World War Two · Season 9 · Episode 11

How to Legalize Scapegoating - Q3 1935

Saturday, April 11 · 18 min

Nuremberg Laws explained: how Nazi Germany turned antisemitic street violence into state policy in 1935. In this episode, Spartacus Olsson reports from Berlin on the third quarter of 1935, when the Kurfürstendamm riots, Goebbels’ propaganda campaigns, and Hitler’s regime culminated in the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. This historical analysis breaks down how the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor stripped German Jews of civil rights, redefined citizenship around “German blood,” and replaced chaotic mob violence with systematic bureaucratic persecution. The video also explores the role of Joseph Goebbels, the SA, the coming 1936 Berlin Olympics, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, worsening shortages in the Nazi economy, and the collapse of democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression in the Third Reich.