Nazi Racial Ideology & the Radicalisation of the State (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Summary

• The Nazis viewed the world through Social Darwinist ideas

  • They believed the world's population was divided into races that were in a bitter struggle for domination

  • In order for their aryan race to triumph over people that the Nazis viewed as subhuman, they believed they had to strengthen their populations through selective breeding

  • This involved the sterilisation and murder of those who the Nazis believed carried hereditary disabilities or traits

  • It also involved the prevention of intermarriage or procreation between aryans and non-aryans

  • This was known as 'racial hygiene'

• After 1938, the Nazi regime began to murder millions of people that it considered subhuman in its concentration and extermination camps

Nazi racial ideology

• The Nazis believed that humanity was divided into a hierarchy of races

  • They believed that the aryans were the 'master race' and were at the top of the hierarchy

  • Jewish people, Slavic people and Black people were viewed by the Nazis as 'untermenschen' or subhuman and were viewed as being at the bottom of the racial hierarchy

• The Nazis believed that active steps needed to be taken to keep the aryan race 'pure'

  • This involved preventing marriage and procreation between aryans and people from other races

  • The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 made sexual intercourse between aryans and non-aryans a criminal offence

Policies towards people with mental illness and those with disabilities

• People with mental illness or physical disabilities were viewed by the Nazis as 'biological outsiders' who should be subjected to 'racial hygiene'

  • The concept of 'racial hygiene' involved preventing people with mental illness or physical disabilities from having children through sterilisation

• The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases was passed in July 1933

  • This made sterilisation compulsory for many people identified by the Nazis as being 'inferior'

  • This included people with inherited physical disabilities and those with mental health issues, including those with depression, schizophrenia and alcoholism

  • Around 400,000 people were sterilised in Germany between 1933 and 1945

• By 1935, these same groups were subject to compulsory abortion if they became pregnant

• In 1939, the Nazis introduced the T4 programme (Aktion T4) which led to 'euthanisation' or murder of adults and children with disabilities or mental illnesses

  • The children's euthanasia programme ran from 1939

    • Over 5,000 children were given lethal injections or starved to death in special hospitals

  • From late 1939 the programme was expanded to adults in asylums (approximately 70,000 people were killed by 1941)

• The T4 programme was halted in 1941 after protests from both Catholic and Protestant clergy and criticism from the Pope

  • Bishop Clemens von Galen's sermons in August 1941 were one of the key reasons for the public halting of the programme

  • This halt was public only, the covert killing by starvation and lethal medication continued

"Anyone suffering from a hereditary disease can be sterilised by a surgical operation if, according to the experience of medical science, there is a high probability that his offspring will suffer from serious physical or mental defects of a hereditary nature.

Anyone suffering from any of the following diseases is considered hereditarily diseased under this law: 1. congenital mental deficiency, 2. schizophrenia, 3. manic-depression, 4. hereditary epilepsy, 5. hereditary St. Vitus dance (Huntington’s chorea), 6. hereditary blindness, 7. hereditary deafness, 8. serious hereditary physical deformity.

Furthermore, anyone suffering from chronic alcoholism can be sterilised."

An extract from the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (July 14, 1933)

Policies towards asocials and gay men

• Asocial was the term used to describe people who lived outside what the Nazis believed were societal norms

  • Asocials included career criminals, homeless people, sex workers, alcoholics, long-term unemployed and homosexuals

• In 1933, 1936 and 1938, there was a mass round-up of people who lived on the streets

  • Many were sent to concentration camps, and others were forced to undergo 're-education' or to enter work

Homosexuals

• Homosexuality was viewed as degenerate by the Nazis, and the gay culture that had flourished in Weimar Germany was brutally crushed

  • In 1935, the Nazis broadened Paragraph 175 (1871), which had made homosexuality a criminal offence

    • This meant that more behaviours were punishable by imprisonment, including physical, verbal, or gestural contact considered lustful or sexual

    • Lesbians were not systematically categorised or persecuted in the same way as gay men

  • Once convicted, many gay men were rearrested upon their release from prison and sent to concentration camps

  • During this 'preventative custody', many gay men were castrated

  • Around 60% of the gay men sent to concentration camps died whilst there, with many being beaten to death

Policies towards religious sects, the Roma and Sinti

Religious Sects

• Many religious groups or sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, were international in their outlook and were viewed suspiciously by the Nazis

  • As a result, most were banned by the Nazis in November 1933

  • The bans on the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists were lifted after they promised to cooperate with the Nazi government

• However, the Jehovah's Witnesses refused to cooperate or compromise their pacifist beliefs

  • As a result, around 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned in Nazi Germany

Roma and Sinti

• Roma and Sinti people were commonly referred to as 'Gypsies'

• Germany's Roma and Sinti populations were not as large as Germany's Jewish population, but they suffered the same systemic discrimination and persecution

  • The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 applied to Roma and Sinti as well as Jewish people

  • This meant Roma and Sinti people became subjects rather than citizens

  • They were also banned from having sexual intercourse or marrying aryans

• The 'Decree for the Struggle Against the Gypsy Plague' was issued in 1938, which identified and classified Germany's Roma and Sinti populations

  • They were then subject to forced deportations to Poland from 1939

• Note: The extract below is from a contemporary report which uses language which today would be considered offensive

"Experience gained in the fight against the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. Experience shows that part-Gypsies play the greatest role in Gypsy criminality. On the other hand, it has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question.

To this end, it is necessary to establish the racial affinity of every Gypsy living in Germany and of every vagrant living a Gypsy-like existence.

I therefore decree that all settled and non-settled Gypsies, and also all vagrants living a Gypsy-like existence, are to be registered with the Reich Criminal Police Office-Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance."

An extract from a report named The Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance, written by Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS, in 1938.

How central was racial ideology to the Nazi state?

• Racial policy became increasingly central to the Nazi state

  • Their belief in ideas such as the hierarchy of races and protecting racial purity was there from the beginning

  • But as the Nazi regime became more secure in power, their policies became increasingly extreme

  • After 1938, these policies led directly to the deaths of millions of people who were considered 'Untermenschen'

• Some historians argue that the Nazi treatment of minority groups from 1933 is evidence that they always intended the mass extermination of European Jewish people

  • This is known as the 'intentionalist' argument

• Other historians believe that the Nazis changed their policies towards minority groups as circumstances changed

  • This is known as the 'functionalist' argument