Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany (1933-45) has gone down in history as one of the most horrific mass-murderers in history. Not only did he cause the bloodiest war ever seen, but his warped racial ideology precipitated the Holocaust, the organized slaughter of over twelve million persons. At the top of his list of 'inferior' groups were the Jews of Europe. Hitler sought to make the Reich Judenrein ( 'free of Jews'), and did so in the most horrific fashion imaginable.
             There are two schools of thought on the origins of the Holocaust. The first is the intentionalist, the belief that it was the Nazis' determined and unwavering attempt to physically destroy European Jews. The other is the functionalist belief, that being that the decision to slaughter the Jews was reached via a twisted road, being a result of forces outside of Germany as well as within.
             This paper will argue the functionalist view of the Holocaust, discussing different avenues pursued by the Germans to make their land Judenrein, and how the failure of those attempts led the Nazis to their horrific Endlösung ( 'Final Solution').
             Many people would be shocked to learn that Adolf Hitler was not always an anti-Semite. In his famous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which he wrote in prison in prison after the failed Beer Hall putsch of 1923. In this work, he remarks that "The Jew still characterized for me by nothing but religion, and therefore on grounds of human tolerance I maintained my rejection of religious attacks." However, he did at some point, experience a complete about-face in his thinking, at one point discovering the 'moral stain' that Jews put on society. Later in Mein Kampf he asked "was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?"
             It is unknown exactly what caused Hitler's attitude of tolerance toward...