Ethnic Minorities in Nazi Germany Flashcards
What vision did the Nazis have for Germany?
- They wanted it to be ‘racially pure’, and only inhabited by Aryan Germans
How far did this policy of racial purity extend?
- It excluded disabled Aryans
What did the Nazis do to deal with disabled people?
- They passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in July 1933, which they used to forcibly sterilise disabled people
How did the idea to sterilise disabled people become more radical, and when?
- In 1939 the programme Action T4 started
- It was the killing of disabled children and adults
Give 2 figures on Action T4.
- 5000 children were killed
- By 1941, 80,000 had been killed by gas alone
How did the Nazis expand the sterilisation law?
- They included Jews, black and mixed race people, and Gypsies
How many people were sterilised between 1933 and 1939?
- 300,000
How were Gypsies treated during World War Two? Give 3 examples.
- At the end of 1939 Hitler ordered for them to be deported to the east of Poland
- Tens of thousands of them were killed by SS squads along with Jewish people
- The mass murder of Gypsies was also part of the Final Solution (21,000 died in Auschwitz alone)
What did the Nazis do to discriminate against Jews in 1933? Give 3 examples.
- There was post-election anti-Jewish violence by the SA
- The Nazis called for a national boycott against Jewish shops in April
- They passed the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service
What caused the Nazis to call for a national boycott of Jewish shops?
- Hindenburg had urged Hitler to control the post-election violence
What did the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service say?
- It prevented Jews from being in the civil service, but with some exceptions
Why were there some exceptions to the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service?
- Hindenburg had originally refused to approve the law and introduced amendments to protect those who had served Germany during the war
What are 2 reasons why the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service was so important?
- It was the first explicitly racist law to be passed in Germany since 1871
- It was the start of the legal exclusion of Jews
Which laws were passed against Jews in 1935?
- The Nuremberg Race Laws
Describe 3 parts of the Nuremberg Race Laws.
- Reich Citizenship Law: Jews were deprived of German citizenship
- Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour: Aryans could not marry or have sex with Jews
- Being Jewish was also defined as having 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents