Chapter 64: The Racial State - The Third Reich Part Two: Racial Hygiene - Nazi Germany's Racial Laws In addition to the political reforms which proved to be so popular, (even the undemocratic ones), the Nazi government also implemented a number of far reaching racial laws. These laws covered a huge number of areas: from eugenics (the basis of which had been laid in America, not Germany, as outlined in an earlier chapter); prohibition of mixed marriages between Germans, Jews and all who were not German citizens or who not could become German citizens - and this included non-Whites. Sterilization Law
On 14 July 1934, the German government passed the law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, also known as the Sterilization Law. In terms of this law an individual could be sterilized if, in the opinion of specially established courts, that person suffered from any genetic diseases, identified as feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, insanity, genetic epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, genetic blindness or deafness, or severe alcoholism (interestingly enough, it was only in the early 1990's that American scientists "rediscovered" the genetic link to alcoholism). This law, for which Nazi Germany became infamous, was however by no means the first such law: in 1928, the Swiss canton of Waadt had passed a law in terms of which the mentally ill could be sterilized; in 1929, Denmark had passed similar sterilization legislation; Norway passed sterilization laws in 1934; followed by Sweden in 1935; Finland (1935); Estonia (1936) and Iceland (1938). Other states that passed sterilization laws included Mexico, Cuba, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Hungary. In 1907, the American state of Indiana had passed a sterilization law; by 1930, a further 28 American states and one Canadian province had followed suit, resulting in the sterilization of some 15,000 persons before 1930. By 1939, more than 30,000 people in 29 American states had been sterilized. (Racial Hygiene, Medicine under the Nazis, Robert N. Proctor, Harvard University Press, 1988). Nazi Eugenics The German eugenicist movement was directed primarily against Germans, not Jews. German medical research held that degenerate Whites posed a major threat to German society because of their propensity to greater reproductive levels: in this view, the Nazis were certainly not alone. In 1930, the women's supplement to the Social Democratic Party's newspaper, Vorwaarts, criticized the 1929 Danish sterilization law for not allowing the compulsory sterilization of "inferiors." In 1931, even the German Communist Party expressed itself in support of sterilization of psychiatric patients under certain conditions. (Racial Hygiene, Medicine under the Nazis, Robert N. Proctor, Harvard University Press, 1988). As a result of the German Sterilization law, somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000 people had been sterilized in that country by the end of the war in 1945 - none of them Jews and with the only non-Whites being 500 children born of sexual relationships between German women and Black French soldiers who had been used to occupy the Rhineland area after World War One.
Above: Nazi eugenics was primarily concerned with German Whites, not other races. The word "Untermensch" (or sub-man) was actually used to refer to degenerate Whites, not other races. In this illustration from the 1937 publication Volk in Gefahr (A People in Danger), the problem of criminal Whites is addressed so: "The Threat of the Underman. It looks like this: Male criminals had an average of 4.9 children, criminal marriage, 4.4 children, parents of slow learners, 3.5 children, a German family 2.2 children, and a marriage from the educated circles, 1.9 children." Mother's Cross Imitating ancient Greek and Roman attempts to encourage population growth, the German government rewarded those families with large numbers of children: a special Mother's Cross was struck, given in bronze to German women who had four children, silver for six children and gold for eight. Hundreds of thousands of these medals were given out before the war ended. Financial payments and tax concessions were also offered for large numbers of children. A combination of these incentives, the abolition of abortions (except in cases of the mentally ill) and the expansion of the borders of Germany eventually caused an increase (over and above what would have been the case had Hitler not come to power) in the number of children born in Germany during the Third Reich era of just over three million. The Nuremberg Laws In September 1935, the German government passed the Reich Citizenship Law which effectively limited citizenship of Germany to only those of "German and related blood who through their behavior make it evident that they are willing and able faithfully to serve the German people and nation." Jews and other non-Germans were reclassified as aliens and denied German citizenship. The Blood Protection Law, proclaimed on the same day, forbade all sexual relations between Germans and non-Germans, based on citizenship. This effectively forbade marriages between Germans, Jews and non-Whites alike. To address the issue of already existing marriages and children, the law defined a Jew as a person who had two (out of the four) Jewish grandparents - less than that and the person was classed as a German, and allowed to marry other Germans - a Nazi concession to the fact that many European Jews were to all practical purposes European in racial make-up. In fact, the Blood Protection Law specifically forbade such "one quarter Jews" from marrying other "one quarter Jews" - this was done to promote the further dissolution of Jewish genes, conversely to prevent the strengthening of any Jewish gene pool in Germany which might result from such unions. Contrary to propaganda surrounding the Third Reich, many of these one quarter Jews served the new German government faithfully, serving in all areas of the Reich's administration, including in the armed forces, without persecution of any sort.
Above: The Nuremberg laws had strict genetic rules as to who was a Jew and who was not: a person was only classified as Jewish if they had more than two Jewish grandparents. This chart, issued by the Reich Health Office in 1936, is an overview or "admissibility of marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans." The white circles represent "pure Germans", the circles with black indicate the proportion of Jewish blood. Allowable (zulassig) was a marriage between full Aryan and a one-quarter Jew; not allowed (verboten) was a marriage between a one quarter Jew and a three quarters Jew - an interesting example of how the laws actually sought to dissipate the Jews into Germany. It was not without irony that these laws of who was a Jew and who was not a Jew, were drawn up in consultation and approval with the German Council of Jews, particularly those who were in favor of the Zionist movement and who wanted Jews to leave Europe to settle what was then Palestine. The third and last racial law passed by the German government was the Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People, promulgated in October 1935. This law required couples wishing to marry to submit themselves to a medical examination before marrying to see if any genetically undesirable traits might be passed on to children born of such a union: the law forbade marriage between individuals suffering from venereal disease, feeble mindedness, epilepsy, or any of the diseases encompassed in the Sterilization Law. Those who were classed as bearing such genetically undesirable traits, were only allowed to marry if they agreed to be sterilized, so that no children would be born of the marriage. Euthanasia Project sees 70,273 incurable retarded people put to death In 1938, a German father by the name of Knauer wrote to Hitler asking that his child, born blind, retarded and with one arm and one leg, be granted a mercy death, or euthanasia. The case so moved Hitler that he ordered his personal physician to establish if the claims were true, and if so, that the child be granted euthanasia. This Knauer case was to be the start of a legal euthanasia program, the first in Western civilization since the times of the Spartans and early Romans, who had also engaged in mercy killings of severely retarded and deformed children. In all, some 5,000 retarded and deformed children were granted euthanasia by the German government before the end of the war - with each case being individually reviewed by a specially appointed committee. The policy of administering euthanasia to retarded and deformed children was then also extended to incurably insane adults. Thanks to the German habit of keeping meticulous records, the exact number of incurably insane adults granted euthanasia is known: 70,273. Although the adult euthanasia project was conducted in secret, it was impossible to conceal such things from the German public, and by 1941, news of the mercy killings had been leaked. Growing public pressure on the Nazi government forced the abandonment of the program in that year. Part Three: European Support for Hitler Part Four: The "Final Solution" - Nazi Policy towards Jews Part One: The Ideological background to Hitler's Germany All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999. Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden. |
