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Focus Study 2: The Nazi state 1933-1939

The development of Nazi racial policy 1933 to 1939, including the Nuremberg Laws (1935) and Kristallnacht (1938), and the historiographical debate over the path to the Holocaust

A focused answer to the HSC Modern History Core Study dot point on Nazi racial policy 1933 to 1939. The 1933 boycott, the Nuremberg Laws (1935), Kristallnacht (1938), the historiographical debate between Dawidowicz and Mommsen, and the path from persecution to the Final Solution.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.810 min answerUpdated 2026-06-26

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What this dot point is asking

NESA examines Nazi racial policy as a process, not a single event. You need to trace the escalation from 1933 to 1939, name the key laws and events, and engage with the historiographical debate between intentionalists (Dawidowicz, Goldhagen) and structuralists (Mommsen, Broszat) about the road to the Holocaust.

The answer

1933: Legal discrimination

Nazi racial policy began the day Hitler took office. The boycott of Jewish businesses (1 April 1933) was the first national antisemitic action, led by Julius Streicher's SA but officially "spontaneous." Within a week, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933) removed Jews from the civil service, the judiciary, and the universities. The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities (April 1933) capped Jewish student enrolments at 1.5 per cent. The Editorial Law (October 1933) banned Jews from journalism.

By the end of 1933, Jews were excluded from public employment, journalism, the arts, and the professions in any state role.

1935: The Nuremberg Laws

Announced at the Nuremberg Rally on 15 September 1935.

The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of German citizenship. Jews became "subjects of the state" without political rights.

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour banned marriage and extramarital sexual relations between Jews and persons of "German or related blood." Jews were forbidden to employ female "Aryan" domestic workers under 45.

The First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined a Jew as anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents. Persons with one or two Jewish grandparents were classified as Mischling (mixed) of the first or second degree.

Saul Friedlander argues the Nuremberg Laws crystallised racial antisemitism into the basic operating logic of the state.

1936-1938: Aryanisation

The 1936 Berlin Olympics brought a brief, tactical lull. From 1937 the "Aryanisation" of Jewish businesses accelerated, often through forced sales below market value. The Decree on the Registration of Jewish Property (26 April 1938) required Jews to disclose all assets above 5,000 Reichsmarks, preparing the ground for systematic confiscation. By 1938, identification documents required the middle names "Israel" or "Sara" for Jews, and passports were stamped with a red "J."

November 1938: Kristallnacht

On 7 November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris in protest at the deportation of Polish-Jewish families. Vom Rath died on 9 November. That night, Goebbels coordinated a nationwide pogrom presented as "spontaneous." Between 9 and 10 November 1938, 91 Jews were killed (with hundreds more dying from suicide or injuries), 267 synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalised, and around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.

The Jewish community was fined 1 billion Reichsmarks. The Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life (12 November 1938) closed all Jewish businesses. Jews were banned from schools, parks, theatres, and most public spaces.

Emigration and the road to war

Between 1933 and 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 525,000 Jews emigrated, often after surrendering most of their property. The Evian Conference (July 1938) saw 32 nations refuse to relax immigration quotas for Jewish refugees. After the German invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), Nazi racial policy moved from emigration and persecution to ghettoisation and, from 1941, mass murder.

Historiography

Lucy Dawidowicz (The War Against the Jews, 1975) is the canonical intentionalist: Hitler intended the destruction of European Jewry from the writing of Mein Kampf (1924), and the 1933 to 1939 sequence is the unfolding of a plan.

Hans Mommsen ("The Realisation of the Unthinkable," 1986) is the canonical structuralist: there was no master plan; competing agencies radicalised policy in a cumulative process.

Christopher Browning (The Origins of the Final Solution, 2004) and Ian Kershaw take a middle position: ideology set the destination, but wartime opportunity and bureaucratic competition set the path. Kershaw's "twisted road to Auschwitz" image captures this.

Daniel Goldhagen (Hitler's Willing Executioners, 1996) controversially argues that "eliminationist antisemitism" was widespread in German society, not confined to Nazi institutions.

Escalation timeline

Date	Event	Significance
1 Apr 1933	Boycott of Jewish businesses	First national action
7 Apr 1933	Civil Service Law	Jews excluded from public office
15 Sept 1935	Nuremberg Laws	Citizenship and Blood Law
14 Nov 1935	First Supplementary Decree	Mischling category defined
Aug 1936	Berlin Olympics	Tactical lull
26 Apr 1938	Registration of Jewish Property	Aryanisation accelerates
9-10 Nov 1938	Kristallnacht	State-coordinated pogrom
12 Nov 1938	Decree on Exclusion from Economic Life	Jewish businesses closed
Sept 1939	Invasion of Poland	Ghettoisation begins
22 June 1941	Operation Barbarossa	Einsatzgruppen begin mass shootings
20 Jan 1942	Wannsee Conference	Final Solution coordinated

How to read a source on this topic

Section I sources on Nazi racial policy commonly include Kristallnacht photographs, the Nuremberg Laws text, Goebbels' diary entries, Victor Klemperer's diaries, and survivor testimonies recorded after 1945. Three reading habits.

First, distinguish perpetrator from victim sources. Goebbels' diary (10 November 1938) celebrates the "spontaneous" violence; Klemperer's diary entries record fear and bewilderment. Both are evidence, but of different things.

Second, fix the stage in the trajectory. A 1933 source (boycott) shows discrimination; a 1935 source (Nuremberg Laws) shows legal codification; a 1938 source (Kristallnacht) shows organised violence. The same Jewish community faces different states at each stage.

Third, treat the staged as state policy. Kristallnacht was presented as a "spontaneous" reaction to vom Rath's assassination but was coordinated by Goebbels with SA and SS participation. Treat "spontaneous" claims as themselves evidence of state intent.

Note

Think of the regime building a cage one bar at a time. First it shut people out of jobs (1933) - like a workplace quietly firing everyone from one background. Then it passed the Nuremberg Laws (1935), which is like a government suddenly ruling that a whole group are no longer citizens and cannot marry "outsiders" - a paper rule, but one that strips away rights overnight. Then came Kristallnacht (1938), the night the rules turned into open violence: shops smashed, places of worship burned, thousands dragged away. The big argument among historians is simple to picture: did the Nazis follow a master plan from day one (the "intentionalist" view), or did they keep pushing further because rival officials competed to look the toughest, so it snowballed (the "structuralist" view)? Most now say the goal was always hostile, but the exact path was improvised. Note one thing carefully: this pre-war stage is persecution. The systematic mass murder - the Holocaust - starts later, from 1941.

Worked examples

Model responses

Q1 (source response). Source A (described): the Reich Citizenship Law, 15 September 1935, defining a "Reich citizen" as a subject of German or kindred blood. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain how Nazi racial policy was legally formalised in 1935. [5 marks]

The Reich Citizenship Law in Source A formalised racial policy by splitting the population into two legal tiers: "Reich citizens" of "German or kindred blood" with full political rights, and mere "subjects of the state." Jews were reduced to the second tier, losing the vote and civil protections. The companion Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour banned intermarriage. Crucially, the First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined a Jew by ancestry - three or more Jewish grandparents - creating the Mischling category for those with one or two. This shifted persecution from the social discrimination of 1933 (the boycott, the Civil Service Law) onto a hereditary legal basis that later measures, from Aryanisation to deportation, would rely upon.

Marker's note: The 5 marks reward using the source (the "German or kindred blood" test), accurate own knowledge (the second law and the November decree), and the technical Mischling detail. A top answer also signals the SHIFT from social to legal/hereditary discrimination.

Q2 (source evaluation). A Kristallnacht photograph (described): a burning synagogue, 10 November 1938, with onlookers standing by. Assess the usefulness of this source for a historian investigating Nazi racial policy in 1938. [6 marks]

The photograph is useful as direct visual evidence of Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938): the burning synagogue corroborates the documented destruction of 267 synagogues, and the passive onlookers illustrate how the violence was public and tolerated. As a contemporary image it captures the shift from the legal codification of 1935 to organised violence in 1938. Its usefulness is limited, however: a photograph captures one moment, not the coordination behind it (Goebbels' role, Heydrich's telex ordering police not to intervene), nor the regime's framing of the pogrom as "spontaneous." It also cannot show the aftermath - the 1 billion Reichsmark fine, the 30,000 arrests, the 12 November decree closing Jewish businesses. It is therefore strong on the visible event but must be corroborated with perpetrator documents to reveal state intent.

Marker's note: A 6-mark response judges usefulness BOTH ways - what the image shows (the event, public tolerance) and what it hides (coordination, intent, aftermath) - and corroborates with specific own knowledge. Markers penalise simply describing the photograph.

Q3 (essay paragraph). For "To what extent was Nazi racial policy 1933-1939 a coherent plan?", a historiography paragraph:

The intentionalist reading is strongest on continuity of purpose. Lucy Dawidowicz (The War Against the Jews, 1975) argues Hitler intended the destruction of European Jewry from early in his career, so the escalation from the boycott (1 April 1933) to the Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) to Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) is the deliberate unfolding of a fixed goal. The unbroken antisemitic direction across six years supports her. Yet Hans Mommsen's structuralist response exposes the limits of a "plan": the 1936 Olympic lull and the reactive nature of Kristallnacht - improvised after vom Rath's assassination, amid rivalry between Goebbels, Goering, and the SS - show policy radicalising cumulatively rather than on schedule. The synthesis of Ian Kershaw ("the twisted road to Auschwitz") best fits the evidence: ideology fixed the destination, but circumstance and bureaucratic competition chose the path.

Marker's note: This paragraph earns marks because the historians are USED to drive the argument (intent vs process) rather than listed, every claim is pinned to a dated event, and it reaches a judgement. To lift it to band 6, link back explicitly to the question's "to what extent" - here, a coherent intent but not a coherent plan of action.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

2020 HSC (verbatim)7 marksExplain the value and limitations of Source B in understanding the impact of Nazi repression on Jewish people.

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A 7-mark source-analysis task requires balanced value and limitations, with own knowledge.

Step 1: Identify the source: Note the date, the author, and the genre. Common Section I source types on Jewish persecution: Kristallnacht photographs (synagogue fires, smashed shop windows in Berlin), Jewish refugee testimonies, Goebbels' diary entries (especially 10 November 1938), Nuremberg Laws text, or extracts from Victor Klemperer's diaries (I Will Bear Witness, kept 1933 to 1945).
Value: A Jewish testimony or diary provides the lived experience of exclusion: the loss of citizenship after the Nuremberg Laws (September 1935), the public humiliation, the Aryanisation of property from 1937, the violence of Kristallnacht (9 to 10 November 1938). A Klemperer diary entry shows the daily texture of repression.
Limitations: A single perspective cannot capture the full scope. A photograph captures one moment, not the cumulative effect of 1933 to 1939. A perpetrator source (Goebbels' diary) reveals state intent but suppresses victim experience. Most Jewish testimonies are from survivors; the experience of the murdered is largely silent.
Wider knowledge: Around 250,000 of Germany's 525,000 Jews emigrated by 1939. The Evian Conference (July 1938) saw 32 nations refuse to relax immigration quotas. Saul Friedlander (Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1997) emphasises the importance of integrating victim voices into the historiography.

Markers reward balanced value and limitations, three to four substantive facts of repression, and a named historian.

Practice (NESA)6 marksExplain the significance of the Nuremberg Laws in the development of Nazi racial policy.

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A 6-mark "explain" needs three significances developed with evidence.

Legal codification of racism: The Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) were the first explicit legal framework that defined Jewish identity by ancestry rather than religion. The First Supplementary Decree (November 1935) classified anyone with three Jewish grandparents as a Jew, and created the intermediate category of Mischling (mixed). This made racial status hereditary and irreversible.
End of Jewish citizenship: The Reich Citizenship Law downgraded Jews from "Reich citizens" to "subjects of the state," removing political rights, the vote, and the protection of civil law.
Foundation for later escalation: The Nuremberg Laws established the legal architecture that later legislation (the 1938 decrees, Aryanisation, deportation orders) was built on. They also normalised state-sponsored racial classification in everyday administration: passports, schools, civil service records.

Saul Friedlander (Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1997) describes the laws as the moment when racial antisemitism became "the law of the land." Markers reward the technical detail (Mischling category), the political consequence, and the historiographical link to the wider trajectory.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation4 marksOutline the key features of the Nuremberg Laws (1935).

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A 4-mark "outline" wants a structured account of the main features, not an argument.

The Nuremberg Laws were announced on 15 September 1935 at the Nuremberg Rally and comprised two laws. (1 mark for date and context.)

The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of German citizenship, reducing them to "subjects of the state" without political rights such as the vote. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour banned marriage and extramarital sexual relations between Jews and persons of "German or related blood", and barred Jews from employing "Aryan" women under 45 as domestic servants. (2 marks for accurate content of both laws.)

The First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined a Jew as anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents and created the intermediate Mischling category. (1 mark for the technical definition.)

Marking criteria: 4 marks = correct date plus accurate features of BOTH laws plus the grandparent definition; 2-3 marks = some features with minor gaps; 1 mark = a single relevant feature.

foundation5 marksOutline the escalation of Nazi racial policy from 1933 to 1938.

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A 5-mark "outline" rewards a clear chronological sequence with dates.

1933 - legal discrimination: The boycott of Jewish businesses (1 April 1933) was the first national action; the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933) removed Jews from public office, the judiciary, and universities.
1935 - legal codification: The Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) ended Jewish citizenship and banned intermarriage; the First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined Jewish identity by ancestry.
1936-1938 - economic exclusion: After a tactical lull for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Aryanisation accelerated from 1937; the Decree on the Registration of Jewish Property (26 April 1938) prepared for confiscation.
November 1938 - organised violence: Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) was a state-coordinated pogrom; the Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life (12 November 1938) closed all Jewish businesses.

Marking criteria: 5 marks = four clearly dated stages showing escalation from discrimination to codification to violence; 3-4 marks = a sound sequence with some dates; 1-2 marks = a few events without a clear trajectory.

core6 marksExplain how the Nuremberg Laws (1935) changed the legal status of Jews in Germany.

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A 6-mark "explain" needs cause-and-effect developed across three points with evidence.

From citizen to subject: Before 1935, German Jews held citizenship and formal civil rights. The Reich Citizenship Law (15 September 1935) created two tiers: Reichsburger ("Reich citizens" of German or related blood) and mere "subjects of the state." Jews became the latter, losing the vote and the protection of full civil law. The change was political and constitutional, not merely social.
Identity fixed by ancestry: The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour criminalised intermarriage, while the First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined a Jew as anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents. Crucially, this made Jewish status hereditary and irreversible - a person could not change it by conversion, because the test was "blood," not religion.
A framework for escalation: The laws created administrative categories (Jew, Mischling of the first and second degree) that every later measure - Aryanisation, the 1938 decrees, deportation lists - relied upon. Saul Friedlander argues the laws made racial antisemitism the "law of the land."

Marking criteria: 6 marks = three developed changes (citizenship, hereditary definition, framework) with accurate evidence and a clear sense of consequence; 4-5 marks = two developed points; 1-3 marks = description without explaining the change in legal status.

core7 marksSource A (described): A diary entry by a German-Jewish professor, dated late September 1935. The writer records that after the Nuremberg Rally he and his wife "are no longer citizens"; he notes neighbours now avoid greeting him in the street, and wonders whether his decades of war service and university teaching count for nothing. Using Source A and your own knowledge, assess the usefulness of this source for a historian investigating the impact of the Nuremberg Laws on German Jews. [7 marks]

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A 7-mark "assess the usefulness" question wants a judgement built from the source's content, origin, and perspective, weighed against own knowledge - both strengths and limits.

Origin and perspective: The source is a private diary by a German-Jewish professor written in late September 1935, days after the laws. As a contemporary, first-person record it captures the immediate emotional impact and is not shaped by hindsight, which adds value. (Real diaries of this kind - Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness, kept 1933-1945 - are the classic example.)
Content corroborated by own knowledge: The writer's claim that he is "no longer a citizen" precisely reflects the Reich Citizenship Law (15 September 1935), which reduced Jews to "subjects of the state." His reference to lost war service and university teaching connects to the earlier Civil Service Law (7 April 1933). The social detail - neighbours refusing to greet him - illustrates how legal exclusion licensed everyday humiliation. The source is therefore useful for showing both the legal and the social texture of persecution.
Limitations: It is a single, elite, urban, professional perspective; it cannot represent poorer or rural Jews, or those who emigrated (around 250,000 of 525,000 by 1939). A diary records perception, not always accurate detail, and reveals the victim's experience but not state intent (for that a historian needs perpetrator sources). One entry cannot capture the cumulative escalation to Kristallnacht (1938).
Judgement: Highly useful as evidence of the immediate lived impact of the Nuremberg Laws on an educated German Jew, but narrow in social scope and silent on perpetrator motive; it must be corroborated with the legal text and a range of testimonies.

Marking criteria: 7 marks = a sustained judgement integrating origin/perspective, source content, accurate own knowledge, AND clear limitations; 5-6 marks = usefulness assessed with some own knowledge but thin on limitations; 3-4 marks = describes the source with limited evaluation; 1-2 marks = retells the source.

exam25 marks'Nazi racial policy between 1933 and 1939 was the unfolding of a coherent plan.' To what extent do you agree? [25 marks]

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This is a 25-mark essay testing the intentionalist-structuralist debate. Markers reward a sustained, signposted thesis, specific evidence, and explicit historiography that addresses the exact wording ("to what extent").

Thesis (judgement up front): Ideology supplied a constant antisemitic destination, but the 1933-1939 sequence was driven as much by improvisation, competing agencies, and circumstance as by a fixed plan; the period is better read as cumulative radicalisation within an ideological frame than as a blueprint unfolding on schedule.
Argument 1 - the case FOR a plan (intentionalist): Continuity of antisemitic intent is real: the boycott (1 April 1933), the Civil Service Law (7 April 1933), the Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) and Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) form an unmistakable escalation. Lucy Dawidowicz (The War Against the Jews, 1975) reads this as Hitler's long-held goal, traceable to Mein Kampf (1924), being put into action.
Argument 2 - the case AGAINST a plan (structuralist): The pace was uneven and reactive: the 1936 Berlin Olympics produced a tactical lull; the Nuremberg Laws were drafted hurriedly at the rally itself; Kristallnacht was triggered by vom Rath's assassination and shaped by rivalry between Goebbels, Goering, and the SS. Hans Mommsen argues there was no master plan but a "cumulative radicalisation" by competing agencies.
Argument 3 - the synthesis (and judgement): Christopher Browning and Ian Kershaw reconcile the two: ideology set the destination, but wartime opportunity and bureaucratic competition chose the path - Kershaw's "twisted road to Auschwitz." Crucially, the pre-war policy was emigration and persecution; systematic murder begins only in 1941. So a coherent INTENT existed, but a coherent PLAN of action did not.
Model paragraph (Argument 2): The structuralist reading is strongest where policy is reactive rather than scheduled. The 1936 Berlin Olympics show the regime softening visible persecution for international advantage - hardly the behaviour of a fixed timetable. Kristallnacht is the clearest case: it was not a planned next step but a pogrom improvised after Herschel Grynszpan shot Ernst vom Rath, with Goebbels seizing the moment to outflank rivals. As Hans Mommsen argues, antisemitic policy radicalised cumulatively because competing Nazi agencies each pushed further to prove their zeal, not because a single document dictated the sequence. This does not deny the underlying ideological drive; it shows that the road from the Nuremberg Laws to organised violence was opportunistic, which is why the laws of 1935 were not followed by the violence of 1938 until an external trigger arrived.

Marker's note: A band 6 response sustains a clear judgement on "to what extent," deploys precise dates and laws as evidence, and weaves at least two contrasting historians (Dawidowicz vs Mommsen) into the argument rather than bolting them on. Band 4-5 narrates the events accurately but argues weakly or names historians without using them. Avoid calling the whole period "the Holocaust" - markers penalise collapsing pre-war persecution into wartime extermination.

exam10 marksCompare the views of Lucy Dawidowicz and Hans Mommsen on the origins of Nazi antisemitic policy. [10 marks]

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A 10-mark "compare" wants both positions stated accurately, then set against each other with your judgement - not two separate summaries.

Dawidowicz (intentionalist): In The War Against the Jews (1975), Lucy Dawidowicz argues Hitler intended the destruction of European Jewry from early in his career (traceable to Mein Kampf, 1924), so the 1933-1939 measures are the deliberate unfolding of a long-held goal. Emphasis: continuity, ideology, Hitler's will.
Mommsen (structuralist/functionalist): In "The Realisation of the Unthinkable" (1986), Hans Mommsen argues there was no master plan; policy radicalised cumulatively as competing agencies (Goebbels, Goering, the SS) outbid one another, with circumstance and a "weak dictator" presiding over improvisation. Emphasis: process, structure, bureaucratic competition.
Comparison and judgement: They agree antisemitism was central but disagree on mechanism: planned intent (Dawidowicz) versus emergent process (Mommsen). The uneven pace of 1933-1939 - the Olympic lull, the reactive nature of Kristallnacht - supports Mommsen on the PATH, while the unbroken antisemitic direction supports Dawidowicz on the DESTINATION. The middle position of Browning and Kershaw ("twisted road") arguably captures the policy best.

Marking criteria: 10 marks = both views accurately stated, explicitly compared on a clear basis (intent vs process), and a supported judgement; 6-7 marks = both views with limited comparison; 3-5 marks = one view, or two summaries not compared.