How did Hitler established a racist state in Germany
Answers
Eugenics and Genocide in Nazi Germany Summary
The Holocaust was a form of genocide, which refers to the intentional, systematic extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe did not happen suddenly. It was the end of a long process of anti-Semitism and the belief in the pseudo-science of eugenics. The Nazis used propaganda and terror to enforce their anti-Semitic policies. By 1938, the lives of Jews living in Germany had become intolerable. A policy of annihilation called 'The Final Solution' was planned and put into practice in Nazi-occupied parts of Europe after the Second World War broke out in 1939.
The Nazi racist ideology of a Herrenvolk ('master race') was used to justify their eugenics program aimed at weeding 'undesirable' genes from the population. The Holocaust was the consequence of this racism.
Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany
At the time the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, there were 500 000 Jews living in Germany. They saw themselves as Germans, who differed from other Germans only in religion. Hostility towards Jews had existed for hundreds of years in Europe. Jews were often used as scapegoats when things went wrong and were blamed for no reason. Anti-Semitism was therefore not unique to Nazi Germany. The Nazis extended the ideas of Anti-Semitism and Social Darwinism that were popular in Europe at the time.
Anti-Semitism was a major part of Nazi Party ideology. The false Social Darwinist theory of a hierarchy of human beings claimed that some groups of people were born with superior talent, ability and worth. In his book Mein Kampf Hitler argued that the German 'race' was superior to all others. He wrongly described gentile (ie non-Jewish) Germans as the 'Aryan race' or 'Herrenvolk' ('master race') and believed they had a duty to control the world.
Jews were blamed for all Germany's troubles and were demonised by Nazi propaganda, even though Jews made up less than 1% of the German population. The popular stereotype and Nazi propaganda created the myth that Jews were rich, when in fact Jews were not particularly wealthy. In Poland, for example, 3 million out of 3.3 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, more than 50% of them lived in poverty.
How did Hitler take away the rights of the people of Germany?
Anti-Jewish Nazi laws and decrees
Hitler wanted to make Nazi Germany Judenrein (free of Jews). In the early years, the policy of Judenrein did not include genocide. Rather, anti-Jewish oppressive measures were slowly introduced to exclude Jews from all aspects of German life. Anti-Semitic laws went hand in hand with state violence and terror. By 1939, discriminatory laws and decrees grew longer and longer and included the following:
Jewish businesses were boycottedAll Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David badge to make them easy to identifyJews were dismissed from the civil serviceJews were expelled from all schools and universitiesJews were stripped of all citizenship rightsMarriage or sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans' was forbiddenJews were forbidden in certain places (for example, Jews were forced to sit on separate benches, were not permitted to use public facilities, travel on trams, or attend opera, theatre or cinema, were not admitted to restaurants, hotels, shops or hospitals)In some places bakeries would not sell bread to JewsAfter June 1938, the Nazis began the systematic expropriation of Jewish propertyNot only Jews
Jews were the main targets of genocide. But the following people were also considered 'inferior' and 'undesirable', and were sterilized, sent to concentration camps or killed:
Nazi policies labeled centuries-long residents in German territory who were not ethnic Germans such as Jews (understood in Nazi racial theory as a "Semitic" people of Levantine origins), Romanis (also known as Gypsies, an "Indo-Aryan" people of Indian Subcontinent origins), along with vast majority of Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, Russians etc.), and all other persons of color (with some exceptions) as inferior non-Aryan subhumans (i.e. non-Nordics, under the Nazi misinterpretation of the term "Aryan") in a racial hierarchy that placed the Herrenvolk ("master race") of the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") at the top.
In 1941 the Nazis changed their Anti-Semitic policy to systematic annihilation, which they called the 'final solution to the Jewish question.' They decided to murder every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe.