The Persecution of Minorities in Nazi Germany

The section explores the persecution of minorities in Nazi Germany. The Nazis had extreme views on race and social purity. Hitler and his followers believed that certain groups were racially or socially inferior, posing a threat to the 'purity' of the Aryan race. These beliefs led to the systematic persecution, exclusion, and eventual extermination of millions of people.

The groups targeted by the Nazis included:

• Jewish people (who suffered the worst persecution, culminating in the Holocaust).
• Slavs (including Poles and Russians, seen as inferior to Germans).
• Roma and Sinti ('Gypsies') (whom the Nazis sought to eliminate).
• Black people (who faced forced sterilisation, medical experiments, and murder).
• People with disabilities (who were forcibly sterilised and later killed under the ‘euthanasia’ programme).
• Homosexuals (who were imprisoned, subjected to medical experiments, and sometimes killed).
• Religious minorities (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to swear loyalty to Hitler).
• Political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists).

Nazi Racial Beliefs

The Nazis promoted the idea that Aryans (Germans of pure Nordic descent) were the master race (Herrenvolk), destined to rule over others. This racist ideology justified the exclusion, persecution, and mass murder of those deemed 'untermensch' (sub-human).

The Nazis also believed in eugenics, a pseudoscience claiming that humanity could be ‘improved’ by preventing ‘undesirable’ people from reproducing. They argued that individuals with disabilities, mental illness, or hereditary diseases were a burden on society and should be sterilised or killed.

Policies of Persecution

Sterilisation Programme

• The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933) allowed the Nazis to sterilise people they deemed ‘unfit’ to reproduce.
• People with physical or mental disabilities, deafness, blindness, epilepsy, or alcoholism were forcibly sterilised.
• Between 300,000 and 400,000 people were sterilised under this law.
• Black Germans, particularly the children of German women and French-African soldiers from World War One (derogatorily called ‘Rhineland Bastards’), were also sterilised.

The Murder of People with Disabilities

• In 1939, the T4 Euthanasia Programme was launched to murder people with disabilities in hospitals and care homes.
• Patients were taken to special killing centres such as Hadamar and Hartheim, where they were gassed, starved, or given lethal injections.
• At least 200,000 disabled people were murdered before public protests (including from the Catholic Church) led to the programme’s official suspension in 1941; although secret killings continued.

Concentration Camps and Forced Labour

• Many groups, including homosexuals, prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, pacifists, and criminals, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
• Roma and Sinti people suffered particularly harsh treatment. By the end of World War Two, 85% of Germany’s Roma population had been murdered in camps such as Auschwitz.
• Homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangles on their uniforms and were subjected to horrific medical experiments.

The Nazis’ Persecution of the Jews

The Jewish community suffered the most extreme persecution under the Nazis. Anti-Semitic policies intensified over time, leading to mass murder in the Holocaust.

Early Persecution (1933–1938)

1933 – Nazi Policies Begin

• The Nazis organised a boycott of Jewish businesses.
• Jewish civil servants, lawyers, and teachers were sacked.
• Books by Jewish authors were publicly burned.
• Race science lessons were introduced in schools, teaching that Jews were inferior.

1935 – The Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws legally enshrined anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany by:

• Stripping Jews of German citizenship.
• Banning marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews.
• Denying Jews civil and political rights.

These laws made it clear that Jews were no longer considered part of German society.

1938 – Intensified Discrimination

• Jews were banned from working as doctors.
• Jewish men had to add the name 'Israel' and women 'Sarah' to their names to make them easily identifiable.
• Jewish children were expelled from schools.
• Kristallnacht ('Night of Broken Glass') – 9-10 November 1938
  • A nationwide attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues.
  • Over 1,000 synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
  • This was a major turning point: Jews now faced open physical violence.
  • Many Jews saw Kristallnacht as proof that they had no future in Germany. Some fled the country, and the Kindertransport programme began, helping Jewish children escape to Britain.

1939–1945: From Persecution to Genocide

1939–1941 – Further Restrictions

• Jews were banned from owning businesses or radios.
• In occupied Poland, Jews were forced into ghettos such as Warsaw, where they lived in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
• Mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) began executing Jewish men, women, and children in mass shootings.

1942–1945 – The Final Solution

At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Nazi leaders planned the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews—a policy known as the Final Solution.

• Jews were deported to death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor.
• Upon arrival, most were sent directly to gas chambers.
• Over six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust.

The Nazis’ racial and social policies led to the persecution and murder of millions of people. Their belief in Aryan superiority resulted in:

• The sterilisation and execution of disabled people.
• The forced labour and mass murder of Slavs, Roma, and Black people.
• The imprisonment and execution of political and religious opponents.
• The systematic genocide of Jewish people during the Holocaust.