I believe that Holocaust was made possible by a confluence of the following, coexisting factors:
1. Historic anti-Semitism.
2. Hitler the Phenomena.
3. The creation of the German Totalitarian State.
4. The creation of the SS, Hitler's private army.
5. The violence of the W.W.II.
6. The Demonization of the Jews.

All those conditions had to be in place, to permit Hitler to play out his nightmarish plans for the eradication of the European Jewry. From all those conditions, demonization of the Jews was the most important . My reasoning is as follows:

ANTI-SEMITISM
Anti-Semitism existed for millenniums and the Jews faced continuous persecutions like the Inquisition, Black Plaque, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels but they never faced total destruction like during the Holocaust. It is true that anti-Semitism was the vehicle that brought Hitler to power, but in past there were many powerful rulers that hated and persecuted Jews. Some like the Hadrian or the Russian Tzars attempted cultural Genocide but not physical destruction. anti-Semitism was only one of the conditions that made the Final Solution a reality.

HITLER THE PHENOMENA
Before getting to power Hitler had little contact with Jews, nevertheless in Mein Kampf, he perceives the Jews to be powerful, evil antagonists of the Aryan race. The main attributes of the Devil - evil and supernatural powers, are the exact attributes of the Jewish stereotypes. In his last will, dictated before his suicide, Hitler repeats the same anti-Jewish nonsense although 6 million Jews went to their death helplessly and almost peacefully, negating every motion of their supernatural power.

Killing of the Jews, eliminating valuable manpower, killing of doctors, scientists was against the interest of the German people. It took a charismatic, paranoid, senseless leader of a totalitarian state, controlling a powerful SS army to embark on the Final Solution.

THE TOTALITARIAN STATE.
Millions of men women and children, were sent to their death without a court order, public discussion, or signs of protests. Only in the German Totalitarian State this could have happened.

Despite Hitler's explosive rhetoric he was a passive leader that surrounded himself with a retinue of paladins that ran the country and created new institutions, like the Gestapo created by Goering, the propaganda machine created by Goebbles, the SS organization created by Himmler. The greatest contribution to the creation of this state had Heydrich, the master of dirty tricks, involved in the burning of the Reichstag and in the creation of the concentration camps. It was Heydrich who formulated the idea that people can be detained not for crimes committed but for the perceived danger they pose to the rulers of the State. Without the German Totalitarian state and the concentration camps, the Holocaust could not happen.

THE SS ORGANIZATION
The SS Organization was created by Himmler and it grew from 160 people to an army of 350,000. The SS was a de facto Hitler's private army, not controlled by the Reich, not supported by the budget of the state, blindly following all Fuhrer's wishes. Only such an organization could kill a million of children, on the basis of an oral order. Without the SS, the Holocaust could not happen.

DEMONIZATION OF THE JEWS
Sometime ago, Reverend Falwell declared that the Anti-Christ, a Jewish male, will be found in the States. According to the Christian mythology, the Anti-Christ will be a product of an illegitimate liaison of the Devil and a Jewess. Reverend Falwell stated also that he considers himself a friend of Israel, and rightly so. This is a good illustration of the pervasive diabolization of the Jews, that played a tremendous role in the Holocaust.

I believe that anti-Semitism is a conscious act of hating or detesting the Jews, whereas Demonization is a subtle, subconscious, archetype perception of Jews as evil and almost supernaturally powerful. It is pervasive even today, in the Post Holocaust era. We see it in the in resurgence of anti-Semititsm in Russia, in the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Louis Farakhan, in the equating of Zionism with racism by UN. How otherwise can one explain the existence of anti-Semitism in countries without Jews? It radiates from the pages of internet discussion groups, where Jews are accused of many crimes. It is reflected in the belief of a Warsaw cabbie that the Jews control all the Polish banks. It is reflected in the spontaneously erected crosses at Auschwitz.

DEMONIZATION AND THE HOLOCAUST.
The Dehumanization of the Jews was a factor mostly responsible for the Holocaust and the totalitarity of the destruction. A Nazi planner Dr. Wetzel, relating to the Poles wrote: "....it goes without saying that one cannot resolve the Polish problem by liquidating Poles as the Jews were liquidated. Such a solution would brand the German people into the far future and would cost us sympathy on all sides....." Why? Because the Poles were never demonized, the Jews were. 

The Red Cross refrained from denouncing the massacres in the death-camps; In 1942 the British Embassy in Washington issued a memorandum expressing concern that too many Jews might escape from Hitler and burden democracies with their presence; In 1939 the St. Louis with 900 refugees aboard was turned back at port after port, and subsequently many refugees were deported back to Hitler's Germany and died.

Covering under the mantle of strict Vatican neutrality, the Pope refused to condemn Hitler's atrocities, despite the fact that in 1940 he broke this policy by expressing concern over the German violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland. When criticized by the German Catholics he wrote to the German bishops that neutrality was not synonymous "with indifference and apathy where moral and humane consideration require a candid word." It looks like that the murder of millions of Jews did not involve "moral and humane" considerations. Why? Demonization is the answer.

Demonization was also the cause of the abandonment of the Jews by the Roosevelt administration. As Robert Michael wrote: 

"The records of the Casablanca Conference contain the clearest and most significant evidence concerning the President attitudes toward the Jews and the basic reason why he did nothing to end the anti-refugee policy of the United States."

"The conference took place in January 1943 in the middle of the period when the mass murder of Jews was taking place in Europe. By this time, Roosevelt knew nearly everything about these atrocities. Roosevelt had been informed over the years by American diplomats and American press reports about the Jewish condition in Europe. Moreover, in December 1942 the Polish government in exile had accurately informed the U.S. government of many of the facts of the Holocaust." 

"Yet at Casablanca, Roosevelt amazingly seemed to sympathize with Nazi discrimination against Jews. He proposed to Generals Nogu's and Giraud that the French government in North Africa discriminate against the Jews of French North Africa just as Hitler had done in Germany before the war."

kimel@systec.com