Modern History - Nazi Racial Policy

• Hitler delivered a speech to the Reichstag in which he
• threatened the annihilation of the Jews, and if war comes it will result in the
• destruction of the Jewish race in Europe.

• Poland invaded - Hitler’s hatred of the Jews – saw polish Jews were the biggest
• threat, large Jewish population became subjected to violence

• all Jews in Poland were ordered to wear a yellow star to
• identify them. This regulation was later extended throughout all German-controlled
• lands (IMPACT ON EUROPE)

• Jewish inhabitants of major towns and cities began to be
• herded into ghettos – disease, overcrowding. Warsaw ghetto was the largest –
• where thousands died from starvation.

Almost all of Poland’s 3.5 million Jews were dead

• Nazi ideology saw the Jew as the root of all their problems and their
• biggest enemy

• *Were labelled as ‘non-Aryan’
• *Sent to ghettos in Poland and special gypsy camps in Auschwitz – where many became the subject of medical experimentation
• *It is estimated over 200 000 of a total of almost 900 000 European Gypsies were victims of the Holocaust.

• *Were the subject of the sterilisation law and the Nazi definition of ‘handicapped’ for sterilisation was very loose, and included prostitutes and alcoholics
• *The beginning of the war saw the introduction of a euthanasia program which was designed to give a ‘mercy death’ to unproductive people, thus disguised as aiding Germany in its war effort

un-German and unnatural – designated life unworthy of life

Hitler clearly states in his book that Jews are inferior compared to the Aryan race and are seen as parasites. He also outlines his plans for a pure Aryan race, untainted by Jews.

Russia invaded by Hitler – measures against Jews were intensified

• *Groups of about 3000 men whose orders were to kill all Jews:
• men, women and children, and other undesirables in occupied territories in the
• East
• *no attempt at hiding activities and most victims were shot and buried in
• mass graves
• *Special units formed within the SS under the authority of Reinhard Heydrich

The mass murder of the Jews was a consistent plan of Hitler’s. Without the Nazis there never would have been a Holocaust, but they came to power in a country with a long history of anti-Semitism and so the killing of Jews was not forced upon the German people, and many ordinary German’s saw it as right and just.

new laws were introduced that stripped Jews of even more of their remaining rights –couldn’t travel beyond local community without police permit

• * Wannsee conference
• *Heydrich called a secret conference where selected Nazis decided on the arrangements for the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’
• *Jews were to be removed from homelands/ghettos and taken to the east in overcrowded freight wagons
• *Those who were unfit/old were taken to extermination camps & those who were fit were sent to concentration camps to be worked to death

6 extermination camps were set up in occupied Poland (IMPACT ON EUROPE), including Auschwitz, where more than 4 million people were murdered between 1941 an 1944

*The extermination in camps continued until 1944, when the advancing Russians overran the camps. *Number of Jews who died at Nazi hands – approx 6 million

Believes Hitler didn’t have the ability or interest to properly organise the final solution, so instead he left it to Himmler and Heydrich