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Hitler and the Nazis had firm views on race. They believed that certain groups were inferior and were a threat to the purity of the Aryan race. There were many groups who were targeted for persecution, including Slavs (Eastern Europeans), gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled - but none more so than the Jews.

Black people were also persecuted in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories. They suffered forced sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality and, sometimes, were murdered. However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups.

Nazi racial beliefs

Policy of persecution

• Sterilisation - In order to keep the Aryan race pure, many groups were prevented from reproducing. The mentally and physically disabled, including the deaf, were sterilised, as were people with hereditary diseases. Children born to German women and French African soldiers in the Rhineland at the end of World War One were called 'Rhineland Bastards' and also sterilised.
• The murder of people with disabilities - The Nazis’ false belief in genetic superiority led to the persecution and murder of people with disabilities. Euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person’s life to relieve suffering. However, this is very different to the Nazi euthanasia programme, which was the systemic and state sponsored murder of people with disabilities. At least 200,000 people with disabilities were murdered by the Nazi regime.
• Concentration camps - Homosexuals, prostitutes, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, alcoholics, pacifists, beggars, hooligans and criminals were often rounded up and sent away to camps. During World War Two 85 per cent of Germany's gypsies died in these camps.

The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews

The group most heavily targeted for persecution by the Nazis were the Jews of Germany. The outbreak of World War Two brought the horror of mass killings and the Final Solution, but the period 1933 saw a gradual increase in persecution, reaching a turning point during Kristallnacht in November 1938:

1933

• Nazis organised a boycott of Jewish businesses.
• Books by Jewish authors were publicly burnt.
• Jewish civil servants, lawyers and teachers were sacked.
• Race science lessons were introduced, teaching that Jews were sub-human.

1935

The Nuremberg Laws formalised anti-Semitism into the Nazi state by:

• Stripping Jews of German citizenship.
• Outlawing marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans.
• Taking away from Jews all civil and political rights.

1938

• Jews could not be doctors.
• Jews had to add the name Israel (men) or Sarah (women) to their name.
• Jewish children were forbidden to go to school.
• Kristallnacht - 9 November. The SS organised attacks on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in retaliation for the assassination of the German ambassador to France by a Jew.

1939

• Jews were forbidden to own a business, or even a radio

By the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939, the Jews were stateless, their employment options in Germany were severely restricted and they feared for their safety.