Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws German: Nürnberger Gesetze, pronounced Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the security system of German Blood as living as German Honour, which forbade marriages as well as extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without all citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same set as Jews.

Out of foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did non commence until after the Hitler rose to power in 1933, they began to implement their policies, which covered the lines of a Chancellor and non-Aryans from the legal profession, the civil service, and from teaching in secondary schools and universities. Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide book burning on 10 May. Jewish citizens were harassed and referenced to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.

The Nuremberg Laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and subsequent to 8 March 1938 upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the up to 90% of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was nearly impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to realise them. Mass deportation schemes such(a) as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.

Background

The Nazi Party was one of several far-right political parties active in Germany after the end of the number one World War. The party platform included removal of the Weimar Republic, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism. They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum alive space for Germanic peoples, order of a Volksgemeinschaft people's community based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.

While imprisoned in 1924 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book is an autobiography and exposition of Hitler's ideology in which he laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. In it, he outlined his picture in Jewish Bolshevism, a conspiracy picture that posited the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy for world dominance in which the Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. Throughout his life, Hitler never wavered in his world view as expounded in Mein Kampf. The Nazi Party advocated the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft "people's community" with the goal of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race Fremdvölkische.