The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany which were introduced at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. The laws classified people as German if four of their grandparents were of "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".

The Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans. At the time of Hitler's assumption of power on 30 January 1933 less than one percent of the German population was Jewish. Nevertheless, antisemitism had been a major theme of Hitler's rhetoric for almost fifteen years and attacks on Jews started with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933.

During the spring and summer of 1933, Nuremberg disenchantment with how the Third Reich had developed in practice as opposed to what had been promised had led to many in the Nazi Party, especially the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters; i.e those who joined the Party before 1930, and who tended to be the most ardent anti-Semites in the Party), and the SA into lashing out against Germany's Jewish minority as a way of expressing their frustrations against a group that the authorities would not generally protect. A Gestapo report from the spring of 1935 stated that the rank and file of the Nazi Party would "set in motion by us from below" a solution to the "Jewish problem", "that the government would then have to follow". As a result, Nazi Party activists and SA members started a major wave of assaults, vandalism and boycotts against German Jews.

A conference of ministers was held on August 20, 1935 to discuss the negative economic effects of Party actions against Jews. Adolf Hitler, the Party representative at the conference, argued that such effects would cease, once the government decided on a firm policy against the Jews.

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