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In the first seven and a half years of Nazi rule in Germany, Hitler partook in no Jewish killing, though Jews were targeted by the Fuhrer and his party in other ways. From 1940 onwards however, Hitler's anti-Semitic nature stepped up a gear, with his attempts at the gradual separation of Jews from society increasing in intensity and callousness to ultimately peak at mass persecution and the Holocaust. Ever since 1945, a raging debate has continued among Historians as to Hitler's true intentions for the Jewish Race. Had he consistently followed a "blueprint for genocide"1, intending mass extermination of the Jewish Race from the outset and simply concealing a deep seated loathing of the race through his attempts to gain power? Did the Jews simply become an obstacle to Hitler's ideological blonde hair and blue eyed' Aryan Race, used merely as an emerging scapegoat for all that was wrong with the nation and persecuted as a result? Or finally, was Hitler pressured into genocide by the influence of others, or by circumstance?

This article aims to demonstrate that Hitler did not intend the Holocaust from the outset, more that an idea for Jewish persecution lingering at the back of his mind became more realistic when fuelled by the party "hard core"2 who encouraged Hitler to dispose of the Jewish race in line with his ideology, his aims for a true Aryan Race, and his growing distrust of the Soviet Union. It was these elements of Hitler's rule that ultimately led to pro-Aryan and anti-Semitic schemes such as the Madagascar Plan', Euthanasia Programme' as well as Hitler's new ideology that all Bolsheviks were Jews, a factor contributing to the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and acting as a significant platform for the Road to Auschwitz'.

Turning to the first element in the debate we will examine whether Hitler had consistently followed a "blueprint for genocide"1. Though Hermann Goering's 1938 proclamation that he "would not wish to be a Jew in Germany"3 highlights the underlying intensity of discrimination against the Jewish Race, the comment does little to suggest any intent on the part of Hitler or the Nazis as to the future possibility of mass Jewish extermination through the Final Solution. The Madagascar Plan two years after Goering's proclamation follows along similar lines, with the scheme highlighting the fact that Nazi anti-Semitism was limited only to within Germany. Nazi racial policy was therefore focussed solely on removing Jews from within the country,

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