Lesson 10

To deepen your understanding of the ideas in this lesson, read Chapter Four in Facing
History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.

The Nazis in Power: Discrimination, Obedience, and

Opportunism

? WHY teach this material?

Rationale
In this lesson, students will continue to explore the concept of obedience through the
lens of the laws passed during Hitler’s first years in power. The suggested activities focus
students’ attention on how these laws might have influenced the attitudes and actions of
individuals living in Germany during the 1930s. Later in this unit, students will be able
to trace how laws which gradually stripped Jews of their rights as citizens laid the ground-
work for their deportation and extermination during the Holocaust. In this lesson, as stu-
dents consider why people chose to follow unjust laws in Nazi Germany, they also have
the opportunity to reflect on discrimination in their communities today, especially the
ways that it might be possible to confront unjust laws within a democratic society.

LEARNING GOALS
The purpose of this lesson is to help students:
• Reflect on these guiding questions:
• What laws were passed once Hitler gained power? How do you think these laws
might have shaped the attitudes and actions of individuals living in Germany in
the 1930s?
• What is discrimination? Who benefits from discrimination? Who suffers?
• Why might Germans have followed these laws, even though many of them discrim-
inated against their Jewish neighbors? Under the Nazi dictatorship, what options
might have been available to Germans who did not agree with these laws?
• Why are individuals more vulnerable to being discriminated against under a dic-
tatorship than a democratic system of government? How might democratic institu-
tions (elections, freedom of press, courts) help groups and individuals combat dis-
crimination in communities today?
• Practice these interdisciplinary skills:
• Paraphrasing primary source documents
• Drawing conclusions from evidence in primary source documents
• Presenting information to peers
• Deepen understanding of these key terms:
• Dictatorship
• Nuremberg laws
• Discrimination
• Opportunism
• Fear

Lesson 10 • 142
 • Obedience
• Resistance (dissent)
(See the main glossary in the unit’s “Introduction” for definitions of these key
terms.)

? WHAT is this lesson about?

When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he was finally in a position where he could use
the power of law to control German society. His ability to pass laws continued to get
stronger, culminating in 1934 when the German electorate approved the decree that gave
Hitler dictatorial power. Once Hitler established a dictatorship, any vestiges of demo-
cratic institutions were destroyed. Without a parliament, courts, or elections to stop him,
Hitler had the power to make all of the rules. There was no system of checks and bal-
ances; institutions paid homage not to a constitution (i.e., “the rule of law”) but to a
desire to please the Führer.* This attitude is exemplified by the first law Hitler passed after
becoming Führer. On August 20, 1934, Hitler declared that all soldiers and government
officials were obliged to recite an oath not to German law or nation, but to Hitler him-
self.

The timeline in Lesson 8 demonstrates how even before he became Führer, Hitler used
laws to further the goals of the Nazi Party at the expense of civil liberties and democratic
institutions. The Nazi Party platform clearly articulated these goals which included strip-
ping Jews of citizenship and their right to vote. Hitler did not attempt to realize these
goals overnight. Rather, he took a gradual approach, eliminating the rights of Jews one
step at a time. Beginning in 1933, only a few months after he became Chancellor, Hitler
proposed the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” which made it
illegal for communists, Jews, and other individuals deemed “unfit” to work in the civil
service as doctors, teachers, police, judges, or other state employees. This law was Hitler’s
first step in using laws to define who is a Jew and who is not a Jew, an important stage in
the Nazis’ ultimate goal to remove all Jews from Germany. It identified Jews as someone
with at least three Jewish grandparents, and it provided more specifications to help deter-
mine how to evaluate the status of individuals who may be from one Jewish parent and
one Aryan parent or whose parents may have converted and “do not belong to the Jewish
community at this time.”

Yet, it was not until 1935 that Hitler and the Nazis finally achieved their goal of stripping
Jews of citizenship, creating a legal distinction between Germans and their Jewish neigh-
bors. At a Nazi Party conference in the town of Nuremberg, Hitler announced three new
laws, thereafter referred to as the Nuremberg laws. (See handout 2, documents 1 and 2
for an excerpt of the Nuremberg Laws.) These laws redefined what it meant to be
German. Until this point, Jews living in Germany considered themselves to be German
citizens, and were often treated accordingly. Many Jews spoke German, attended German
schools, and voted in national and regional elections. The Nuremberg laws, however,
explicitly stated that a Jew could no longer be a German citizen protected by German
laws. Because the Nazis were preoccupied with protecting Aryan blood from contamina-
tion with Jewish blood, these laws also made it illegal for Jews and Aryans to share sexual

* Führer had been used for centuries as a title for German rulers. It means “leader” in German. When Hitler assumed this
title for himself in 1934, he was connecting his rule to that of German kings and emperors that had come before him.

Lesson 10 • 143
relations, and even made it illegal for young
German women to work in a Jewish home.
The Nuremberg laws went on to define who
was a Jew, continuing the work which began
in 1933. Being a Jew was no longer a matter
of self-definition or self-identification. Now
a person was considered a Jew because of
what his or her parents or grandparents had
chosen to believe.

The Nuremberg laws were crucial to the

process of dehumanization that the Nazis
institutionalized once they took power, and
the laws helped set the stage for the organ-
ized violence and mass murder that would
come later in the regime. While the
Nuremberg laws explicitly mentioned Jews,
the interpretation of these laws also accused
Gypsies* and blacks as having “alien
blood.”1 And dozens of laws passed by the
Nazis targeted other groups deemed unde-
sirable, including communists, homosexuals,
and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Accordingly, the
policies established by Hitler, supported by
the Nazis and followed by most Germans, The Nuremberg laws were the first step in legally defining Jews as sep-
arate from the German people. Samuel Bak’s painting, Signal of
reveal how rampant discrimination—the use Identity, emphasizes the yellow stars Jews were later forced to wear as
of laws, policies, and practices to treat indi- an outward symbol of their status as noncitizens.
viduals differently based on their member-
ship in a specific group—became a corner-
stone of Hitler’s governing strategy.

The majority of Germans reacted to these laws with enthusiasm, or at least passivity.
Within Germany explicit resistance to the Nuremberg Laws, and other discriminatory
policies instituted by the Nazis, was virtually unheard of. Why was this the case when
surely many Germans had Jewish neighbors? In many German towns and cities, Jews and
Germans had lived together in relative peace. Germans had Jewish teachers and Jewish
doctors. They attended schools with Jews and had served in the military with them.
Because of intermarriage, some German families had members who identified as Jews or
were now being identified as Jewish by the Nazis. There is no simple answer to the ques-
tion of why Germans did not resist these unjust laws, including laws aimed at vulnerable
groups other than Jews. As described in the previous lesson, obedience is one factor that

* At the time of the Holocaust, Germans and other Europeans used the name “Gypsies” when referring to an ethnic group
of people whose origins can be traced to South Asia. (The name actually stems from the word Egyptian because Europeans
originally believed that they came from Egypt.) Over time, the label “Gypsy” was conferred on any nomadic group with
similar physical appearance (i.e., darker skin and hair), lifestyle, and customs. Most of the individuals labeled as Gypsies are
actually members of the Romani or Sinti community. Recently, in recognition of the inaccurate and derogatory qualities of
the label “Gypsy,” the international community has adopted the more respectful Roma, Romani, or Sinti. However, to
avoid historical anachronism, in the lesson plans we use the word Gypsies when identifying the groups of people who were
targeted for segregation and annihilation by the Nazis, since this is what the Nazis called them at the time. Refer to the fol-
lowing websites for more information about the Roma people and their history: http://www.romani.org, http://www
.religioustolerance.org/roma.htm, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Roma_history.

Lesson 10 • 144
influenced the behavior of Germans at this time. In Nazi Germany, children, men, and
women were rewarded for obeying Nazi policies and faced consequences for refusals to
obey. Opportunism is another factor that influenced Germans to follow these laws. While
minority groups were being denied basic civil and human rights, many Germans bene-
fited from these discriminatory practices. For example, Germans were given the jobs that
were held by Jews and others who were forcibly fired in accordance with the “Law for the
Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” Later, Germans claimed property, including
homes, paintings, jewelry, and other valuables, that were confiscated from Jews, commu-
nists, and other political prisoners. Moreover, the desire to belong (conformity) and the
fear of ostracism may have motivated some people to follow laws, even laws that they
knew were unjust. In the film The Nazis: A Warning from History—Chaos and Conspiracy,
Erna Kranz explains, “When the masses were shouting ‘Heil,’ what could the individual
person do? You went with it. We were the ones who went along.”2 The willingness of
many Germans to support Nazi policies, the lack of resistance to discriminatory laws, and
the cooperation of institutions, including churches, raise the question of how much the
Jews had really been accepted in German society prior to Hitler coming to power.

Additionally, to understand the reasons why Germans obeyed Hitler’s laws, we must rec-
ognize the fact that Germany was a totalitarian state when many, but not all, of these
laws were passed. Once Hitler became Führer, it was certainly more difficult for Germans
to resist following Nazi laws. By 1935, Hitler had already established many mechanisms
aimed at preventing a grassroots protest movement: he had instituted an active secret
service and state police, had opened a well-known concentration camp for those who
opposed Nazi ideals, and had bombarded public spaces, including schools, with Nazi
propaganda aimed at convincing the public that Hitler was acting in the best interests of
Germany. While these policies and institutions certainly made political dissent more chal-
lenging, in the 1930s it was still possible for many Germans (those without ties to the
Communist Party or Jewish ancestry) to resist without facing severe consequences. The
historical evidence does not indicate that Germans who passively resisted Nazi ideology
were sent to concentration camps. To be sure, Germans who demonstrated less zeal for
Nazi policies could be denied promotions or could lose their jobs entirely. For example,
Ricarda Huch, a poet and a writer, had to resign from her position at the prestigious
Prussian Academy of Arts when she refused to take Hitler’s oath of loyalty.3 During the
years of the Third Reich, she lived in internal exile, unable to publish her writing or teach
at the university. At the same time, she was not jailed or physically harmed for her refusal
to support Nazi policies. Thus, in the early years of the Nazi regime, there were opportu-
nities for Germans who were not Jews to protest the laws being enacted. The Nazis moni-
tored public opinion and when they learned of reservations among people they were
often willing to modify policies and change the timetable for their implementation. It is
unclear what would have happened if more people chose to engage in various forms of
resistance during the first months and years of the regime. According to historian Daniel
Goldhagen, the fact that few Germans decided to protest Nazi policies might represent
their willingness to tacitly accept Nazi laws, for reasons such as self-preservation, oppor-
tunism, peer pressure, antisemitism, or prejudice.4

While a minority of Germans struggled, unsuccessfully, to find meaningful ways to dis-

sent, this task was even more difficult for groups targeted by the Nazi Party. Without
access to a free press, an independent judiciary, and the right to vote, Jews and other
minority groups in Germany did not have access to “levers of power” that groups have
used during other struggles for civil rights, such as the civil rights movement in the

Lesson 10 • 145
United States. Studying the history of Nazi Germany illuminates how minority groups
become especially vulnerable to discrimination when they live under a dictatorship. As
students continue their study of the steps leading up to the Holocaust, they will see how
the laws declared by Hitler throughout the 1930s provided the foundation for genocide.

Related readings in
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
“Defining a Jew,” pp. 201–2
“The People Respond,” p. 203
“The Hangman,” pp. 204–6

? HOW can we help students engage with this material?

Duration: one class period

Materials
Handout 1: Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis: Documents (1–6)
Handout 2: Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis: Document analysis worksheet

Opener
To prepare students for the material in this lesson, you can begin class by asking students
to review the material from the previous lessons about Germany’s shift from democracy
to dictatorship. The main idea you want students to recall is that Hitler went from hav-
ing no formal power, to some power, to all of the power in Germany. At the same time,
citizens went from having the power to elect representatives, join political parties, and
enjoy civil rights such as freedom of speech, to losing all of that power when they elected
Hitler as Führer.

Next, ask students to respond to the question, “Now that Hitler is Führer (dictator), the
Nazis have power to declare any law that he wants. Based on your knowledge of the goals
of the Nazi Party, what new laws might he declare?” Have students review the Nazi Party

Helping Students Understand the Concept of Dictatorship

Most students in your classroom probably have not experienced living under a dictatorship,
but most, if not all, students have likely experienced playing or watching games with estab-
lished rules and referees. If you think your students need more help understanding the implica-
tions of living under a dictatorship, one way to help them is by using a sports analogy. You can
ask students how a game would change—for example, basketball, football, or baseball—if
someone took over the league, tossed out the rule book, and fired all of the umpires. What
could this leader do if he or she wanted a particular team to win or a particular team to lose?
What would happen to the game without a referee? A sports or game metaphor provides an
opportunity to explain the implications of Hitler revoking the Weimar Constitution (i.e., like
throwing out the rule book) and controlling the courts (i.e., like firing all of the umpires and
hiring new ones who will do what you say). Of course, this metaphor is not accurate when you
compare the consequences of an unfair game versus an unfair dictatorship. You can open up
the following question to students: How are the consequences of an unfair game different than
the consequences of an unfair government system?

Lesson 10 • 146
platform to spark their thinking. Students can record answers in their journals and you
can ask for volunteers to share their thoughts with the class.

Main Activities
Explain to students that the purpose of the main activity is to help them learn about
some of the laws the Nazis passed before and after Hitler became dictator, and to con-
sider how these laws might have impacted people living in Germany. Handout 1 includes
excerpts of six laws passed by Hitler between 1933 and 1936. You do not have to use all
of the laws for this activity. You can help students comprehend and analyze the laws as a
whole class activity or you can have them work in small groups. You might decide to
focus on only a few laws. If so, we strongly suggest you focus on the Nuremberg laws
(documents 1 and 2) because they constituted an essential step that contributed to the
Holocaust.

There are many ways you could structure this class. You might decide to review the laws
together as a whole-class activity. Or your students could be assigned to present one of
the laws to the rest of the class. You might organize this activity as a jigsaw. In a jigsaw,
students first work in “expert” groups with one document. Handout 2 includes compre-
hension, interpretive, and universal questions designed to help students think about the
impact of the specific law they have been assigned and the idea of fairness or “just laws.”
While working in small groups, students can focus on answering the comprehension and
interpretive questions. [Note: The suggestions in the follow-through activity build on stu-
dents’ answers to the universal questions about fairness and discrimination.] Once experts
have had the opportunity to successfully analyze their law, new groups are formed. These
new groups include at least one student from each expert group. Students can present the
law they have been assigned to their new group. As students learn about the laws declared
by Hitler, they can add them to the timeline they started during Lesson 7 (or they can
begin a new timeline).

To reinforce students’ understanding of laws in Nazi Germany, students can return to the
predictions they made during the opening activity. To what extent were students able to
successfully predict some of the laws Hitler declared? Help students review the laws they
just learned about through the lens of the Nazi Party platform. How did the laws passed
by Hitler support the principles in the platform? Did Hitler pass any laws that went
against any of the ideas in the platform? You might ask students to think back to the
German citizen they were assigned during Lesson 7. How might this individual have felt
about these laws? Would he/she have been pleased, concerned, or surprised by any of
these laws? Students can respond to these questions in their journals before discussing
their ideas in small groups or as a whole class.

Follow-Through (in class or at home)

The laws passed by Hitler exemplify unjust laws because of the way they discriminate
against individuals because of their membership in a specific group. Debriefing this activ-
ity provides an opportunity to review the meaning of the word “discrimination,” which
you may have defined during Lesson 5. What does it mean to discriminate? What is the
relationship between discrimination and prejudice? Who benefits from laws discriminat-
ing against members of particular groups? Is discrimination ever justified? Why are indi-
viduals more vulnerable to being discriminated against under a dictatorship than a demo-
cratic system of government? How might democratic institutions (elections, freedom of

Lesson 10 • 147
press, courts) help groups combat discrimination in communities today? These are all
questions you can use as prompts for journal writing or a class discussion. If you have
organized this activity using the jigsaw method, you could ask all of the “mixed” groups
to discuss the universal questions on handout 2 after they have presented their docu-
ments. Then each small group can present their idea about the qualities that make a fair
or just law.

One important learning goal for this unit is for students to recognize how ordinary peo-
ple—people like you and me—went along with the unjust policies of the Nazi Party. To
emphasize this point, ask students to respond to the following prompt in their journals:

Identify an experience (from your own life or from history) with a rule or law that
you thought was unfair to a particular group of people in your neighborhood or
school (i.e., girls, boys, older students, younger students, non-English speakers, immi-
grants, athletes, etc.) How did you respond to this rule? Did you follow it or resist it?
Why?

Volunteers can share their responses. After several students have shared, ask students if
writing the journal entry and listening to their peers changed their understanding of why
Germans followed Hitler’s laws. If so, in what ways have their ideas changed? By 1934,
the Germans lived under a dictatorship. Yet, students in the United States live in a
democracy. Ask students if any of their responses to unfair laws might have been different
if they lived in a dictatorship, and why this might be the case.

Assessment(s)
Students’ responses on handout 2 can be used to evaluate their ability to paraphrase and
interpret a primary source document. Their work on handout 2 and their comments dur-
ing class discussion will provide evidence of how students are able to explain how a law
might impact individual and group behavior. Another way to evaluate students’ historical
understanding is to ask them to describe how the laws passed by Hitler represent the
ideas in the Nazi Party platform. Finally, in students’ journal entries and comments dur-
ing class discussion, look for students to express a deeper understanding of discrimina-
tion. Students should be able to define discrimination as specific laws, policies, or prac-
tices that treat individuals differently because of their membership in a particular group,
and they should be developing an awareness of how some groups might benefit from dis-
criminatory policies while other groups suffer as a result of these same practices. Students
with a sophisticated understanding of this material will be able to recognize the ethical
dilemmas raised by unjust laws, especially when individuals benefit from the laws and
could suffer as a result of resisting them.

Extensions
Each of the laws included in this lesson impacted the attitudes and actions of the
German people in ways that contributed to the Holocaust. There will be plenty of oppor-
tunities in the rest of the unit to refer to these laws. For example, as students learn about
Hitler’s use of indoctrination, education, and propaganda to control German youth, you
can remind students of the law requiring German children to join the Hitler Youth
Movement. The Nuremberg laws are especially significant because they allowed the Nazi
government to decide who was a Jew and who was not a Jew, and then they stripped Jews
of their citizenship. You might want to spend more time analyzing the significance of the

Lesson 10 • 148
Nuremberg laws. Most adolescents experience moments when they are stuck between
how others, such as parents or peers, define them and how they want to define them-
selves. So, the fact that the Nazi government had the power to define and label individu-
als, often against their own will, has the power to provoke students’ own thoughts on the
concept of identity. Questions you might use to prompts students’ reflections in writing
or discussion include: What does it mean to lose the right to define yourself? What are
examples from today or the past of when individuals have been defined by others? Are
these labels and definitions always negative? What gives groups or individuals the power
to define and label other people?
• This lesson includes only several of the hundreds of laws the Nazis passed to pro-
mote their racist ideology and control the hearts and minds of the German people.
You or your students can learn about other Nazi laws, including laws targeting
groups other than Jews, such as the Gypsies and the disabled, by searching on the
following online archives:
Yad Vashem, “Documents of the Holocaust—Germany and Austria”
http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/index_about_holocaust.html
Yale Law School—The Avalon Project, “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Vol. 4”
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nca_v4menu.asp

• If students are constructing a timeline of the events leading up to the Holocaust,

you can ask them to add these laws to their timelines. By searching on the Internet,
students can add images to their timelines to illustrate these laws. Or if students do
not have access to computers with Internet connections, you could find images for
the students and ask them to attach the image to the most relevant place on the
timeline. The following websites have a large collection of images from Germany in
the 1930s:
United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial (http://www.ushmm.org)
The History Place Holocaust Timeline
(http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html)
The Holocaust Chronicle (http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/)
Yad Vashem
(http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/index_about_holocaust.html)

Lesson 10 • 149
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 1
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

(also called the Nuremberg laws) — September 15, 19355

Firm in the knowledge that the purity of German blood is the basis for the survival of the
German people and inspired by the unshakeable determination to safeguard the future of
the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law. . .

Section 1
Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or some related blood are
forbidden. Such marriages . . . are invalid, even if they take place abroad in
order to avoid the law.

Section 2
Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and citizens of German or
related blood are forbidden.

Section 3
Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens of German or related
blood who are under 45 years as housekeepers.

Section 4
1. Jews are forbidden to raise the national flag or display the national colors.
2. However, they are allowed to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of
this right is protected by the State.

Section 5
Anyone who disregards Section 1 . . . Section 2 . . . Sections 3 or 4 will be pun-
ished with imprisonment up to one year or with a fine, or with one of these
penalties. . . .

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
150
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 2
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

The Reich Citizenship Law

(also called the Nuremberg laws) — September 15, 1935

Article 16
Section 2
1. A Reich citizen is that subject who is of German or related blood only and
who through his behavior demonstrates that he is ready and able to serve
faithfully the German people and Reich.
2. The right to citizenship of the Reich is acquired by the grant of citizenship
papers.
3. A citizen of the Reich is the sole bearer of full political rights as provided
by the law.

Addition to the Reich Citizenship Law

November 14, 1935 (also called the Nuremberg laws)7

Article 4
1. A Jew cannot be a Reich citizen. He has no voting rights in political
matters; he cannot occupy a public office.
2. Jewish officials will retire as of December 31, 1935 . . . .

Article 5
1. A Jew is a person descended from at least three grandparents who are full
Jews by race . . . .
2. A Mischling [someone of mixed background] . . . is also considered a Jew if
he is descended from two full Jewish grandparents . . . .

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
151
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 3
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Oath of Reich Officials and of German Soldiers,

of 20 August 19348

Article 1
The public officials and the soldiers of the armed forces must take an oath
of loyalty on entering service.

Article 2
1. The oath of loyalty of public officials will be: “I swear: I shall be loyal and
obedient to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people,
respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me
God.”
2. The oath of loyalty of the soldiers of the armed forces will be: “I swear by
God this sacred oath: I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler,
the Führer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the
Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time
for this oath.”

Article 3
Officials already in service must swear this oath without delay according to
Article 2 number 1.

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152
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 4
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 19339
The Reich Government has enacted the following Law . . .

Article 1
1. To restore a national professional civil service and to simplify administration, civil servants may
be dismissed from office in accordance with the following regulations, even where there would
be no grounds for such action under the prevailing Law.

Article 2
1. Civil servants who have entered the service since November 9, 1918, without possessing the
required or customary educational background or other qualifications are to be dismissed from
the service. Their previous salaries will continue to be paid for a period of three months following
their dismissal.

Article 3
1. Civil servants who are not of Aryan descent are to be retired; if they are honorary officials, they
are to be dismissed from their official status.
2. Section 1 does not apply to civil servants in office from August 1, 1914, who fought at the Front
for the German Reich or its Allies in the World War, or whose fathers or sons fell in the World War.

Article 4
1. Civil servants whose previous political activities afford no assurance that they will at all times
give their fullest support to the national State, can be dismissed from the service. . . .

Amendment to the Administration of the Law for the

Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 11 April 193310
Regarding Article 2:
Unfit, are all civil servants who belong to the communist party or communist aid or supplemen-
tary organization. They are, therefore, to be discharged.

Regarding Article 3:
1. A person is to be regarded as non-Aryan, who is descended from non-Aryans, especially Jewish
parents or grandparents. This holds true even if only one parent or grandparent is of non-Aryan
descent. This premise especially obtains if one parent or grandparent was of Jewish faith.

3. If Aryan descent is doubtful, an opinion must be obtained from the expert on racial research
commissioned by the Reich Minister of the Interior.

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
153
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 5
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Law Concerning the Hitler Youth of December 1, 193611

It is on youth that the future of the German Nation depends. Hence, it is

necessary to prepare the entire German youth for its coming duties. The
government therefore has passed the following law . . .

Article 1
The entire German youth within the borders of the Reich is organized in the
Hitler Youth.

Article 2
It is not only in home and school, but in the Hitler Youth as well that all of
Germany’s youth is to be educated, physically, mentally, and morally, in the
spirit of National Socialism, to serve the nation and the racial community.

Article 3
The task of educating the entire German youth is entrusted to the Reich
Youth Leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He thus
becomes the “Youth Leader of the German Reich.” His office shall rank with
that of a ministry. He shall reside in Berlin, and be responsible directly to
the Führer and Chancellor.

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
154
 Lesson 10: Handout 1, Document 6
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Law Against the Establishment of Parties, 14 July 193312

Article I
The National Socialist German Workers’ Party constitutes the only political
party in Germany.

Article 2
Whoever undertakes to maintain the organization of another political party
or to form a new political party shall be punished with penal servitude of up
to three years or with imprisonment of between six months and three years,
unless the act is subject to a heavier penalty under other regulations.

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
155
 Lesson 10: Handout 2
Laws Passed by Hitler and the Nazis

Document analysis worksheet

Comprehension questions
1. Name of the law you are presenting:

2. What is the meaning of this law? Explain the law in your own words.

Interpretive questions
3. Who did you think might have benefited from this law?

4. Who suffered as a result of this law?

5. How might this law have influenced the attitudes and actions of the German people?
How might their lives and beliefs have changed as a result of this law?

6. Why do you think the Nazis created this law?

Universal questions
7. Do you think this law is fair? Why or why not?

8. What are the qualities of a fair or “just” law?

Purpose: To deepen understanding of the power of conformity and discrimination in Nazi Germany and in society today. •
156
Notes
1
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Sinti and Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era,” Holocaust Teacher
Resource Center website, http://www.holocaust-trc.org/sinti.htm (accessed January 8, 2009).
2
Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, DVD (Burbank: BBC Video, 2005).
3
Wolfgang Beutin, A History of German Literature (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993), 496.
4
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, “Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,”
http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/goldhagen.htm (accessed January 9, 2009). For further reading
on Goldhagen’s perspective, read Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996).
5
“Law for Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” Holocaust Education and Archive Research
Team website, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/pbgh.html (accessed January 10,
2009).
6
“Nuremberg Laws on Reich Citizenship, September 15, 1935,” Yad Vashem website,
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201998.pdf (accessed January 10,
2009).
7
“The Reich Citizenship Law (September 15, 1935) and the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law
(November 14, 1935),” German History in Documents and Images website, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-
dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=2171 (accessed January 10, 2009).
8
“Oath of Reich Officials and of German Soldiers, of 20 August 1934,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School
website, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2061-ps.asp (accessed January 12, 2009).
9
“Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933,” Yad Vashem website,
http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc10.html (accessed January 12, 2009).
10
“First Regulation for Administration of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 11
April 1933,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School website, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2012-ps.asp
(accessed January 12, 2009).
11
“Law Concerning the Hitler Youth of December 1, 1936,” History of the Holocaust website,
http://www.cdojerusalem.org/iconsmultimedia/ClientsArea/HoH/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Stabiliz/R
acial/LawConce.html (accessed January 12, 2009).
12
“Law against the Establishment of Parties,” History of the Holocaust website,
http://www.cdojerusalem.org/iconsmultimedia/ClientsArea/HoH/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Forging/S
eizure/LawAgain.html (accessed January 12, 2009).

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