Post-WWI states invented denaturalization laws stripping citizenship from politically disfavored groups
Evidence
25 The first law of this type was a French war measure in 1915 which concerned only naturalized citizens of enemy origin who had retained their original nationality; Portugal went much farther in a decree of 1916 which automatically denaturalized all persons born of a German father. Belgium issued a law in 1922 which canceled naturalization of persons who had committed antinational acts during the war, and reaffirmed it by a new decree in 1934 which in the characteristically vague manner of the time spoke of persons “manqitant gravement a leurs devoirs de citoyen beige.” In Italy, since 1926, all persons could be denaturalized who were not’”worthy of Italian citizenship” or a menace to the public order. Egypt and Turkey in 1926 and 1928 respectively issued laws according to which people could be denaturalized who were a threat to the social order. France threatened with denaturalization those of its new citizens who committed acts contrary to the interests of France (1927). Austria in 1933 could deprive of Austrian nationality any of her citizens who served or participated abroad in an action hostile to Austria. Germany, finally, in 1933 followed closely the various Russian nationality decrees since 1921 by stating that all persons “residing abroad” could at will be deprived of German nationality. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2510
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes the concrete historical mechanism of denaturalization as a tool of twentieth-century statecraft - the reader needs this genealogy for the statelessness and race-thinking framework.
- XREF: connects to: Nativists pursued naturalization restriction chiefly to curtail foreign-born political power. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 581