TIL Adolf Hitler once befriended a Jew, Rosa Bernile Nienau, which only ended when top Nazi officials interfered five years later.

There was a division within the Nazi party on what their goals should be. So some actually were left, e.g. the big push towards land reform, and education, of cheap consumer products, like "the peoples' car", "peoples' radio", etc. All these goals were generally lower in priority though than preparation for war, and Hitler was terrible at making a budgets. Ridiculously so.

At its core nazism's purpose was to make the German people rich. It just foolishly decided that the better way to do that was via amtisemitism, war, and territorial expansion. It looked at the wealth of the USA and thought that expulsion of native peoples and expansion was the cause, hence the plans to expand eastwards.

He even called Slavs the "Indianer" (American Indians) of the east.

An additional part of the problem was that Hitler was a dictator, so prioritised personal power over what he believed were best for Germany, e.g. massive secretive bribes to German generals to keep him in power.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - bbc.com