Nazi social and racial policy 1933 to 1939, including the position of women, youth, and churches, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the persecution of Jews and other minorities, and Kristallnacht of November 1938

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe and analyse how Nazi social and racial policy reshaped German society between 1933 and 1939. Strong answers cover women, youth, churches, and the persecuted groups (Jews, Sinti and Roma, the disabled, homosexuals) and integrate the gap between ideology and practice. The Burleigh "racial state" framework, the Friedlander stages of antisemitism, and the Pine work on women set the historiographical frame.

The answer

Women

The regime's slogan Kinder, Kuche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) framed women as wives and mothers. Policy followed.

• The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage (1 June 1933) offered interest-free 1,000-mark loans; 25 per cent was forgiven for each child born.
• Married women were pressured out of the civil service (June 1933) and the professions. The proportion of women in the medical workforce fell from 5 per cent to 2 per cent between 1933 and 1939.
• The Lebensborn programme (December 1935) under SS direction supported "racially valuable" mothers.
• The Mother's Cross (Mutterkreuz, 1938) awarded bronze (four children), silver (six), and gold (eight).
• The German Women's League (Deutsches Frauenwerk) and NS-Frauenschaft promoted ideology.

The birth rate rose from 14.7 per 1,000 (1933) to 20.4 (1939). The labour shortage from 1936 onwards drew women back into work despite policy; by 1939 women's employment was rising. Lisa Pine (Nazi Family Policy, 1997) emphasises the gap between rhetoric and the wartime reality.

Youth

The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend, HJ) was founded in 1926 and grew to dominate German youth life under Baldur von Schirach (Reich Youth Leader from June 1933).

The Hitler Youth Law (1 December 1936) made HJ the only legal youth organisation. The Youth Service Duty (March 1939) made membership effectively compulsory from age 10 (Jungvolk to 14, HJ 14 to 18). The League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Madel, BDM) covered girls; activities focused on domestic and racial training and physical fitness.

Schools were nazified through the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB), with around 97 per cent of teachers in membership by 1937. The Adolf Hitler Schools (founded 1937) and the Napola (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten) trained the elite. Racial science (Rassenkunde) was taught as a discipline.

Limited non-conformity persisted. The Edelweiss Pirates (working-class urban youth) and Swing Youth (middle-class jazz fans) avoided HJ activities and resisted assimilation. Neither threatened the regime.

Churches

The Reich Concordat with the Vatican (20 July 1933), signed by Vice-Chancellor Papen and Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII), guaranteed Catholic religious freedom in return for political withdrawal. The Concordat was repeatedly violated. Catholic youth groups were dissolved (1936); priests were prosecuted for currency offences and "immorality."

Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (14 March 1937), smuggled into Germany and read from pulpits on Palm Sunday, attacked Nazi racial policy. The regime responded with currency and "immorality" trials of priests.

The Protestant churches split. The "German Christians" (Deutsche Christen) movement, supported by the regime, accepted the Nazi worldview. The Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), led by Pastor Martin Niemoller and the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposed it. The Barmen Declaration (May 1934) declared Nazi ideology incompatible with Christian faith. Niemoller was arrested in July 1937 and held in protective custody until 1945. Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943 and executed in April 1945.

Antisemitism: the legal phase 1933 to 1935

The boycott of Jewish businesses (1 April 1933) was largely a failure but signalled the regime's intent. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933) excluded Jews from state employment. The Reich Citizenship Law of 1934 stripped some Jews of citizenship.

The Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) at the Nazi Party rally comprised two laws:

• The Reich Citizenship Law: only those of "German or related blood" could be Reich citizens. Jews became "subjects" without political rights.
• The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour: marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and "Aryans" were criminalised.

The First Supplementary Decree (14 November 1935) defined a Jew as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents; Mischlinge of first and second degree (two or one Jewish grandparents) were defined as well, with intermediate rights.

Antisemitism: the radicalisation 1936 to 1939

The Olympics (August 1936) saw a partial public retreat from antisemitic display, in international audience. After the Games the pressure resumed. From 1937, "Aryanisation" forced Jewish businesses into German hands at fire-sale prices. Jewish doctors and lawyers were progressively excluded from practice.

Kristallnacht (9 to 10 November 1938) followed the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris on 7 November. Goebbels orchestrated a "spontaneous" pogrom; Heydrich's instructions coordinated the SS, SA, and police. The outcomes:

• Around 267 synagogues burned.
• 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed.
• 91 Jews killed; many more injured.
• Around 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.

The Decree for the Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life (12 November 1938) imposed a 1 billion mark "atonement" tax on the Jewish community and excluded Jews from retail trade, the professions, and most occupations. Emigration accelerated; the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration (January 1939) under Heydrich was set up to coordinate it. Around 117,000 Jews emigrated in the year after Kristallnacht.

Other persecuted groups

The Sinti and Roma (around 26,000 in Germany in 1939) were registered by the Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance (Munich, 1936) under Dr Robert Ritter. Forced sterilisation began in 1936; many were interned in special camps.

The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (14 July 1933) authorised compulsory sterilisation of those with named conditions (schizophrenia, alcoholism, "feeble-mindedness"). Around 400,000 Germans were sterilised between 1934 and 1939. The T4 "euthanasia" programme of the disabled would begin in October 1939.

Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, tightened in 1935, criminalised male homosexuality. Around 50,000 men were convicted between 1933 and 1945; around 15,000 sent to camps.

Historiography

Michael Burleigh (The Third Reich: A New History, 2000) treats the regime as a "racial state" in which all persecuted groups belong to the same ideological project.

Saul Friedlander (Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, 1997) identifies the phase 1933 to 1939 as "redemptive antisemitism" in which Hitler's personal ideology drove progressively radical policy.

Lisa Pine (Nazi Family Policy, 1997) is the standard on women, showing the gap between ideology and practice.

Robert Gellately (Backing Hitler, 2001) integrates terror and consent across the racial policies, showing the role of denunciation.

Detlev Peukert (Inside Nazi Germany, 1987) supplies the opposition/non-conformity distinction relevant to youth and church responses.

How to read a source on this topic

Sources on Nazi social and racial policy commonly include Nuremberg Law texts, Kristallnacht photographs (often the burnt-out synagogues), Stuermer cartoons by Julius Streicher, Mother's Cross propaganda, Hitler Youth recruitment posters, and Confessing Church documents. Three reading habits.

First, separate the policy text from the implementation. The Nuremberg Laws were vague until the First Supplementary Decree of 14 November 1935 defined a Jew. Implementation depended on local Gauleiter and Gestapo offices, with significant variation.

Second, watch for the gap between ideology and labour-market reality. KdF posters celebrate motherhood; Reich Labour Ministry figures from 1938 show women's employment rising again. Both are evidence, of different things.

Third, read antisemitism in stages. A 1933 boycott photograph captures an early, partial policy; a 1935 Nuremberg Laws document captures legal exclusion; a Kristallnacht photograph captures pogrom. Friedlander's phasing is the most useful reading frame.

Common exam traps

Treating Nazi women's policy as fully successful. The labour shortage from 1936 reversed the ideology in practice. Real women's employment was rising by 1939.

Forgetting Pacelli and the Concordat. The future Pope Pius XII negotiated the 1933 Concordat as Cardinal Secretary of State. Both Vatican parties bear responsibility for the political withdrawal.

Misdating Kristallnacht. 9 to 10 November 1938, following the 7 November assassination of vom Rath, not 7 November itself.

Treating the racial policy as Jewish-only. Sinti and Roma, the disabled, and homosexuals were also targets of the "racial state." Burleigh's framework integrates them.

In one sentence

Nazi social and racial policy between 1933 and 1939 promoted Kinder, Kuche, Kirche for women (although labour-market reality reversed this from 1936), made Hitler Youth and BDM membership effectively compulsory under the 1936 Law, neutralised political religion through the Concordat and pressed the Confessing Church into limited resistance, and progressively excluded Jews through the Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935) and the Kristallnacht pogrom (9 to 10 November 1938) within the wider "racial state" (Burleigh) that also targeted Sinti and Roma, the disabled, and homosexuals.