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Nuremberg Laws: Legalizing

Antisemitism

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The following article on the Nuremberg Laws is an excerpt from Richard Weikart’s
book Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. It is available to
order now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

On September 15, 1935, the German state stripped its Jews of their citizenship, reducing
them to the status of “subjects” under the auspices of the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade
sexual relations between biological Jews and Germans. It elevated the science of eugenics
into state policy; crafted to protect the German people, which were perceived to be under
threat by “inferior races.”

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The roots of the Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws were a major step forward in the ratcheting anti-Semitism of Hitler’s
regime. After he came to power in 1933, he and his regime endeavored to implement anti-
Semitic policies against the Jews as a race, not as a religion. Ironically, when Hitler and his
cabinet passed discriminatory legislation against the Jews, they used synagogue records to
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determine who was a Jew. The reason was simple. The Nazis could not nd a biological
marker to distinguish Jews from non-Jews. During the Nazi regime, some scientists
performed serological studies and other experiments to see if they could nd a way to
identify Jews scienti cally, but these all failed. Some German anthropologists claimed they
could identify Jews by skull measurements and facial features, but these were often
subjective and inconclusive.

When perusing synagogue records to determine the identity and fate of an individual,
however, Nazi o cials did not consider the individual’s actual membership in the synagogue
(a clear religious statement). They looked at his or her grandparents, trying to establish
Jewish racial ancestry. Nazi o cials identi ed as Jews individuals who were Catholics,
Protestants, agnostics, or atheists, because they did not care what religion these individuals
currently embraced. Jews were determined entirely by their genealogy, not by their religion.
They were targeted for discrimination (and later extermination) based on their grandparents’
religious a liation.

The legal de nition of Jewishness

according to the Nuremberg Laws
Why did the Nazis determine Jewish status based on grandparents? In one sense, this could
have been a matter of practicality, but also Hitler and other Nazis believed that biological
science provided a rationale for not going too far back genealogically. When Nazi o cials
were debating the way to frame the Nuremberg Laws, some argued that individuals having
only one Jewish grandparent could be reabsorbed back into the German Volk, as long as they
did not intermarry with Jews. This position won the day and was re ected in the Nuremberg
Laws. Hitler re ected this perspective, too, in a monologue in December 1941, when he
stated that while those with some recent Jewish heredity often associate with Jews, by the
seventh, eighth, or ninth generation, nature takes care of this problem by eliminating the
deleterious hereditary traits. He explained that the Mendelian laws of heredity ensured that
the Jewish traits would no longer be present by then in the vast majority of cases.

One of the most important commandments in Hitler’s sexual morality—and a centerpiece of

the Nuremberg Laws’ second piece of legislation( Law for the Protection of German Blood
and German Honor), or simply Blutschutzgesetz—was thou shalt not mix your blood with other
races. While the Catholic Church forbade intermarriage between Catholics and non-Catholics,
Hitler forbade intermarriage and sexual relations between Germans and Jews, regardless of
their religious convictions.

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For Hitler, it was a sin—punishable by law after the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated in
1935—for a Catholic of Aryan descent to marry a Catholic with Jewish grandparents. Hitler
also forbade intermarriage of Germans with Slavs but encouraged German intermarriage
with the Norwegians or Dutch, because they were deemed fellow Nordic peoples.

The Nuremberg Laws were part of the long road toward the Holocaust in the Nazi regime’s
attempts to purge its nation of non-Aryan peoples.

This post is part of our collection of resources on Nazi Germany. Click here for our comprehensive
information resource on the society, ideology, and key events in Nazi Germany.

This article is an excerpt from Richard Weikart’s book Hitler’s Religion:

The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. It is available to order
now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

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You can also buy the book by clicking on the buttons to the left.

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"Nuremberg Laws: Legalizing Antisemitism" History on the Net

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April 11, 2019 <https://www.historyonthenet.com/nuremberg-laws>
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About the Editor

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