When the Nazis first came to power, they quickly needed to solidify their position. They had come to power due to populist uprisings, and their leader’s unconventional approach. Once in office, they moved quickly to find scapegoats for the plight of the people. Hitler had spent decades convincing himself that Germany’s problem were the Jews. In 1933, there were 522,000 Jews in Germany.

The government began publicly vilifying the Jews. At first, those who stood up for them were labeled “anti-German” and unpatriotic. After all, Hitler’s entire motive was to “make Germany great again” and if you spoke out against the legality of what he was doing, you were obviously working against the welfare of the German people.

While initially this went on simply as public bullying, it quickly became illegal, not by law, but by decree. Hitler simply ordered the police and other law enforcement authorities to start arresting those that spoke out for the Jews, or acted to help them.

The people went along with this, because after hearing often enough, loudly enough, publicly enough, and long enough, that the Jews were the problem, they believed it.

Pretty soon the people turned against those that spoke out, labeling them initially as unpatriotic, later as criminals, and finally as traitors.

This was all propagated by feeding targeted propaganda to the people. News media were criticized if they reported the facts and the truth. Eventually they were censored to fit the message of the state, and dissenting news was eventually banned. The government turned the people against the media.

And so it all started. We know how it ended. 50 million people dead worldwide.