significant role in the newly developing industries and businesses. The rapid social and economic mobility and cultural advancement of European Jews during this period made them one of the most visible symbols of modernization. Individuals, who opposed 19th-century modernization, ranging from aristocrats to peasants, perceived the Jews as a destructive force. Traditional attitudes that persisted after Jewish emancipation and new images of the Jews both merged with contemporary frustrations and angers resulting from the social changes brought on by capitalism.
             By the mid-19th century a new social theory had emerged in Europe. This was the theory of race. According to this theory, humanity was divided into "higher" and "lower" races. In the view of those who believed in this theory, the Jews were the lowest race. There was also a mortal threat to the "purity" of the "higher" races.
             Until 1929 the National Socialist German Workers' Party, as the Nazi Party was officially called, was a small political party. Then, in the parliamentary elections of 1930, the party received more than 18 percent of the total votes cast, compared to about 2.5 percent in 1928. The bulk of the votes for the Nazis came from the middle classes and the well-to-do rather than from workers and unemployed people. The major factors in the Nazis' electoral success were lingering anger at Germany's military collapse toward the end of World War I. Also there was resentment toward the Versailles treaty, which had ended the war and imposed harsh conditions on Germany, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, fear of the spread of Communism a
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