But who taught the Nazis?

We have all heard about what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

Nazis were the lowest form of Humanity. We all grew up with that thought. They believed in purity of blood. Which we now know is the weakest form of an organism, for without diversity you get blood diseases, weak genes and so on. They believed in Jews being a low form of life, beneath of that of themselves. A people who should be rounded up and packed into ghettos.

They needed Jews to be designated obviously so as Jews, to wear special clothing, to wear special badges, typically a Star of David, so that no non Jew could mistake them as other than Jewish and accidentally do business with them, or interact with them.

They saw Jews as ugly. Posters showed Jews as scary. Rumors were rampant. They pushed for an attitude of negativity toward all Jews. It was thought that they would kill children for their blood. Steal money from people, cheat, bring on all kinds of bad disasters to all the "good" non Jewish people. And we hate them for that kind of behavior and for their treatment of a group of people merely because of their blood and religion.

Bu then I found out that during the middle ages, in 1555, when the Grand Inquisitor became Pope, he did all this, thereby starting these behaviors and beliefs. Pope Paul IV, C.R. (28 June 1476 – 18 August 1559), né Giovanni Pietro Carafa, was Pope from 23 May 1555 until his death. n January 1536 he was made Cardinal-Priest of S. Pancrazio and then Archbishop of Naples. He reorganized the Inquisition in Italy.

Catharism, Levitov, and the Voynich Manuscript

I hadn't realized why the Inquisition was started. In the 12th century, to counter the spread of Catharism, prosecution of heretics by secular governments became more frequent. Catharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. For these and other reasons, not once in history but several times, in the 12th, 13th and 16th centuries, the Inquisition started up again and was still active up until the 19th century.

Emblem of the Inquisition

Jews were forced to become Christian whenever possible. Even Christians were forced to believe in the most drastic of ways. The obvious evolution of this was that the Catholic authorities became paranoid which isn't so surprising when you are forcing people to do something against their will. And so the Inquisition was started again, not once in history but several times, in the 12th, 13th and 16th centuries, lasting decades. The handbook for Inquisitors says: "for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit."

Jews were band from using new materials or production, they were rounded up and forced to live in a Ghetto in Rome,

Via Rua in Ghetto, (rione Sant'Angelo), by Ettore Roesler Franz (ca 1880 ).

The Pope before Pope Paul IV had given Jews a place to live in safety when they fled Spain after being expelled from Spain by the Queen. They were later told they had to wear special clothing designating them as Jews, and they had to wear special badges. They were designated a place to live. But then when Pope Paul IV became pope, he pushed the limits and forced the Jews to wear the clothing they had been ordered to wear and had fallen away from wearing. He forced them to live in a confined area and to be locked in every night.

And so many attitudes toward the Jews was begun, exaggerated and enforced.

The Nazis didn't invent any of this. They got it from the Catholic church, from a history and precedent that was hundreds of years old and spread all over Europe and an attitude that was spread around the world through missionaries. I'm not saying that Nazis are any less despicable for their having only carried on an attitude started hundreds of years before them. But I am saying that the Catholic church has something to answer for.

As someone said, If the military was dropping condoms in Vietnam rather than Napalm and bombs, that war would have ended rather abruptly.