PERSECUTION OF MINORITIES

• Through 12 years of power, Nazis persecuted any group that they thought challenged the Nazi ideals

  Gay and Lesbians were a threat to family life

  Mental health disorders were a threat to perfect master race

  Roma and Jews were though to be inferior
• Organisations for homosexuals were shut down

  Homosexuality was already a crime before 1933, Nazis exploited this prejudice

  Books by gay authors were banned

  Around 100,000 gays were arrested with around 50,000 people sent to prison

  Between 5000 and 10,000 of these ended up in concentration camps

  Forced to wear pink triangle to mark them out
• ‘Euthanasia programme’ was begun in 1939 against people with mental health disorders

  At least 5000 babies and children were killed between 1939 and 1945 either by injection or starvation

  Between 1939 and 1941, 72,000 patients with mental health conditions were gassed before a public outcry in Germany itself ended the extermination
• Attempted extermination of the Roma, did not cause an outcry

  5 out of 6 Roma living in Germany in 1939 were killed by the Nazis

  Little to no complaints about treatment of asocials, alcoholics, homeless, prostitutes, criminals and beggars, rounded up off the streets and sent to concentration camp
• ‘FINAL SOLUTION’


  Hitler’s antisemitism

  Antisemitism - Hatred of Jews

  Throughout Europe Jews have faced discrimination for hundreds of years

  Often treated unjustly in courts or forced to live in ghettos

  Reason - Religious reasons and they were better

  Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus Christ

  Nazi promoted the idea that Jews were better off, owning more stores and successful businesses
• Nazi Race Theory

  Believed that the Germans were members of the Aryan race (master race)

  Mainly white, northern Europeans

  Germans who could prove their Aryan heritage received an ‘Aryan Certificate’

  Below Aryans there were lesser races (Slavs, Africans and Asians)

  At the bottom (Untermenschen) there were the Jews and Roma

  Viewed as parasitic and a danger to the healthy Aryan race

  The Mischling were Germans of mixed race ancestry (at least 1 Jewish grandparent)

  Ideas formed the basis of the 1935 Nuremburg Laws
• Nazi eugenics

  Attempts the Nazis made to biologically ‘improve’ the Aryan race

  Nazis believed that to ensure a thriving future Aryan master race

  Aryans should only marry Aryans and raise Aryan children

  Eugenics programmes meant to stop inter-racial marriage

  Many non-Aryans were sterilised, many of the 20,000 black people living in the Rhineland
• Nazi Eugenics

  Also believed that people with hereditary mental and physical conditions (Down’s syndrome) should not be allowed to have children

  Argued that these people were a waste of money

  Many were sterilised

  In 1939 - ‘Aktion T-4’ euthanasia programme saw a total of 200,000 people deemed ‘unfit for life’

  Everything for ‘racial hygiene’
• Early measures against the Jews

  Jews were immediately banned from the Civil Service and a variety of public services such as broadcasting and teaching

  Same time, SA and later SS troopers organised boycotts of Jewish shops and businesses, which were marked with a star of David

  Göbbels’ propaganda experts bombarded German children and families with anti-Jew messages

  Daily life Jewish people faced discrimination

  Might be refused jobs, service in shops

  In school, Jewish children were humiliated then segregated
• September 1935

  Annual Nuremberg Rally, Hitler announced 2 anti-Semitic laws

  The ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’ made it illegal for Jews to marry or have sex with Aryans

  The ‘Reich Citizenship Law’ classified Germans into different racial groups

  Aryans of pure German blood

  Mischling (mixed race)

  Non-Aryans, including Jews
• Only Aryans were given full German citizenship

  A further decree later in the year added Roma and black Germans to the list of non-Aryans
• Kristallnacht took place in November 1938
• A young Jewish man killed a German diplomat in Paris, which the Nazis used as an excuse to launch a violent revenge on Jews
• Plain clothes SS troopers were issued pickaxes and hammers and addresses of Jewish businesses
• The SS troopers ran riot, smashing Jewish shops and workplaces
• 91 Jews were murdered during Kristallnacht
• Hundreds of Synagogues were burned during the violent attacks
• 20,000 Jewish people were taken to concentration camps as a result of Kristallnacht
• Thousands more Jewish people left the country to escape the violence
• Many Germans watched the events of Kristallnacht with alarm and concern
• The Nazis presented Kristallnacht as a spontaneous reaction of ordinary Germans against the Jews, although many Germans did not believe this
• Hardly any Germans protested the violent attacks on Jews during Kristallnacht
• A few Germans who did protest were brutally murdered
• Jews were fined 1 Billion marks as their damaged property was rented from German owners
• After Kristallnacht, Naci policies towards Jews got increasingly harsher Jewish children were banned from German schools

  End of 1938 all Jewish businesses were confiscated
• Before war broke out again in September 1939

  Still nearly 200,000 Jews living in Germany (nearly 500,000 in 1933)

  Nazis enforced new restrictive laws to make it easier for authorities to identify Jews

  Forced to add new first names to their identification papers (Israel - men, Sarah - women)

  Red ‘J’ stamped on their passports

  War continued, Nazi policy towards the Jews in Germany and occupied Europe would become more brutal and increasingly radical