How did the Nazis justify the differences in the way they treated Jews v. POWs?
score:4
Nazi doctrine developed in the 1920s from pre-existing anti-semitic and other racist tendencies, and placed Jews amongst the Untermensch - essentially "not quite human". The Russians were categorised with Slavs, and were also "not quite human".
Western Allied people (French, British, American) fell into a category that was considered to be compatible with most Germans (the Aryan ideal was an extremely select elite above everyone else).
This goes most of the way in explaining the extreme treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi controlled regions, as well as that of Russian and other Eastern European POWs, in contrast to that of Western POWs. That's not to say Western POWs had an easy time of it - with starvation, harsh punishments, and even executions for escape attempts.
Another consideration for the variation in treatment was that POWs (at least in the beginning of the war, and in the west) generally fell under the responsibility of the Heer, Luftwaffe, or Kriegsmarine, and not the more fanatical SS and Gestapo.
Finally, there was always the risk that the Allies would reciprocate any mistreatment of prisoners. Indeed, the Russians did reciprocate quite strongly as they began to advance west in the later stages of the war.
Upvote:8
I'll try to explain briefly the big picture, because the full answer would be book length. So this answer is simplified and designed to give you a good idea about where to keep learning.
The Nazis had a concept of Scientific racism.
This led them to define the "Jewish problem" and to therefore define Jews as sub-humans. They then created the "Nuremberg Laws", which codified the protection of the German racial superiority in law. All this agenda led to an organized plan to solve the "Jewish problem". It started with idea to deport Jews out of Europe, but very quickly rolled to a total planned genocide which was documented under the name "The Final Solution".
The official decision about the genocide was given at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and it was documented by Adolf Eichmann. They were very organized, as you may notice. Adolf Eichmann is considered by many as the architect of the plan.
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