When the Nazi government in Germany turned its attention to treatment of Jewish people in Germany,

it struggled with how to define who was Jewish and how to create a new and lesser legal status for Jewish people in Germany.

They found their inspiration in the United States.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century.

Music Episode 291, the Nuremberg Laws.

When people think about Nazis, about Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Movement in our day, one of the first things that comes to mind is the Nazis' horrible ideas about race and ethnicity.

And rightly so.

Today, I want to talk about how those ideas translated into law and public policy in the early years of Nazi rule in Germany.

And when you think about Nazis and their horrible ideas about race and ethnicity,

your mind likely goes first to anti-Semitism, and again, rightly so.

That means I'm going to be talking mostly, although not exclusively,

about Nazi policy regarding Jewish people in Germany.

But always keep in mind that Nazi hatred was never directed exclusively at Jewish people.

The Nazis had hate enough to spread around.

Let's begin by winding the clock back to the spring of 1933, just weeks after Hitler became

Chancellor, when the government he led took its first steps toward diminishing the legal status of Jewish people in Germany.

I talked about this a little bit in episode 270.

Soon after the Enabling Act was passed, that was the law that gave Hitler's cabinet the power

to enact laws on their own without Reichstag approval, the first steps were taken to bar

Jewish Germans from public life in Germany.

First was the law the government called the law for the restoration of the professional civil service.

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