Editing Racial policy of Nazi Germany

{{Short description|Set of laws implemented in Nazi Germany}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1986-044-08, Stein-Pfalz, Eva Justin bei Schädelmessung.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|[[Eva Justin]] of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit measuring the skull of a [[Romani people|Romani]] woman]]
{{Nazism sidebar |expanded=Race}}

The '''racial policy of Nazi Germany''' was a set of policies and laws implemented in [[Nazi Germany]] under the [[dictatorship]] of [[Adolf Hitler]], based on [[Nazism and race|pseudoscientific and racist doctrines]] asserting the superiority of the putative "[[Aryan race]]", which claimed [[Scientific racism|scientific legitimacy]]. This was combined with a [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics program]] that aimed for "[[racial hygiene]]" by [[compulsory sterilization]] and extermination of those who they saw as ''[[Untermenschen]]'' ("sub-humans"), which culminated in [[the Holocaust]].

Nazi policies labeled centuries-long residents in German territory who were not ethnic Germans such as [[Jews]] (which in [[Nazi racial theories|Nazi racial theory]] were emphasized as a [[Semitic people]] of [[Levant]]ine origins), [[Romani people|Romani]] (an [[Indo-Aryan peoples|Indo-Aryan people]] originating from the [[Indian subcontinent]], historically colloquially referred to derogatorily as "Gypsies"), along with the vast majority of [[Slavs]] (mainly ethnic [[Polish people|Poles]], [[Serbs]], [[Ukrainians]], [[Russians]], [[Belarusians]], etc.), and most non-Europeans as inferior non-Aryan subhumans (under the Nazi appropriation of the term "[[Aryan]]") in a racial hierarchy that placed the ''Herrenvolk'' ("[[master race]]") of the ''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'' ("people's community") at the top.<ref name="Operation Barbarossa 2004 page 180">''Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics against Human Dignity'', by André Mineau, (Rodopi, 2004) p. 180</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book|title=The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942|first=Vojtěch|last=Mastný|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=1971|isbn=0231033036}}{{Page needed|date=May 2013}}</ref><ref>''Hitler's Home Front: Wurttemberg Under the Nazis'',  Jill Stephenson p. 135, Other non-'Aryans' included Slavs, Blacks and Roma .</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">''The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin'' p. 118 Annette F. Timm – 2010 The Nazis' singleminded desire to "purify" the German race through the elimination of non-Aryans (particularly Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs)</ref>

The racial policy of the [[Nazi Party]] and the German state was organized through the [[State of Racial Policy]], which published circulars and directives to relevant administrative organs, newspapers, and educational institutes.<ref>Ihrig, pp. 90–135.</ref>

==Historical origins of Nazi racial theories and policies==
[[Adolf Hitler]] himself along with other members of the [[Nazi Party]] in the [[Weimar Republic]] (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on [[ecological anthropology]], [[scientific racism]], [[Holism in science|holistic science]], and [[organicism]] regarding the constitution of [[complex systems]] and the theorization of organic-racial societies.<ref>{{cite book |last=Harrington |first=Anne |year=2021 |title=Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler |chapter=Six: Life Science, Nazi Wholeness, and the 'Machine' in Germany's Midst |pages=175–206 |chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691218083-009/pdf |location=[[Princeton, New Jersey]] |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |doi=10.1515/9780691218083-009 |isbn=9780691218083 |jstor=j.ctv14163kf.11 |s2cid=162490363 |quote=When Hans Shemm in 1935 declared [[Nazism|National Socialism]] to be "politically applied biology," things began to look up, not only for [[Holism in science|holism]], but for the [[life sciences]] in general. After all, if the good National Socialist citizen was now seen as the man or woman who understood and revered what were called "Life's laws," then it seemed clear that the life scientists had a major role to play in defining a National Socialist educational program that would transmit the essence of these laws to every family in every village in the country. [...] So much seemed familiar: the calls among the [[Nazi Party|National Socialists]] to return to authentic "German" values and "ways of knowing," to "overcome" the materialism and mechanism of the "West" and the "Jewish-international lie" of scientific objectivity; the use of traditional ''volkisch'' tropes that spoke of the [[German people]] (''Volk'') as a mystical, pseudobiological whole and the state as an "organism" in which the individual was subsumed in the whole ("You are nothing, your Volk is everything"); the condemnation of [[Jews]] as an alien force representing chaos, mechanism, and inauthenticity. [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] himself had even used the stock imagery of conservative holism in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' when he spoke of the democratic state as "a dead mechanism which only lays claim to existence for its own sake" and contrasted this with his vision of statehood for Germany in which "there must be formed a living organism with the exclusive aim of serving a higher idea."}}</ref><ref name="Deichmann 2020">{{cite journal |last=Deichmann |first=Ute |date=2020 |title=Science and political ideology: The example of Nazi Germany |url=https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511767145001/html/ |journal=Mètode Science Studies Journal |publisher=[[Universitat de València]] |volume=10 |issue=Science and Nazism. The unconfessed collaboration of scientists with National Socialism |pages=129–137 |doi=10.7203/metode.10.13657 |issn=2174-9221 |s2cid=203335127 |quote=Although in their basic framework [[Ideology of the Nazi Party|Nazi anti-Semitic and racist ideology]] and policies were not grounded in science, scientists not only supported them in various ways, but also took advantage of them, for example by using the new possibilities of unethical experimentation in humans that these ideologies provided. Scientists’ complicity with Nazi ideology and politics does, however, not mean that all sciences in [[Nazi Germany]] were ideologically tainted. I argue, rather, that despite the fact that some areas of science continued at high levels, science in Nazi Germany was most negatively affected not by the imposition of Nazi ideology on the conduct of science but by the enactment of legal measures that ensured the [[Racial segregation#Nazi Germany|expulsion of Jewish scientists]]. The [[anti-Semitism]] of young faculty and students was particularly virulent. Moreover, I show that scientists supported Nazi ideologies and policies not only through so-called reductionist science such as [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics and race-hygiene]], but also by promoting organicist and holistic ideologies of the racial state. [...] The ideology of leading Nazi party ideologues was strongly influenced by the [[Völkisch movement|Volkish movement]] which, in the wake of the writings of philosopher [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]] and other nineteenth century authors, promoted the idea of ''Volk'' (people) as an organic unity. They did not base their virulent anti-Semitism and racism on anthropological concepts.|doi-access=free |hdl=10550/89369 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Anker |first=Peder |year=2021 |title=Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945 |chapter=The Politics of Holism, Ecology, and Human Rights |chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.4159/9780674020221-008/pdf |location=[[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] and [[London]] |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |doi=10.4159/9780674020221-008 |page=157 |isbn=9780674020221 |s2cid=142173094 |quote=The paradoxical character of the politics of holism is the theme of this chapter, which focuses on the mutually shaping relationship between [[John William Bews]], [[J. F. V. Phillips|John Phillips]], and the [[White South Africans|South African]] politician [[Jan Christian Smuts]]. Smuts was a promoter of international peace and understanding through the League of Nations, but also a defender of [[Racial discrimination|racial suppression]] and [[white supremacy]] in his own country. His politics, I will argue, were fully consistent with his holistic philosophy of science. Smuts was guided by the efforts of ecologists such as Bews and Phillips, who provided him with a day-to-day update of the latest advances in scientific knowledge of natural laws governing ''[[Homo sapiens]]''. A substantial part of this chapter will thus return to their research on human ecology to explore the mutual field of inspiration linking them and Smuts. Two aspects of this human ecological research were particularly important: the human gradualism or ecological “succession” of human personalities researched by Bews, and the concept of an ecological biotic community explored by Phillips. Smuts transformed this research into a policy of racial gradualism that respected local ways of life in different (biotic) communities, a policy he tried to morally sanctify and promote as author of the famous [[Preamble to the United Nations Charter|1945 Preamble of the United Nation Charter]] about human rights.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-last=Scheid |author-first=Volker |date=June 2016 |chapter=Chapter 3: Holism, Chinese Medicine, and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future |chapter-url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK379258/ |editor1-last=Whitehead |editor1-first=A. |editor2-last=Woods |editor2-first=A. |editor3-last=Atkinson |editor3-first=S. |editor4-last=Macnaughton |editor4-first=J. |editor5-last=Richards |editor5-first=J. |title=The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities |volume=1 |location=[[Edinburgh]] |publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]] |doi=10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400046.003.0003 |isbn=9781474400046 |id=Bookshelf ID:NBK379258 |s2cid=13333626 |url=https://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=fulltext&uiLanguage=en&rid=27082 |via=[[NCBI]] |quote='''Common Roots: Holism Before and During the Interwar Years''': This chapter cannot explore in detail the complex entanglements between these different notions of holism, or how they reflect Germany’s troubled path towards modernity. My starting point, instead, is the [[Interwar period|interwar years]]. By then, holism had become an important resource for people across Europe, the US and beyond—but once again specifically in Germany—for dealing with what [[Max Weber]], in 1918, had famously analysed as a widely felt [[disenchantment]] with the [[Modern era|modern world]]. The very word ‘holism’ (as opposed to ideas or practices designated as such today), as well as related words like ‘emergence’ or ‘organicism’, date from this time. It was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts to describe a perceived tendency of evolutionary processes towards the formation of wholes, granting these wholes a special onto-epistemic significance that parts lack. This was cultural holism now underpinned by evolutionary science and deployed by Smuts not only as a tool for grasping the coming into being of the world but also as an ideological justification for the development of [[Apartheid]] in [[South Africa]]. In [[Weimar Germany]] and then [[Nazi Germany|under Nazism]], holistic science became a mainstream academic endeavour, once more intermingling cultural politics and serious scientific research. Holistic perspectives also became popular in the interwar years among academics and the wider public throughout the UK and US. In France, it was associated with [[Vitalism|vitalist philosophies]] and the emergence of neo-Hippocratic thinking in medicine, manifesting the unease many people felt about the shifts that biomedicine was undergoing at the time.}}</ref> In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century [[German nationalism|German nationalist]] philosopher [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]], whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other [[Nazi Party]] members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented [[Völkisch nationalism]].<ref name="Deichmann 2020"/>

==Basis of Nazi policies and the constitution of the Aryan Master Race==
{{Main|Nazi racial theories}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 135-KB-15-083, Tibetexpediton, Anthropometrische Untersuchungen.jpg|thumb|[[Bruno Beger]] conducting anthropometric studies in [[Sikkim]]]]

The Aryan [[master race]] conceived by [[Adolf Hitler]] and the other Nazis graded humans on a scale of pure Aryans to non-Aryans (who were viewed as [[Untermensch|subhumans]]).{{sfn|Davies|2006|p=167}} At the top of the scale of pure Aryans were Nordic-type Germans and other Nordic-Aryan [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] and Northern European peoples, including the [[Dutch people|Dutch]], [[Scandinavia]]ns, and the [[English people|English]].{{sfn|Davies|2006|p=167}} [[Italic peoples|Latins]] were held to be somewhat inferior, but were tolerated; and the French were thought to have a suitable admixture of Germanic blood.{{sfn|Davies|2006|p=44}}

The feeling that Germans were the Aryan ''[[Herrenvolk]]'' (Aryan master race) was widely spread among the German public through Nazi propaganda and among Nazi officials throughout the ranks, in particular when the [[Reichskommissariat Ukraine|Reichskommissar of Ukraine]] [[Erich Koch]] said:

{{blockquote|We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here.|Erich Koch, 5 March 1943{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=939}}}}

The Nazis considered the [[Slavs]] as Non-Aryan ''[[Untermenschen]]'' ("sub-humans") who were to be enslaved and exterminated by Germans.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>  In countries where these people lived, there were according to Nazis small groups of non-Slavic German descendants. These people underwent a "racial selection" process to determine whether or not they were "racially valuable", if the individual passed they would be re-[[Germanisation|Germanised]] and forcefully taken from their families in order to be raised as Germans.<ref name="Bendersky2013">{{cite book | last = Bendersky| first = Joseph W. |title = A Concise History of Nazi Germany | date = 2013 | publisher = Rowman & Littlefield | isbn = 978-1-4422-2270-0 | page = 180}}</ref><ref name="GellatelyStoltzfus2001">{{cite book | last1 = Gellately| first1 = Robert | last2 = Stoltzfus| first2 = Nathan | title=Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany | year = 2001 | publisher = Princeton University Press| isbn = 978-0-691-08684-2 | page = 106}}</ref>{{sfn|Davies|2006|pp=167, 209}} This secret plan [[Generalplan Ost]] ("Master Plan East") aimed at expulsion, enslavement and extermination of most Slavic people. Nazi policy towards them changed during [[World War II]] as a pragmatic means to resolve military manpower shortages: they were allowed, with certain restrictions, to serve in the [[Waffen-SS]], in spite of being considered subhumans.{{sfn|Davies|2006|pp=167, 209}} Nazi propaganda portrayed people in [[Eastern Europe]] with an Asiatic appearance to be the result of intermingling between the native Slavic populations and Asiatic or Mongolian races as sub-humans dominated by the Jews with the help of [[Bolshevism]].{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=241}} At the bottom of the racial scale of non-Aryans were [[Jews]], ethnic [[Polish people|Poles]], ethnic [[Serbs]] and other Slavic people, [[Romani people|Romani]], and [[black people]].<ref name="Simone Gigliotti">Simone Gigliotti, [[Berel Lang]]. ''The Holocaust: A Reader''. Malden, Massachusetts, US; Oxford, England, UK; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. pp. 14.</ref> The Nazis originally sought to rid the German state of Jews and Romani by means of deportation (and later extermination), while black people were to be segregated and eventually eliminated through [[compulsory sterilization]].<ref name="Simone Gigliotti" /><ref>"Hitler's Home Front: Wurttemberg Under the Nazis" Jill Stephenson p. 113 " Other non-'Aryans' included Slavs, Blacks and Roma and Sinti (Romanies)"</ref>

[[Völkisch movement|Volkisch]] theorists believed that Germany's [[Germanic peoples|Teutonic]] ancestors had spread out from Germany throughout Europe.<ref name="George Victor 2007. Pp. 117">George Victor. ''Hitler: The Pathology of Evil''. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc, 2007. p. 117.</ref> Of the Germanic tribes that spread through Europe, the theorists identified that the [[Burgundians]], [[Franks]], and [[Western Goths]] joined with the [[Gauls]] to make [[France]]; the [[Lombards]] moved south and joined with the Italians; the [[Jutes]] made [[Denmark]]; the [[Angles (tribe)|Angles]] and [[Saxons]] made [[England]]; the [[Flemings]] made [[Belgium]]; and other tribes made the [[Netherlands]].<ref name="George Victor 2007. Pp. 117"/>

Nazi racial beliefs of the superiority of an Aryan master race arose from earlier proponents of a supremacist conception of race such as the French novelist and diplomat [[Arthur de Gobineau]], who published a four-volume work titled ''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]'' (translated into German in 1897).{{sfn|Aly|2014|p=154}} Gobineau proposed that the [[Aryan race]] was superior, and urged the preservation of its cultural and [[Racial hygiene|racial purity]].<ref>Evans, Richard J. (2003). ''The Coming of the Third Reich'', p. 33</ref> Gobineau later came to use and reserve the term Aryan only for the "German race" and described the Aryans as 'la race germanique'.<ref>The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus. p. 294 A. J. Woodman – 2009 The white race was defined as beautiful, honourable and destined to rule; as 'cette illustre famille humaine, la plus noble'.74 Originally a linguistic term synonymous with Indo-European,7S 'Aryan' became, not least because of the Essai, the designation of a race, which Gobineau specified as 'la race germanique'</ref> By doing so he presented a racist theory in which Aryans—that is Germans—were all that was positive.<ref>So that the reader not be left in ignorance as to who the Aryans are, Gobineau stated: "La race germanique était pourvue de toute l'énergie de la variété ariane." We see, then, that Gobineau presents a racist theory in which the Aryans, or Germans, are all that is good Comparative literature by American Comparative Literature Association.; Modern Language Association of America. Comparative Literature Section.; University of Oregon. 1967, p. 342</ref> [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]]'s work ''[[The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century]]'' (1900), one of the first to combine [[Social Darwinism]] with antisemitism, describes history as a struggle for survival between the Germanic peoples and the Jews, whom he characterized as an inferior and dangerous group.<ref>Evans, Richard J. (2003). ''The Coming of the Third Reich''. New York, p. 33–34</ref> The two-volume book ''Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene'' (1920–21) by [[Eugen Fischer]], [[Erwin Baur]], and [[Fritz Lenz]], used [[pseudoscientific]] studies to conclude that the Germans were superior to the Jews intellectually and physically, and recommended [[eugenics]] as a solution.{{sfn|Aly|2014|p=157}} [[Madison Grant]]'s work ''[[The Passing of the Great Race]]'' (1916) advocated [[Nordicism]] and proposed using a eugenic program to preserve the [[Nordic race]]. After reading the book, Hitler called it "my Bible".{{sfn|Kühl|2002|p=85}}

Racist author and Nordic supremacist<ref>{{cite book|title= The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science |first=Marek |last=Kohn |publisher=Vintage |year=1996 |page=48}}</ref> [[Hans F. K. Günther]], who influenced Nazi ideology, wrote in his "Race Lore of German People" (''[[Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes]]'') about the danger of "Slavic blood of Eastern race" mixing with the German<ref>Hund, Wulf D.; Koller, Christian; and Zimmerman, Moshe (2011) ''Racisms Made in Germany'' LT Verlag. p. 19 {{ISBN|9783643901255}}</ref> and combined virulent nationalism with [[Antisemitism]].<ref>Wegner, Gregory (2002) ''Anti-Semitism and Schooling Under the Third Reich''. New York: Routledge. p. 14 {{isbn|9780815339434}}</ref> Günther became an epitome of corrupt and politicized pseudo-science in post-war Germany.<ref>Race, Color, Identity: Rethinking Discourses about "Jews" in the Twenty-first Century Efraim Sicher Berghahn Books,  2013</ref> Among the topics of his research were attempts to prove that Jews had an unpleasant "hereditary smell".<ref>Oisteanu, Andrei (2009) ''Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures''. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 68 {{ISBN|9780803220980}}</ref> While one of the most prominent Nazi writers, Günther still was not considered the most "cutting edge" by Nazis.<ref>Steinweis, Alan E. (2006) ''Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 26 {{ISBN|9780674022058}}</ref>
[[File:EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg|thumb|right|Propaganda for Nazi Germany's [[Aktion T4|T-4 Euthanasia Program]]: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community {{Reichsmark|60,000|link=yes}} during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too." from the [[Office of Racial Policy]]'s [[Neues Volk]].]]
The July 1933 [[Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring]]—written by [[Ernst Rüdin]] and other theorists of "racial hygiene"—established "[[Hereditary Health Court|Genetic Health Courts]]" which decided on [[compulsory sterilization]] of "any person suffering from a hereditary disease." These included, for the Nazis, those suffering from "[[intellectual disability|Congenital Mental Deficiency]]", [[schizophrenia]], "[[Manic depression|Manic-Depressive Insanity]]", "[[Epilepsy|Hereditary Epilepsy]]", "[[Huntington's Chorea|Hereditary Chorea]]" (Huntington's), [[Blindness|Hereditary Blindness]], [[Deafness|Hereditary Deafness]], "any severe hereditary deformity", as well as "any person suffering from severe [[alcoholism]]".<ref>''The law for the prevention of hereditarily diseased offspring. (Approved translation of the "Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses"). Enacted on July 14, 1933. Published by Reichsausschuss für Volksgesundheitsdienst.'' (Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1935). (Official translation of the law into English)</ref> Further modifications of the law enforced sterilization of the "[[Rhineland bastard]]s" (children of mixed German and African parentage).

The Nazi Party wanted to increase birthrates of those who were classified as racially elite. When the Party gained power in 1933, one of their first actions was to pass the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage. This law stated that all newly married couples of the Aryan race could receive a government loan. This loan was not simply paid back, rather a portion of it would be forgiven after the birth of each child. The purpose of this law was very clear and simple: to encourage newlyweds to have as many children as they could, so that the Aryan population would grow.<ref>Maynes, Mary Jo., and Ann Beth. Waltner (2012) ''"Powers of Life and Death": The Family: A World History'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 103</ref>

==Racial policies regarding the Jews, 1933–1939==
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 133-075, Worms, Antisemitische Presse, "Stürmerkasten".jpg|thumb|left|Public reading of [[Julius Streicher]]'s anti-Semitic newspaper ''[[Der Stürmer]]'', [[Worms, Germany]], 1935]]

Approximately 525,000 [[History of the Jews in Germany|Jews]] were living in Germany in 1933 (0.75% of the entire German population).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country|title=Jewish Population of Europe in 1933: Population Data by Country|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org}}</ref> Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the national seizure of power in 1933.{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=203}} The Nazi Party used [[Populism|populist]] antisemitic views to gain votes. Using the "[[Stab-in-the-back myth|stab-in-the-back legend]]", they blamed poverty, the [[hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic]], unemployment, and the loss of World War I and surrender by the "[[Stab-in-the-back myth|November Criminals]]" all on the Jews and "cultural Bolsheviks", the latter considered to be in a [[Judeo-Bolshevism|conspiracy with the Jews]]. German woes were attributed to the effects of the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. In 1933, persecution of the Jews became active Nazi policy. This was at first hindered by the lack of agreement on who qualified as a [[Jew]] as opposed to an [[Aryan race|Aryan]]; this caused legislators to balk at an antisemitic law for its ill-defined terms.{{sfn|Koonz|2003|p=170}} [[Bernhard Lösener]] described it as "total chaos", with local authorities regarding anything from full Jewish background to {{frac|1|8}} Jewish blood as defining a Jew; [[Achim Gercke]] urged {{frac|1|16}} Jewish blood.{{sfn|Koonz|2003|p=171}} Those of mixed descent (''[[Mischling]]e'') were especially problematic in their eyes.{{sfn|Koonz|2003|p=174}} The first antisemitic law was promulgated with no clear definition of a Jew.{{sfn|Koonz|2003|p=184}} Finally, the criterion was set at three or four Jewish grandparents; two or one rendered a person a ''Mischling''.{{sfn|Koonz|2003|p=187}}

On April 1, 1933, the [[Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses]] was observed throughout Germany. Only six days later, the [[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service]] was passed, banning Jews from [[Public sector|government jobs]]. It is notable that the proponents of this law, and the several thousand more that were to follow, most frequently explained them as necessary to prevent the infiltration of damaging, "alien-type" (''Artfremd'') hereditary traits into the German national or racial community (''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'').{{sfn|Ehrenreich|2007|pp=1, 165–167}} These laws meant that Jews were now indirectly and directly dissuaded or banned from privileged and superior positions reserved for "Aryan Germans". From then on, Jews were forced to work in more menial positions, becoming [[second-class citizen]]s or to the point that they were "illegally residing" in [[Nazi Germany]].

In the early years of Nazi rule, there were efforts to secure the elimination of Jews by expulsion; later, a more explicit commitment was made to extermination. On August 25, 1933, the Nazis signed the [[Haavara Agreement]] with [[Zionism|Zionists]] to allow [[German Jews]] to emigrate to [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] in exchange for a portion of their economic assets. The agreement offered a way to leave an increasingly hostile environment in Nazi Germany; by 1939, 60,000 German Jews (about 10% of the Jewish population) had emigrated there. Thereafter, Nazi policy eventually changed to one of total extermination. Nazi doctrine culminated in [[the Holocaust]], or so-called "[[Final Solution]]", which was made official at the January 1942 [[Wannsee Conference]].

===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.

===Jewish responses to the Nuremberg Laws===
[[Image:Jewish Children in Nazi Germany Exercise Class.jpg|thumb|Gymnastics lesson in a Berlin Jewish school, 1936]]

After the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the ''[[Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden]]'' (Representation of the German Jews) announced the following:

{{blockquote|The Laws decided upon by the Reichstag in Nuremberg have come as the heaviest of blows for the [[Jews in Germany]]. But they must create a basis on which a tolerable relationship becomes possible between the German and the Jewish people. The ''"Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden"'' is willing to contribute to this end with all its powers. A precondition for such a tolerable relationship is the hope that the Jews and Jewish communities of Germany will be enabled to keep a moral and economic means of existence by the halting of defamation and boycott.

The organization of the life of the Jews in Germany requires governmental recognition of an autonomous Jewish leadership. The ''Reichsvertretung der Juden'' in ''Deutschland'' is the agency competent to undertake this.

The most urgent tasks for the ''"Reichsvertretung"'', which it will press energetically and with full commitment, following the avenues it has previously taken, are:

Our own Jewish educational system must serve to prepare the youth to be upright Jews, secure in their faith, who will draw the strength to face the onerous demands which life will make on them from conscious solidarity with the Jewish community, from work for the Jewish present and faith in the Jewish future. In addition to transmitting knowledge, the Jewish schools must also serve in the systematic preparation for future occupations. With regard to preparation for emigration, particularly to [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]], emphasis will be placed on guidance toward manual work and the study of the [[Hebrew (language)|Hebrew]] language. The education and [[Hakhshara|vocational training]] of girls must be directed to preparing them to carry out their responsibilities as upholders of the family and mothers of the next generation.<ref>{{cite book|last=Yahil|first=Leni|title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945|url=https://archive.org/details/holocaustfateofe00yahi_0|url-access=limited|year=1998|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195045238|page=[https://archive.org/details/holocaustfateofe00yahi_0/page/79 79]}}</ref>}}

===Influence of American segregationist laws===
The Nazis had already barred Jews from having a role in Germany society as Lawyers, Civil Servants and Teachers with the 1933 [[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service]] and led a systemic [[Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses|boycott of Jewish businesses]] (in addition to expulsion or exclusion from other professions, or the right to own stocks) before the 1935 Nuremberg Laws were proposed but were looking for a means of codifying in a legal sense the exclusion of Jews (and other "non-Aryan" minorities) from both citizenship of the Reich, and therefore strip fundamental protections from the population.<ref name=BradsherNuremburg>{{Cite web |last=Bradsher |first=Greg |date=2010 |title=The Nuremberg Laws |url=https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html |website=www.archives.gov}}</ref><ref name=LindleyWhitman>{{cite web | last=Lindley | first=Robin | title=How the US influenced the creation of Nazi race laws under Hitler | website=ABA Journal | date=2023-02-07 | url=https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/yale-law-professor-james-whitman-discusses-how-the-us-influenced-the-creation-of-nazi-race-laws-under-hitler | access-date=2025-02-07}}</ref>

[[James Q. Whitman]], Professor of Law at Yale University, stated in his book "Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law" that both historic US precedence and Jim Crow Era laws were openly discussed by Nazi party officials and lawyers as examples of how to legislate for racial segregation and against miscegenation that ultimately resulted in the [[Nuremberg Laws]] and the stripping of citizenship from German Jews with the [[Reich Citizenship Law]].<ref name=LittleWhitman>{{Cite web |last=Little |first=Becky |date=August 16, 2017 |title=How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow |url=https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow |website=History.com}}</ref><ref name=WilliamsWhitman>{{cite web |author=Thomas Christie Williams |title=Long Read Review: Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman |website=lse.ac.uk |date=2017-08-25 |url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/08/25/long-read-review-hitlers-american-model-the-united-states-and-the-making-of-nazi-race-law-by-james-q-whitman/ |access-date=2025-02-07}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Al-Arshani | first=Sarah | title=The Nazis studied US eugenics and Jim Crow laws as a model for their policies. When they were criticized, one historian says, 'they pointed to Mississippi.' | website=Business Insider | date=2022-09-21 | url=https://www.businessinsider.com/nazis-studied-us-eugenics-jim-crow-laws-model-policies-2022-9 | access-date=2025-02-07}}</ref>

==Sinti and Roma==
{{Main|Porajmos}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv R 165 Bild-244-52, Asperg, Deportation von Sinti und Roma.jpg|thumb|Sinti and Roma about to be deported from the German town of [[Asperg]], 22 May 1940]]

Nazi Germany began persecution of the [[Romani people|Romani]] as early as 1936 when they began to transfer the people to municipal internment camps on the outskirts of cities, a prelude to the deportation of 23,000 Gypsies to concentration camps. "Pure-blooded" Gypsies were considered by the Nazis to be Aryan.{{sfn|Lewy|2000|p=139}} Roughly ten percent of Gypsies were considered to be racially pure.{{sfn|Lewy|2000|pp=49, 137}}

[[Heinrich Himmler]] suggested creating a "Gypsy Law" to separate Gypsies from the German people:

{{blockquote|The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of [[miscegenation]], and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation.{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|p=121}}}}

However, although many laws during Nazi Germany persecuted the Gypsies, a specific "Gypsy Law", although talked about often, was never enacted by the Nazis.{{sfn|Lewy|2000|p=86}}

==Afro-Germans==
{{Main|Persecution of black people in Nazi Germany}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-15664, Farbiger Junge.jpg|thumb|right|180px|A young Rhinelander who was classified as a ''bastard'' and ''hereditarily unfit'' under the Nazi regime]]
In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] described children resulting from marriages to African occupation soldiers as a contamination of the Aryan race "by Negro blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe."<ref>[[Mein Kampf]], volume 1, chapter XIII.</ref> He thought that "Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the [[Rhineland]], with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate."<ref>[[Mein Kampf]], volume 1, chapter XI.</ref> He also implied that this was a plot on the part of the French, saying the population of France was being increasingly "negrified".<ref name="voice-online.co.uk"/><ref>Adolf Hitler, [http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v2c13.htm ''Mein Kampf,'' Vol. II, chapter XIII]</ref>

[[File:Eugen Fischer box crop.png|thumb|left|upright|[[Eugen Fischer]] in 1934]]

The number of black people in Germany when the Nazis came to power is variously estimated at 5,000 to 25,000.<ref name="voice-online.co.uk">{{cite web| url = http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=15123 | title = The forgotten black victims of Nazi Germany | date=16 February 2009 | work = Voice Online | publisher = GV Media Group Ltd | access-date = 9 March 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090223073157/http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=15123 | archive-date=23 February 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.annefrankguide.net/en-us/bronnenbank.asp?oid=15973 |work=Anne Frank Guide |title=Black people in Nazi Germany |date=28 September 2018 |publisher=Anne Frank House}}</ref> According to the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]; "While there was no centralized, systematic program targeting Black people in Germany for murder, many were imprisoned, forcibly sterilized, and murdered by the Nazis. An unknown number of them, perhaps hundreds, were killed."<ref>{{Cite web |title=What Groups of People Did The Nazis Target? |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/what-groups-of-people-did-the-nazis-target#black-people-in-germany-3 |access-date=28 April 2025 |website=Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>

Prior to Hitler coming to power, black entertainers were popular in Germany, but the Nazis banned [[Jazz in Germany|jazz]] as "corrupt [[Negermusik|negro music]]".<ref name="voice-online.co.uk"/>

Of particular concern to the Nazi scientist [[Eugen Fischer]] were the "[[Rhineland Bastard]]s": [[Mulatto|mixed-race]] offspring of [[Senegalese]] soldiers who had been stationed in the Rhineland as part of the French army of occupation. He believed that these people should be [[Compulsory sterilization|sterilized]] in order to protect the racial purity of the German population. At least 400 mixed-race children were forcibly sterilized in the Rhineland by 1938. This order only applied in the Rhineland. Other [[Afro-Germans|African Germans]] were unaffected. Despite this policy, there was never any systematic attempt to eliminate the black population in Germany, though some black people were used in medical experiments, and others mysteriously disappeared.<ref name="voice-online.co.uk"/>

According to Susan Samples, the Nazis went to great lengths to conceal their sterilization and abortion program in the Rhineland.<ref>Samples, S., "African Germans in the Third Reich", ''The African German Experience'', Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay ed.</ref> [[Hans Massaquoi]] describes his experience as a half-African in [[Hamburg]], unaware of the Rhineland sterilizations until long after the war.<ref>Massaquoi, Hans J., ''Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany'', Harper Perennial, 2001. He mistakenly states that they were later murdered in the Holocaust, p. 2</ref> Samples also points to the paradoxical fact that African-Germans actually had a better chance of surviving the war than the average German. They were excluded from military activity because of their non-Aryan status, but were not considered a threat and so were unlikely to be incarcerated. Samples and Massaquoi also note that African-Germans were not subjected to the segregation they would have experienced in the United States, nor excluded from facilities such as expensive hotels. However, they both state that downed black American pilots were more likely to become victims of violence and murder from German citizens than white pilots.<ref name="voice-online.co.uk"/>

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1974-079-57, Berlin, Ausstellung "Planung und Aufbau im Osten".jpg|thumb|upright|In March 1941 [[Deputy Führer]] [[Rudolf Hess]] and ''[[Reichsführer-SS]]'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] visit an exhibition of proposed rural German settlements within occupied Eastern Europe.]]

==Policies regarding Poles, Russians, and other Slavs==
{{See also|Nazi crimes against the Polish nation|German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war|Generalplan Ost}}

As early as 1925, Hitler suggested in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' that the German people needed ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("living space") to achieve German expansion eastwards (''[[Drang nach Osten]]'') at the expense of the "inferior Slavs". Hitler believed that "the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in [[Russia]], but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race."<ref name="Mein Kampf 1">Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', 1925  {{Page needed|date=May 2016}}</ref>

After the [[Operation Barbarossa|invasion of the Soviet Union]], Hitler expressed his future plans for the Slavs:

{{blockquote|As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mould the best of them as we see fit, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pig-styes; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitants and civilising them, goes straight off into a concentration camp!<ref name="Trevor-RoperWeinberg2013">{{cite book|author1=H. R. Trevor-Roper|author2=Gerhard L. Weinberg|title=Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944: Secret Conversations|date=2013|publisher=Enigma Books|isbn=978-1-936274-93-2|page=466}}</ref>}}

Nazi ideology viewed the Slavic peoples as non-Aryan ''[[Untermenschen]]'' ("sub-humans"), who were targeted for enslavement, expulsion and extermination.<ref name="Gumkowski">{{cite book|url=http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110409034704/http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm|archive-date=9 April 2011|chapter=Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe|first1=Janusz|last1=Gumkowski|first2=Kazimierz|last2=Leszczynski|first3=Edward|last3=Robert|title=Poland Under Nazi Occupation|format=Paperback|page=219|publisher=Polonia Pub. House|edition=First|year=1961|asin=B0006BXJZ6|access-date=14 March 2014}}</ref> The racial status of Slavs during the Third Reich was inconsistent over time.{{sfn|Ehrenreich|2007|p=10}} Hitler viewed the Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".<ref name="Welch2013">{{cite book|author=David Welch|title=Hitler: Profile of a Dictator|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-40156-5|page=74}}</ref> Nazi propaganda portrayed the Germanic peoples as "heroes" in contrast to the Jewish and Slavic "sub-humans".{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=83}} Nazi propaganda depicted Eastern Europe as racially mixed "Asiatic" that was dominated by the Jews with the aid of Bolshevism.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=241}} The Nazis considered some people in Eastern Europe to be suitable for Germanization (they were presumed to be of German descent); if they were considered racially valuable they were to be re-Germanized and forcefully taken from their families to Germany and raised as Germans.<ref name="Bendersky2013" />

The final version of ''[[Generalplan Ost]]'', essentially a grand plan for [[ethnic cleansing]], was divided into two parts: the ''Kleine Planung'' ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the ''Grosse Planung'' ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won (to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25–30 years). The Small Plan was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. The individual stages of this plan would then be worked out in greater detail. In this way, the plan for Poland was drawn up at the end of November 1939.

[[File:Bundesarchiv R 49 Bild-0131, Aussiedlung von Polen im Wartheland.jpg|thumb|left|[[Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany|Mass expulsion of Poles]] in 1939 as part of the German ethnic cleansing of western Poland annexed to the Reich]]

The plan envisaged removal of the majority of the population of conquered counties, with very small and varied percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing [[Germanisation]], expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would be Germanized.<ref name="Gumkowski" /> Himmler declared during the Germanization process that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with any "alien races".{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=543}} The ''[[Wehrbauer]]'' ("soldier-peasants") would settle in a fortified line to prevent civilization arising beyond and threatening Germany.<ref>[[Robert Cecil (British diplomat)|Robert Cecil]], ''The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology'' p. 190 {{ISBN|0-396-06577-5}}</ref>
[[File:Der_Untermensch.jpg|thumb|Cover of the racist propaganda brochure "''Der Untermensch''" published and distributed by [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] in 1942. The Nazi propaganda pamphlet depicted Russians, Jews and various inhabitants of Eastern Europe as "subhumans".{{sfn|Müller|Ueberschär|2009|p=245}} <ref>{{Cite journal |title=Der Untermensch |url=https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126075206/https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-date=26 November 2020 |journal=Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection|date=January 1942 }}</ref>]]
The Nazis issued the [[Polish decrees]] on 8 March 1940 which regulated the working and living conditions of Polish laborers ([[Zivilarbeiter]]) used during World War II in Germany. The decrees set out that any Pole "who has sexual relations with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death."<ref name="Gellately2001">{{cite book|author=Robert Gellately|title=Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany|url=https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell|url-access=registration|date=8 March 2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-160452-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell/page/155 155]}}</ref> The [[Gestapo]] were extremely vigilant about sexual relations between Germans and Poles and pursued any case relentlessly where this was suspected.<ref name="Gellately1990">{{cite book|author=Robert Gellately|title=The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945|year=1990|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-820297-4|page=224}}</ref> There were similar regulations used against the other ethnic groups brought in from Eastern Europe, including the death penalty for sexual relations with a German person.<ref name=Gellately1990/> During the war, hundreds of Polish and Russian men were executed for their relations with German women.<ref>{{cite book| title = Nazi Ideology and the Holocaust | date = January 2007 | publisher = United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | isbn = 978-0-89604-712-9 | page = 58}}</ref><ref>Diemut Majer, ''"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich'', p. 855</ref>

Heinrich Himmler, in his secret [[memorandum]] "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East" dated 25 May 1940, expressed his own thoughts and the future plans for the populations in the East.<ref name=HimmlerEast1>{{cite book |chapter=Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East |last=Himmler |first=Heinrich |date=25 May 1940 | title=Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 |pages=147–150, Vol. 13 | publisher=US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia}}</ref> Himmler stated that it was in the German interest to discover as many ethnic groups in the East and splinter them as much as possible, find and select racially valuable children to be sent to Germany to assimilate them and restrict non-Germans in the General Government and conquered territories to four-grade elementary school which would only teach them how to write their own name, to count up to 500 and to obey Germans.<ref name=HimmlerEast1 /> Himmler believed the Germanization process in Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood".<ref>Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, p. 181</ref>

After the launch of [[Operation Barbarossa]] in 1941, [[Nazi Germany]] officially described the military invasion as a "European crusade against Bolshevism" in the international arena. On the other hand, [[Nazi Propaganda|Nazi propaganda]] targeting domestic audiences vigorously depicted the war against Soviet Union as a racial struggle of Aryans against "Jewish and Slavic ''[[untermensch]]en''" to annihilate "[[Judeo-Bolshevism|Judeo-Bolsheivism]]".{{sfn|Müller|Ueberschär|2009|pp=243, 244}} [[Reich Security Main Office]] (RSHM) proliferated conspiratorial, racist propaganda themes that identified "Jewishness with Bolshevism" and vilifiied Slavs as "''[[untermensch]]en''". These tropes were key elements of Nazi ideology and propaganda throughout [[World War II]].{{sfn|Müller|Ueberschär|2009|p=245}} 

==Other "non-Aryans"==
{{See also|Ostlegionen|Free Arabian Legion|Kalmykian Cavalry Corps|Indische Legion}}
[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-295-1560-21, Nordfrankreich, Turkmenische Freiwillige.jpg|thumb|right|Volunteer ''[[freiwillige]]'' troops of the [[Turkestan Legion]] in France, 1943]]

Though the laws primarily targeted Jews,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.anti-racism.supanet.com/rac/concept.htm |title=The Concept "Jew" in Nazi German "Race" Legislation |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511164210/http://www.anti-racism.supanet.com/rac/concept.htm |archive-date=11 May 2008 |access-date=21 June 2014}}</ref> other "non-Aryan" people were subject to the laws, and to other legislation concerned with [[racial hygiene]]. The term "Aryan" was never fully defined—it was too imprecise and ambiguous; a number of judicial and executive decisions made attempts over time to clarify the concept. Outside of Europe, North African Arabs were by definition non-Aryan because of their "[[Negroid|African origins]]", but according to [[Alfred Rosenberg]]'s racial theories (''[[The Myth of the Twentieth Century]]''), some of the [[Berber people|Berbers]], particularly the [[Kabyle people|Kabyles]] and the [[Rif people|Rif]], were to be classified as Aryans.<ref>(a)"''The Berbers, among whom even today one finds light skins and blue eyes, do not go back to the Vandal invasions of the fifth century A.D., but to the prehistoric Atlantic Nordic human wave. The [[Kabyle people|Kabyle]] huntsmen, for example, are to no small degree still wholly Nordic (thus the blond Berbers in the region of Constantine form 10 % of the population; at Djebel Sheshor they are even more numerous).''", [[Alfred Rosenberg]], ''[[The Myth of the Twentieth Century]]'', 1930; (b) "''Among the Berbers a Nordic strain shows itself clearly''", [[Hans F.K. Günther]], ''The racial elements of European History'', 1927</ref> The Nazis portrayed [[Swedish people|Swedes]], the [[Afrikaners]] &ndash; who are white European descendants of Dutch-speaking [[Boers]] in [[South Africa]] &ndash; and higher-degree Northern/Western Europeans of South America (mainly from Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina) as ideal "Aryans" along with the German-speaking peoples of Greater Germany and Switzerland (the country was neutral during the war). The Roma (Gypsies), who, while considered originally Aryan, were deemed a threat to the Aryan race because of their racial mingling.<ref>{{cite web |title=Gypsies in the Holocaust | url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypsies.html}}</ref>

==Iranians==

Beginning in 1933, Nazi leadership made efforts to increase their influence in Iran, and they financed and managed a racist journal, ''[[Iran-e Bastan]]'', co-edited by a pro-Nazi Iranian, Abdulrahman Saif Azad. This and other [[chauvinistic]] publications in the 1930s were popular among Iranian elites, as they "highlighted the past and the pre-Islamic glories of the Persian nation and blamed the supposedly 'savage Arabs and Turks' for the backwardness of Iran."{{sfn|Asgharzadeh|2007|pp=91–94}} The Nazis advocated the common Aryan ancestry of Iranians and Germans. As a result, in 1936 the [[Hitler Cabinet|Reich Cabinet]] issued a special decree exempting Iranians from any restrictions to the [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg Racial Laws]] on the grounds that they were "pure" Aryans. Various pro-Nazi publications, lectures, speeches, and ceremonies, also drew parallels between [[Reza Shah]], Hitler, and Mussolini to emphasize the charismatic resemblance among these leaders.{{sfn|Asgharzadeh|2007|pp=91–94}}

Nazi ideology was most common among Persian officials, elites, and intellectuals, but "even some members of [[Ethnic minorities in Iran|non-Persian groups]] were eager to identify themselves with the Nazis"{{Attribution needed|date=October 2023}} and a supposed Aryan race.{{sfn|Asgharzadeh|2007|pp=91–94}} In 1934, the Nazis celebrated the [[Ferdowsi millennial celebration in Berlin]], in which the Nazi government declared that the German and Persian people share membership in a common [[Nordic Indo-Germanic People|Indo-Germanic]] race. Hitler declared Iran to be an "Aryan country"; the changing of Persia's international name to Iran in 1935 was done by the [[Shah]] at the suggestion of the German ambassador to Iran as an act of "Aryan solidarity".{{sfn|Hiro|1987|p=296}} Even in 1939, Germany provided Iran with the so-called German Scientific Library. The library contained over 7,500 books selected "to convince Iranian readers... of the kinship between the National Socialist Reich and the Aryan culture of Iran".<ref>Lenczowski. 1944, p. 161</ref>

In 1936, the [[Rassenpolitisches Amt|Nazi Office of Racial Politics]], in response to a question from the German Foreign Ministry, classified non-Jewish Turks as Europeans, but "left unanswered the question of how to think about the obviously non-European Arabs, Persians, and Muslims."{{sfn|Herf|2011|pp=18–24}} Later that year, ahead of the [[1936 Summer Olympics|Summer Olympic Games]] in Berlin, the Nazis responded to questions from the [[Egypt]]ians by saying that the Nuremberg racial laws did not apply to them, and after the Iranian ambassador to Berlin "assured German officials that 'there was no doubt that the Iranian, as an Aryan,' was 'racially kindred (''artverwandt'') with the Germans," the German Foreign Ministry "assured the Iranian Embassy in Berlin that the correct distinction between was not between "Aryans and non-Aryans" but rather between "persons of German and related blood on one hand and Jews as well as racially alien on the other."{{sfn|Herf|2011|pp=18–24}} Iranians were classified as "pure-blooded Aryans" and thus were excluded from the [[Nuremberg Laws]].{{sfn|Asgharzadeh|2007|pp=91–94}} Following the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, the Expert Advisor for Population and Racial Policy redefined "Aryan" as someone who is "tribally" related to "German blood".{{sfn|Ehrenreich|2007|pp= [https://archive.org/details/naziancestralpro00ehre_0/page/9 9], 10}} Therefore, the official declaration by the Nazi state of Iranians being Aryans effectively rendered them as being "of kindred blood" to the Germans.

==Turks and Turkics==

=== Turks ===
In 1935, a half-Turkish half-German man named "Johannes Ruppert" was forced to leave the [[Hitler Youth]], due to the belief that as the son of a Turkish man he was not a full Aryan as required by the [[Reich Citizenship Law]].<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Herf |first=Jeffrey |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npq5k |title=Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World |date=2009 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-14579-3 |pages=17–18, 151–152|jstor=j.ctt1npq5k }}</ref> Ruppert sought assistance from the Turkish Embassy in [[Berlin]] to clarify how “the Aryan question” affected his case. The Turkish Embassy brought the matter to the attention of the German Foreign Ministry. In a note of December 20, 1935, a Foreign Ministry official wrote that "opening up the Aryan question in relation to Turkey is extraordinarily undesirable as well as dangerous for our relations with Turkey".<ref name=":02" /> However, in January 1936, Foreign Ministry wrote a memo to the [[Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy]], writing that it was "essential that determination of whether the Turks are Aryan be decided as soon as possible", so that the Foreign Ministry could give "a satisfactory answer" to the Turkish Embassy's repeated questions about the issue, since there had been individual cases, that is, others in addition to Ruppert, in which "German citizens with Turkish mixed-blood had run into difficulties with the state and the [Nazi] Party due to their origins".<ref name=":02" /> The classification of Turks as "non-Aryans", in keeping with [[Nazi racial theories]], led to foreign policy complications, because the Nazis considered the Turkish government as a potential ally. Consequently, the racial theories had to be "modified" to some degree in accordance with foreign policy requirements.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nicosia |first1=Francis R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ykQtDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |title=Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Middle East: Arab and Turkish Responses |last2=Ergene |first2=Boğaç A. |date=2018 |publisher=Berghahn Books |isbn=978-1-78533-785-7 |page=68 |language=en}}</ref> On April 30, 1936, Nazi Office for Racial Policy released a circular which stated that the Turks were "Europeans" while explaining that Turkish citizens of [[History of the Jews in Turkey|Jewish background]] would still be considered Jews and Turks of "colored origin" would be considered non-European.<ref>A 1378/36 (June 19, 1936), Political Archives of German Foreign Office. The circular: Ankara 539, doc. 82–35.B 8/4 (April 30, 1936), Political Archives of German Foreign Office.</ref><ref name=":02" /> Some Turkish and international newspapers, such as the Swiss ''[[Le Temps]]'' and the Turkish ''Republique'', reported at the time that the Turks had been recognized as an "Aryan nation" and that they were exempt from the [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg laws]].<ref name=":12">Motadel, David (2014) ''Iran and the Aryan myth.'' In: Ansari, Ali, (ed.) Perceptions of Iran: history, myths and nationalism from medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic. International library of Iranian studies (37). I.B. Tauris, London, p. 134. {{ISBN|9781848858305}}</ref><ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last=Motadel |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0D1rBQAAQBAJ |title=Islam and Nazi Germany's War |date=2014 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-74495-0 |page=57 |language=en}}</ref> Turkish newspaper ''[[Akşam]]'' published an article with the headline "The Turks are Aryans!".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ihrig |first=Stefan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F_Q9BQAAQBAJ |title=Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination |date=2014 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-36837-8 |page=128 |language=en}}</ref> Such reports were picked up by other international newspapers, as well as by some modern scholarship, however the claim that the Turks had been recognized as an "Aryan nation" and that they were exempt from the [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg laws]] was a hoax.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":22" /> Nazi officials themselves disputed these reports by publishing a press release which stated that they were unfounded.<ref name=":22" /> The Nazis classified some Turks as "European" and not as "Aryans" and the decision had no practical consequences.<ref name=":12" /> In addition, this decision was designed to appease Turkey from a foreign policy standpoint, although, from a racial standpoint, Nazi officials did not believe that the Turks were neither European nor Aryan.<ref name=":02" />

In May 1942, a writer in the official journal of the Nazi Office for Racial Policy, ''[[Neues Volk]]'', replied to a father's question caused by his daughter's relationship with a Turkish man, about whether racial differences between Germans and Turks meant that a marriage should not take place.<ref name=":02" /><ref name=":4">{{cite web |author=Jeffrey Herf |year=2008 |title=Nazi Germany and the Arab and Muslim World: Old and New Scholarship |url=https://www.bu.edu/historic/conference08/Herf.pdf |access-date=1 June 2023 |website=Boston University}}</ref> The reply read:<ref name=":02" />

{{Blockquote|text=A marriage or similar connection between your daughter with a Turk is out of
the question. A Near Eastern blood element [Bluteinschlag] predominates among the Turks, among whom, alongside Oriental and Western racial components, mongoloid racial elements also enter. The Near Eastern and Oriental races are alien [artfremde] races. The same is true of the mongoloid [Mongolide] races. Moreover, in such cases, even when such racial considerations are not present, marriages of German young women with foreigners are not desirable. If your daughter does not want to listen to you, she faces the danger of being placed in protective custody. We emphatically point out to you and to your daughter the serious consequences of this behavior, one that obviously does not possess the slightest feeling for the honor of the Volk [''nicht das geringste völkische Ehregefühl besitzt''].<ref>“Völkische Lebensfragen: Das Rassenpolitische Amt gibt Auskunft,” Neues Volk: Blatter des Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP, vol. 10, no. 5, PAAA R99175, Inland Partei Akten, Umgang fremdrassiger Ausländer mit deutschen Mädchen, 1941–43.</ref>}}

Although the Nazi leadership agreed with the content of the reply, they criticized the journal for publishing it, because, in a foreign policy point of view, it was really clumsy ("denkbar ungeschickt") to publish before defeating the British in [[Middle East]].<ref name=":02" /><ref name=":4" /> For example, [[Franz von Papen]], the German ambassador to Turkey, informed the German Foreign Ministry that the publication of this text "has serious foreign policy considerations". He noted that such statements could aid "our [[Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]] opponents" in their "propaganda against us" and asked the Office of Racial Politics not to publish such things in the future.<ref name=":02" /> On May 16, 1942, [[Franz Rademacher]], director of the Office of Jewish Affairs in the German Foreign Ministry, wrote to [[Walter Gross (politician)|Walter Gross]], the founder and editor of the magazine, that he "had no objection to the content of the information from a racial-political viewpoint but that it was "from a foreign policy standpoint, really clumsy” and "a political blunder" that would have "embarrassing and awkward foreign policy implications".<ref name=":02" /> Nazi officials sought to prevent [[miscegenation]] between Turks and Germans and, if necessary, sought to imprison or deport the "offending" Turkish man.<ref name=":02" />

=== Crimean Karaites ===
The [[Crimean Karaites]], Turkic speakers following [[Karaite Judaism]], managed to get a declaration from the Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families that they were not to be considered of Jewish religion and their racial classification should be done individually.<ref>YIVO archives, Berlin Collection, Occ E, 3, Box 100, letter dated January 5, 1939.</ref> However, not every Nazi officer or soldier were aware of the official position and a small number Karaites were murdered by German troops in Russia, as if they were Jews. The majority of the Karaites fared much better than the Turkic-speaking Jews, the [[Krymchaks]].<ref name="Haaretz">{{cite news |title=Somewhat Jewish, Fully Russian: Crimea Karaites Recall Past Glory |language=en |work=Haaretz |url=https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/crimea-karaites-welcome-russia-1.5341282 |access-date=2 March 2022}}</ref>

== Norwegians ==
In [[Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany|Norway]], the Nazis favored and promoted children between Germans and Norwegians, in an attempt to raise the birth rate of Nordic Aryans. Around 10,000–12,000 [[war children]] (''Krigsbarn'') were born from these unions during the war. Some of them were separated from their mothers and cared for in so-called "''[[Lebensborn]]''" clinics ("Fountain of Life" clinics).<ref>[[BBC]], 4 February 2003, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/729902.stm Norway's Nazi legacy] {{in lang|en}}</ref><ref>[[Le Figaro]], 8 March 2007, [http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070308.WWW000000487_les_enfants_des_nazis_trainent_la_norvege_devant_les_tribunaux.html Les enfants des nazis traînent la Norvège devant les tribunaux] (Children of Nazis bring Norway before the Courts) {{in lang|fr}}</ref>

==Finno-Ugrics==
The [[Finns]] had a debatable position in the Nazi racial policies, as they were considered a part of the "Eastern Mongol race" with the [[Sámi people|Sámi]] people in traditional racial hierarchies.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Mo birget soadis (how to cope with war): Adaptation and resistance in Sámi relations to Germans in wartime Sápmi, Norway and Finland |journal=[[Scandinavian Journal of History]] |last=Evjen |first=Bjørg |date=2019-05-09 |issue=1 |volume=45 |pages=25–47|doi=10.1080/03468755.2019.1607774|hdl=10037/17966 |s2cid=164636406 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |title=Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment |journal=[[Holocaust and Genocide Studies]] |last=Holmila |first=Antero |date=2009-12-01 |issue=3 |volume=23 |pages=413–440|doi=10.1093/hgs/dcp041}}</ref> Finland did not have [[Lebensborn]] centres, unlike [[Norway]], although [[Finland]] had tens of thousands of German soldiers in the country. Archival research however has found out that 26 Finnish women were in contact with the Lebensborn program for unspecified reasons.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Sota vei Suoman natsien äitiyskotiin |url=https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10162067 |last=Kerola |first=Päivi |date=2018-04-22 |publisher = [[Yle]] |access-date=2022-08-01 |language=Finnish}}</ref>

In 1941 Nazi Germany established the [[Reichskommissariat Ostland]] to administer the conquered territories of the [[Baltic region]]. The colonial department in Berlin under Minister [[Alfred Rosenberg]] (born in [[Tallinn]] in 1893) looked on Estonians favorably as Finno-Ugrics and thus as "Aryans", Generalkommissar [[Karl-Siegmund Litzmann]] authorized a ''Landeseigene Verwaltung'', or local national administration.<ref>Historical dictionary of Estonia (2nd edition), by Toivo Miljan, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015</ref> As Germany [[Operation Barbarossa|invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941]], Finland [[Continuation War|participated in the invasion]] primarily to recover the territories it was forced to cede to the USSR after the [[Moscow Peace Treaty]] which ended the [[Winter War]] between the Finns and the Soviets. Owing to Finland's substantial military contribution on the northern flank of the [[Eastern Front (WWII)|Eastern Front of World War II]], Hitler decreed in November 1942 that "from now on Finland and the Finnish people be treated and designated as a Nordic state and a Nordic people", which he considered one of the highest compliments that the Nazi government could bestow upon another country.<ref name="rich">Rich, Norman (1974). ''Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order'', pp. 400–401. W.W. Norton & Company Inc., New York.</ref> Hitler stated in private conversation that:
<blockquote>After their first conflict with the Russians, the Finns applied to me, proposing that their country should become a German protectorate. I don't regret having rejected this offer. As a matter of fact, the heroic attitude of this people, which has spent a hundred of the six hundred years of its history in fighting, deserves the greatest respect. It is infinitely better to have this people of heroes as allies than to incorporate it in the Germanic Reich—which, in any case, would not fail to provoke complications in the long run. The Finns cover one of our flanks, Turkey covers the other. That's an ideal solution for me as far as our political protective system is concerned.<ref name="Trevor-Roper2000vii">Trevor-Roper, H.R. (2000). ''[https://archive.org/stream/HitlerTableTalk/Hitler%20TableTalk_djvu.txt Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944]''. New York: Enigma Books</ref></blockquote>

==East Asians==
{{See also|Persecution of Chinese people in Nazi Germany}}

[[File:Kung and hitler.jpg|right|thumb|220px|Republic of China ambassador Hsiang-hsi Kung traveled to Nazi Germany in 1937 and was warmly received by Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Hjalmar Schacht.]]
[[File:Gedenktafel-chinesenviertel-schmuckstra%C3%9Fe.jpg|right|thumb|A memorial plaque on Schmuckstraße in Hamburg provides a brief history of the Chinese quarters in St. Pauli and its destruction by the Gestapo in 1944.]]
[[File:Hitler+JapAmbassadormeet.jpg|thumb|[[Adolf Hitler]] meeting with Empire of Japan ambassador [[Hiroshi Ōshima]]]]

In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', Hitler expressed his praise for the Japanese's acceptance of European civilization and his rejection of the assimilation of Chinese into Germany:
<blockquote>The foundation of actual life is no longer the special Japanese culture, although it determines the color of life-because outwardly, in consequence of its inner difference, it is more conspicuous to the European-but the gigantic scientific-technical achievements of Europe and America; that is, of Aryan peoples. Only on the basis of these achievements can the Orient follow general human progress. They furnish the basis of the struggle for daily bread, create weapons and implements for it, and only the outward form is gradually adapted to Japanese character.<ref name="fs2.american.edu">''Mein Kampf'' by Adolf Hitler, Volume One - A Reckoning, Chapter XI: Nation and Race http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/HitlerMeinKampf.html</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>What they mostly meant by [[Germanisation|Germanization]] was a process of forcing other people to speak the German language. But it is almost inconceivable how such a mistake could be made as to think that a [[Negro]] or a [[Chinaman]] will become a German because he has learned the German language and is willing to speak German for the future, and even to cast his vote for a German political party.<ref name="fs2.american.edu"/></blockquote>

The need to maintain working relations with Japan and China forced the Nazis to back off from some of their previous racial rhetoric. In his "Political Testament" of 1945, Hitler claimed that "I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilisations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilisation to which we belong."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Christian Leitz |title=Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 The Road to Global War |date=2004 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781134687367 |pages=125–126}}</ref> Since 1926, [[Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)|Germany had supported the Republic of China militarily and industrially]]. Germany had also sent advisers such as [[Alexander von Falkenhausen]] and [[Hans von Seeckt]] to assist the Chinese, most notably in the [[Chinese Civil War]] and China's [[Anti-communism|anti-communist campaigns]]. [[Max Bauer]] was sent to China and served as one of [[Chiang Kai-shek|Chiang Kai-shek's]] advisers. Around this time, [[H. H. Kung|Hsiang-hsi Kung]], the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] [[Ministry of Finance (Taiwan)|Minister of Finance]], visited Nazi Germany and was warmly welcomed by Hitler on June 13, 1937. During this meeting, Hitler, [[Hermann Göring]], and [[Hjalmar Schacht]] bestowed upon Kung an honorary doctorate degree, and attempted to open China's market to German exports. In order to attract more Chinese students to study in Germany, Hitler, Göring, and Schacht earmarked for 100,000 [[reichsmark]]s for Chinese students studying in the universities and military academies of Nazi Germany after they persuaded a German industrialist to set aside the money for that purpose. Moreover, Kung, in favor of commercial credits, politely refused a generous international loan offer by Adolf Hitler.<ref>"Business: Kung's Credits" ''TIME Magazine''</ref> The most famous of these Nazi-trained Chinese officers was [[Chiang Wei-kuo]], the son of Republic of China President [[Chiang Kai-shek]], who studied military strategy and tactics at a [[Kriegsschule (Wehrmacht)|Kriegsschule]] in [[Munich]], and subsequently achieved the rank of [[lieutenant]] and served as an officer in the [[Wehrmacht]] on active combat duty in [[Europe]] until his return to the Republic of China during the later years of World War II.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-one-time-the-nazis-helped-china-fight-japan-42ce2fa6c6d | title=That One Time the Nazis Helped China Fight Japan | date=22 June 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.warhistoryonline.com/guest-bloggers/unexpected-partnership-nazi-germany-republic_china-x.html | title=An Unexpected Partnership in WW2: Nazi Germany and the Republic of China | newspaper=Warhistoryonline | date=28 September 2016 | last1=Yeung | first1=Norton }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.shanghai1937.com/a-chinese-in-the-german-wehrmacht/ | title=A Chinese in the German Wehrmacht &#124; Shanghai 1937 }}</ref><ref name="How Did East Asians Become Yellow">{{cite web | url=https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2016/11/how-did-east-asians-become-yellow | title=How Did East Asians Become Yellow? }}</ref><ref name="thevintagenews.com">{{cite web | url=http://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/03/18/hitler-saw-china-and-japan-as-equals-to-germany-and-even-wrote-admiringly-i-admit-freely-that-their-history-is-superior-to-our-own/ | title=Hitler saw China and Japan as equals to Germany and even wrote admiringly: "I admit freely that their history is superior to our own" | date=18 March 2017 }}</ref> In fact, in the early days, the Nazis did not persecute the Chinese and allowed the Chinese to go to Germany to study or become military officers. This was because China did not become a warring country with Germany, and the countries still maintained normal exchanges, and the two sides had trade and military cooperation. And Germany can obtain cheap raw materials from China. However, during World War II, after China joined the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]], Nazi Germany also oppressed and harmed the Chinese living in Germany. The Gestapo launched the Chinesenaktion (China action) on May 13, 1944. 129 Chinese citizens were arrested, of which at least 17 Chinese died from Gestapo shooting or forced labor.

Due to Nazi Germany's recognition of Japanese as "[[Honorary Aryans|Aryans of the East]]"<ref name="thevintagenews.com"/> Hitler had allowed Japanese soldiers to study in Nazi German military academies and serve in the Nazi German Wehrmacht as part of their combat training. Hitler had supported the [[Empire of Japan]] as early as 1904, when during the [[Russo-Japanese War]] it had defeated the Russians, which he considered a defeat for [[Austro-Slavism]].<ref>{{cite book | title = Mein Kampf | author = Adolf Hitler | year = 1925 | chapter = The World War | quote = When the Russo-Japanese War came I was older and better able to judge for myself. For national reasons I then took the side of the Japanese in our discussions. I looked upon the defeat of the Russians as a blow to Austrian Slavism.}}</ref><ref name="oneill1993">{{cite book | title=Churchill | publisher=Clarendon Press | author=O'Neill, Robert | year=1993 | location=Oxford | page=275 | chapter = Churchill, Japan, and British Security in the Pacific 1904–1942 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HQguDdnu8zgC&pg=PA275 |editor1=Blake, Robert B. |editor2=Louis, William Roger | isbn=0-19-820626-7}}</ref> He made a number of other statements expressing his respect and admiration for the Japanese in his book ''[[Mein Kampf]]''.<ref>pp. 141, 158, 274, 290-291, 637-640, Ralph Manheim Translation, Mariner paperback edition</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.std.com/obi/Adolph.Hitler/unpacked/mkv1ch05.html |title=Mein Kampf – Volume I, Chapter V |access-date=2019-05-15 |archive-date=2013-11-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131121000754/http://www.std.com/obi/Adolph.Hitler/unpacked/mkv1ch05.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Although of a separate and different evolutionary race, the Imperial Japanese were considered by Nazi ideologists such as Himmler as having sufficiently superior qualities as did German-Nordic blood to warrant an alliance. Himmler, who possessed a great interest in, and was influenced by, the [[anthropology]], philosophies and [[Pantheism|pantheistic]] religions of [[East Asia]], mentioned how his friend [[Hiroshi Ōshima]], the [[List of Japanese ministers, envoys and ambassadors to Germany|Japanese Ambassador to Germany]], believed that the noble castes in Japan, the [[daimyo]] and the [[samurai]], were descended from gods of celestial origin, which was similar to Himmler's own belief that "the [[Nordic race]] did not evolve, but came directly down from heaven to settle on the [[Atlantis|Atlantic continent]]."<ref name="report">''The Activities of Dr. Ernst Schaefer'', OI – Final Interrogation Report (OI-FIR) No. 32, Secret – United States Forces European Theater Military Intelligence Service Center APO 757, February 12, 1946, p. 4.</ref>

Initially, the Japanese were still subject to Germany's racial laws, which – with the exception of the 1935 [[Nuremberg Laws]] that specifically mentioned Jews – generally applied to all "non-Aryans". However, since Japanese were given "Aryans of the East" status, these racial laws were applied to them in a lenient manner as compared to other "non-Aryans" who were not granted "Aryan" status by Adolf Hitler. The Nazi German government began enacting the laws after taking power in 1933, and the Japanese government initially protested several racial incidents involving Japanese or [[Germany–Japan relations|Japanese-Germans]] that year which were then resolved by the Nazi high command by treating their Japanese allies leniently in these disputes. Especially after the collapse of [[China–Germany relations|Sino-German]] cooperation and Chinese declaration of war on Germany, [[Persecution of Chinese people in Nazi Germany|Chinese nationals faced prosecution in Germany]]. Influential Nazi anti-Semite [[Johann von Leers]] favored excluding Japanese from the laws due both to the alleged Japanese-Aryan racial link and to improve diplomatic relations with Japan. The [[German Foreign Ministry|Foreign Ministry]] agreed with von Leers and sought several times between 1934 and 1937 to change the laws, but other government agencies, including the [[Racial Policy Office]], opposed the change.{{r|furuya2000}}

Then in October 1933, German Foreign Minister [[Konstantin von Neurath]] issued an exemption to and Japanese from the racial laws. Additionally, in April 1935 another Nazi decree stated that racial discrimination cases involving Aryans of the East (aka. Japanese) that might jeopardize German diplomatic relations—i.e., Japanese—would be dealt with individually. Decisions on some cases sometimes took years, with those affected unable to obtain jobs or interracially marry, primarily because the German government preferred as much as possible to avoid giving exemptions. The German government often exempted more German-Japanese than it preferred in order to avoid a repeat of the 1933 controversies, and in 1934 it [[Censorship in Nazi Germany|prohibited the German press]] from discussing the race laws when Japanese were involved to avoid any diplomatic problems with China or Japan.<ref name="furuya2000">{{cite book | title=Japanese Prisoners of War | publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group |editor1=Towle, Philip | editor-link1 = Philip Towle |editor2=Kosuge, Margaret |editor3=Kibata, Yōichi | author=Furuya, Harumi | chapter=Japan's Racial Identity in the Second World War: The Cultural Context of the Japanese Treatment of POWs | year=2000 | pages=123–124, 126–130, 132–134 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ktCv32ysz0AC&pg=PA117 | isbn=1-85285-192-9}}</ref>

==Germanization between 1939 and 1945==
{{Main|Germanization}}
Nazi policy stressed the superiority of the [[Nordic race]], a sub-race of the white European population defined by the measurement of the size and proportions of the human body models of racial difference.{{sfn|Hutton|2005|pp=9–10, 36–38, 101–105}} From 1940 the Nazi authorities in the [[General Government]] (occupied Poland) divided the population into different groups.{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=543}} Each group had different rights, food rations, allowed strips in the cities, separated residential areas, special schooling systems, public transportation and restricted restaurants. Later adapted in all Nazi-occupied countries by 1942, the Germanization program used the racial caste system of reserving certain rights to one group and barred privileges to another. Ethnic Poles were believed by Hitler to be "biologically inferior race" that could never be educated or elevated through Germanization.{{sfn|Weikart|2011|p=73}} In 1940, Hitler approved of a plan regarding the Germanization of the [[Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia]], he estimated around half of the Czech population were suitable for Germanization but made clear that the "mongoloid" types and Czech intelligentsia were not allowed to be Germanized.{{sfn|Weikart|2011|p=67}}

During the occupation of Poland, the Nazi government [[Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany|kidnapped]] children with Nordic racial characteristics. Those classified as "racially valuable" were sent from to the German Reich to be adopted and raised as Germans, while those who failed the tests would be used in slave labor or murdered in medical experiments.<ref name="StackelbergWinkle2013">{{cite book | last1= Stackelberg |first1= Roderick | last2 = Winkle | first2 = Sally A. | title = The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts | date = 2013 | publisher = Routledge |isbn = 978-1-134-59693-5 | page = 271}}</ref>

Nordicist [[Anthropometry|anthropometrics]] was used to "improve" the racial make-up of the Germanized section of the population, by absorbing individuals into the German population who were deemed suitably Nordic.<ref name="Gumkowski" />

Germanization also affected the [[Sorbs]], the minority Slav community living in [[Saxony]] and [[Brandenburg]], whose Slavic culture and language was suppressed to absorb them into German identity.{{sfn|Hutton|2005|p=159}} Tens of thousands suffered internment and imprisonment as well, to become lesser-known victims of Nazi racial laws.{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|pp=131–135}} Similarly, the Nazis considered the people living in the [[Goralenvolk]] area to be descended from ethnic Germans and were therefore classified as Aryans.{{sfn|Wendt|2010|p=85}}

==See also==
{{div col|colwidth=35em}}
*''[[Ahnenerbe]]''
*[[Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany]]
*[[Anti-Romani sentiment]]
*[[Antisemitism]]
*[[Antisemitism in Europe]]
*[[Antisemitism in 21st century Germany]]
*[[Anti-Slavic sentiment]]
*[[Aryan certificate]]
*[[Aryan paragraph]]
*[[Aryanization (Nazism)|Aryanization]]
*[[Badge of shame]]
*[[Consequences of German Nazism]]
*[[Eugenics]]
*[[Greater Germanic Reich]]
*[[Honorary Aryan]]
*[[Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics]]
*[[Kaiser Wilhelm Society]]
*[[Master race]]
*[[Josef Mengele]]
*''[[Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen]]''
*[[Nazi eugenics]]
*[[Nazi racial theories]]
*[[Nordicism]]
*[[Office of Racial Policy]]
*[[Romani Holocaust]]
*[[Racial hierarchy]]
*[[Racial discrimination]]
*[[Racial segregation]]
*[[Racism]]
*[[Racism in Europe]]
*[[Racism in Germany]]
*[[Racism in Israel]]
*[[White nationalism]]
*[[White supremacy]]
*[[Yellow badge]]
*[[Renordification]]
{{div col end}}

==References==
{{reflist}}
{{cleanup section|reason=inconsistent citation style (e.g. <code>page</code> vs. <code>p.</code>); probably further copy-editing required.|date=February 2021}}

==Bibliography==
{{refbegin}}
*{{cite book|last=Aly |first=Götz |author-link=Götz Aly |year=2014 |title=Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |isbn=9780805097047}}
* {{cite book|last=Asgharzadeh|first=Ailreza|title=Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist Racism, and Democratic Struggles|year=2007|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US |isbn=978-1349538850}}
*{{cite book| last1=Burleigh | first1=Michael | author-link= Michael Burleigh|last2=Wippermann | first2 = Wolfgang | title= The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 | url=https://archive.org/details/racialstate00mich | url-access=registration | year=1991 | location = Cambridge and New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn = 978-0521398022}}
*{{cite book|last=Davies|first=Norman|author-link=Norman Davies|title=Europe at War: 1939-1945 : No Simple Victory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sdJmAAAAMAAJ|year=2006|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=978-0-333-69285-1}}
*{{cite book|last=Ehrenreich |first=Eric |year=2007 |title=The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-34945-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Herf|first=Jeffrey|title=Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World: With a New Preface|year=2011|publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300168051}}
* {{cite book|last=Hiro|first=Dilip|title=Iran Under the Ayatollahs|year=1987|publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc|isbn=9780710211231}}
*{{cite book | last = Hutton | first = Christopher | year = 2005 | title = Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk | place = Cambridge and New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn = 978-0-74563-177-6 }}
*{{cite book | last = Koonz | first = Claudia | author-link = Claudia Koonz | title = The Nazi Conscience | year = 2003 | publisher = Belknap | location = Cambridge, Mass. | isbn = 0-674-01172-4 | url = https://archive.org/details/naziconscience00koon }}
*{{cite book|last=Kühl |first=Stefan |title=The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-19-514978-5}}
*{{cite book | last = Lewy | first = Guenter | title = The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies | url = https://archive.org/details/nazipersecutiono0000lewy | url-access = registration | year = 2000 | publisher = Oxford University Press USA | isbn = 0195142403 }}
*{{cite book | last = Longerich | first = Peter | title = Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews | year = 2010 | isbn = 978-0-19-280436-5 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford; New York }}
*{{cite book | last1=Müller | first1=Rolf-Dieter | last2=Ueberschär | first2=Gerd R. | title=Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945: A Critical Assessment | date=2009 | publisher=Berghahn Books | location=New York | isbn=978-1-84545-501-9 | language=en}}
*{{cite book|last=Overy |first=Richard |title=The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia |year=2004 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=0-393-02030-4}}
*{{cite book | last = Shirer | first = William L. | author-link = William L. Shirer | title = The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | publisher = Simon & Schuster | location = New York | year = 1960 | lccn = 60-6729 | title-link = The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich }}
*{{cite book|last=Weikart|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Weikart|title=Hitler's ethic: the Nazi pursuit of evolutionary progress|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=Basingstoke|year=2011|isbn=978-0-230-11273-5}}
*{{cite book | last = Wendt | first = Anton Weiss | title = Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-dominated Europe | year = 2010 | publisher = Cambridge Scholars Publishing | isbn = 978-1443823685 }}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin}}
*[[Gotz Aly|Aly, Götz]], Susanne Heim. ''Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction'', London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002, 514pp, {{ISBN|978-0-297-84278-1}}
*[[Yehuda Bauer|Bauer, Yehuda]]. ''A History Of The Holocaust'', New York: F. Watts, 1982 {{ISBN|0-531-09862-1}}.
*{{cite book |author1-last=Black |author1-first=Peter |author2-last=Gutmann |author2-first=Martin |year=2017 |orig-year=2016 |chapter=Racial theory and realities of conquest in the Occupied East: The Nazi leadership and non-German nationals in the SS and police |editor1-last=Böhler |editor1-first=Jochen |editor2-last=Gerwarth |editor2-first=Robert |title=The Waffen-SS: A European History |location=[[Oxford]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198790556.003.0002 |doi-access=free |isbn=9780198790556 |oclc=970401339 |s2cid=157309772}}
*[[Christopher R. Browning|Browning, Christopher]]. ''The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy'', University of Nebraska Press, 2004, 616pp, {{ISBN|0-8032-1327-1}}
*[[Saul Friedländer|Friedländer, Saul]]. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939'', New York : HarperCollins, 1997 {{ISBN|0-06-019042-6}}
*König, Malte. ''Racism within the Axis: Sexual Intercourse and Marriage Plans between Italians and Germans, 1940–3'', in: Journal of Contemporary History 54.3, 2019, pp.&nbsp;508–526.
*[[Detlev Peukert|Peukert, Detlev]]. ''Inside Nazi Germany: conformity, opposition and racism in everyday life'' London: Batsford, 1987 {{ISBN|0-7134-5217-X}}.
*Proctor, Robert. ''Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. {{ISBN|0-674-74578-7}}
*Schafft, Gretchen E. ''From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich''. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.{{ISBN|978-0-25207-453-0}}
*Weindling, Paul. ''Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945''. Cambridge University Press, 1989. {{ISBN|0-521-42397-X}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/19970606052435/http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/nurmlaw3.html Nazi Racial Laws in English translation]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20010418171618/http://www.shoa.de/nuernberger_rassengesetze_texte.html Nazi Racial Laws in the German original]
*{{cite web |url=http://www.passportland.com/images/lewin-simon/lewin-simon.html|title=Images of a 1938 German "J" Jewish passport from www.passportland.com |access-date=2019-04-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110402184424/http://www.passportland.com/images/lewin-simon/lewin-simon.html |archive-date=2011-04-02 |url-status=dead }}

{{Nazism}}
{{The Holocaust}}
{{Antisemitism topics|state=collapsed}}
{{Racism topics|state=collapsed}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Racial Policy Of Nazi Germany}}
[[Category:1930s in politics]]
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[[Category:Anti-Slavic sentiment]]
[[Category:Anti-Polish sentiment in Europe]]
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[[Category:Historical definitions of race]]
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[[es:Política racial de la Alemania Nazi]]