Editing Nazi Germany (section)

== Racial policy and persecution ==

Racial policy was central to Nazi rule. The regime claimed that Germans belonged to an Aryan master race and used this ideology to justify exclusion, persecution, forced sterilization, deportation, forced labour, and mass murder.

Jews were the primary target of Nazi racial policy. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship rights and prohibited marriage or sexual relations between Jews and people classified as German-blooded. Persecution escalated during the 1930s and became genocidal during the Second World War.

Other persecuted groups included Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Slavs, political opponents, prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and others classified as undesirable by the regime.