What were the actions taken by the Nazis to enforce their racial and political ideology from 1933-1945?
1 Answer
I would say (in order of magnitude):
1) Deportation and/or extermination;
2) Total warfare (in the east);
3) Eugenic/Sterlization;
Explanation:
In the period you mentioned the Nazis operated a huge program of deportation and segregation in concentration camps (lagers) of political or religious opponents (communist, socialists, priests), prisoners considered inferior (untermensch) and specific racial or ethnic minorities (Jews, Gypsies).
The deportation was usually the first stage of the process where huge numbers of people were concentrated in restricted and controlled areas (normally inside big cities or towns) called Ghettos.
Here the living conditions became unbearable very quickly (lack of food, no sanitation, lack of medical assistance) producing a first "selection" through the elimination of the older or very young.
Then there was the deportation of the entire population of the ghetto (easily controllable) to a concentration camp where, after a first preliminary "death" selection on arrival, the few survivors were worked to death (starvation, diseases, brutality).
Another aspect of the racial/political "cleansing" operated by the Nazis was specific of the Eastern front (former USSR) where the troops were instructed to consider the population as inferior or subhuman, and so, subjected to extreme brutality and disrespect of humanitarian conventions (execution of prisoners and civilians or widespread killing induced through exposure to cold or starvation, summary elimination of Commissars and political local leaders).
The last aspect of the "racial" policy was perhaps the stranger and more incredible of all: in Germany there was a program of elimination of mentally ill or physically disabled people on the ground of their...racial "defectiveness"!!! Even worse the people suspected of carrying genetic "undesirable" potential or displaying mental/behavioral difference were sterilized to try to induce a purification (eugenics) of the national genetic material to be able to breed “perfect” specimens only.
Mind you, these are only some of the activities that I know of. More sinister and absurd projects probably existed and were even enforced (considering the “inventiveness” of people like Himmler or Heydrich…).
