German law and German crimes in the Nazi era

The vexed question of the "legality" of the Nazi regime's anti-Semitic policies is considered against the background of the regime's insistence on propriety. Through a combination of "emergency decrees" and discriminatory legislation such as the so-called "Nuremberg Laws" (1935), Jews were gradually deprived of civil rights, jobs and ultimately their lives. When mass murders of Jews commenced outside Germany, the regime sought by concealing them to cover up the fact that they were manifestly criminal.