Nazi Racial Policies

​The harsh reality in Nazi Germany was that a person's role in society, their race, their ethnicity, their religion, their agenda, and their physical and mental health all determined their life chances.

​It has been claimed that policies towards the Jewish community were gradual and that the early moves of the Nazis gave no indication of the violence to which the Jewish people were subjected during WWII. Some Germans agreed with legal discrimination against the Jewish people and others were receptive to Nazi propaganda that asserted that mixing with ‘sub-humans’ had weakened the German race. However, there were other Germans who found the policies offensive. The problem for these people, particularly after August 1934, was how to register their abhorrence. Despite the dictatorship, there is still evidence to show that the Nazis had to tread carefully with their policies, take backward steps to prevent inflaming opinion and only embark on the genocide of Jewish people once WWII had begun.

​The justifiable and understandable indignation of the German people at the cowardly murder of a German diplomat in Paris was widely displayed last night. In numerous towns and villages of the Reich, reprisals were carried out against Jewish buildings and places of business. The whole population is now firmly asked to abstain from all further action of whatever nature against the Jews. The final reply to the Jewish outrage in Paris will be given to the Jews by legal means.

​The Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in Vienna in January 1939 under the control of Adolf Eichmann. The emigration was to be forced and the most favoured destinations were Palestine, Britain and the USA. They also considered resettling Jews in the city of Lublin in Poland, or Madagascar!

​Reinhard Heydrich referred to these proposals as the territorial final solution to the Jewish question. Under Eichmann, 45,000 Jews left Germany within six months. The success of this policy meant the establishment of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration. Between them, it is estimated that these two offices led to the emigration of over half of the Jewish population before September 1939.

​Asocial was a very flexible term used by the Nazis for all those who fell outside the social norms of the Nazi national community. They included beggars, criminals, those considered ‘work-shy’, alcoholics, prostitutes and even juvenile delinquents.

​These groups were seen as a burden on social welfare, a threat to public order, or both. They were regarded by the Nazis as a product of criminal biology. Individuals with specific social problems meant nothing in Nazi society and as far as the Nazis were concerned, restoration of racial purity through eugenics was a vital step in creating Volksgemeinschaft.

​The Nazis became responsible for murdering large numbers of disabled and mentally ill men, women and children through selective euthanasia. They were helped by nurses and doctors who believed that what they were doing was morally correct. By 1941,70,000 adult patients had been murdered by the AktionT4 programme. This Nazi euthanasia programme, directed against people with disabilities and some12 hereditary and mental illnesses, was the first time the Nazis used poison gas to murder their victims.