Nazi rule · Germany · 1933–1945
The Nazi regime used invented racial categories to organize exclusion, dispossession and genocide.
Explore GermanyPublished by WTJPublication updated
1933–1945
Nazi rule · When prejudice governs
The Nazi regime used invented racial categories to organize exclusion, dispossession and genocide.
The rewritten law book
After 1933, the Nazi regime excluded Jews through successive laws. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws removed full citizenship and restricted marriage using invented racial categories. Officials turned antisemitic ideology into administrative rules. These classifications were instruments of persecution, not scientific descriptions of people.
A witness writes back
David Fiks wrote a detailed account of the November 1938 pogrom for his children after reaching England. He described how his Christian landlady, Hedwig Schmidt, hid him. His letter records violence and an individual act of help. It shows that people faced choices within a persecuting society.
The machinery of persecution
The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators. War widened the regime's reach. State institutions, occupation and many participants made genocide possible; an account focused on one leader alone cannot explain how it happened.