Ethnic Minorities in Nazi Germany

Question 1

What vision did the Nazis have for Germany?

Answer 1

• They wanted it to be ‘racially pure’, and only inhabited by Aryan Germans

Question 2

How far did this policy of racial purity extend?

Answer 2

• It excluded disabled Aryans

Question 3

What did the Nazis do to deal with disabled people?

Answer 3

• They passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in July 1933, which they used to forcibly sterilise disabled people

Question 4

How did the idea to sterilise disabled people become more radical, and when?

Answer 4

• In 1939 the programme Action T4 started
• It was the killing of disabled children and adults

Question 5

Give 2 figures on Action T4.

Answer 5

• 5000 children were killed
• By 1941, 80,000 had been killed by gas alone

Question 6

How did the Nazis expand the sterilisation law?

Answer 6

• They included Jews, black and mixed race people, and Gypsies

Question 7

How many people were sterilised between 1933 and 1939?

Answer 7

• 300,000

Question 8

How were Gypsies treated during World War Two? Give 3 examples.

Answer 8

• At the end of 1939 Hitler ordered for them to be deported to the east of Poland
• Tens of thousands of them were killed by SS squads along with Jewish people
• The mass murder of Gypsies was also part of the Final Solution (21,000 died in Auschwitz alone)

Question 9

What did the Nazis do to discriminate against Jews in 1933? Give 3 examples.

Answer 9

• There was post-election anti-Jewish violence by the SA
• The Nazis called for a national boycott against Jewish shops in April
• Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service passed

Question 10

What caused the Nazis to call for a national boycott of Jewish shops?

Answer 10

• Hindenburg had urged Hitler to control the post-election violence

Question 11

What did the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service say?

Answer 11

• It prevented Jews from being in the civil service, but with some exceptions

Question 12

Why were there some exceptions to the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service?

Answer 12

• Hindenburg had originally refused to approve the law and introduced amendments to protect those who had served Germany during the war

Question 13

What are 2 reasons why the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service was so important?

Answer 13

• It was the first explicitly racist law to be passed in Germany since 1871
• It was the start of the legal exclusion of Jews

Question 14

Which laws were passed against Jews in 1935?

Answer 14

• The Nuremberg Race Laws
• Reich Citizenship Law: Jews were deprived of German citizenship
• Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour: Aryans could not marry or have sex with Jews
• Being Jewish was also defined as having 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents

Question 15

What was important about the timing of the passing of the Nuremberg Race Laws?

Answer 15

• It was passed around the same time the idea of Volkgemeinschaft was being emphasised by the Nazis

Question 16

When did the Nazis organise the first large-scale act of violence against Jews, and what was it known as?

Answer 16

• November 1938
• Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)

Question 17

Describe 5 aspects of Kristallnacht.

Answer 17

• More than 200 people died
• Over 1000 synagogues were destroyed
• Jewish owned homes and shops were attacked and looted
• Over 20,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps
• Jews were taxed a billion Reichsmark for the damage

Question 18

What approach did the Nazis take to make Germany ‘Jew-free’ at first? Give 5 details.

Answer 18

• They encouraged Jews to leave Germany
• Over 450,000 left between 1933 and 1939
• The Nazis took a tax of 30- 50% of their wealth
• However, leaving became harder as countries set quotas on immigration, and the Nazis became less willing to let Jews go
• After Anschluss (and the absorption of more Jews into Germany as a result) they were allowed to only take a suitcase each
• Those who fled to other European counties ultimately did not flee far enough

Question 19

Who was responsible for dealing with Polish resistance after the occupation of Poland in 1939? What else did they do?

Answer 19

• Einsatzgruppen (special SS units)
• They killed Jews in increasing numbers

Question 20

What initially happened to the Jews who were not killed by the Einsatzgruppen in Poland?

Answer 20

• They were put in ghettos from October 1939 (German Jews were also sent to these ghettos)

Question 21

How had the activities of the Einsatzgruppen worsened by 1941?

Answer 21

• By then they were committing mass murder; they rounded up Jews, forced them to dig mass graves, told them to strip and they would then shoot them

Question 22

How large of a scale did the Einsatzgruppen work on?

Answer 22

• They killed 2 million out of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust

Question 23

What 3 issues did Himmler have with the work of the Einsatzgruppen?

Answer 23

• He believed it was:
• too slow
• too inefficient
• too psychologically damaging for them

Question 24

When was the ‘Final Solution’ decided on?

Answer 24

• In the Wannsee conference in 1942

Question 25

What were conditions like in death camps? Give 2 details.

Answer 25

• The people there were used to dig roads or work on the land or in factories before they were gassed
• People died from starvation, dysentry or mistreatment by the guards