Other persecuted groups
Badge of the 'asocials'
'Subhumans'
Nazi ideology ranked people according to a strict hierarchy, with 'Aryans' – light-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed north Europeans – at the top. Those at the bottom were called Untermenschen or 'subhumans'.
After they came to power, one of the first laws that the Nazis introduced was the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which ordered the sterilisation of those considered inferior or unfit to breed, such as people with mental and physical disabilities, African-Germans and 'asocials'.
In 1939, a secret plan was set in train that targeted children with disabilities. They were taken to special paediatric clinics where they were starved to death or given lethal overdoses of medicine. It is estimated that 5,000 German babies, children and young people died in this way during the course of the war.
A secret plan was set in train that targeted children with disabilities
The extermination was soon extended to adults. Selected to be killed by specially recruited doctors, these victims were transported to special sanatoria where they were told that they would be given a physical examination and take a disinfecting shower. Instead, they were killed in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas.
At least 200,000 disabled people were murdered in this euthanasia programme.
Slavs
The Nazis also categorised the Poles and other Slavs, such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians, as racially inferior Untermenschen. In addition, they considered them an obstacle to gaining the territory – or Lebensraum needed by the Germans.
The Nazi occupation of Poland was extremely brutal and was maintained by a reign of terror. Some 50,000 Polish children whose appearance matched the 'Aryan' stereotype were forcibly removed from their families and transferred to the Reich to be adopted and 'Germanised'. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were expelled from their homes in western Poland, to be replaced by ethnic Germans.
At the same time, millions of Slavs were deported to Germany for forced labour. Professionals and intellectuals – seen as ideologically dangerous – were sent to concentration camps or publicly executed.
Soviet prisoners of war were treated with particular brutality, with more than three million dying in operations of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), in POW or concentration camps. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians were also executed by the Einsatzgruppen. Altogether, many millions of people were slaughtered in the Slav countries.
Religious dissidents
Most of the mainstream church leaders in Germany supported the Nazis or at least did nothing to hinder them, but some individuals – such as the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer, who was executed in 1945 – opposed the regime.
They would not salute or participate in Nazi rallies and parades, and they refused to enrol for compulsory military service
The Nazis singled out the Jehovah's Witnesses for persecution because their religious convictions would not allow them to swear loyalty to a worldly government or to serve in its armed forces. From the start, they would not give the 'Heil Hitler' salute or participate in Nazi rallies and parades, and they refused to enrol for compulsory military service. In 1935, they were banned from civil service jobs and many were arrested.
Unlike the Jews, Slavs and Gypsies, who were targeted for racist reasons, the Jehovah's Witnesses could have chosen to submit to the Nazi regime. However, even though they faced persecution, torture and/or incarceration in concentration camps, the great majority stood by their beliefs – and an estimated 2,500–5,000 died for them.
Political opponents
Despite the fact that their official name was 'National Socialists', the Nazis were always bitterly hostile to the socialists and Communists. Stormtroopers carried out terrible acts of violence against them, and on one occasion, before Hitler became chancellor, 167 Nazi members were thrown out of the Reichstag for beating up 57 members of the German Communist Party.
Once the Nazis came to power, they set about systematically eliminating non-Nazi political organisations. Political dissidents – mainly Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats and trade unionists, as well as writers and artists whose work was considered subversive – were among their earliest victims. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was established in 1933 with the express purpose of detaining political prisoners, and thousands of dissidents were incarcerated there. Two other camps in Germany – Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald – were, like Dachau, built in areas where there was strong opposition to the regime and were intended to imprison 'enemies of the state'. Many of the inmates died as a result of the maltreatment they received there.
The German trade union organisation was shattered in May 1933, when the Nazis imprisoned its leaders and occupied its property. After that, trade unionists were forced to join the Nazi Deutsche Arbeitsfront ('German Labour Front').
Political opposition was also a target outside Germany. The first inmates of Auschwitz, sent there in June 1940, were 728 Polish political prisoners.
By the end of the war, at least one million political dissidents had been murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.