Nuremberg Laws
From Metapedia
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were racial laws passed in National Socialist Germany. They were used to define the Jewish population inside Germany. People with four German granparents were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".
[edit] Introduction and History
A conference of ministers was held on August 20, 1935, to discuss the negative economic effects of Party actions against Jews. Adolf Wagner, the Party representative at the conference, argued that such effects would cease, once the government decided on a firm policy against the Jews.
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the Economics Minister, criticized arbitrary behaviour by Party members as this inhibited his policy of rebuilding Germany's economy. It made no economic sense since Jews were believed to have certain entrepreneurial skills that could be usefully employed to further his policies. Schacht made no moral condemnation of Jewish policy and advocated the passing of legislation to clarify the situation. The following month two measures were announced at the annual Party Rally in Nuremberg, becoming known as the Nuremberg Laws. Both measures were hastily improvised and Jewish experts from the Ministry of the Interior were ordered to Nuremberg by plane.
The first law, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,[1] prohibited marriages and extra-marital intercourse between “Jews” (the name was now officially used in place of “non-Aryans”) and “Germans” and also the employment of “German” females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, The Reich Citizenship Law [2], stripped persons not considered of German blood of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between “Reich citizens” and “nationals.” .
The Nuremberg Laws by their general nature formalised the unofficial and particular measures taken against Jews up to 1935. The Party leaders made a point of stressing the consistency of this legislation with the Party program which demanded that Jews should be deprived of their rights as citizens. The laws were passed unanimously by the Reichstag, or German Parliament, in a special session held during a Nuremberg Rally. The move was largely symbolic, as by this time Hitler had the power to pass laws without parliamentary approval, per the terms of the Enabling Act.
After the example of the Nuremberg Laws, The Law for Protection of the Nation was passed in Bulgaria during World War II, which also had a strong antisemitic character.
[edit] Existing Copies
An original typescript of the laws signed by Hitler himself was found by the 203rd Detachment of the U.S. Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC), commanded by Martin Dannenberg, in Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany, on April 27, 1945. It was appropriated by General George S. Patton, in violation of JCS 1067. During a visit to Los Angeles, California, he secretly handed it over to the Huntington Library. The document was stored until June 26, 1999 when its existence was revealed. Although legal ownership of the document has not been established, it is on permanent loan to the Skirball Cultural Center, which placed it on public display three days later.
[edit] Reactions
After the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler received telegrams of congratulation from all over the Arab and Muslim world, especially from Morocco and Palestine.[3]
