ABSTRACT
The Germans victimized other groups and minorities during German domestic phase of Adolf Hitler’s reign, though Jews remained the principal target of the Nazis. Such policies ranged from ongoing harassment, the removal of citizenship rights, imprisonment, forced labor, sterilization, and murder. The Nazi victory in Germany destroyed traditional, though often unpracticed, societal values anchored in the Judaeo-Christian ideal of humane compassion. The Nazis replaced this ethical tradition with a quasi-religious, amoral value system that promoted some of European society’s worst prejudices. Homosexuals were another of Nazi Germany’s victim groups. The Nazis detested homosexuals because of their “socially aberrant behavior.” The Nazis also viewed other groups such as the Roma and Sinti and Afro-Germans as threats to the Aryan racial pool, though they were not despised and feared like the Jews. Because of their smaller numbers, Germany’s leaders thought they could wipe out these groups by using eugenic methods such as sterilization.
