Nazi racial theories
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The German Nazi Party adopted and developed several racial hierarchical categorizations as an important part of its racist ideology (Nazism) in order to justify enslavement, extermination, ethnic persecution and other atrocities against ethnicities which it deemed genetically or culturally inferior. The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping and it was accepted by Nazi thinkers. The Nazis considered the putative "Aryan race" a superior "master race" with Germanic peoples as representative of the Nordic race being considered the best branch, and they considered Jews, mixed-race people, Slavs, Romani, black people, and certain other ethnicities racially inferior subhumans, whose members were only suitable for slave labor and extermination. In these ethnicities, Jews were considered the most inferior. However, the Nazis considered Germanic peoples such as Germans to be significantly mixed between different races, with the East Baltic race being considered inferior by the Nazis, and that their citizens needed to be completely Nordicized after the war. The Nazis also considered certain non-Germanic groups, including the Sorbs, Northern Italians, and Greeks, as being of Germanic and Nordic origin. Some non-Aryan ethnic groups such as the Japanese (semi-officially designated "honorary Aryan") were considered to be partly superior, whereas certain Indo-European peoples such as Slavs, the Romani, and Indians were considered racially inferior.
These beliefs stemmed from a mixture of historical race concepts, 19th-century and early 20th century anthropology, 19th-century and early 20th-century biology, racial biology, white supremacism, notions of Aryan racial superiority, Nordicism, social Darwinism, German nationalism, and antisemitism with the selection of the most extreme parts. They also originated from German military alliance needs.[2][3] The term Aryan generally originated during the discourses about the use of the term Volk (the people constitute a lineage group whose members share a territory, a language, and a culture).[4] Unlike the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) only used for military conflicts, the Schutzstaffel (SS) was a paramilitary organization directly controlled by the Nazis with absolute compliance with Nazi racial ideology and policies.
Racial hierarchy
[edit source]The Adolf Hitler-led Nazis claimed to observe a strict and scientific hierarchy of the human race. Hitler's views on race and people are found throughout his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf but more specifically, they are found in chapter 11, the title of which is "Nation and Race". The standard-issue propaganda text which was issued to members of the Hitler Youth contained a chapter on "The German Races" that heavily cited the works of Hans F. K. Günther. The text seems to categorize the European races in descending orders in the Nazi racial hierarchy: the Nordic (including the Phalic sub-race, a subgroup of the Nordic race), Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic races.[5] In 1937, Hitler spoke in the Reichstag and declared, "I speak prophetically. Just as the discovery that the earth moved around the sun led to a complete transformation of the way people looked at the world, so too the blood and racial teachings of National Socialism will change our understanding of mankind's past and its future."[6]
Highest Aryans: Germanic and Nordic
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In his speeches and writings, Hitler referred to the supposed existence of an Aryan race, a race that he believed founded a superior type of humanity. According to Nazi ideology, the purest stock of Aryans were the Nordic people of Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. The Nazis defined Nordics as being identified by their tall stature (average 175 cm [5 ft 9 in]), their long faces, their prominent chins, their narrow and straight or aquiline noses with a high base, their lean builds, their dolichocephalic skulls, their straight and light hair, their light eyes, and their fair skin.[7] The Nazis regarded the Germans as well as the English, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes as the most racially pure in Europe.[7] Indeed, members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) considered Aryans not to be of a single ethnic group, and did not have to be exclusively German, but instead could be selected from populations across Europe to create the "master race".[8] The normative German term for them was that there existed an arisches Volk (Aryan people), not arische Rasse (Aryan race).[4]
The Nazis believed that the Germanic peoples of Northwestern Europe belonged to a racially superior Nordic subset of the larger Aryan race, who were regarded as the only true culture-bearers in civilized society.[9] 'Aryan' world history became the link between East and West, also between the Old World and New World. The principal dogma, in this Nazi historiography, was that the glories of all human civilizations were creations of the 'Aryan' master race, a culture-bearing race.[10][page needed] The Nordic (Germanic) Aryans did not develop into great civilizations in ancient history because they lived in the cold, damp, and harsh environment for a long time. However, they kept their purity intact and later only the Germanic Aryans at the end of history would eventually conquer and dominate the world because of their purity was maintained, being proved during the Germanic domain of Industrial Revolution (the Slavs later mixed with Asiatic peoples during the Middle Ages and lost their racial purity and superior talent).[10][page needed]
The Nazis claimed that the Germanic peoples specifically represented a southern branch of the Aryan-Nordic population.[11] The Nazis considered that the Nordic race was the most prominent race of the German people, but that there were other sub-races that were commonly found amongst the German people such as the Alpine race population who were identified by, among other features, their lower stature, their stocky builds, their flatter noses, and their higher incidences of darker hair and eyes. Hitler and the Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther framed this as an issue which would be corrected through the selective breeding of "Nordic" traits.[12][13] In general terms, Günther diagnosed combinations of the following elements in the German Volk: Nordic (nordisch); Mediterranean (westisch, mediterran, mittelländisch); Dinaric (dinarisch); Alpine (ostisch, alpin); East Baltic (ostbaltisch); Phalian (fälisch, dalisch).[4] These theories generated some fear in southern Germans, as they thought that Nazism was a form of "Nordic colonialism" and that non-Nordics would be treated as second-class citizens.[4]
Nonetheless, Hitler stated "the principal ingredient of our people is the Nordic race (55%). That is not to say that half our people are pure Nordics. All of the aforementioned races appear in mixtures in all parts of our fatherland. The circumstance, however, that the great part of our people is of Nordic descent justifies us taking a Nordic standpoint when evaluating our character and spirit, bodily structure, and physical beauty."[5] Nazis were also tolerant of native Germans who did not possess the physical appearance of the Nordic race as long as they shared the traits of being a "German" which were "courage, loyalty and honor".[14]
In the 1920s, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler came under the influence of Richard Walther Darré, who was a leading proponent of the blood and soil concept. Darré strongly believed that the Nordic race was racially superior to all other races and he also strongly believed that the German peasants would play a fundamental role in securing Germany's future and Germany's future expansion in Eastern Europe,[15] and in the racial strength of the German people.[16]
Germans wishing to obtain Reich citizenship had to obtain an Aryan certificate, which was typically done by providing proof that their four grandparents were of Aryan descent and obtaining an Ahnenpass (ancestor’s pass). According to the document:
National Socialist thought grants full equity to every other Volk and, moreover never speaks of superior or inferior, but rather only of alien racial admixture.[17]
Himmler required all SS candidates to undergo a racial screening and he forbade any German who had Slavic, Negroid or Jewish racial features from joining the Schutzstaffel (SS).[18] Applicants had to provide proof that they had only Aryan-Germanic ancestors back to 1800 (1750 for officers).[19]
Although Himmler endorsed occultism with his racial theories, Hitler did not and at Nuremberg on 6 September 1938, he declared:
National Socialism is not a cult-movement – a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship. Therefore we have no rooms for worship, but only halls for the people – no open spaces for worship, but spaces for assemblies and parades. We have no religious retreats, but arenas for sports and playing-fields, and the characteristic feature of our places of assembly is not the mystical gloom of a cathedral, but the brightness and light of a room or hall which combines beauty with fitness for its purpose. In these halls no acts of worship are celebrated, they are exclusively devoted to gatherings of the people of the kind which we have come to know in the course of our long struggle; to such gatherings we have become accustomed and we wish to maintain them. We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else – in any case, something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our program there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will – not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord.[20]
In February 1940, Himmler said the following during a secret meeting with Gauleiters, "We are firmly convinced, I believe it, just as I believe in a God, I believe that our blood, the Nordic blood, is actually the best blood on this earth... In a thousand centuries this Nordic blood will still be the best. There is no other. We are superior to everything and everyone. Once we are liberated from inhibitions and restraints, there is no one who can surpass us in quality and strength."[21]
In private in 1942, Hitler stated, "I shall have no peace of mind until I have planted a seed of Nordic blood wherever the population stand in need of regeneration. If at the time of the migrations, while the great racial currents were exercising their influence, our people received so varied a share of attributes, these latter blossomed to their full value only because of the presence of the Nordic racial nucleus."[22]
The matter of satisfactorily defining who precisely was an "Aryan"[a] remained problematic for the duration of Nazi rule.[24] In 1933, a definition of "Aryan" according to the Nazi official Albert Gorter for the Civil Service Law stated:
The Aryans (also Indo-Germans, Japhetiten) are one of the three branches of the Caucasian (white race); they are divided into the western (European), that is the German, Roman, Greek, Slav, Lett, Celt [and] Albanesen, and the eastern (Asiatic) Aryans, that is the Indian (Hindu) and Iranian (Persian, Afghan, Armenian, Georgian, Kurd). Non-Aryans are therefore: 1. the members of two other races, namely the Mongolian (yellow) and the Negroid (black) races; 2. the members of the two other branches of the Caucasian race, namely the Semites (Jews, Arabs) and Hamites (Egyptians). The Finns and the Hungarians belong to the Mongoloid race; but it is hardly the intention of the law to treat them as non-Aryans. Thus ... the non-Jewish members of the European Volk are Aryans...[23]
That definition of "Aryan" was deemed unacceptable by the Nazis because it included members of some non-Europeans ethnic groups; therefore, the Expert Advisor for Population and Racial Policy redefined an "Aryan" as someone who was "tribally" related to "German blood".[25] It was generally agreed amongst Nazi racial theorists that the term "Aryan" was not a racial term and strictly only a linguistic term.[26] Nevertheless, the term "Aryan" was still used in Nazi propaganda in a racial sense.[27]
In June 1935, Nazi politician and Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick argued that "non-Aryan" should have been replaced with "Jewish" and "of foreign origin". His recommendation was rejected. Frick then commented, "'Aryan' and 'non-Aryan' are sometimes not entirely tenable... From a racial political point, it is Judaism that interests us more than anything else."[28]
After the Nuremberg Laws (Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and The Reich Citizenship Law) were passed in September 1935, Nazi Party lawyer and State Secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry Wilhelm Stuckart defined "related blood" (artverwandtes Blut) as:
So, when we speak of related blood, we mean the blood of those races that are determinative for the blood of the peoples who since time immemorial have a closed settlement area in Europe. Therefore, the members of the European peoples as well as their pure descendants in other parts of the world are essentially of related blood. However, one has to exclude the foreign-blooded, who can be found among every European people, such as the Jews and the human beings with a Negroid blood-impact.[29]
Dr. Ernst Brandis, a legal bureaucrat, who made an official comment about the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German people on 18 October 1935, defined "German blood" as:
The German people is no unitary race, rather it is composed of members of different races (of the Nordic, Phalian, Dinaric, Alpine, Mediterranean, East-Elbian race) and mixtures between these. The blood of all these races and their mixtures, which thus is found in the German people, represents 'German blood'.[30]
Frick on 3 January 1936 commented about the Nuremberg Laws and defined "related blood" as:
Since German blood is a prerequisite for Reich citizenship, no Jew can become a Reich citizen. But the same applies to the members of other races whose blood is not related to German blood, e.g. for Gypsies and Negroes. According to § 6 of the first implementation regulation for the Blood Protection Act, a marriage should not be contracted if offspring endangering the purity of German blood is to be expected from it. This provision prevents marriages between people of German blood and such persons who do not have any Jewish blood, but are otherwise of alien blood. The alien breeds in Europe, apart from the Jews, normally only includes the gypsies.[31][32]
Stuckart and Hans Globke in 1936 published the Civil Rights and the Natural Inequality of Man and wrote about the Nuremberg Laws and Reich citizenship:
A member of any minority group demonstrates his ability to serve the German Reich when, without surrendering membership in his own specific Volk group, he loyally carries out his civil duties to the Reich, such as service in the armed forces, etc. Reich citizenship is, therefore, open to racially related groups living in Germany, such as Poles, Danes, and others. It is an altogether different matter with German nationals of alien blood and race. They do not fulfill the blood prerequisites for Reich citizenship. The Jews, who constitute an alien body among all European peoples, are especially characterized by racial foreignness. Jews, therefore, cannot be seen as being fit for service to the German Volk and Reich. Hence, they must necessarily remain excluded from Reich citizenship.[33]
The Nuremberg Laws criminalized sexual relations and marriages between people of "German or related blood" and Jews, blacks and Gypsies as Rassenschande (race defilement).[34]
In 1938, a brochure for the Nuremberg Party Rally included all Indo-European peoples as being of "related blood" to the Germans:
Central and Northern Europe are the homeland of the Nordic race. At the beginning of the most recent Ice Age, around 5,000 BC, a Nordic-Indogermanic Urvolk of the Nordic race [artgleicher nordrassischer Menschen] existed, with the same language and unified mode of behavior [Gesittung], which divided into smaller and larger groups as it expanded. From these went forth Germans, Celts, Romans, Greeks, Slavs, Persians, and Aryan Indians... The original racial unity and common ownership of the most important cultural artifacts remained for thousands of years the cement holding together the Western peoples.[35]
However, soon after the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis decided to relegate the Slavs to a non-European status:
The German people were the only bearers of culture in the East and in their role as the main power of Europe protected Western culture and carried it into uncultivated regions. For centuries they constituted a barrier in the East against lack of culture (Unkultur) and protected the West against barbarity. They protected the borders from Slavs, Avars, and Magyars.[36]
In 1942, Himmler redefined the term "related" which until that year had referred to non-German European nations as follows: "that the racial structure of all European nations is so closely related to that of the German nation that if interbreeding occurs there is no danger that the German nation's blood will be racially contaminated".[37] The term "related" was defined, firstly, as "German blood and blood of related Germanic races" (to which members of "non-Germanic" nations were only included insofar as they were capable of being Germanised), and secondly, "related blood but not from related races", by which Himmler meant all the non-Germanic European nations (Slavs, Latins, Celts, and Balts). According to historian Peter Longerich, this two-tiered definition was created to later exclude the second category from having sexual relations with Germans: this was Himmler's strategy of preparing the way for a future ban on sexual relations between Germanics and those of Latin, Baltic, or Celtic origins. Slavs had already been formally banned from having sexual relations with Germans, by this point.[37]
Jews, Romani, and black people were not considered Aryans by Nazi Germany.[38] Instead, they were considered subhuman and inferior races.[39][40][41][42][43]
East Asians
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In Mein Kampf, Hitler expressed his praise for the Japanese's acceptance of European civilization and his contempt for the Chinese:
The foundation of actual life is no longer the special Japanese culture, although it determines the color of life-because outwardly, in consequence of its inner difference, it is more conspicuous to the European-but the gigantic scientific-technical achievements of Europe and America; that is, of Aryan peoples. Only on the basis of these achievements can the Orient follow general human progress. They furnish the basis of the struggle for daily bread, create weapons and implements for it, and only the outward form is gradually adapted to Japanese character.[44]
What they mostly meant by Germanization was a process of forcing other people to speak the German language. But it is almost inconceivable how such a mistake could be made as to think that a Negro or a Chinaman will become a German because he has learned the German language and is willing to speak German for the future, a