The Holocaust, the mass execution of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany, is well known. But the Nazis engaged on programmes of extermination and genocide against other groups, both within Germany and outside, killing millions more. This article is an attempt to highlight the full Nazi program.
Mentally Ill and Disabled
The Nazis embraced ‘eugenics’, and wished to eliminate elements from German society which they believed were weakening their gene pool. Chief among these were the disabled and the mentally ill, who were examined by Nazi doctors and health panels. Up to 400,000 people were forcibly sterilized after laws were passed, but Hitler wished a different way of refining German blood, and many were executed under the euphemism ‘euthanasia’. Operation T4 allowed patients to be assessed – almost entirely in absentia – and taken to special killing centres. The use of poison gas was first developed in these liquidations. Although these executions were designed to be secret, details leaked out and T4 was stopped due to public opposition. However, even more secret programs continued the killings, which spread outside Germany. Between 200,000 – 250,000 people were executed.
Roma and Sinti
Europe’s Roma, and the related Sinti, were considered racially inferior by the Nazis and subject to persecution, imprisonment in ghettos, transportation to camps and systematic mass execution. Better known in Western Europe by the partly pejorative name of ‘gypsies’, the Roma were killed in the famous death camps including Auschwitz. The numbers killed are between 250,000 to 500,000, which may have marked a halving of Roma numbers in Europe. West Germany didn’t acknowledge this genocide until 1982.
Jews
Europe’s Jewish population is the best known victim of the Nazi liquidations. Jews were subject to years of persecution before the start of the Second World War, as legal rights were removed and Jews forced to wear yellow stars to mark them out, and attempts were made to deport Jews and seize their belongings. However, once war began the Nazis decided upon the ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish ‘Problem’, namely the liquidation of the entire population. To this end six million were executed, in methods ranging from groups being shot by soldiers, to the industrialised death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau, where the Jews were gassed and cremated. Six million Jews died before the war ended.
Polish and Slavs
The Jewish extermination wasn’t the largest the Germans were planning. Their quest for ‘lebensraum’ (living space), and their ideology of racial purity over the eastern European populations, led them to plan the entire extermination of Poland and other eastern nations in order to have a clear region to settle. The execution of tens of millions was planned, and only stopped by the failure of their war on the Eastern Front. Hitler’s statement to his generals that “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” is often claimed to have been about the Jews. In reality, Hitler was speaking of the Poles. Indeed, he went on “I have sent my Death’s Head units to the East with the order to kill without mercy men, women and children of the Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the living space that we need.” (Translation from Richard J. Evans in the London Review of Books.) Estimates of the number of non-Jewish Poles killed can reach three million.
Homosexuals?
It doesn’t appear that the Nazis tried to liquidate all homosexuals like the other groups listed here. However, gays and lesbians suffered from a mass of persecuting legislation, including having to wear a pink triangle, and around 10 – 15,000 died in death camps. Many more died of suicide after castration and intimidation.
