Were the jews ruining the economy of germany hence why they were targeted because they were immigrants and overtaking germans place

1. The claim examined — what the question actually asks and why it matters

The user’s question combines an economic assertion (“ruining the economy”) with an explanation for violence (“hence why they were targeted because they were immigrants and overtaking Germans’ place”), which requires separating empirical economic reality from ideological justification; historical records indicate the Nazis framed Jews as economic scapegoats while simultaneously enacting legal measures to remove them from economic life, so causation runs from policy and propaganda to dispossession, not the reverse ^{[5] [3]}.

2. Nazi propaganda and law: manufacture of an economic threat

Nazi leaders and organs of state deliberately promoted narratives that blamed Jews for Germany’s misfortunes and portrayed them as economically dominant, and then translated that rhetoric into law—laws that barred Jews from businesses, required registration of property, and paved the way for “Aryanization” of firms—most notably decrees in 1938 that removed Jews from retail and required property registration, measures historians call the legal machinery of expropriation ^{[3] [2] [4]}.

3. Economic reality: prominence, not domination

While German Jews were disproportionately visible in certain professions and cultural achievements—24% of Germany’s Nobel Prize winners were Jewish, for instance—this visibility does not equal a national economic takeover or “ruining” of the economy, and many Jews believed their contributions and assimilation would protect them even as persecution escalated ^[6]. Scholarly work notes perceptions among Germans that Jews had undue influence, but frames this as a constructed grievance used to justify removal rather than an objective diagnosis of economic harm ^[5].

4. Violence, legal exclusion, and the trajectory from discrimination to expropriation

The persecution combined legal measures with violence and terror; state bureaucracies and party organizations coordinated exclusions, boycotts, and pogroms that impoverished Jews and transferred assets to non‑Jewish Germans, making the economic “problem” into a self-fulfilling process of dispossession engineered by the regime ^{[7] [8] [2]}. The April 1938 property registry and later legislation were explicitly described by contemporaries as steps toward complete removal of Jews from the economy, demonstrating intent to seize wealth rather than redress an economic imbalance ^[4].

5. Motives beyond money: racial ideology, political consolidation, and opportunism

Economic grievances were entangled with a racist ideology that depicted Jews as biological and cultural threats to “German” purity; Nazi policy used economic accusations as one instrument among many—legal exclusion, propaganda, terror—to consolidate power and mobilize popular acquiescence, and historians emphasize that antisemitism’s central driver was racism and political aims, not objective economic calculation ^{[9] [1]}. Additionally, ordinary Germans and institutions sometimes benefited materially from Aryanization and thus had incentives to tolerate or assist persecution ^[10].

6. Conclusion — causation inverted: dispossession was policy, not a remedial response

The historical record in primary and scholarly sources shows that Jews were targeted because of entrenched antisemitic ideology and the Nazi state’s program of exclusion and expropriation, not because Jews had actually “ruined” Germany’s economy or were legitimately overtaking Germans; the charge of economic sabotage functioned as justification for laws and violence that themselves produced economic displacement and theft ^{[3] [5] [4]}. Sources used: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, contemporary analyses of legal measures and propaganda, and historical studies of economic antisemitism ^{[3] [6] [2] [7] [4] [5]}.