Nazi Germany persecuted, brutalized, and murdered groups of people whom they saw as enemies or threats. The Nazis saw Jews as their primary enemy. They targeted Jewish men, women, and children with unrelenting focus. The scope of terror and the scale of human loss raise the questions: What groups did the Nazis target? And why did they target these specific groups of people?
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Nazi Germany targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. From the very beginning, the Nazi German regime took steps to ruthlessly and tirelessly isolate, impoverish, and discriminate against Jewish people in Germany. During World War II, this policy escalated to mass murder. In total, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews in a genocide now known as the Holocaust.
In addition to the genocide of Europe’s Jews, the Nazis also persecuted, brutalized, or murdered additional groups of people. In some cases, they did so with the help of their allies and collaborators.1
Nazi Germany dehumanized and devalued entire groups of people on the basis of Nazi ideology. Ideology is a set of beliefs about how the world operates. Nazi ideology was racist, antisemitic, and ultra-nationalist. It drew on a number of existing concepts. These concepts included racism, nationalism, antisemitism, anticommunism, antigypsyism, and eugenics. The Nazis combined these concepts and took them to destructive, murderous extremes.
The Nazis evaluated people according to biological, racial, political, and social criteria. According to Nazi ideology, certain groups of people—such as Jews and Roma—were racial threats that undermined the racial purity of the German people. Others—such as people with disabilities—were considered biological threats. The Nazis believed they compromised the genetic health of the German people. Still others were seen as social, political, and/or ideological threats to Nazi control in Germany and beyond. During World War II (1939–1945), the Nazis conquered much of Europe. They treated real and supposed enemies as existential threats. Among those targeted as existential threats were members of the Polish elite, Soviet Prisoners of War, and members of resistance groups. During the war, Nazi Germany perpetrated a genocide of Europe’s Jews and numerous other mass atrocities.