Editing Racial policy of Nazi Germany (section)

===Nuremberg Laws===
{{Main|Nuremberg Laws}}

{{More citations needed section|date=April 2021}}

[[Image:Nuremberg laws Racial Chart.jpg|thumb|upright=1.65|1935 Chart from Nazi Germany used to explain the [[Nuremberg Laws]]. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 employed a [[scientific racism|pseudo-scientific basis]] for racial discrimination against Jews. People with four German grandparents (white circles) were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if they were descended from three or more Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). Either one or two Jewish grandparents made someone a ''Mischling'' (of mixed blood). The Nazis used the religious observance of a person's grandparents to determine their race.]]

Between 1935 and 1936, persecution of the Jews increased apace while the process of "''[[Gleichschaltung]]''" ({{lit|standardisation}}, the process by which the Nazis achieved complete control over German society) was implemented. In May 1935, Jews were forbidden to join the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'' (the armed forces), and in the summer of the same year, anti-Semitic propaganda appeared in shops and restaurants. The Nuremberg Laws were passed around the time of the great Nazi rallies at [[Nuremberg]]; on September 15, 1935, the "[[Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor]]" was passed. At first this criminalized sexual relations and marriage only between Germans and Jews, as well as the employment of German women by Jews.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whitman |first=James |title=Hitler's American Model : the United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Kellie D. |title=The sound of hope: Music as solace, resistance and salvation during the holocaust |publisher=McFarland |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-4766-7056-0 |page=13}}</ref> The law was later extended to "Gypsies, Negroes and their bastard offspring"; it became punishable by law as ''[[Rassenschande]]'' or racial pollution.<ref>{{cite book | author = S. H. Milton | chapter = "Gypsies" as social outsiders in Nazi Germany| title =  Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany | editor = Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus | year = 2001 | publisher = Princeton University Press | isbn = 9780691086842 | pages = 216, 231}}</ref>{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|p=49}} After this, the "[[Nuremberg Laws|Reich Citizenship Law]]" was passed, and was reinforced in November by a decree; it included only people of "German or related blood", which meant that all Jews were stripped of their [[citizenship]] and their official title became "subjects of the state". This meant that they were deprived of basic citizens' rights, e.g. the right to vote.<ref name="wistrich2002">{{cite book | last = Wistrich | first = Robert | title = Who's Who in Nazi Germany | publisher = [[Routledge]] | year = 2002 | isbn = 0-415-26038-8 }}</ref> This removal of citizens' rights was instrumental in the process of anti-semitic persecution: the process of [[denaturalization]] allowed the Nazis to exclude—''[[de jure]]''—Jews from the "''Volksgemeinschaft''" ("national community"), thus granting judicial legitimacy to their persecution and opening the way to harsher laws and, eventually, extermination of the Jews. Philosopher [[Hannah Arendt]] pointed out this important judicial aspect of the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]] in ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]'' (1951), where she demonstrated that to violate [[human rights]], Nazi Germany first deprived human beings of their citizenship. Arendt underlined that in the [[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen]], citizens' rights actually preceded human rights, as the latter needed the protection of a determinate state to be actually respected.

The drafting of the [[Nuremberg Laws]] has often been attributed to [[Hans Globke]]. Globke co-authored several aspects of the laws, such as the ordinance which legally required Jews with non-Jewish names to take on the additional first names Israel or Sara, along with the official legal commentary on the Reich Citizenship Law.<ref name="wistrich2002" />

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101III-Duerr-053-29, Lettland, KZ Salaspils, Essensausgabe.jpg|thumb|left|Jewish prisoners are issued food on a building site at [[Salaspils concentration camp]], Latvia, in 1941.]]

In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from having any influence in education, politics, higher education, and industry. There was now nothing to stop the anti-Jewish actions that spread across the German economy.

Between 1937 and 1938, new laws were implemented, and the [[racial segregation|segregation]] of Jews from the "German Aryan" population was completed. In particular, Jews were punished financially for being Jewish.

From March 1, 1938, government contracts could not be awarded to Jewish businesses. On September 30, "Aryan" doctors could only treat "Aryan" patients. Provision of medical care to Jews was already hampered because Jews were banned from being doctors.

On August 17, Jews with first names of non-Jewish origin were legally required to add "Israel" (males) or "Sara" (females) to their names, and a large letter "J" was to be printed on their passports on October 5.<ref name="wistrich2002" /> On November 15, Jewish children were banned from going to state-run schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or been persuaded to sell out to the government, further reducing their rights as human beings; they were, in many ways, effectively separated from the German populace.

The increasingly [[totalitarian]] regime that Hitler imposed on Germany allowed him to control the actions of the military. On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew named [[Herschel Grynszpan]] attacked and shot German diplomat [[Ernst vom Rath]] in the German embassy in Paris. Grynszpan's family, together with more than 12,000 Polish-born Jews, had been expelled by the Nazi government from Germany to Poland in the so-called "''[[Polenaktion]]''" on October 28, 1938. [[Joseph Goebbels]] ordered retaliation. On the night of November 9, the [[SS]] and [[Sturmabteilung|SA]] conducted "the Night of Broken Glass" ("''[[Kristallnacht]]''"), in which at least 91 Jews were killed and a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in [[Nazi concentration camp]]s. After the start of the war, and the conquest of numerous European countries, the Jewish population was put into [[ghetto]]s, from which they were shipped to [[death camp]]s where they were murdered.