Nazi Attitudes and Policies to the minorities

• Nuremberg Laws


  Laws passed by the Nazis that targeted Jews and placed restrictions upon their movements, rights and lives
• Nuremberg Laws were passed


  15th September 1935
• Laws that specifically targeted Jews

  • The Reich Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour
  • The Reich Law on Citizenship
• The Reich Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour

  • Prohibited Jews from marrying Germans
  • Prohibited Jews from engaging in sexual relationships with Germans
• The Reich Law on Citizenship

  • Stripped Jews of their German citizenship
  • Jews were defined as subjects of the Reich rather than citizens
  • Those having German blood were entitled to be citizens
  • Required Jews to wear the yellow Stars of David
• The Reich Law on Citizenship was perhaps the more significant of the two laws
• Direct persecution


  Implementation of laws
• Indirect persecution

  Indoctrination of the populations
• Nazis' control of education and media


  1. Spread anti-Jewish message and beliefs to the people of Germany

  2. Indirect form of persecution towards Jews
• The resulting effect of indirect persecution is hard to quantify
• Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933

  1. Nazi Stormtroopers stood outside businesses to dissuade Germans from using the business

  2. Wrote 'Jude' on the outside of businesses run by Jews
• Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws


  1935
• Types of disabilities targeted

  • Physical disabilities
  • Mental disabilities
• After the Nuremberg Laws


  1. Laws required all Jews to register their possessions with the Nazis

  2. Issuing of identify cards to all Jews in July
• Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring passed


  1933
• Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring


  Stopped the birth of children who would inherit diseases or conditions from their parents
• Implementation of the law

  1. Nazis forced people to be sterilised

  2. People included those with psychological problems, deformities, were deaf or blind, or were epileptic
• Nazis started the T4 Programme


  1939
• T4 Programme

  • Killing of disabled babies through the use of overdoses
  • Programme extended to include children up to the age of 17
• Homosexuals (according to the Nazis)

  Contradicted the ideal family view
• Homosexuals in concentration camps wore pink triangles, which was an insult as those who had sexually assaulted children were also made to wear pink triangles
• Gypsies


  Also referred to as Roma or Sinti people
• Gypsies

  • Nomadic people
  • Travelled around countries for their living
• The Nazis described the Slavic people as members of the Untermenschen, or sub-human
• Anti-Semitism

  The term used to describe hostility towards Jews
• Eugenics

  The scientific theory of selective breeding
• Eugenics

  • Scientists used the ideas of natural selection and evolution to attempt to explain that this could be used within human beings
  • The best parents would then breed and produce the best possible children
• The Nazis did not invent Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Semitism has been present throughout history for a variety of reasons
• Applying the ideas of Eugenics

  1. The Nazis embarked on a programme of forced sterilisation for those not conforming to the ideas of the Master Race

  2. To ensure that those people could not breed
• During the 1930s, Anti-Semitic feelings were running high in Germany
• Reasons for Anti-Semitism in Germany

  • Many Germans blamed the Jews for the loss of the First World War and the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles
  • Jews were also blamed for the economic crash from 1929 to 1933 in which many Germans and Jews lost out
  • These views were peddled by nationalist politicians, with Hitler being one of them
• Eugenics

  • Scientists used the ideas of natural selection and evolution to attempt to explain that this could be used within human beings
  • The best parents would then breed and produce the best possible children
• Nazis

  Took the ideas of Eugenics and created policies to create the German Master Race