Hitler Examining Stolen Art In A German Museum
Photo Source: NARA

When the Nazis took over Germany, they established a policy oriented government, unfortunately for some of the German people and the world at large, these policies usually resulted in cruel and often murderous results. When you look at World War II Germany, it often seems that rather than an advanced society, Nazi Germany was a throwback to more barbaric times. It is true that their technology was probably the most advanced in the world, in most areas, especially anything to do with weapons and war, but the government seemed to belong to a society more like the Pre-Columbian Incas where human sacrifice was quite common and there was little regard for human life. You wouldn't have wanted to be captured by the Incas because you would be sacrificed, in many cases and you wouldn't have wanted to have been captured by the Nazis, because the end result might be the same, except on a much larger scale.

Anthropometry is the study of human body measurement. It is generally used to classify and compare. It had been used in the 19th century to try and classify murders and other criminals. At one point it was thought that different types of criminals exhibit different body traits. For example, murderers would all have one body trait and different types of criminals would have the same body traits within their criminal classification. We know today that this is ridiculous. The Nazis were big believers in this. They established the Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare. Aryans and non Aryans were classified using skull measurements and other physical features. A law actually passed requiring craniometric certification. You had better meet the minimum requirements, or you could forget about getting permission to marry. You might not even be able to get a job, or worse yet, you could be sent to a death camp. Anthropometry was being studied in the U.S. and Europe at the time, but no thought was given to use it as a race purification device. The Nazis, on the other hand, saw it as a useful tool in eugenics.

Hitler Receiving Ovation At Reichstag
Photo Source: NARA

Nazis thought that they could improve the Aryan race through eugenics. It became a social policy in the Nazi period. Unfortunately this resulted in some people being classified as unworthy of being alive. It is hard to believe that any government could have such a policy, but there it was. This result was involuntary sterilization for over 400,000 people, that we know of. If you were a dissident, homosexual, insane, religious, criminal or any other type of person deemed to not be worthy of reproducing, you were prevented from it. This was thought to keep the race pure. It seems that while Hitler was in prison in Landsberg, he did a lot of reading and many of those books dealt with genetic engineering. He began to believe that Germany was being corrupted by degenerates. He vowed to have them removed from German society. A law was passed called the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring in 1933. Doctors had to register all cases of any illness, that their patients had, that was hereditary. The only exception was for women over 45 years old. Germany established Genetic Health Courts and you didn't want to ever have to appear before one of them. Sterilization was not the only Nazi answer to the supposed genetically inferior. Besides the 400,000 sterilized people there were at least 200,000 that were just murdered.

Laws were passed against homosexuality that stated that any homosexual act was punishable by imprisonment. Here is the main paragraph from that law:
Paragraph 175: A male who commits a sex offense with another male or allows himself to be used by another male for a sex offense shall be punished with imprisonment.
Of course it wasn't long before homosexuals were not only being sent to prison but to death camps.

Hitler hated Communists and Jews, that is well know. What may not be as well know is the fact that he felt that the Catholic Church was a deeply entrenched threat. Hitler felt the church taught slave ideology and that is was based on Jewish roots. He braced himself for the struggle with the Catholic Centre Party and the church. He decided that the best person to help him deal with this problem was Alfred Rosenberg, the anti-Semite and hater of Christianity. Rosenberg felt that the true God of Germany was Wotan, king of the gods and that the German race had been tricked into giving up their beliefs by Semitic tribes. He stated that the Catholic church was the organization behind this and the fault lay with it. He went on to say that Jesus was an unwitting tool of Jewish world conspirators. The first step took place in 1933 when all Catholic papers were banned in Cologne by Goering. Eventually the ban was lifted but then SS troopers broke up meetings of the Christian trade unions and the Catholic Centre Party. A speaker and some priests were hurt. Thousands of Catholics were thrown into labor camps and Hitler demanded a new agreement with the Pope. In 1933, strangely, the negation for the Germans was a Catholic, Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen. An agreement was signed that specified certain activities. The church had to withdraw its support for the Catholic parties in Germany. It didn't have much choice since the Pope know that many Catholics had been rounded up. In return Germany said that the church could conduct education, church rallies and have youth associations. This did not stop the attacks on the Catholics. Later on newspapers ran editorials warning people not to allow their children to enter Catholic schools. and the clergy was systematically harassed and imprisoned.

The Nazis did not want free speech. After all, you don't want people criticizing your policies in a totalitarian state, so they passed an "Editors' Law." A Literary Chamber of the Third Reich was established and all editors were forced to join it and follow the directives it issued. Now people no longer could find out was was really happening in Germany. The Germans were determined to build up their military and military spending went from 10% of the countries expenditures in 1933 to 25% by 1935. The Nazi government, by its policies, reduced banks to not much more than government stockholders. The government supervised every stage of the German economy.

We all know what the Nazi policy was toward the unfortunate Jews, Gypsies and others. This, in their view, was extermination of inferior races. It was extermination in death camps and labor camps. How a modern country could even establish such a policy is puzzling. It is so heartless as to appear not to be enacted by humans. The cruelty of the Nazi policies is beyond understanding by most of us, could it have been that Hitler was a mad man? All we can hope for is that this type of cruelty never rears its ugly head again. The total amount of Jews killed has been estimated at almost 6,000,000. Some say that between 500,000 and 600,000 Gypsies were murdered. It is also said that over 6,000,000 Poles were killed and 3,000,000 Catholics. These figures are staggering. God have mercy on all of them.