Racial policy of Nazi Germany

The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented in Nazi Germany (1933–45) based on a specific racist doctrine asserting the superiority of the Aryan race, which claimed scientific legitimacy. This was combined with a eugenics programme that aimed for racial hygiene by compulsory sterilization and extermination of those who they saw as Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), which culminated in the Holocaust.

Nazi policies labeled centuries-long residents in German territory who were not ethnic Germans such as Jews (understood in Nazi racial theory as a "Semitic" people of Levantine origins), Romanis (also known as Gypsies, an "Indo-Aryan" people of Indian Subcontinent origins), as well as European non-"Nordic" peoples including Slavs (Poles, Serbs, Russians, etc.), and all other persons of color as inferior non-Aryan subhumans (i.e. non-Nordics, under the Nazi misinterpretation of the term "Aryan") in a racial hierarchy that placed the Herrenvolk ("master race") of the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") at the top. Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy, considered inhuman and thus unworthy of life.