Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

Racial policy and the persecution of Jews to 1939

Why does the escalation of persecution move in steps, and what decided the size of each step?

Option 3 · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45 › Key topic 4 · Nazi Germany 1933–39 — one of 5 lessons in this key topic. Paper 1 — depth study: Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45, key topic 4 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn Racial policy and the persecution of Jews to 1939, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“Nazi racial policies and increasing persecution of Jews” — examined through change and causation. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Who was being persecuted

Around 500,000 Jews lived in Germany in 1933, under 1 per cent of the population, concentrated in cities and heavily assimilated: German-speaking, often several generations native, disproportionately represented in medicine, law, journalism and commerce, and with about 100,000 having served in the German army in the First World War, of whom some 12,000 died.

Nazi racial doctrine also targeted Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities and hereditary illnesses, Black Germans, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexual men. The July 1933 sterilisation law produced around 400,000 forced sterilisations, and Paragraph 175 prosecutions rose sharply after 1935. The Jewish case is the specification's principal focus and is not the whole of the racial policy.

The steps, and what each tested

1 April 1933: a national boycott of Jewish businesses, organised by the party and called off after a single day because foreign reaction and domestic indifference made it embarrassing. Days later the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removed Jews from public employment, with an exemption Hindenburg insisted on for veterans and those in post since 1914.

September 1935: the Nuremberg Laws. The Reich Citizenship Law made Jews subjects rather than citizens; the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans'. A supplementary decree in November defined a Jew by descent — three or four Jewish grandparents — which meant that a racial law had to be operationalised by consulting baptismal registers, because race could not be identified any other way.

1938: the pace changes. Jewish assets over 5,000 marks had to be registered in April; Jewish doctors and lawyers were barred from practice; the forenames Israel and Sara were imposed in August; passports were stamped with a J in October.

9–10 November 1938: Kristallnacht, triggered by the shooting of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan. Coordinated by Goebbels and carried out by SA and party members in civilian clothes, it destroyed hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses. Around 91 people were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. A fine of one billion marks was then imposed on the Jewish community for the damage done to it, and insurance payments were confiscated by the state.

Testing, feedback, escalation

Each step was preceded by an assessment of reaction and followed by an adjustment. The 1933 boycott was abandoned within a day when it was unpopular. The Nuremberg Laws were drafted at speed, partly in response to party radicals conducting unauthorised local violence, and they had the effect of channelling that violence into law. The 1938 measures were introduced when the regime was diplomatically confident and Schacht's economic caution had been overridden.

Kristallnacht is the exception that proves the pattern. Open street violence produced widespread public distaste — recorded in the Sopade reports and in Göring's own complaint about the destruction of insured property — and the regime never repeated it inside Germany. Persecution afterwards became administrative: registration, expropriation, emigration under duress, and after 1939 deportation. The lesson the regime drew from public disapproval was not to stop but to make it invisible.

That is why the absence of protest matters as an input rather than as a moral observation. Between 1933 and 1939 roughly half of Germany's Jews emigrated, and each departure removed neighbours, colleagues and customers who might have made the next measure visible.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1 April 1933
National boycott of Jewish businesses; called off after one day. Why this date: The first test of public reaction, and the regime learned from the result.
7 April 1933
Civil service law removes Jews from public employment, with a veterans' exemption. Why this date: The exemption shows the regime still constrained by Hindenburg; it was removed in 1935.
15 September 1935
The Nuremberg Laws remove citizenship and prohibit intermarriage. Why this date: Persecution becomes law rather than party action, and requires a legal definition of a Jew.
9–10 November 1938
Kristallnacht: about 91 killed, 30,000 men arrested, a one-billion-mark fine imposed on the victims. Why this date: The transition from public violence to administrative persecution, and the moment emigration became flight.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • About 500,000 — Jews in Germany in 1933, under 1 per cent of the population.
  • About 91 killed, about 30,000 arrested — Kristallnacht. (The figure of 91 is the contemporary official count; deaths in the camps in the following weeks were considerably higher.)
  • 1 billion marks — The collective fine imposed on the Jewish community after Kristallnacht.
  • About half — The proportion of Germany's Jews who had emigrated by September 1939.

The people to place

  • Hans Globke — Interior ministry official who wrote the official commentary on the Nuremberg Laws.
  • Reinhard Heydrich — Organised the Kristallnacht arrests and directed the emigration offices.
  • Herschel Grynszpan — Shot vom Rath in Paris in November 1938; the pretext for Kristallnacht.
  • Hjalmar Schacht — Economics minister who resisted measures he thought economically damaging until removed in 1937.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • The intentionalist reading: The escalation followed a purpose set out long in advance, and the steps are the implementation of an intention held since the 1920s. Contested by Structuralist accounts, which argue that competing agencies, local radicalism and improvised responses to problems the regime had created for itself drove the pace, and that the absence of a written plan before 1941 is evidence rather than a gap..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The persecution moved steadily and continuously worse.

This: It moved in steps with pauses, and the pauses were deliberate: the 1936 Olympics saw signage removed for the duration. The pattern is escalate, assess, adjust, escalate.

Not this: Kristallnacht was a spontaneous outburst of popular anger.

This: It was coordinated from a party gathering in Munich on the evening of 9 November, with instructions transmitted to Gauleiter and SA units, and participants were told to wear civilian clothes so it would look spontaneous.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The Nuremberg Laws and the November 1935 supplementary decree.

The distinction: The Laws of 15 September removed citizenship and prohibited intermarriage without defining who was Jewish. The decree of 14 November supplied the definition by grandparents. The gap of two months is itself evidence that the legislation was improvised.

Blurred: Discrimination, persecution and extermination.

The distinction: 1933–35 is legal discrimination; 1935–39 is escalating persecution and expropriation; the killing programme begins in 1939–41 and belongs to key topic 5. Collapsing them makes the 1930s look like a plan being executed and removes the question of how the escalation happened.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer treats each measure as producing information the regime then acted on. The boycott was withdrawn because it was unpopular; Kristallnacht was never repeated because it was visible; and what followed was not restraint but concealment. That converts 'why did nobody stop it' from an accusation into a mechanism.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: Dates in order with the correct instrument attached, and the testing mechanism named. An answer that explains why the boycott was called off after one day has understood the whole pattern.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Explain two effects of the Nuremberg Laws on Jews in Germany. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  2. Explain two effects of Kristallnacht on Nazi policy towards Jews. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  3. Explain two reasons why Nazi persecution of Jews increased in the years 1933–39. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  4. 'The Nuremberg Laws were the most significant step in Nazi persecution of Jews before 1939.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. 'Nazi racial policy in the years 1933–39 followed a clear plan.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Did the Nazis rule Germany by fear or by consent?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on Racial policy and the persecution of Jews to 1939, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain Racial policy and the persecution of Jews to 1939 — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue Racial policy and the persecution of Jews to 1939 against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against The Intentionalist's Case — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

The same people, elsewhere in the option

Carry on through the option