Lesson video

Hello, welcome to history here at Oak National Academy.

My name's Mr. Newton, and I'll be your teacher today, guiding you through the entire lesson.

Right, let's get started.

In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany with a clear and radical vision for the country's future.

At the heart of this vision was the belief that Germany could only become strong again by removing those seen as racially or socially unfit.

These ideas were not created overnight.

They had developed over decades, shaped by theories that used scientific language to justify longstanding prejudice.

In today's lesson, we will explore how these beliefs influenced Nazi policy, and how entire groups were targeted, marginalized, and persecuted as a result.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain how Nazi racial ideology influenced their treatments of minority groups.

Before we begin, there are a few key words that we need to understand.

Eugenics was the belief that human populations could be improved through selective breeding, by encouraging reproduction among those deemed fit, and preventing it among the unfit.

Aryan was an ancient group of Indo-European peoples.

The Nazis wrongly redefined Aryan to mean a racially pure northern European person who were biologically superior and destined to rule over other races.

Sterilization is the process of having a medical operation to make it impossible to have children.

Hereditarily, relating to traits or conditions passed from parents to children through genes, such as eye color or certain genetic diseases.

Euthanasia is the act of killing someone who is very ill or very old so that they do not suffer anymore.

The Nazis use this term to justify murdering those they deemed unworthy of life.

Today's lesson is called, "Nazi Racial Ideology and the Treatment of Minorities," and the lesson is split into two parts.

First, we'll focus on Nazi racial beliefs, the idea that influence how they saw society, science, and identity.

Then we'll move on to the second part, Nazi policies and the treatments of minorities.

Here, we'll examine how these beliefs were turned into real laws and actions, targeting different groups through discrimination, persecution, and violence.

Right, let's begin with Nazi racial beliefs.

In January, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he set about creating a people's community.

This Nazi vision wasn't just about reclaiming lost territory or rebuilding the economy, at its core was a chilling idea, that Germany could only become strong again if it was racially pure.

The Nazis believed in creating a "People's Community," which was a national group made up only of racially pure Aryans.

Anyone who did not fit this ideal would be pushed out, silenced, or destroyed.

Let's take a closer look at this propaganda poster from Nazi Germany.

At the top, the slogan reads, "The NSDAP secures the people's community." This is a bold claim, positioning the Nazi Party as the protector of German society.

The phrase "People's Community," or Volksgemeinschaft, was central to Nazi ideology, promoting the idea of a unified national family.

But here in his poster, we can see what vision the Nazis had for the national family or People's Community.

At the top of the poster, we can see an eagle with its wings outstretched standing watch over the family.

The eagle had long symbolized imperial and national strength in German history, but under the Nazis, it took on new meaning, representing the power and authority of the regime.

Below the eagle, the father wraps his arms around the family, echoing the eagle's protective posture.

Notice how the family is portrayed, blonde-haired, healthy, smiling, traditional.

This was meant to represent the ideal German family, one that fit the Nazi image of racial purity.

Therefore, the People's Community wasn't just about unity, it was about excluding anyone who didn't fit the Nazi vision of a racially pure, healthy, and obedient society.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

"The main aim of Nazi racial ideology was to build a racially pure national blank." Pause the video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and let's see how that sentence should have read.

The main aim of Nazi racial ideology was to build a radically pure national community.

Okay, let's continue.

So, it's important to understand that Nazi racial beliefs didn't appear out of nowhere.

The Nazis twisted earlier scientific ideas to build their own racist beliefs about race, health, and society.

In the decades before the Nazis came to power, some scientists and thinkers developed new theories about how traits and health conditions were passed down through families, and how this might affect society.

Some of these ideas were based on real science, but they were often mixed with harmful beliefs about race and human value.

The Nazis later twisted these ideas to justify terrible actions.

One starting point was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and we can see a photograph of Darwin on the left.

Darwin explained how animals and plants that were better suited to their environments were more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their traits to the next generation.

This became known as natural selection or survival of the fittest.

Now, it's important to stress here that Darwin wasn't a racist, and that his theory of evolution is a genuine scientific idea, and still forms the basis of modern biology.

However, others took Darwin's biological ideas and wrongly applied them to human society through what became known as Social Darwinism, claiming that some races or nations were stronger and more advanced than others, and that letting the weak die out was part of progress.

This was a misapplication of Darwin's scientific theory, which Darwin himself never intended to apply to human societies or races.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

How did Nazis misuse Darwin's theory of natural selection? A, they applied it to human societies to justify racism.

B, they rejected its in favor of religious beliefs.

C, they used it to argue for environmental reforms. Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if your correct answer was A, and that the Nazis had applied Darwin's theory of natural selection to human societies to justify racism.

So, like I said, Darwin's science was a starting point.

His theory of evolution and natural selection was revolutionary.

Some scientists took Darwin's ideas and used them to make real advances in biology and genetics, but at the same time, others began to misuse his theory.

Some scientists and thinkers began asking dangerous questions, "What if we could apply the idea of survival of the fittest to people?" "What if we could control who gets to pass on their genes?" Some of these scientists developed the theory of eugenics, the idea of improving society through genetics.

In other words, the society could improve its genetic quality through selective reproduction, and this meant encouraging certain people to have children while preventing others from doing so.

Eugenics took the real science of heredity and twisted it with prejudice to justify deciding who could have children based on flawed ideas about human worth.

Eugenics crossed a moral line.

It judged who was fit or unfit based on biased ideas about poverty, disability, or behavior, and it's allowed the state to decide who had the right to reproduce.

That's what made it so dangerous.

It's important to understand that eugenics wasn't just about race, at least not in its early stages.

Many early eugenicists focused on things like mental illness, physical disabilities, learning difficulties, alcoholism, or even poverty and criminal behavior.

They claimed that if these people were stopped from having children, it would improve society.

Over time, however, these ideas were taken to the extreme and developed into racist theories, especially in Nazi Germany.

These ideas would later lead to Nazi beliefs about racial hygiene.

Some scientists claims that the German people had to stay racially pure in order to survive.

They believed that anyone with a mental health condition, a disability, or the supposed wrong racial background was a threat to the health of the nation.

These views gave a scientific-sounding excuse for discrimination, and helped prepare the ground for Nazi racial policies.

On the left, you can see a page taken from a 1914 book called "Rasehygiene." This was produced by scientists who believed in eugenics and racial hygiene.

The image shows how people were grouped into so-called racial types, based only on their physical features, like the shape of their nose, eyes, jaw, or forehead.

These classifications were completely unscientific, but they were presented as fact.

Charts like this were used to suggest that some races were more advanced or more valuable than others.

This is a clear example of how scientific language and imagery were misused to support racist ideas.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is match each idea to its correct description.

So, you can see I've given you two words, eugenics and racial hygiene, and I want you to match those words to their correct definition.

Pause the video, have a go, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew that eugenics aimed to improve society through selective reproduction based on genetics, and that racial hygiene aimed to improve the racial purity of the population through selective reproduction based on race.

Okay, let's continue.

So, Hitler adopted and radicalized existing racial theories, and in 1925, outlined Nazi racial ideology in his book, "Mein Kampf." And so, what we have to remember here is that by 1924, when Hitler was writing "Mein Kampf," this was the height of Weimar chaos.

Hitler and the Nazis were convinced that Germans were facing a deadly threat to their racial health, like a disease infecting the nation.

The Nazis often wrapped their racial beliefs in the language of science, medicine, and public health.

This made their ideas sound objective and credible, not just to the public, but to themselves.

This meant that extreme ideas were thought of as rational, even responsible policy.

Many genuinely believed that certain groups posed a threat to the health of the nation, and reacted with fear in a way similar to how people might respond to the spread of disease or a pandemic.

The Nazis did not believe they were doing evil, they thought they were following science and protecting Germany from collapse.

Shockingly, this would result in a deliberate campaign of exclusion, sterilization, and eventually, mass murder.

And we know what Hitler's beliefs were on this topic because he detailed these beliefs in his book "Mein Kampf." He imagined humanity as a racial hierarchy.

At the top stood the master race, the Aryans, at the bottom were the sub-humans, the untermenschen.

The Nazis saw the master race as blonde, blue-eyed, and northern European.

Hitler believed that Germans were the modern descendants of the ancient Aryans, a pure and noble race from the Nordic regions.

He saw them as biologically superior, destined to rule, and that their ancestors had built great civilizations like ancient Greece and Rome.

And once again, it's important to note that Aryans were a real historical and cultural group, but the Nazis distorted the idea, turning it into a myth of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed master race that they claimed were the ancestors of modern Germans.

We can see this myth brought to life in Nazi propaganda.

On the left, we can see a propaganda image taken from a 1938 calendar titled "A New People." It shows an idealized German man, woman, and child, all with blonde hair and fair skin.

This is a visual example of the Nazi idea of the Aryan master race, healthy, physically strong, and racially pure.

The man's muscular build and protective stance suggests strength and leadership, while the woman and child represent purity, family, and the future of the nation.

The background includes a large eagle, another symbol of Nazi power, linking the family's wellbeing to the strength of a Nazi state, their people's community.

Images like this didn't just celebrate an ideal, they also sent a silent but powerful message about who did not belong in the Nazi vision of society.

The people who are seen to be at the bottom of Hitler's racial hierarchy, the sub-humans, or the untermenschen, these were people that Hitler deemed biologically inferior, Jews, Slavs, Roma and Sinti, often called gypsies at the time, mixed race people, and people with disabilities.

Homosexuals were also targeted, not because of race, but because the Nazis believed they undermined the ideal of strong, masculine men producing more Aryan children.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following statements reflect Nazi racial beliefs as described by Hitler and the Nazi party? Select three correct answers.

A, Hitler believed that Arian were biologically superior and destined to the rule.

B, homosexuals are seen as racially inferior members of the sub-human class.

C, humanity was divided into a racial hierarchy with subhumans at the bottom.

D, Nazis believed that Germans were facing a deadly threat to their racial health.

Pause the video, select your three correct answers, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answers were A, Hitler believed that Aryans were biologically superior and destined to rule, C, humanity was divided into a racial hierarchy with subhumans at the bottom, and D, Nazis believed that Germans were facing a deadly threat to their racial health.

Okay, great, let's move on to task A.

What I want you to do first is read the three sources below.

So, the first source is from a Nazi official's speech.

"Nazism is just biology put into practice." And the second source is from a Nazi school biology textbook, "Just as we care for the health of our own body, we must also protect the racial body of the German people.

People with serious or debilitating illnesses should not be allowed to have children." And the third source is Adolf Hitler in his book, "Mein Kampf," 1925, "The strong should rule and stay separate from the weak.

Only someone naturally weak would see this as unfair." So, what I want you to do is for each source, discuss the following questions.

What is the source saying? How does it justify Nazi racial policy? And, why is this justification misleading or dangerous? Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done having go at that task.

Hopefully you had some great discussions there.

So, you could have discussed many things, but you may have discussed some of the following.

So, if we have a look at the first source from a Nazi official's speech, you could have said that the source is suggesting that Nazism was based on science, especially biology, and that the Nazis used scientific-sounding arguments to justify their racial beliefs.

They misused real science like Darwin's theory of evolution, and they took ideas in eugenics and pushed them to their extremes, and that the speech made Nazi actions sound medical or logical rather than brutal.

And that it's dangerous, because it gave their racial policies a full sense of legitimacy, and helped justify policies like civilization and exclusion without appearing openly violent, even though they were.

And for the second source, a Nazi school biology textbook, the source reflects the idea of racial hygiene, the belief that the German population had to be kept pure and genetically strong.

It shows how the Nazis falsely compared society to a human body, claiming that certain groups were like diseases that needed to be eliminated, and that the textbook message fits with how the Nazis took earlier ideas from eugenics and distorted them to justify preventing certain people from having children, and that the Nazis saw people with mental health conditions, disabilities, or from certain racial backgrounds as a threat to Germany's survival, and that this logic was used to justify sterilization and exclusion as if this was necessary for national survival, instead of targeting real people with rights and lives.

And finally, the third source, Adolf Hitler in "Mein Kampf." You could have discussed that the source shows the core of Hitler's racial ideology.

He believed in a hierarchy where Aryans were superior and destined to rule, and other groups like Jews, Roma and Sinti, and Slavs were seen as biologically inferior, and that the Nazis linked this belief to their view of history, claiming Aryans built great civilizations and had to stay pure to protect their greatness.

And that this ideology made discrimination seem natural rather than evil, allowing Nazis to justify violent policies as protecting Germany, rather than recognizing them as crimes against innocent people.

And it ignores the fact that those ideas weren't based on real science, they were twisted to support racism and violence.

Okay, great, so now that we've explored the core beliefs behind Nazi racial ideology, we can see how these ideas were rooted in distorted science, selective history, and a very narrow vision of who belonged in Germany.

But, beliefs on their own don't change the society, they have to be turned into action.

So the next part of our lesson, we will look at how these racial ideas are written into laws, shaped government policy, and directly impacted the lives of millions.

So, let's now turn to Nazi policies and the treatment of minorities.

So, guided by their belief in eugenics, the Nazis made racial hygiene a central goal.

As propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels expressed, the Nazis believed Germany needed a racially healthy population to dominate the world.

Within months of taking power in 1933, the Nazis passed a law for the prevention of hereditarily diseased offspring.

This law required the compulsory sterilization of people with a wide range of medical conditions, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, hereditary deafness or blindness, severe alcoholism, and even so-called "feeble mindedness." The aim was to prevent these people from having children so that such conditions would not be passed on to future generations.

By 1939, over 360,000 Germans had been forcibly sterilized.

As the Second World War approached, the Nazis believed that serialization wasn't enough.

In 1939, Hitler secretly authorized the program of euthanasia.

People with physical or mental disabilities were now falsely labeled as genetically diseased, as lives unworthy of life.

A propaganda campaign spread the message that caring for the disabled was too expensive for the nation.

On the left is a Nazi propaganda poster from the late 1930s.

It shows a man with a disability seated in front of a doctor or medical professional.

The caption reads, "60,000 Reichmarks.

This is what the person suffering from hereditary illness costs Germany during his lifetime.

Fellow citizens, that is your money too." This is an example of how the Nazis used the language of economics and public responsibility to justify their sterilization and euthanasia policies.

By presenting people with disabilities as a financial burden, the regime tried to make the public see their persecution as not only acceptable, but necessary.

It also shows how propaganda worked alongside Nazi laws, making extreme policies seem like common sense by framing them as a way to protect the nation's resources.

The Nazi euthanasia program meant that doctors were authorized to kill patients through lethal injection, starvation, or gas.

Parents were often told their children were being moved for better care.

In reality, they were being killed.

Thousands died before public protests, especially from the Catholic clergy forced the program underground, but the killings continued in secret.

One Nazi doctor defended the policy by comparing disabled people to sick animals.

He claimed that killing them was natural, because in the wild, weak animals are less likely to survive and reproduce.

This reveals how Nazis dehumanized victims to justify murder.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following were methods the Nazis used to target people with disabilities? Select two correct answers.

A, exile to foreign countries, B, euthanasia, C, military conscription, D, sterilization.

Pause a video, select your two correct answers, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answers were B, euthanasia, and D, sterilization.

Okay, let's continue.

So, although Slavs were not yet persecuted in Germany as severely as people with disabilities, Nazi ideology clearly marked them for discrimination.

The diagram on the left shows how the Nazis imagined humanity as a racial hierarchy.

At the very top are the Aryans, seen as the so-called "master race." Just below them are other Northern Europeans, followed by Southern Europeans, groups of Nazis considered less pure, but still more acceptable than others.

Further down are people the Nazis labeled as subhumans, including many other races, and including Slavic people.

At the very bottom are Jewish people, whom the Nazis saw as not only inferior, but unworthy of life, a belief that drove the Holocaust.

It may be surprising to see that the Nazis also placed Slavic people in the category of subhumans, despite them being white and European, and this shows that Nazi racial ideology wasn't just about skin color, it was about a very narrow and strict idea of who was considered racially acceptable.

Many Slavic people lived and worked in Germany.

The Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, including Poles, Russians, and Czechs were seen by the Nazis as racially inferior.

This idea had deep historical roots.

The word slave itself comes from Slav, reflecting a long history of Slavic people being enslaved and used as forced labor.

Nazi leaders claimed that Slavs were only fit to be conquered and enslaved by the German people.

There was also a fear that if Slavs intermarried with pure Aryans, it would weaken the German race.

Inside Germany, Slavic people faced increasing discrimination, job restrictions, and were forbidden from having relationships with Germans.

These attitudes were a warning sign of what was to come.

During the Second World War, such beliefs would be used to justify the mass deportation, forced labor, and killing of millions of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

"The Nazis believed that blank were racially inferior and only fit to be enslaved by the German people." Pause the video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct sentence should have read, "The Nazis believed that Slavs were racially inferior and only fit to be enslaved by the German people." The Nazis also persecuted Roma and Sinti people, Afro-Germans, and homosexual men.

The Roma and Sinti people, often called gypsies at the time, had lived in Europe for centuries, originally migrating from India.

Many Roma and Sinti communities moved from place to place, rather than settling in one area.

Because of their traveling lifestyle and distinct culture, they were often seen as outsiders and treated with suspicion.

The Nazis portrayed them as criminals and beggars, and began rounding them up for forced sterilization and imprisonment in concentration camps.

It's important to note here that these were not death camps.

Concentration camps were prison-like facilities used to isolate and punish those the Nazis saw as undesirable.

They should not be confused with the extermination camps built later, which were designed for mass murder.

On the left is a chart used in Nazi concentration camps to show that different badges worn by prisoners.

Each badge is a colored triangle or a combination of triangles, and each color represented a specific category of prisoner.

For example, a pink triangle was used for homosexual men, a black triangle for people labeled as asocial, which could include Roma and Sinti people, or others the Nazis saw as outsiders, and a yellow triangle for Jewish prisoners.

Sometimes these triangles were combined to form a star for Jewish people who also belonged to another category.

These badges were sewn onto prisoners' uniforms, making it instantly clear to guards and to other prisoners why someone had been imprisoned.

This system didn't just organize the camps, it was a way of dehumanizing people, reducing them to a color coded label rather than recognizing them as individuals.

In 1939, the Nazi regime ordered the Roma and Sinti deportation from Germany, marking the start of a broader plan to remove them entirely from German society.

Mixed-race Germans of African heritage were also targeted.

Most were the children of African soldiers and German women, or the descendants are settlers from Germany's former colonies overseas.

Around 500 were sterilized under quietly issued government orders based solely on their race.

The Nazis also persecuted homosexual men.

Although homosexuality was already illegal in Germany, the Nazi regime took enforcement much further.

They were not concerned with morality, but with population policy.

The Nazis claimed that homosexual men failed in their duty to reproduce and help build the Aryan race.

The SS arrested thousands, sent them to concentration camps, forced them to wear pink triangle badges, and subjected them to brutal treatment.

All of these groups that we've mentioned here were targeted because they did not fit the Nazi vision of a racially pure and obedient national community.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following actions were taken by the Nazis against Roma and Sinti people, Afro-Germans, and homosexual men? A, asked to return to their country of origin, B, forcibly sterilized or imprisoned in concentration camps, C, recruited into the German army.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answer was B, forcibly stabilized or imprisoned in concentration camps.

Okay, great, let's move on to the final task, task B.

What I want you to do here is explain how Nazi racial ideology influenced their treatment of minority groups.

And to help you in focusing your answer, I want you to aim to refer to three or four minority groups in your answer, and consider using these words too, racial hygiene, eugenics, Darwin, Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, sub-humans, Aryan, and euthanasia.

So, use all the knowledge you've gained from today's lesson to write a detailed explanation of how Nazi racial ideology influenced the treatment of minority groups.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done having a go at that task.

So, there's many ways that you could have written your paragraphs, but compare your answers with the one I have here.

So, you may have answered that Nazi racial ideology was rooted in the belief that Germany's strength depended on racial purity.

Hitler believed that the area and race was superior, and that all other races were inferior or dangerous to the German people.

The Nazis took ideas from Darwin's theory of evolution and the eugenics movement, and either distorted them or pushed them to their extremes.

They promoted the idea of racial hygiene, which meant removing or preventing reproduction among those considered unfit or undesirable.

And you may have continued that from the moments they came to power in 1933, the Nazis began targeting those with disabilities, mental health conditions, or hereditary conditions.

Forcibly sterilizing over 360,000 people under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

By 1939, this policy escalated into the euthanasia program where children and adults with disabilities were secretly murdered.

These actions were seen by the Nazis as necessary to protect the genetic health of the Aryan race, and were justified using distorted scientific arguments and propaganda that portrayed disabled people as burdens on the states.

I have also continued that this ideology also extended to other minority groups.

The Nazis viewed Jews, Slavs, Roma and Sinti, and mixed-race people as racial threats.

Jews and Slavs were labeled sub-humans, and Slavic workers in Germany were given fewer rights and were banned from marrying Germans to avoid weakening the Aryan race.

Roma and Sinti people were portrayed as criminals and outsiders, leading to forced sterilization, imprisonment in concentration camps, and eventual deportation.

Mixed-race Germans of African descent were quietly sterilized.

And you may have concluded that even groups not targeted for racial reasons, like homosexual men, were persecuted because the Nazis claimed they were failing in their duty to reproduce Aryan children.

The Nazis' belief in a racially pure people's community underpinned all of these actions.

Anyone who did not fit the ideal was seen as a threat to Germany's future, and was silenced, excluded, or destroyed as part of a wider campaign of racial cleansing.

Okay, let's summarize today's lesson, "Nazi Racial Ideology and the Treatments of Minorities." Nazi racial ideology used eugenics to justify controlling who could reproduce and shape the future of society.

The Nazis carried forced sterilization of people with mental health conditions, disabilities, or hereditary conditions.

Hitler believed the Aryan race was biologically superior and destined to rule over others.

Nazi scientists used the term euthanasia to justify murdering those seen as weak in order to protect Germany's racial health.

And the Nazis persecuted Jews, Slavs, Roma and Sinti, mixed-race people, and homosexual men through exclusion, forced sterilization, and concentration camps.

Well done, everyone, and today we've seen how Nazi racial ideology shaped the way entire groups were treated.

These ideas were built on distorted science, selective history, and propaganda, and they were used to justify policies that caused immense suffering and loss of life.

By studying this history, we can better recognize the warning signs and the importance of protecting the rights and dignity of all people.

See you in the next lesson.