2 - nazi racial policies (to 1939)

Question 1

‘untermenschen’

Answer 1

‘subhuman’, biologically inferior, of lesser racial value

Question 2

Nazi racial beliefs

Answer 2

• Aryans = superior race (due to intelligence, hard work & willingness to make sacrifices for the nation)
• Germany lost WW1 because of the weak (had to be removed)
• mixing with untermenschen had contaminated Aryans (selective breeding & removal of undesirables needed)

Question 3

Nazi racial policies

Answer 3

• propaganda campaign agst undesirables to create resentment
• Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring (1933) = sterilisation law
• Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (1933)
• department within Gestapo to deal with homosexuality (1935 law = arrested 50,000 gay people)
• work-shy, homeless people, sex workers, gay people & juvenile delinquents sent to concentration camps (1936)
• euthanasia campaign (1939)
• asocials put into forced labour

Question 4

Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring (1933)

Answer 4

• allowed sterilisation of: ‘simple-minded’, ‘chronic alcoholics’, people with schizophrenia, hereditary blindness & deafness
• from 1934 -> 350,000 men sterilised

Question 5

Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (1933)

Answer 5

compulsory castration for certain sex offenders

Question 6

How many gay people were arrested following the law introduced in 1935?

Answer 6

50,000

Question 7

1939 euthanasia campaign

Answer 7

• exterminated people with mental-health conditions
• killed 5000 disabled younger people
• by 1941, protests forced the programme to be stopped (restarted in secret)
• extended to foreign workers with incurable physical illnesses, racially inferior babies & terminally sick prisoners

Question 8

Roma, Sinti & Gypsies

Answer 8

• persecuted as non-Aryan, work-shy & homeless
• gypsies banned from marrying Germans (1935)
• Decree for the Struggle against the Gypsy Plague (1938) = gypsies registered to ensure racial separation
• 30,000 gypsies deported to special sites in Poland (1939)

Question 9

3 phases of Nazi policy towards Jewish people

Answer 9

• origins (development of Nazi ideology)
• gradualism (1933-39 = legal discrimination, terror, violence & forced emigration)
• genocide

Question 10

Nazi anti-semitism

Answer 10

• Jewish people portrayed as inferior to German race in 19th & early 20th centuries
• used as scapegoats for defeat in WW1, & economic crisis of 1920s-early 30s

Question 11

legal discrimination against Jewish people

Answer 11

• 1st April 1933 = boycott of Jewish shops (not widely accepted)
• 7th April 1933 = Law of Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, excluded Jewish people from civil service
• 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws = Jewish people lost citizenship, marriage btwn Jews & Germans was banned
• 1938 = Jewish doctors not allowed to practice
• 1938 = Polish Jewish people expelled
• 1938 = Jewish people excluded from schools & universities
• 1938 = compulsory closure & sale of Jewish businesses

Question 12

1935 Nuremberg Race Laws

Answer 12

• Jewish people lost citizenship
• marriage between Jewish people & German people was banned

Question 13

Nazi violence towards Jewish people

Answer 13

• violence localised & sporadic
• March 1938 = attacks on 200,000 Jewish people in Vienna
• 9-10th October 1938 = Kristallnacht (Jewish homes, businesses & synagogues attacked; 100 Jews killed)

Question 14

Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna

Answer 14

• established in 1938, under Adolf Eichmann
• forced Jewish people to emigrate

Question 15

Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration

Answer 15

• established in 1939

Question 16

How many Jewish people left before the war?

Answer 16

about half of the Jewish population