Nazi racial policy has been considered, particularly by Friedlander, as a product of Hitler's promotion of pre-existing racism within German society. The Weimar years saw many nationalist parties hold the Jewish community responsible for the humiliation of their World War I defeat, the Treaty of Versailles and the effects of the Great Depression. Indeed Hindenburg himself claimed that Germany had not been defeated in World War I but was instead "stabbed in the back by Jews and Communists." Furthermore, anti-Semitism was the most significant aspect of Hitler's Weltanschauung, and a dominant theme in his Mein Kamf : Jews were 'untermenschen' or 'subhuman' and revealed how Hitler perceived them as a parasite, contaminating the purity of Aryan blood. Pinson explained that "the Jew, in the Nazi ideology, was the embodiment of all their enemies rolled into one." This anti-Semitic feeling was heightened through the skillful use of propaganda.
Hitler's astounding skills as an orator coupled with Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry's incessant flow of anti-Semitic material aided in leading the