Attitudes and Policies Towards Minorities

• The Nazis believed that the German Aryan race was superior to all other races
• Aryan


  Genetically white German nationals
• Eugenics was a theory popular at the beginning of the 20th century based on Darwin's natural selection
• Eugenics


  Encouraging the best parents to breed and preventing unsuitable parents from having children through sterilization
• Racial hygiene


  Only the best parents from the best race should be encouraged to breed
• Hitler wrote down his ideas about race and his hatred of the Jews in Mein Kampf while in prison


  Described the Aryan Germans as the Herrenvolk or master race and other European races as sub-humans
• Hitler believed that Aryans were superior to all other races and only Aryans should be allowed to have children
• Hitler considered Roma and Jewish people as unworthy of life
• Anti-Semitism was common in Germany
• German nationalist sentiments were strong after World War I
• Hitler pursued his anti-Semitism freely once he came to power in 1933
• Slavs were another persecuted group by the Nazis
• Hitler threatened to invade Slavic countries as part of his Lebensraum or living space policy
• Groups subjected to ill treatment by the Nazis

  • Gypsies
  • Gay men
  • People with disabilities
  • Jewish people
• Hitler threatened to invade Slavic countries as part of his Lebensraum policy
• Groups within the Gypsy category


  • Cinti
  • Roma
  • Yenish
• The Nazis despised the Gypsy group because they lived by moving around and accused them of not working and being a drain on the state
• From 1936, some Gypsies were forced to live in camps with very poor facilities
• In 1938, traveling communities were banned from traveling in groups and were rounded up and put on a register
• Roma and other groups were subject to the Nuremberg laws in the same way as Jewish people were
• Gay men were treated as undermentioned by the Nazis, who believed that they lowered the moral standard of Germany
• In 1934, 766 men accused of being gay were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps
• In 1935, stricter laws against being gay were passed
• By 1936, the number of gay men arrested was 4,000, and by 1938, it was 8,000
• Gay men in concentration camps were often picked out for bullying and torture, with an estimated 5,000 deaths before 1939
• The Nazi laws encouraged the castration of gay men
• The Nazis believed that people with disabilities were a burden on society
• In 1933, the law for the prevention of hereditary disease was passed, ordering the compulsory sterilization of anyone with a disability
• Over 400,000 people were prevented from having children by 1939 due to compulsory sterilization
• In 1939, the Nazis escalated the persecution of the disabled to murder through the T4 program
• The T4 program included the murder of babies with severe mental or physical disabilities by starvation or lethal injection
• The persecution of Jewish people was the most comprehensive of all the groups targeted by the Nazis
• Hitler's views on Jewish people were clear, with Nazi propaganda calling them filth and vermin
• Jewish people were pushed out of the workplace, banned from inheriting property, and banned from the army
• Local authorities run by Nazis followed the central government's lead in discriminating against Jewish people
• The Nazis manipulated public opinion and actions against Jewish communities from as early as March 1933
• In September 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws designed to make life difficult for Jewish people, Roma, Scinti people, and black people
• The citizenship laws removed German citizenship from anyone deemed not to be of German blood
• Those with three or four Jewish grandparents were deemed to be Jewish
• Even those who had converted or given up their religion could still be counted as Jewish