Why the Germans? Why the Jews?

An excellent book. The author offers an explanation to the hatred of Jews in Germany, based on emotion of envy and insecurity within a particular group - an upwardly mobile lower class. He claims that the problem was not, as commonly thought, the failure of the Weimar republic, but its success. The republic created many opportunities for an upward mobility, especially through educational opportunities. Initially the Jews were in a better position to exploit such opportunities due to the importance of education within the Jewish culture, and that created envy. The envy, though, was exacerbated when the upwardly mobile Germans were rapidly catching up and the economic and educational differences became considerably smaller. The author claims that, indeed, the envy tends to be stronger among groups perceived as similar. This envy, as well as the opportunities created by removal of the Jews, made much of the German population quietly sympathetic with the Nazi anti-Jewish actions. Without this sympathy, Holocaust would be impossible.
While the author perceives the especially high level of hatred towards the Jews in Germany as a consequence of the weakness of German identity, which was further affected by WWI and its economic aftermath, he points out that competition over opportunities for upward mobility might easily turn into a virulent envy and a readiness to accept, or at least to ignore, inhuman actions by the authorities in other places and in other ethnic contexts as well.