German people, they had no moral right to their property, and the measures to strip them of it were merely an act of simple restitution, their wealth going back whence it came–to the Reich. With the war, a new argument was added. Hitler had always insisted that, if a war came, it would be the work of the Jews, acting on the international stage; and when it did come, he held the Jews responsible for all the deaths that ensued. The conclusion implicit in this argument was that the Jews had no moral right to their lives either. Indeed, he said on a number of occasions that war would precipitate a
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