Initially, these laws referred predominantly to relations between ethnic Germans (classified, together with most other western Europeans, as "Aryans") and non-Aryans, regardless of citizenship.

In the course of the ensuing war years, sexual relations between Reichsdeutschen (ethnic Germans, regardless of place of birth) and millions of foreign Ostarbeitern ("workers from the East") forcibly brought to Germany were also legally forbidden.

In addition, there was a practical reason behind the laws: prior to their enactment, Polish and Soviet women and girls working on German farms began having so many unwanted births that hundreds of special homes known as Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte ("foster homes for foreign children") had to be created, in order to abort or kill the infants away from public view.

[4][5][6] Prior to the Nazi ascension to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler often blamed moral degradation on Rassenschande, or on "bastardization"—a way to assure his followers of his continuing antisemitism, which had been toned down for popular consumption.

[10] Freisler published a pamphlet that called for banning "mixed-blood" sexual intercourse in 1933, regardless of the "foreign blood" involved, which faced strong public criticism and, at the time, no support from Hitler.

[14] Even before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, the SS regularly arrested those accused of racial defilement and paraded them through the streets with placards around their necks detailing their crime.

[23] The extent of the law meant that the police were insufficient to the task of detecting infractions; more than three-fifths of all Gestapo cases were prompted by denunciations.

[24] Germans who had intermarried with Jews and other non-Aryans prior to the Nuremberg Laws did not have their unions nullified, but were targeted and encouraged to divorce their existing partners.

[31] During the war, any German woman who had sexual relations with foreign workers was publicly humiliated by being marched through the streets with her head shaven and a placard around her neck detailing her crime.

Pamphlets were issued encouraging German women to prevent sexual relations with foreign workers brought to Germany and to view them as a danger to their "blood" (i.e. racial purity).

[37] To prevent violations of German racial laws, orders explicitly provided that the workers were to be recruited in equal numbers of men and women, so brothels would not be needed.

[38] The program to import nannies from Eastern Europe, including Poland and Ukraine, would result in their working with German children, and quite possibly sexually exploitation; therefore, such women had to be suitable for Germanisation.

[42] After the Nuremberg Laws were propagated, Streicher in four of the first eight articles in 1935 of the Der Stürmer demanded for the death penalty in cases of race defilement.

[43] Fips portrayed, for instance, a despondent mother smoking while neglecting her child in a lonely rooming house, with a picture of her Jewish seducer on the floor, with the caption: "Everything in her has died.

[48] In Jud Süß, the title Jew relentlessly pursues a pure Aryan maid; after he succeeds by having her husband arrested and tortured, and offering to free him for her compliance, she drowns herself.

[50] Repeated efforts were made to propagate Volkstum, racial consciousness, to prevent sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers.

[51] Pamphlets enjoined all German women to avoid sexual intercourse with all foreign workers brought to Germany, citing them as a danger to their blood.

— German National Catechism[55]"The Jewish Question in Education", a pamphlet for teachers, lamented that many girls and women had been ruined by Jews because no one had warned them of the perils, "no one introduced them to the god-given secrets and laws of blood and race.

[citation needed] They could however be tried for perjury or similar offenses if they tried to protect their (alleged or actual) lover, or sent to a concentration camp (which was not part of the justice system, but inflicted by the Gestapo without any legal control).

[58] Julius Streicher and others continued to claim the death penalty, which in some cases actually was given, using laws for aggravated punishment if using war-time brownout to commit the "offense" (on which pretext Leo Katzenberger e. g. was killed), if being a "dangerous habitual criminal", and the like.