The German minority census of 1939

The National Socialist government of Germany, in May of 1939, conducted a census of the nation's "non-Teutonic" peoples. Plans for this undertaking stemmed from a 1936 decision intended to identify those "ethnic subversives" who threatened Hitler's fascist state. Authority for this activity was vested with the Reichssippenamt, an historically respectable government department dating from Bismarckian times.