⚖ Racial and Citizenship Laws in the Third Reich

Context and Disclaimer

Currently, I am engaged in a very significant Shoah–Holocaust research and website development effort. While conducting my research and developing the related websites, I have come to believe that many people today have an extremely limited understanding of the legal background and governmental frameworks constructed by the Third Reich to legalize and justify the abomination that was the Holocaust (or Shoah).

Be advised, I in no way condone or approve of the underlying laws and/or government actions mentioned in this article. I offer this information for informational and understanding purposes only.

This human tragedy did not happen by accident; it happened by design. It was not random; it was specifically targeted. It did happen; and, it was unbelievably cruel and evil.

Yes, the Holocaust was designed. And, the designers wanted the “removal of Jews, Gypsies, Intellectuals, Homosexuals, et cetera” to be “legal”; as a result, laws and structures were built to justify the Reich’s actions.

📜 The Nuremberg Laws: Establishing a "Legal" Framework

If you are unfamiliar with the Third Reich’s "Racial and Citizenship" Laws which were implemented and formed the "legal" basis for the Holocaust/Shoah, what follows is a brief synopsis of the evolution of the Reich’s legal framework.

Intellectual Roots: Eugenics

The legal framework was a direct outgrowth of National Socialist political theories evolved from racial theories of the time, known as Eugenics. This field of thought, suggested even in some of Plato’s writings around 400 BCE, discussed applying the principles of selective breeding to humans. Leveraging on the early thoughts of Plato (and others), plus Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews, and the desire for a purely German Empire (Reich), the foundational laws were established.

Die NĂŒrnberger Gesetze (The Nuremberg Laws)

The most important, capstone laws were known as Die NĂŒrnberger Gesetze (The Nuremberg Laws), passed in September 1935. These laws established a framework for the classification of “undesirables,” the expulsion of Jewish and Gypsy people, and the confiscation of their property.

The Nuremberg Laws consisted of two primary statutes:

  1. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (Das "Blutschutzgesetz"): This law prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jewish and German citizens, and forbade the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households.
  2. The Reich Citizenship Law (Das ReichsbĂŒrgergesetz): This law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights.

At about this same time, additional “legal” definitions and guides were developed and set into effect. Racial Guides were developed to help citizens understand citizenship and ethnic “acceptability.”

🔗 The Final Link: The Wannsee Conference

The final link in the chain that moved persecution into systematic mass murder was closed at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. The meeting was attended by high-ranking officials of the National Socialist regime. The central figure was Reinhard Heydrich, SS-ObergruppenfĂŒhrer und General der Polizei (Senior Group Leader and General of Police) and chief of the Reich Main Security Office (which included the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD).

At the conference, Heydrich discussed the practical implementation of the “overall solution to the Jewish question in Europe” (The Final Solution).

Heydrich detailed how Europe would be “combed through from west to east” but that Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would have priority “due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.” This was a reference to increasing pressure from the Gauleiters (regional National Socialist Party leaders) in Germany to remove Jewish people from their areas to allow accommodation for Germans made homeless by Allied bombing, as well as to make space for laborers being imported from occupied countries.

The “evacuated” Jewish people, he said, would first be sent to “transit ghettos” in the General Government, from which they would be transported eastward. Heydrich stressed the importance of defining who was a Jewish person for the purposes of “evacuation” to avoid legal and political difficulties.

He outlined categories of people who might be spared immediate killing, such as Jewish people over 65 years old and Jewish World War I veterans who had been severely wounded or won the Iron Cross. They might be sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp instead of being killed. Heydrich explained that this “expedient solution
 in one fell swoop many interventions will be prevented.”

Essential Resources for Deeper Historical Perspective

For the best information available on the web regarding this pivotal event, please visit the House of the Wannsee Conference–Memorial and Educational Site.

💭 Conclusion: History and Memory

There is no excuse for what was done. None of it was moral; nothing was "legal" in any sense of justice or human rights. I provide this quick study only in the hope of making historical context a bit more clear and in offering links to a deeper historical perspective.

I will conclude by offering a few thoughts and quotes:

George Santayana said once:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) famously said on the matter:

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

References and Further Reading

Credits and Licensing

Compiled by Mark Rabideau, Opa and Professional Genealogist.

All materials licensed: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License by eirenicon limited liability company.