The association of Jews with Bolshevism had a massive impact both in Germany itself and also in the Soviet Occupied nations. Hitler had connected the two firstly in MK ("The Marxist weapon of Jewry descends like a nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people") and then it was used during his rule to blame Jews for causing the war (SD reports consistently show that ordinary Germans had zero appetite for war initially) and for keeping it going. (“If the international Jewish financiers should succeed in plunging Europe into another world war…then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry but will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" Hitler's speech to German parliament, 1939) In addition and perhaps most interestingly, Tim Synder asserts Hitlers antisemitism to his own 'ecological panic' and the Jew-Bolshevik concept “allowed Hitler’s portrait of a planetary ecosystem polluted by Jewish ideas to crystallise as planning for the Holocaust” (Synder, 2015)

In addition the association of Jews with Bolshevism allowed for the Nazi's to exploit German people (especially the middle classes) deep fear of Bolshevik revolutionaries to their own advantage. As the war went on, Nazi propaganda persistently used the threat of encirclement (The Brits and Americans to the West and the Jew Bolshevik Soviets to the East) to keep Germans dedicated to the war effort and when morale lowered, Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for prolonging the war and inflicting misery on the German people (See the propaganda poster: The Jew, Inciter of War, Prolonger of War)

However its important to understand that the Shoah could not have happened simply because of Hitler's own ideological view and he took a lesser role in the Holocaust than other Nazis and SS paramilitaries, despite this however, the ideological association of Jews and Bolshevism allowed for the SS to exploit Slavs living in Soviet occupied territory, the mass shootings of Jews was not just done by the Einsatzgruppen but also by local men and policemen. Radicalisation was used in order to stimulate a hatred of Jews and the ‘Jew-Bolshevik’ belief was used toward Latvians as it made Jews responsible for the terror of Soviet occupation and it allowed for executioners to be ideologically prepared to inflict atrocities. This had previously been a success at inciting anti-Jewish pogroms throughout Soviet states and while Germans took a backseat role prior to systematic executions, reports of the Einsatzgruppen ‘show clearly how strong German influence was on the outbreak of pogroms.