‘1933 was more a continuation of existing policy than a turning point in the way the German authorities treated minorities.’ To what extent do you agree with this?

 We all know how badly non-Aryan races were treated in Germany from 1933 but the question is whether these people were being badly treated before then. Was it just a continuation of an existing policy or was 1933 a turning point in the way German authorities treated these unfortunate people. To a certain extent it was a continuation of something, but not a policy and it wasn’t necessarily the German authorities that badly treated the minorities of Germany but things did became harsher in 1933.

Germany saw more public actions being done by the government in 1933. Only four months into 1933 Jewish shops were being campaigned against and laws were passed to ban non-Aryans from working in proper, high class jobs such as the medical business or in the teaching profession. The year after that saw Jewish people being removed from their German citizenship. This was disgraceful but it didn’t stop there. In the beginning of November of 1938 the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ occurred leaving synagogues in ruins and Jewish owned shops broken into on this night as many as 90 Jews were murdered and many arrested. Following this were the Nazis who took over Jewish shops and businesses.

 German authorities didn’t necessarily treat minorities in a bad way before 1933 but many events, which were caused by German citizens were disgraceful and the German authorities just turned a blind eye. Leading up to 1933 around 200 Jewish graves were vandalized, a Jewish German Foreign Minister was killed by racists and the slogan for a new Nazi news paper in the 1920’s was ‘The Jews are our greatest misfortune’.

Racism existed throughout Europe many years before the racism started in Germany. An example of this was when an area of Poland was given to Russia in the early 1770’s strict rules were laid down to control the new Jewish inhabitants. These rules which were laid down were not unlike the rules which the Nazis later used, restricted areas in which they could live, they were also restricted to working in certain areas of work and Jewish children were limited in the amount of education they could receive. Even harsher rules were laid down to deprive them from becoming the least bit powerful so around 2 million Polish Jews immigrated from Russia to the United States.

 In conclusion I believe that 1933 was more of a continuation of an existing belief rather than policy but I don’t believe that it was the way in which the German authorities treated the minorities but it was more the German citizens.

How many Jews do you think were killed in three years? Well, between 5 and 6 million of them were killed from 1942, 3 million Jews were killed in camps, 1.4 million were shot and more than 600 000 were murdered in ghettos.