I'm currently taking 20th Century History in High School, and although it's a decent course for our age group, the wording used in the textbooks are really vague at times and have confused me a bit.
When we study the rise of the Nazi Party, we learn about how after WW1 and the Treaty Of Versailles the German public felt humiliated and so began Nationalism gaining more traction. The textbook talks about how the Nazi Party "used" these feelings to gain popularity and billed themselves as militaristic because because of the public's need of a show of strength after such a devastating defeat. To what extent did the Nazis and Hitler control their image and target their ideologies to appeal to the public? Did they themselves actually think so radically? From what I understand, I'd say yes because of Hitler's efforts to carry out the Holocaust in secrecy, but I'd like to see some concrete evidence or source of his and other leaders feelings, which we aren't taught
An additional, but still related question. In perpetuating the stab-in-the-back myth, why were Jews the ones targeted so specifically? I understand the reasons for such a myth existing, what with the ruined pride and need to deflect blame, but why Jews?
Thank you so much to anyone who answers this, I'm really interested by the topic but I don't know any good sources to clear up questions or learn new information so finding this sub was great!
This question is dear to my heart, because answering it and unraveling the inner workings and dynamics of Nazi Germany was what lead me to peruse serious, academic history. I looked through the FAQ to see if there were any previous useful answers to this question, but nothing quite hit the spot. I recommend you to have a look yourself though.
The question you pose is at the same time very simple and very complex. It is simple in the sense that it is completely uncontroversial that Hitler's worldview was rooted in a firm belief in struggle between "peoples" or "races" (unfortunately, such terms do not translate perfectly German terms like "Volk". Keep this in mind.) and a deep-seated fear of "the Jew" as the ultimate parasite of all societies. It is very complex in that it is also uncontroversial that Hitler was completely untroubled by bald-faced lying when it suited him. The man was profoundly dishonest at his very core.
If we look beyond Hitler and at the racial pseudoscience produced by NSDAP luminaries, we are faced with another problem: there is not even a nominal effort to make their theories on race internally consistent. Nazis were apparently perfectly content simultaneously maintaining that "the Jew" was malevolent in his vehement protection of the integrity of his own race, and wicked in his polluting other races by intermixing with them. Jews were bad for doing one thing, "Gypsies" (Roma and Sinti) for doing the exact opposite thing. (Sartre wrote a classic work treating this - Anti-Semite and Jew. While I don't care much for the later parts of it, his notion of the bad faith, or disregard for truth, exhibited by the anti-Semite was an idea I found and still find profoundly insightful.)
There is probably no way to truly capture all the angles of your question as it spans about 25 years of history, so I will instead suggest some reading that helped me digest these questions.
The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (Kershaw): This is the must-read introduction to the workings of the Nazi state, the power structures, the role of Hitler, the emergence of the Holocaust. It was the first serious academic history I read and I cannot recommend it enough.
The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Kershaw): This book focuses on the personality cult around Hitler and the near paradoxical contrasts between his public image and his actual person. It's also the best work I've read for analysis of what Germans actually thought about Hitler.
Hitler: Hubris and Hitler: Nemesis (Kershaw): The quintessential biographies of the man, although they study him as a cog in the machinery of the Nazi state, rather than as a "Great Man of History".
Origins of the Final Solution (Browning): This is a bit of a dense read, but it's an excellent indepth look at the ideological and political development that led to the Holocaust. It is somewhat relevant to your queries in that understanding how the Holocaust could happen is one of the fundamental goals in understanding how the Nazis actually thought.
Ultimately, we're not privy to Hitler's thoughts. We should probably be thankful for that as he must have been one of the most toxic individuals to have ever lived; his mental life was surely no less odious. What does become clear when you study his actions is that he must have been driven by very, very deep-seated convictions. With the strained relationship with truth that fascist ideologies and ideologues exhibit, there might not be much use arguing about their exact form, as that may well not have mattered even to Hitler himself.