Nazi racial theories

A poster advertising the 1938 Neues Volk calendar depicting racially pure "Aryans"

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 doliocephalic skulls, their straight and light hair, their light eyes, and their fair skin.[4] The Nazis regarded the Germans as well as the English, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as the most racially pure in Europe.[4] 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".[5] The normative German term for them was that existed an arisches Volk, not arische Rasse.[1]

The Nazis believed that the Germanic peoples of 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.[6] Hitler's conception of the 'Aryan migration' followed a common pattern of historical development: since antiquity, the Nordic 'Aryan' race conquered foreign peoples and territories, founded great civilizations (like ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Roman Empire, Persian Empire, etc.) and finally perished because of a lack of racial hygiene, specially because the toleration shown to Semitic people. '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.[7] The northern European (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 as well).[7]

The Nazis claimed that the Germanic peoples specifically represented a southern branch of the Aryan-Nordic population.[8] 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.[9][10] In general terms, Hans F. K. Günther diagnosed combinations of the following elements in the German Volk: Nordic (nordisch); Mediterranean (westisch, mediterran, mitelländisch); Dinaric (dinarisch); Alpine (ostisch, alpin); East Baltic (ostbaltisch); Phalian (fälisch, dalisch).[1] 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.[1]

The Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in the 1920s became under the influence of Richard Walther Darré who was a leading proponent of the blood and soil concept. Darré held a strong belief that the Nordic race was racially superior to other races and that the German peasants would play a fundamental role in securing Germany's future and German expansion in Eastern Europe.[11] Darré believed that the German peasant played a key role in the racial strength of the German people.[12]

Himmler made all SS candidates to undergo a racial screening and forbid any German who had Slavic, Negroid or Jewish racial features from the joining the Schutzstaffel (SS).[13] Applicants had to provide proof that they had only Aryan ancestors back to 1800 (1750 for officers).[14]

Although Himmler endorsed occultism with his racial theories, Hitler did not and on 6 September 1938 at Nuremberg 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.[15]

Himmler in February 1940 spoke during a secret meeting to Gauleiters and said, "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."[16]

Hitler in private in 1942 said, "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."[17]

Nazi propaganda aimed at the members of the Hitler Youth emphasized the "Nordic" nature of Germans, with the text issued to all Hitler Youth members stating: "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."[2] Nazi propaganda stated that the Nordic must dominate Germany, although it didn't matter if they were Germans who did not have the physical appearance of the Nordic race as long as they shared the traits of being a "German" which were considered to be "courage, loyalty and honor".[18]

The matter of satisfactorily defining who precisely was an "Aryan"[lower-alpha 1] remained problematic for the duration of Nazi rule.[20] 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 (Berbers). 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...[19]

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".[21] It was generally agreed amongst Nazi racial theorists that the term "Aryan" was not a racial term and strictly only a linguistic term.[22] Nevertheless, the term "Aryan" was still used in Nazi propaganda in a racial sense.[23]

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. Frock 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."[24]

A chart in 1935 explaining the Nuremberg Laws

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.[25]

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'.[26]

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 include the Jews regularly only the gypsies.[27][28]

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.[29]

The Nuremberg Laws criminalized sexual relations and marriages between people of "German or related blood" and Jews, blacks and Gypsies as Rassenschande (race defilement).[30]

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 Utvolk 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.[31]

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.[32]

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".[33] The term "related" was defined as "German blood and blood of related Germanic races" (to which members of "non-Germanic" nations who 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).[33]

Jews, Romani, black people, and Slavs (including Poles, Serbs, and Russians) were not considered Aryans by Nazi Germany. Instead, they were considered subhuman and inferior races.[34][35][36]

Hitler and Mr. Kung Hsiang-hsi meeting in 1937

The Nazi government began to enact racial laws after Hitler came to power in 1933, and during that year, the Japanese government protested against several racial incidents which involved Japanese or Japanese-Germans. Later, the disputes were resolved when the Nazi high command treated its Japanese allies leniently. This was especially the case after the collapse of Sino-German cooperation and the formation of the official alliance between Germany and Japan.

Chinese and Japanese were subjected to discrimination under Germany's racial laws, however, which—with the exception of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which specifically mentioned Jews—were generally applied to all "non-Aryans" but the Eastern Asian peoples (excluding Koreans) were considered "Honorary Aryans".

After China declared war on Germany and joined the Allies, Chinese nationals were persecuted in Germany. The influential Nazi anti-Semite Johann von Leers favored the exclusion of Japanese people from the laws because he believed in the existence of the alleged Japanese-Aryan racial link and because he sought to improve Germany's diplomatic relations with Japan. The Foreign Ministry supported von Leers and on several occasions between 1934 and 1937, it sought to change the laws, but other government agencies, including the Racial Policy Office, opposed the change.[37]

Hitler invited Chinese soldiers to study in German military academies and serve in the Nazi German Wehrmacht as part of their combat training. Since 1926, Germany had supported the Republic of China militarily and industrially. Germany had also sent advisers such as Alexander von Falkenhausen and Hans von Seeckt to assist the Chinese, most notably in the Chinese Civil War and China's anti-communist campaigns. Max Bauer was sent to China and served as one of Chiang Kai-shek's advisers. Around this time, Hsiang-hsi Kung (H. H. Kung), the Republic of China Minister of Finance, visited Nazi Germany and was warmly welcomed by Adolf Hitler on 13 June 1937. During this meeting, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Hjalmar Schacht bestowed upon Hsiang-hsi Kung an honorary doctorate degree, and attempted to open China's market to German exports. And in order to attract more Han Chinese students to study in Germany, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Hjalmar Schacht earmarked 100,000 reichsmarks for Han Chinese students who were studying in the universities and military academies of Nazi Germany after they persuaded a German industrialist to set aside the money for that purpose. Additionally, Hsiang-hsi Kung, who favored commercial credits, politely refused a generous international loan which was offered by Adolf Hitler.[38] As a result of this exchange a very small number of Chinese nationals served in the German armed forces. The most famous of these Han Chinese Nazi soldiers was Chiang Wei-kuo, the son of Republic of China President Chiang Kai-shek, who studied military strategy and tactics at a Nazi German Kriegsschule in Munich, and subsequently acquired the rank of lieutenant and served as a soldier in the Wehrmacht on active combat duty in Europe until his return to the Republic of China during the later years of World War II.[39][40][41][42][43]

Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote that he had supported the Empire of Japan as early as 1904 when he stated that, "When the Russo-Japanese War came I was older and better able to judge for myself. For national reasons I then took the side of the Japanese in our discussions. I looked upon the defeat of the Russians as a blow to Austrian Slavism".[44] He made a number of other statements in the book expressing his respect and admiration for the Japanese people.[45]

Although they belonged to a different evolutionary race than the Germans did, the Japanese were considered to have sufficiently superior qualities as were people with German-Nordic blood to warrant an alliance by Nazi ideologists such as Himmler, who possessed a great interest in, and was also influenced by, the anthropology, philosophies and pantheistic religions of East Asia, mentioned how his friend Hiroshi Ōshima, the Japanese Ambassador to Germany, believed that the noble castes in Japan, the daimyo and the samurai, were descended from gods of celestial origin, which was similar to Himmler's own belief that "the Nordic race did not evolve, but came directly down from heaven to settle on the Atlantic continent."[46]

Karl Haushofer, a German general, geographer, and geopolitician, whose ideas may have influenced the development of Hitler's expansionist strategies, saw Japan as the brother nation of Germany. In 1908, he was sent to Tokyo by the German Army "to study the Japanese Army and advise it as an artillery instructor. The assignment changed the course of his life and it also marked the beginning of his love affair with the Orient. During the next four years, he traveled extensively in East Asia, adding Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin to his repertoire of languages, he also knew how to speak Russian, French, and English. Karl Haushofer had been a devout student of Arthur Schopenhauer, and during his stay in the Far East, he was introduced to Oriental esoteric teachings."[47] It was based on such teachings that he came to make similar bestowals of his own upon the Japanese people, calling them the "Aryans of the East", and even calling them the "Herrenvolk of the Orient" (i.e. the "Master race of the Orient").[48]

An October 1933 statement by Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath which was published in response to the Japanese protests falsely claimed that Japanese were exempt. The wide publication of this statement caused many in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere to believe that such an exemption actually existed. Instead of granting Japanese a broad exemption from the laws, an April 1935 decree stated that any racial discrimination cases that might jeopardize German diplomatic relations because they involved non-Aryans—i.e., Japanese—would be dealt with individually. Decisions on such cases often took years to make, and those people who were affected by them were unable to obtain jobs or interracially marry, primarily because the German government preferred to avoid exempting people from the laws as much as possible. The German government often exempted more German-Japanese than it preferred to because it wanted to avoid a repeat of the 1933 controversies. And in 1934, it prohibited the German press from discussing the race laws with regard to Japanese.[37] During World War II, Hitler privately expressed fears concerning the replacement of "white rule" in Asia (that of European colonial powers) with "yellow" supremacy as a result of Japanese conquests.[49]

The Nazis in an attempt to find a satisfactory definition of "Aryan" were faced with a dilemma with regard to the European peoples who did not speak an Indo-European language or Indo-Aryan language, namely Estonians, Finns and Hungarians.

The first legal attempt was in 1933 for the Civil Service Law, when a definition of "Aryan" was given by Albert Gorter for the Civil Service Law that included the Uralic peoples as Aryans.[19] However, that definition was deemed unacceptable because it included some non-European peoples. Gorter changed the definition of 'Aryan' to the definition that was given by the Expert Advisor for Population and Racial Policy (Sachverständigenbeirat für Bevölkerungs- und Rassenpolitik) which was, "An Aryan is one who is tribally related (stammverwandt) to German blood. An Aryan is the descendant of a Volk domiciled in Europe in a closed tribal settlement (Volkstumssiedlung) since recorded history".[19] That definition of 'Aryan' included Estonians, Finns and Hungarians.[19] In 1938 a commentary was made about the Nuremberg Laws that proclaimed that "the overwhelming majority" of Finns and Hungarians were of Aryan blood.[19]

In 1941, Nazi Germany established the Reichskommissariat Ostland in order to administer the conquered territory of Estonia. The colonial department in Berlin under Minister Alfred Rosenberg (born in Tallinn in 1893) favorably looked upon Estonians as Finno-Ugrics and thus, it looked upon them as "Aryans", Generalkommissar Karl-Siegmund Litzmann authorized the establishment of a Landeseigene Verwaltung, or a local national administration.[50]

During the war, Hitler remarked that Estonians contained a lot of "Germanic blood".[51]

The Finns had a debatable position in the Nazi racial theories, as they were considered a part of the "Eastern Mongol race" with the Sámi people in traditional racial hierarchies.[52][53] Finland did not have Lebensborn centres, unlike Norway, although Finland had tens of thousands of German soldiers in the country. Archival research however has found out that 26 Finnish women were in contact with the Lebensborn program for unspecified reasons.[54]

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Finnish army, alongside German units in Lapland, invaded the USSR following Soviet air attacks on Finnish cities. Finland fought the USSR primarily in order to recover the territories which it was forced to cede to the USSR after the Moscow Peace Treaty which ended the Winter War between the Finns and the Soviets. In November 1942, owing to Finland's substantial military contribution to the German war effort on the northern flank of the Eastern Front of World War II, Hitler decreed that "from now on Finland and the Finnish people be treated and designated as a Nordic state and a Nordic people", which he considered one of the highest compliments that the Nazi government could bestow upon another country.[55] Hitler stated in private conversation that:

After their first conflict with the Russians, the Finns applied to me, proposing that their country should become a German protectorate. I don't regret having rejected this offer. As a matter of fact, the heroic attitude of this people, which has spent a hundred of the six hundred years of its history in fighting, deserves the greatest respect. It is infinitely better to have this people of heroes as allies than to incorporate it in the Germanic Reich—which, in any case, would not fail to provoke complications in the long run. The Finns cover one of our flanks, Turkey covers the other. That's an ideal solution for me as far as our political protective system is concerned.[56]

According to the Interior Ministry, Hungarians were "tribally alien" (fremdstämmig) but were not necessarily "blood alien", which added to even more confusion with regard to defining Hungarians on a racial basis.[19] In 1934, a brochure from the series Family, Race, Volk in the National Socialist State simply stated that Hungarians (which it did not define) were Aryans.[19] But, the following year an article in the Journal for Racial Science on the "Racial Diagnosis of the Hungarians", remarked that "opinions on the racial condition of the Hungarians are still very divided".[19] As late as 1943, the question of whether a Hungarian woman was to be allowed to marry a German man was disputed; she was determined to be of 'related blood' and they were allowed to get married.[23]

Although Günther and Hitler viewed Western nations as Aryans, they held dismissive racial views about the lower classes in Britain and France.

According to Günther, the purest Nordic regions were Scandinavia and northern Germany, particularly Norway and Sweden, specifying: "We may, perhaps, take the Swedish blood to be over 80 per cent Nordic, the Norwegian blood about 80 per cent." Britain and southern Germany by contrast were not considered entirely Nordic. Germany was said to be 55% Nordic, and the rest Alpine (particularly southern Germany), Dinaric, or East Baltic (particularly eastern Germany). On the British Isles, Günther stated: "we may adopt the following racial proportions for these islands: Nordic blood, 60 percent; Mediterranean, 30 percent; Alpine, 10 percent." He added that "The Nordic strain in Germany seems to be rather more distributed over the whole people than in England, where it seems to belong far more to the upper classes."[57] Hitler echoed this sentiment, referring to the British lower classes as "racially inferior".[58]

Günther claimed that the Anglo-Saxons had been more successful than the Germans in maintaining racial purity and had been infused with additional Nordic blood through Norse raids and colonization during the Viking Age, Günther referred to this process as Aufnordung ("additional nordification"), which finally culminated in the Norman Conquest.[59] Britain was thus a nation created by struggle and the survival of the fittest among the various Aryan peoples of the isles, and Britain's global conquest and empire-building was a result of its superior racial heredity. Hitler's admiration of the British empire was on the same track. For the Nazis, the ruthless British attitude in the English people was an example of what was needed for a master race to rule over large, inferior, masses of people. Britain's role as a world power, colonial empire, and an agent of international politics was admired by Nazis as a quality of their superiority. Hitler and many others in Germany were convinced that brutality in the colonies and in war was a key feature of the British national character.[60]

Hitler seems to have lumped all the peoples (English, Scots, and Irish) of the British Isles in together,[61] unlike mid 19th century English race theorists, who believed they were superior to the Catholic Irish and tried to claim that Celts were less evolved as subhuman nonwhite others (some of these tropes were repeated by the Imperial Fascist League),[62][63] or indeed some Irish nationalist types who turned this theory around to claim that Celts had greater spiritual and cultural capacity than the plodding Anglo-Saxon shopkeepers.[64] A big plus, in Nazi eyes, about the Celts was that, living in the far west of Europe in Ireland, Brittany etc., they were less 'contaminated' by 'inferior' East European or Jewish blood than people in the middle of Europe. However, some nazi theories claimed that the Irish were close to the Mediterranean peoples, which made them inferior to the more Nordic English.[59][60]

Up until November 1938 when Anglo-German relations started to deteriorate, Hitler had viewed the British on the whole as fellow Aryans and saw the British Empire as a potential German ally. However, the subsequent deterioration of relations and the outbreak of World War II led Nazi propaganda to portray the British establishment as a racially degenerate for supposedly allowing thousands of Jews to immigrate to the United Kingdom, intermarry with the upper class and dominate British foreign policy. A 1944 article described Winston Churchill as a "slave of the Jews and of alcohol".[65][66] Nazi propaganda also vilified the British as oppressive and hating plutocrats with materialistic tendences who were an existential threat to the world, as they were the creators of "international high finance" and the degeneracy of Capitalism.[67]

Hitler viewed the French as close to the Germans racially, but not quite their peers. He said of their racial character: "France remains hostile to us. She contains, in addition to her Nordic blood, a blood that will always be foreign to us."[68] Günther echoed this sentiment, saying that the French were predominantly Alpine and Mediterranean rather than Nordic, but that a heavy Nordic strain was still present. He characterized the French as possessing the following racial proportions: Nordic, 25%; Alpine or Dinaric, 50%; Mediterranean, 25%. These types were said to be most prevalent in north, central, and southern France respectively.[69]

Hitler planned to remove a large portion of the French population to make way for German settlement. The zone interdite of eastern France was set aside and planned to be made part of the German Reich after the rest of France was fully subdued. The French residents of the zone, some 7 million people accounting for nearly 20% of the French population at the time, were to be deported, and the land then occupied by at least a million German settlers. The plan was either postponed or abandoned after Operation Barbarossa in favor of expediting the settlement of the east instead and was never put into place owing to the German defeat in the Second World War.[70]

Nazi propaganda described the Mediterranean race as brown-haired, brown-eyed, light skinned but slightly darker than their Northern European counterparts, and short (average 1.62 m [5 ft 4 in]), with dolichocephalic or mesocephalic skulls, and lean builds. People who fit this category were described as "lively, even loquacious" and "excitable, even passionate", but they were also described as being "prone to act more on feeling than on reason", and as a result, "this race has produced only a few outstanding men".[71]

For the Nazis, in the beginning there were two types of Aryans: one was predominantly red or blonde haired and blue-eyed (Germanic Aryans); while the other was predominantly dark eyed and dark haired (Mediterranean Aryans). Blond, red hair, and dark hair were common among both kind of Aryans but one predominated over the other. The dark-haired (Mediterranean) Aryans migrated to Southern Europe and in that environment released their superior talent in the arts, philosophy, and government. This was due primarily to the favorable conditions of the Mediterranean. This is why the Greeks and Romans created the greatest civilizations known to man. Also, nazis believed that the ancient Greeks and Romans were the racial ancestors of the Germans, and the first torchbearers of "Nordic–Greek" art and culture.[72][73] Later the Mediterraneans Aryans in Spain, France and Italy also committed the great sin of mixing with the other populations (mainly Semitic, Celtic, and North African) who were brought by the Greeks and Romans into their empires and during the Moorish invasions.[59]

Nazi racial theorists questioned the amount of Aryan blood Italians had . Hitler himself viewed northern Italians as strongly Aryan, but not southern Italians. The Nazis viewed the downfall of the Roman Empire as being caused by racial intermixing, claiming that Italians were a hybrid of races, including black African races. When Hitler met Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in June 1934 he told him that all Mediterranean peoples were "tainted" by Negro blood.[74]

According to Hitler, Germans are more closely linked with the Italians than with any other people:

From the cultural point of view, we are more closely linked with the Italians than with any other people. The art of Northern Italy is something we have in common with them: nothing but pure Germans. The objectionable Italian type is found only in the South, and not everywhere even there. We also have this type in our own country. When I think of them: Vienna-Ottakring, Munich-Giesing, Berlin-Pankow! If I compare the two types, that of these degenerate Italians and our type, I find it very difficult to say which of the two is the more antipathetic.[75]

Despite their weaknesses, the Italians have so many qualities that make us like them. Italy is the country where intelligence created the notion of the State. The Roman Empire is a great political creation, the greatest of all. The Italian's people musical sense, its liking for harmonious proportions, the beauty of its race! The Renaissance was the dawn of a new era, in which Aryan man found himself anew. There's also our own past on Italian soil.[76]

During a speech in 1920, Hitler claimed that Greek civilization descended from Aryans.[77] In his unpublished Second Book in 1928, he wrote that Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch state. Similarly, during a speech in August 1929 he reiterated the same thought by stating that Sparta was the "purest racial state" in history.[78] Alfred Rosenberg believed that the civilisation of ancient Greece was the result of an "Aryan-Greek race soul".[79] Himmler instructed the people carrying out Ahnenerbe think tank to study the "Indo-Germanic and Aryan" origins of Greece.[80]

A 1939 article by Tito Körner in the Nazi magazine Volk Und Rasse compared the Greeks of Laconia, with the Greeks of Attica. According to the article, "in the land of the old Indo-Germanic Sparta", "blond hair, blue eyes, and tall height are common", while the Athenians were just a "people of mixed race".[81] Körner believed that the former were directly the "descendants of the ancient Greeks".[81] A 1941 article by Roland Hampe in the same magazine, stated that "nothing could be more false than to say that the Greek people as a whole have been Balkanized. Curiously, we tend to hold the Greek people to a higher racial standard than we do other people", arguing that the Greeks displayed a mental disposition that tended to indicate a common racial descent with those from northern Europe: "An unconscious recollection of their Nordic roots from deepest antiquity seems to reverberate through the veins of the Greek people".[81] According to historian Johann Chapoutot:

Their roots, still visible in the two racial types described in the article of 1939, demonstrated that the recovery of the Greek body through rejuvenation by Nordic blood was still possible: after Turkish, French, and English domination, Greece found itself as a result of the Germans' invasion "finally included in the circulatory system of European blood". Once again, Greece had been resuscitated by a wave of Nordic migration and an injection of its pure, fresh blood. The three prehistoric and ancient waves of migration had been joined by a fourth: that of the Reich triumphant.[82]

During the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940, Hitler "rather admired the Greeks, and expected them to resist successfully".[83] After the German invasion of Greece in 1941, Alfred Rosenberg noted in his diary that Hitler "is very sorry that he has to fight with the Greeks".[83]

For Nazis, the psychology of the Spaniards deemed incompatible with the ideal Nazi Germans, particularly regarding their Catholicism.[84] Also, Ottavio de Peppo noted that Spaniards' religious sentiments were useful to weaken Germany's position because of that contempt of the Nazis to the Spanish psychology.[85] Hitler himself said that "All of Spain is contained in Don Quixote—-a decrepit society unaware the world has passed it by", because Spain was a stagnant nation dominated by three elements that Nazis detested; the aristocracy, the Church and the monarchy, past and future, since Franco had promised a royal restoration. Also, Hitler referred to Spaniards as "lazy", of "moorish blood" and in love with "the greatest whore in history", referencing Catholic Queen Isabel.[86] Wilhelm Faupel, Nazi director of the Ibero-American Institute, conceived his cultural foreign policy as a tool to restore the German presence on the world stage ("Weltgeltung"). Faupel then putting all his care to prevent the racism inherent to the regime from scaring away its "multipliers". Thus he sought, through the Ministry of Propaganda, to have certain libels of black legend removed from circulation, such as those of Arnold Noldens (pseudonym of Wilhelm Pferdekamp), one of whom p. ex. it bore the title Afrika beginnt hinter den Pyrenäen ("Africa begins behind the Pyrenees").[87]

«The Spanish people have a mixture of Gothic, French and Moorish blood. ]...]. The Arab period [...] was the most cultivated, the most intellectual, and in all respects the best and happiest period in the history of Spain. The period of the persecutions followed, with its incessant atrocities»

— Adolf Hitler

About the crisis in Spanish society during the Civil War (and the Carlist Wars), several authors presented adherence to Marxism as a degenerative psychosis, and attempted to offer descriptions of the physiological terrain conducive to this illness. The answer was to be found in the mixed racial inheritance of Spain's long history. Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, a Spanish Nazi sympathizer, thought that Hispanic-Roman-Gothic people (Mediterranean Aryans) struggle against the Judeo-Moors (untermensch) since the Reconquista. So, the Marxist Spanish racial core had to be linked with Judeo-Moorish, and this degeneration of the Spanish race would be the cause of Spanish decadence since the fall of Spanish Empire. Also, the Spanish population, though seemingly unified, was in reality divided into two irreconcilable camps because the assimilation of Jews and Muslims had been fraudulent in ther false conversions to Catholicism.[88]

However, Hitler's opinion of Spaniards changed after that Spanish proved themselves superior to the Italians and French, because they defeated the communists in the Civil War, and mostly after the Blue Division fought very well against the Red Army, demonstrating that the gallantry of the Spanish was a manifestation of it Volkgeist through history (like the Tercio). Although, emphasizing that his Latin character was a real drag.[89]

The SS-Obergruppenführer, Werner Best, and his lieutenant, Manchen, were enchanted by the fascinating "Basquenfrage", because Basques kept their racial purity by prohibiting Jews from entering the Basque country. They were also convinced that Basque tradition based its conception of the people on their blood. As this was the same racial principles as Germans, they took this as a sign that their theories of race were a natural truth. However, there was a "Basque question", because there was not a clear answer about where Basques come from, preoccupying nazi specialists on race if they were Aryans or not. There were theories that they could be descendants of Untermensch like the Phoenicians, Finns, or the Mongols. There were also other mythical theories, influenced by Esoteric Nazism, that they could be descendants of legendary races like Atlanteans or from those who built the Tower of Babel. However, the most popular theory said that they came from the Iberians, so, they had to be Mediterranean Aryans. Some Basques, like Jon Mirande, had sympathy for those theories.[88]

During the mid-1930s, foreign diplomats from Iran and Turkey who visited Germany wanted to know what the Nazis regarded them as, since Iranians in particular spoke an Indo-European language. The Nazis concluded that the Indo-European speakers, including Anatolian languages, Turks and Iranians were Aryans.[90] The Nazis regarded the Turks to be Europeans.[91]

Alfred Rosenberg, in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, spoke about an ancient migration of a "Nordic race", in which he described the ancient Persians as "Aryans with northern blood", who had finally degenerated because of mixing with "lower races". Nazi scholars, of Deutsche Judenforschung discipline, used their linguistic, historical and racial research to propose the thesis of an Aryan race that originated in Northern Europe, and in ancient times spread over the globe, founding ancient civilisations, like the Persian Empire (which had been a "world power"—"an Aryan power"), but eventually intermingled and mixed with native races, it degenerated and fell by "denordification" (Entnordnung). German orientalists and historians during the Nazi era, like Heinrich Schaeder, Heinrich Lüders, Helmut Berve, Fritz Schachermeyr, Walther Wüst, and Wilhelm Weber, adopted the racial thesis of a northern migration to Asia, believing that northern European "Aryans" once colonized the Middle East and Inner Asia to defend their Nordic homeland against Asiatic hordes. Even the ancient wars between Greeks and Persians in this Nazi historiography were relativised as 'quarrels among brother people'.[7] Even some Nazi racial scientists, like Gerhard Heberer, referred to the idea of an ancient Indo-Germanic "Aryan" race in central Germany who start a migration.

"Just like the Iranians laid out the historical foundations in the Middle East, the Germans formed the structure of Europe in the Middle Ages"

— Heinrich Schaeder

Hitler meeting Iranian ambassador Mussa Nuri Esfandiari

Beginning in 1933, Nazi leadership made efforts to increase their influence in Iran, and they financed and managed a racist journal, Iran-e Bastan, co-edited by a pro-Nazi Iranian, Abdulrahman Saif Azad. This and other chauvinistic publications in the 1930s were popular among Iranian elites; they "highlighted the past and the pre-Islamic glories of the Persian nation and blamed the supposedly 'savage Arabs and Turks' for the backwardness of Iran."[92] In Iran:

The Nazis found a favorable climate amongst the Iranian elite to spread fascistic and racist propaganda. The Nazi propaganda machine advocated the (supposedly) common Aryan ancestry of "the two Nations." In order to further cultivate racist tendencies, in 1936 the Reich Cabinet issued a special decree exempting Iranians from the restrictions of the Nuremberg Racial Laws on the grounds that they were 'pure-blooded' Aryans ... In various pro-Nazi publications, lectures, speeches, and ceremonies, parallels were drawn among Reza Shah, Hitler, and Mussolini to emphasize the charismatic resemblance among these leaders. [92]

Nazi ideology was most common among Persian officials, elites, and intellectuals, but "even some members of non-Persian groups were eager to identify themselves with the Nazis" and a supposed Aryan race.[92] On 1934, the Nazis celebrated the Ferdowsi millennial celebration in Berlin, in which the Nazi government declared that the German and Persian people share membership in a common Indo-Germanic race. Hitler declared Iran to be an "Aryan state"; the changing of Persia's international name to Iran in 1935 was done by the Shah at the suggestion of the German ambassador to Iran as an act of "Aryan solidarity".[90] Also, Hitler personally promised that if he defeated the Soviet Union, he would return all of the Persian land taken by Russians during the Russo-Persian Wars. Even in 1939, Germany provided Iran with the so-called German Scientific Library. The library contained over 7,500 books selected "to convince Iranian readers... of the kinship between the National Socialist Reich and the Aryan culture of Iran".[93]

In 1936, the Nazi Office of Racial Politics, in response to a question from the German Foreign Ministry, classified non-Jewish Turks as Europeans, but "left unanswered the question of how to think about the obviously non-European Arabs, Persians, and Muslims."[94] Later that year, ahead of the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, the Nazis responded to questions from the Egyptians by saying that the Nuremberg racial laws did not apply to them, and after the Iranian ambassador to Berlin "assured German officials that 'there was no doubt that the Iranian, as an Aryan,' was 'racially kindred (artverwandt) with the Germans," the German Foreign Ministry "assured the Iranian Embassy in Berlin that the correct distinction between was not between "Aryans and non-Aryans" but rather between "persons of German and related blood on one hand and Jews as well as racially alien on the other."[94] Iranians were classified as "pure-blooded Aryans" and thus were excluded from the Nuremberg Laws.[92]

During the Nazi regime, India was still ruled by the British Raj. Because of this, Hitler's views on Indians were generally disparaging, and his plans for the region were heavily influenced by his racial views, especially related to India's subdued colonized status.[95] Hitler was an Anglophile and considered the Indian independence movement was carried out by the "lower Indian race against the superior English Nordic race", and referred to participants in the movement as "Asiatic jugglers".[96]

Alfred Rosenberg claimed that although Vedic culture was Aryan in origin, especially since the word "Aryan", and related expressions like "Arya", appeared in ancient Indian inscriptions and texts, any Nordic blood in India had long since dissipated due to racial miscegenation.[95] Even Gunther proposed that Indian cultural sphere was produced by Nordic immigrants which in his view were tall and fair and brought with them the elite of ancient India, the art of building in wood, and body-burning, and had a comparatively highly developed social system that was placed in the caste system (as by having the lightest skin that the highest caste Hindus are still recognized, being a sign of the dislike towards the Hither Asiatic race that is to-day fairly clearly to be seen there). Gunther believed that there were many parallels between Hindu Vedas and Zoroastrian Avesta with the Germanic paganism and Nordic mythology that could only be explained by a North European origin, specially because Hindus and Romans alike set the abode of the gods in the north.[7] Only infiltration by the native non-Indo-European peoples (which were mostly dark skinned and shorter) had led to its decline of Indo-Aryan peoples and the fall of the Indian civilization.[59] Similarly, Heinrich Lüders made the case for the "Aryan" migration, focusing mostly on India.

However, the appearance of Buddha and of Buddhism (which, in its essence, had lost all Nordic inspiration), that first wholly and irretrievably broke down the racial discipline and forethought of the "wonderful gifted people" of Indo-Aryan, being a religion spread mainly by non-Nordic missionaries. Buddhism sapped the courageous soul of the early Hindu wisdom, and in its stead preached the spirit of resignation. For the religious aspects of Nazism, Buddhism shows no really constructive thought that only led to the abnegation of the will to beget life with its hostility to the individual rooting himself at all within his people (tore him out of his historical framework), distorting and put a different value on what Brahminism had created in early Hindu times, being against that harmony with all life because its demand for the renunciation of the sexual life, through its discouragement of marriage and all property (helping in the disappearance of Nordic blood). Also, the Indian climate played a very important part in the disappearing of this Aryan elite, as they were not adapted to a tropical region and having a deep effect in a negatively selective direction on the Nordic element in the people. However, the invasion of Indo-Scythian tribes by the Greeks (after Alexander the Great's Indian campaign) seemed to have brought a Nordic revival after establishing Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and Indo-Greek Kingdom. But, racial mixture were bound to lead to the decay of the Hindu culture. With the rise of the Mongol dominion (which lasted from the eighth century until 1536), the victory of the Asiatic racial elements in India was complete, and the Hindu mind ever drifting farther and farther away from the old Aryans, being proved.[59]

In 1935, a half-Turkish half-German man named "Johannes Ruppert" was forced to leave the Hitler Youth, due to the belief that as the son of a Turkish man he was not a full Aryan as required by the Reich Citizenship Law.[97] Ruppert sought assistance from the Turkish Embassy in Berlin to clarify how “the Aryan question” affected his case. The Turkish Embassy brought the matter to the attention of the German Foreign Ministry. In a note of December 20, 1935, a Foreign Ministry official wrote that "opening up the Aryan question in relation to Turkey is extraordinarily undesirable as well as dangerous for our relations with Turkey".[97] However, in January 1936, Foreign Ministry wrote a memo to the Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy, writing that it was "essential that determination of whether the Turks are Aryan be decided as soon as possible", so that the Foreign Ministry could give "a satisfactory answer" to the Turkish Embassy’s repeated questions about the issue, since there had been individual cases, that is, others in addition to Ruppert, in which "German citizens with Turkish mixed-blood had run into difficulties with the state and the [Nazi] Party due to their origins".[97] The classification of Turks as "non-Aryans", in keeping with Nazi racial theories, led to foreign policy complications, because the Nazis considered the Turkish government as a potential ally. Consequently, the racial theories had to be "modified" to some degree in accordance with foreign policy requirements.[98] In April 30, 1936 Nazi Office for Racial Policy released a circular which stated that the Turks were "Europeans" while explaining that Turkish citizens of Jewish background would still be considered Jews and Turks of "colored origin" would be considered non-European.[97][99] Some Turkish and international newspapers, such as the Swiss Le Temps and the Turkish Republique, reported at the time that the Turks had been recognized as an "Aryan nation" and that they were exempt from the Nuremberg laws.[100][101] Turkish newspaper Akşam published an article with the headline "The Turks are Aryans!".[91] Such reports were picked up by other international newspapers, as well as by some modern scholarship, however the claim that that the Turks had been recognized as an "Aryan nation" and that they were exempt from the Nuremberg laws was a hoax.[100][101] Nazi officials themselves disputed these reports by publishing a press release which stated that they were unfounded and that this should have been immediately obvious given the fact that the Nuremberg laws do not refer to the term "Aryan" at all.[101] The Nazis classified Turks as "European" and not as "Aryans" and the decision had no practical consequences.[100] In addition, this decision was designed to appease Turkey from a foreign policy standpoint, although, from a racial standpoint, Nazi officials did not believe that the Turks were neither European nor Aryan.[97]

In May 1942, a writer in the official journal of the Nazi Office for Racial Policy, Neues Volk, replied to a father's question caused by his daughter's relationship with a Turkish man, about whether racial differences between Germans and Turks meant that a marriage should not take place.[97][102] The reply read:[97]

A marriage or similar connection between your daughter with a Turk is out of the question. A Near Eastern blood element [Bluteinschlag] predominates among the Turks, among whom, alongside Oriental and Western racial components, mongoloid racial elements also enter. The Near Eastern and Oriental races are alien [artfremde] races. The same is true of the mongoloid [Mongolide] races.Moreover, in such cases, even when such racial considerations are not present, marriages of German young women with foreigners are not desirable. If your daughter does not want to listen to you, she faces the danger of being placed in protective custody. We emphatically point out to you and to your daughter the serious consequences of this behavior, one that obviously does not possess the slightest feeling for the honor of the Volk [nicht das geringste völkische Ehregefühl besitzt].[103]

Although the Nazi leadership agreed with the content of the reply, they criticized the journal for publishing it, because, in a foreign policy point of view, it was really clumsy ("denkbar ungeschickt") to publish before defeating the British in Middle East.[97][102] For example, Franz von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, informed the German Foreign Ministry that the publication of this text "has serious foreign policy considerations". He noted that such statements could aid "our Anglo-Saxon opponents" in their "propaganda against us" and asked the Office of Racial Politics not to publish such things in the future.[97] On May 16, 1942, Franz Rademacher, director of the Office of Jewish Affairs in the German Foreign Ministry, wrote to Walter Gross, the founder and editor of the magazine, that he "had no objection to the content of the information from a racial-political viewpoint but that it was "from a foreign policy standpoint, really clumsy” and "a political blunder" that would have "embarrassing and awkward foreign policy implications".[97] Nazi officials sought to prevent miscegenation between Turks and Germans and, if necessary, sought to imprison or deport the "offending" Turkish man.[97]

Hitler remarked about the Georgians during one of his table talks:

The Georgians are a Caucasian tribe that has nothing to do with the Turkish [i.e Turkic] peoples. I regard only the Muslims as safe. All the others are considered unsafe... For the time being, I regard the building up of these pure Caucasian nations as quite risky, whereas I don't see a danger in building up a unit consisting only of Muslims... Georgians are not a Turkish people; rather a typical Caucasian tribe, probably even with some Nordic blood in them.[104]

Compared to other Soviet nationalities, Georgians were given preferential treatment and there was even a Georgian Legion. Hitler also theorized that Joseph Stalin's Georgian ethnicity, as well as the fact that the Georgian SSR was nominally autonomous, would eventually draw the Georgians closer to the USSR than to Germany. Several Georgian scholars such as Alexander Nikuradze and Michael Achmeteli served as advisors for Nazis such as Alfred Rosenberg.[105][106][104]

On 24 August 1939, during the meeting of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler asked his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann to photograph Georgian-born Soviet leader Stalin's earlobes to determine whether or not he was an "Aryan" or a "Jew". Hitler concluded that he was an "Aryan".[107] Himmler regarded Stalin as being descended from lost "Nordic-Germanic-Aryan blood".[108]

Armenians were considered an Aryan people, both by the Nazi state and Alfred Rosenberg's racial theory. However, Adolf Hitler personally did not trust them.[109] Due to this, the Armenian Legion was mainly stationed in the Netherlands.[110] Speaking about military units from Soviet peoples, Hitler said: "I don't know about these Georgians. They do not belong to the Turkic peoples...I consider only the Muslims to be reliable...All others I deem unreliable. For the time being I consider the formation of these battalions of purely Caucasian peoples very risky, while I don't see any danger in the establishment of purely Muslim units...In spite of all declarations from Rosenberg and the military, I don't trust the Armenians either."[109]

Alfred Rosenberg declared that the Armenians were Indo-European, or Aryans, and thus they were immediately subject to conscription. According to Versteeg, however, "Although Armenians officially were considered 'Aryans', the notion of them being 'Levantine traders', similar to the Jews, was deep-seated in Nazi circles, and racial 'purists' along with Hitler himself were prone to look upon the Armenians as 'non-Aryans.'"[109]

Albert Speer, in his best-selling memoir Inside the Third Reich, mentions many famous anecdotes told about Adolf Hitler's views on Islam and Arabs.[111] Hitler was transcribed as saying: "Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world."[112] Nazis intellectuals thought that the Germans would have become heirs "of a religion that believes in spreading the faith by means of the sword and subjecting all nations to this faith" and that this doctrine suited well with the German temperament (tracked from Germanic paganism), and better than the passivity of the Catholicism who dominated the Holy Roman Empire (Nazis viewed Catholicism as a meekness and weakness religion for peasants, and a Jewish ideological plague in equal danger like Marxism or Masonic liberalism, who were making a common cause against Nazi racial thought), concluying that was a misfortune to be in the wrong religion and that Arabs had developed a religion for master races.[113] Also, Nazis admired the legacy of Al-Andalus in Spain, considering it as the most glorious period of Spanish history.[86]

About the possibility that Germans, who had converted to Islam, wanted to become or remain members of the Nazi Party, Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Reichskanzlei, sent Hitler's decision:[102]

"In response to questions, the Führer had decided that Germans who are believers in Islam can remain members of NSDAP. Belief is a personal matter of conscience. Muslims can be members of the NSDAP just as can members of the Christian confessions."

— Hitler's decision regarding "Adherence of Party Members to Islam" to Reichsleiter, Gauleiter and Verbändeführer

In 1936, in response to questions from the Turkish, Persian, and Arab diplomats in Berlin, officials in the Foreign Ministry, the Nazi Party's Rassenpolitisches Amt, and the Propaganda Ministry discussed the matter of whether Arab were Aryans. Reports from "Jewish-French newspapers" (according to Eberhard von Stohrer, German ambassador in Cairo) saying that the German race legislation would have classified Egyptians (Arabs), Iranians, and Turks as non-Aryans caused considerable controversy in Muslim world; even the chairman of Egypt's Olympic Committee expressed "great disquiet and concern" in a telegram to German officials organizing the Berlin Olympic committee. Walter Gross wrote to the Foreign Ministry to assure it that neither he nor anyone else in the Rassenpolitisches Amt had made such claims (of declare Egyptians and Arabs as non-Aryans) to the press. The German government reassured that the Nuremberg Laws do not, in fact, label Arabs as non-Aryans. Also, the German government explained that German law had no objections to marriages between Arabs, on the one hand, and Germans, on the other, treating those marriages like a German marriage with Europeans. These confused and utilitarian discussions about the meaning of blood and race at the 1936 Summer Olympics offered a legal and theoretical basis for reconciling German racial laws with closely related peoples of interest such as non-Jewish Semites (Arabs and Muslims) before and during the World War II.[102]

However, love affairs, sexual relations and marriages between Arab men and German women (with the intention of procreating mixed-race children) in Nazi Germany aroused the hostile attention of the Rassenpolitisches Amt, whose officials sought to prevent such bonds and, if necessary to imprison or deport the "offending" Arab and Muslim man.[102] Hitler had told his military commanders in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II:[114][115]

"We will continue to sow riots in the Far East, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. Our logic is the logic of gentlemen. And we see in such towns, at best, polished apes, who want to taste the whip.

Then, in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, during Anglo-Iraqi War, Amin al-Husseini submitted to the Nazi German government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clause about their thoughts of the Arabs as having a volkisch superior to the Jews, even if both were Semitic.[116]

Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

Hitler, recalling Husseini, remarked that he "has more than one Aryan among his ancestors and one who may be descended from the best Roman stock."[117] On October 23, 1942, Nazi Germany's Arabic language station, "Berlin in Arabic," sent the following broadcast to Egypt, in which presented Gross's reply to "H.E. [His Excellency] The Prime Minister of Iraq", after Raschid Ali al-Gaylani solicit an answer from an official source regarding the German consideration of the Arab race.[102]

"In answer to your Excellency's letter of 17th October 1942, I have the honor to give you the racial theory regarding the Arab caste. The racial policy has been adopted by Germany to safeguard the German people against the Jews who, biologically, are different from the Middle East races. Accordingly, Europe has been opposing the Jews for decades. The Germans do not fight the Jews because they are Semitic or because they come from the East, but for their character, egoism and their hostility to society...While Germany forbids the entrance of the Jews into her territory, she welcomes all Arabs of Semitic origin and cares for them. The attitude of the Germans for the Arabs is that of respect. Not a single official German source ever stated that the Arabs originated from a lower caste. On the contrary, the racial theory of National Socialism considers the Arabs of a very high caste. The oppression of the Arabs of Palestine is being followed in Germany with great interest and Germany confirms [i.e. supports, JH] the demands of the Arabs."

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany's propaganda efforts fell were receptive in a minority of Arab and Islamic political and intellectual elites, but was not great enough to tip the scales of the war in North Africa in 1942. If axis powers would have won the campaign, that minority would likely have been collaborators in a German occupation of Egypt and perhaps Palestine.[102][118]

At times a racial fanatic from the Rassenpolitisches Amt made a public matter the crusade against miscegenation between Germans and Arabs (as they were Semites). If and when that happened, it caused problems for German diplomats and soldiers in his propaganda campaigns to convince Arabs and Muslims that Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers were their friends and natural allies against international communism, British colonialism and the "judenfrage". Demanding their officers to have discretion until they won the war.[102] This being the case, the Foreign Office Archives indicate that, at the same time as Nazi radio broadcasts and pamphlets were being distributed by the North African corps proclaiming Germany's sympathy and support for Arab independence and freedom, the Nazi officials at the Rassenpolitisches Amt and various university officials were determined to prevent "foreign" (artfremder) students from Arab countries from continuing personal relationships with German women by withdrawing their permission to study at German universities. Fritz Grobba, the official in the Foreign Ministry who was responsible for liaison with the former Iraqi politician, Raschid Ali al-Gailani (pro-Axis), agreed that expelling Arab students during the war was also out of the question. Deportation would have to be to a neutral country where the students "would fall into the hands of hostile intelligence services".[102] Nazi propaganda was a pragmatic case, namely that the regime's racial hatred was limited to that of the Jews, while non-Jewish Semites, like Arabs in general, were simply different but not for that reason necessarily inferior.

As early as World War 1, Hitler had viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans and for this reason detested German alliance with Austria-Hungary. In his works such as the Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch, Hitler accused the Slavs of lacking any capability to form a working government. In addition, Hitler believed that Slavs like Poles didn't deserve education. With the formation of Soviet Union, Hitler's hostilities against Russia increased drastically, viewing the country as a base for a global Jewish conspiracy. As early as 1934, Joseph Stalin had suspected Nazi Germany of organizing a racial war against Slavic populations and informed this publicly during the 17th Communist Party Congress. Hitler's beliefs in the racial inferiority of Russians personally convinced him that German invasion of Soviet Union will succeed. During the execution of General Plan Ost, Nazis implemented numerous discriminatory laws against Slavic populations. Furthermore, Hitler issued numerous directives banning Slavs from access to education, healthcare and hygiene.[119]

While anti-Slavism had precedent in German society before Hitler's rule, Nazi racism against Slavs was also based on the doctrines of scientific racism.[121] Historian John Connelly argues that the Nazi policies carried out against the Slavs during World War II cannot be fully explained by the racist theories endorsed by the Nazis because of the contradictions and opportunism that occurred during the war.[122]

Prior to the outbreak of the war in 1939, there was only a vague notion of Slavs as an inferior group in the minds of the leading Nazis.[31] How inferior would be determined later on during the war.[31] The Nazis thought that Eastern Europe, namely the areas whose inhabitants speak Slavic languages, was the most racially inferior part of Europe, and very distinct from the rest of Europe.[123][124][125] In addition to deeming them inferior, Nazis also viewed Slavs as the agents of Judeo-Bolshevism.[126] In a 1941 article titled "Zur Psychologie des Ostraumes" ("On the psychology of the Eastern Realm") published in Zeitschrift für Geopolitik journal, Nazi psychologist Gustav Richard Heyer characterized Slavs as "natural slaves" predisposed to servitude, inhabiting Eastern Europe in a primitive state akin to wildlife. Heyer further depicted Germans as a "Prometheus"-like figure for Eastern Europe.[127]

Günther in his book The Racial Science of Europe wrote that the Slavs were originally Nordic but over the centuries had mixed with other races.[128] In The Racial Elements of European History he wrote: "The east of Europe shows a gradual transition of the racial mixtures of Central Europe into predominantly East Baltic and Inner Asiatic regions... Owing to the likeness between East Baltic and Inner Asiatic bodily characters it will often be hard to fix a sharp boundary between these two races".[129] He noted that the Nordic race was prominently found along the Vistula, the Neva, the Dwina and in southern Volhynia, but the further south and east, the East Baltic race became more common and finally in some regions there was "a strong Inner Asiatic admixture". In the Russian-speaking regions he estimated were between at 25 per cent and 30 per cent Nordic. In the Polish regions there was an increase in the East Baltic race, Alpine race, and Inner Asiatic the further east.[129]

Günther, who greatly influenced Hitler and Nazi ideology, studied and wrote about the supposed racial origins of the Slavs. He concluded that Slavs were originally Nordic, but after mixing with other races over the centuries they eventually came to be predominantly of the East Baltic race.[129] However, some Poles and other Slavs were considered to have enough Nordic admixture to be Germanized, because they were supposedly descended from the Nordic ruling class of the early Slavs. He wrote that the further East the more the "Inner Asiatic" racial ancestry was prominent.[129][130] He wrote that of the Poles and other Slavs who were predominantly of the East Baltic race that they were mentally slow, dirty and incapable of long term planning.[131] He also claimed that the East Baltic race was the reason why some German districts had "a heavy proportion of crime".[132]

Himmler in the 1920s was a member of the anti-Slavic Artaman League and wrote:

Increase of our peasant population is the only effective defense against the influx of the Slav working-class masses from the East. As six hundred years ago, the German peasant's destiny must be to preserve and increase the German people's patrimony in their holy mother earth battle against the Slav race.[133]

Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote that Germany's Lebensraum (living space) was going to be in Eastern Europe:

And so, we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre–War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last, we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.[134]

Hitler in his unpublished second book Zweites Buch wrote that the Nazi Party's foreign policy was going to be based on securing Lebensraum for the German people:

The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk.[135]

In the same book, he wrote that the peoples in the annexed territories would not be Germanized:

The völkisch State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must, without further ado, remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades.[136]

To justify their acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for Germans, the Nazis later classified Slavs as a racially inferior "Asiatic-Bolshevik" horde.[137]

During the war, the Gestapo persecuted sexual relations between Germans and the peoples of Eastern Europe because of the "risk for the racial integrity of the German nation".[138]

Himmler in a secret memorandum titled Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East commented about the forceful Germanisation of children of German blood in Eastern Europe:

The parents of such children of good blood will be given the choice to either give away their child; they will then probably produce no more children so that the danger of this subhuman people of the East [Untermenschenvolk des Ostens] obtaining class of leaders which, since it would be equal to us, would also be dangerous for us, will disappear—or else the parents pledge themselves to go to Germany and to become loyal citizens there. The love toward their child, whose future and education depends on the loyalty of the parents, will be a strong weapon in dealing with them.[139]

In the same memorandum, Himmler remarked that the future of the non-German population in the East would be:

No higher school than the four-grade elementary school. The sole goal of this school is to be-- Simply arithmetic up to 500 at the most; writing of one's name; the doctrine that it is a divine law to obey the Germans and to be honest, industrious, and good. I don't think that reading is necessary.[139]

Himmler classified Slavs as "bestial untermenschen" and regarded Jews as the "decisive leader of the untermenschen".[140] In 1941, Himmler advocated that in the annexed territories a bulwark "be created against the Slav nations through the settlement of German farmers and farmers of German descent".[141] Himmler declared that the Germanisation of Eastern Europe would be fully completed when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood".[142]

Himmler in his Posen speeches in 1943 said:

One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men: We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What other nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. [...] The Slav is never able to build anything himself. In the long run, he's not capable of it. I'll come back to this later. With the exception of a few phenomena produced by Asia every couple of centuries, through that mixture of two heredities which may be fortunate for Asia but is unfortunate for us Europeans – with the exception, therefore, of an Attila, a Ghenghis Khan, a Tamerlaine, a Lenin, a Stalin – the mixed race of the Slavs is based on a sub-race with a few drops of blood of our blood, blood of a leading race; the Slav is unable to control himself and create order. He is able to argue, able to debate, able to disintegrate, able to offer resistance against every authority and to revolt. But these human shoddy goods are just as incapable of maintaining order today as they were 700 or 800 years ago, when they called in the Varangians, when they called in the Ruriks.[143]

Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on 14 December 1938 that the Bulgarians were a "courageous people and also our friends".[144] During the war, Hitler remarked "to label the Bulgarians as Slavs is pure nonsense; originally they were Turkomans".[145]

Hitler remarked about the Croats during a table talk:

If the Croats were part of the Reich, we'd have them serving as faithful auxiliaries of the German Fuehrer, to police our marches. Whatever happens, one shouldn't treat them as Italy is doing at present. The Croats are a proud people. They should be bound directly to the Fuehrer by an oath of loyalty. Like that, one could rely upon them absolutely. When I have Kvaternik standing in front of me, I behold the very type of the Croat as I've always known him, unshakeable in his friendships, a man whose oath is eternally binding. The Croats are very keen on not being regarded as Slavs. According to them, they're descended from the Goths. The fact that they speak a Slav language is only an accident, they say.[146]

The Croatian fascist Ustaše government rejected the idea that the Croats were descended from Slavic tribes and endorsed to the idea that they were descended from Germanic Gothic tribes.[147] On 30 April 1941, the government passed three racial laws: the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People" and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship".[148]

The romantic notions that Himmler had about the Bosniaks were probably significant in the genesis of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) and 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama (2nd Croatian).[149] Nonetheless, a memorandum dated 1 November 1942 also indicates that leading Muslim autonomists had already suggested the creation of a volunteer Waffen-SS unit under German command.[150] Himmler was personally fascinated by the Islamic faith and believed that Islam created fearless soldiers.[151] He found their ferocity preferable to the gentility of Christians and believed their martial qualities should be further developed and put to use.[149] He thought that Muslim men would make perfect SS soldiers as Islam "promises them Heaven if they fight and are killed in action."[152]

After the Nazis' proclamation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 16 March 1939, Karl Frank defined a 'German' as:

Whoever professes himself to be a member of the German nation is a member of the German nation, provided that this profession is confirmed by certain facts, such as language, upbringing, culture, etc. Persons of alien blood, particularly Jews, are never Germans. . . . Because professing to be a member of the German nation is of vital significance, even someone who is partly or completely of another race—Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, or Polish, for example—can be considered a German. Any more precise elaboration of the term "German national" is not possible given current relationships.[153]

The Nazis aimed to Germanize the Bohemian and Moravian areas. The issue of sexual relations and marriages between Czechs and Germans was problematic.[154] The Nazis did not prohibit marriages between Czechs and Germans and no law prohibited Jews from marrying Czechs.[154] German women who married Czech men lost their Reich citizenship whereas Czech women who married German men were allowed to become part of the German Volk.[154]

Although Hitler considered Czechs to be of Mongolian origin, in accordance with the idea of completely Germanising the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1940 he agreed with racial anthropologists that up to 50% of Czechs contained enough Nordic blood that they could be Germanized, while the "Mongoloid types" and the Czech intelligentsia were not to be Germanized and were to be "deprived of their power, eliminated, and shipped out of the country by all sorts of methods".[155][156][157]

In 1941 Hitler praised the "hard work and inventiveness of the Czechs" to his Propaganda Minister Goebbels and a year later he remarked that the Czechs were "industrious and intelligent workers".[31][158]

Poster (in German and Polish): Obligations of Polish Workers in Germany which included the death penalty for sexual relations with a German

Hitler thought of Poles as a foreign race and in Mein Kampf he criticised earlier attempts to Germanise ethnic Poles because he argued that the racial inferiority of the Poles would weaken the German nation.[159]

Günther regarded Northern Poland as being predominantly Nordic and that the Nordic race was to be found amongst the upper classes.[160]

An influential figure among German racist theorists was Otto Reche, who became director of the Institute for Racial and Ethnic Sciences in Lipsk and advocated the genocide of the Polish nation. In this position he wrote that ethnic Poles were "an unfortunate mixture" consisting among others of Slavs, Balts and Mongolians, and that they should be eliminated to avoid possible mixing with the German race.[161] When Germany invaded Poland he wrote "We need Raum (space), but no Polish lice on our fur".[162]

After the invasion of Poland, Nazi propaganda began to depict Poles as subhumans. On 24 October 1939, after a meeting in the Propaganda Ministry, the Directive No.1306 of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Ministry was issued and stated: "It must be made clear even to the German milkmaid that Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and Gypsies are on the same inferior level... This should be brought home as a leitmotiv, and from time to time, in the form of existing concepts such as 'Polish economy', 'Polish ruin' and so on, until everyone in Germany sees every Pole, whether farm worker or intellectual, as vermin."[163] Goebbels and Hitler believed that Asia began in Poland.[164]

Goebbels in his diary on 10 October 1939 wrote what Hitler thought of the Poles:

The Führer's verdict on the Poles is damning. More like animals than human beings, completely primitive, stupid, and amorphous. And a ruling class that is an unsatisfactory result of a mingling between the lower orders and an Aryan master race. The Poles' dirtiness is unimaginable. Their capacity for intelligent judgment is absolutely nil.[165]

In December 1939, Himmler declared that racial assessments were essential to avoid "mongrel types from emerging in the territories that are to be newly settled. I want to create a blond province."[166]

The Polish decrees that were about forced Polish workers working in Germany and were enacted on 8 May 1940 stated that any Polish man or woman for having sexual intercourse with a German man or woman.[167] Nazi propaganda issued leaflets for farmhouses where Polish workers resided and informed Germans:

Maintain the purity of German blood! That applies to both men and women! Just as it is considered the greatest disgrace to become involved with a Jew, any German engaging in intimate relations with a Polish male or female is guilty of sinful behavior. Despise the bestial urges of this race! Be racially conscious and protect your children. Otherwise you will forfeit your greatest asset: your honor![168]

German women who had sexual intercourse with Polish workers had their heads shaved and were then forced to have a placard around her neck detailing her crime and paraded around the place where she lived.[169] After 1940, Poles were regularly hanged without trials for accusations of sexual intercourse with German women.[170]

During the war Hitler stated that Germans should not mix with Poles in order to prevent any "Germanic blood" being transmitted to the Polish ruling class.[171]

The Germanization of Poles in Nazi-occupied Poland was troublesome since different Nazis had different beliefs about who could be Germanized. Although Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Danzig-West Prussia Albert Forster advocated for the extermination of Poles, he was more than happy to accept Poles who claimed to have "German blood" to be Germans.[172] Attempting to find out if those Poles were of German ancestry was almost an impossibility and Poles who were interviewed by Nazi Party workers were taken at face value without requiring any documents to prove their claims.[173] However, this policy was at odds with Himmler and the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of the German-occupied territory of Wartheland Arthur Greiser. Himmler and Greiser both advocated for an ethnic cleansing policy of the Poles in the Wartheland so the territory could be resettled by Germans.[174] Hitler left each Gauleiter to Germanise his own territory to how he saw fit with "no questions asked".[175] Under the classifications set out by the Deutsche Volksliste (German Peoples' List), approximately two-thirds of the Polish population in Forster's occupation were classified as Germans.[176]

Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote that, "The organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race".[177]

Influenced by the Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia that were issued by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) on 19 May 1941, in a directive sent out to the troops under his command, General Erich Hoepner of the Panzer Group 4 stated:

The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence. It is the old battle of the Germanic against the Slavic people, of the defence of European culture against Muscovite-Asiatic inundation and of the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. The objective of this battle must be the demolition of present-day Russia and must therefore be conducted with unprecedented severity. Every military action must be guided in planning and execution by an iron resolution to exterminate the enemy remorselessly and totally. In particular, no adherents of the contemporary Russian Bolshevik system are to be spared.[178]

After the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Nazis aimed to exterminate the peoples of the Soviet Union.[179] An order by Hitler ordered that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute all Soviet functionaries who were "less valuable Asiatics, Gypsies and Jews".[180] Nazi propaganda depicted the war against the Soviet Union as a racial war between Germans and the Jewish, Romani and Slavic sub-humans.[181] Similarly, it depicted Russians as "Asiatic hordes",[182] "Mongol storm",[183] and "subhumans".[184]

Himmler gave a speech in Stettin to Waffen SS soldiers of the Eastern Front Battle Group "Nord" and said that the war was a battle of "ideologies and struggle races". He argued that it was between Nazism that was based on "the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood" against "the 180 millionth people, a mixture of races and peoples, whose names are unpronounceable" which soldiers should "shoot without pity or mercy" and reminded the soldiers who were fighting in the war that they were fighting against "the same subhumans, against the same inferior races" that had appeared under different names 1,000 years ago, but reminded them that they were now called "Russian under the political banner of Bolshevism".[185]

Goebbels wrote an essay on 19 July 1942 titled "The So-Called Russian Soul" in which he argued that the Russians' stubborn manner was down to their national character being "animalistic".[186]

Initially after the invasion of the Soviet Union some Ukrainians viewed the German soldiers as "liberators" from the Soviets and some Nazis toyed with the idea of setting up an independent Ukrainian state, but those views were short-lived after the German army began to murder Ukrainians en masse. Hitler and other leading Nazis forbade any Ukrainian independence.[187] The Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine Erich Koch publicly declared the Ukrainians to be racially inferior and forbade subordinates from having any social contact with Ukrainians.[187] Koch also publicly referred to the Ukrainians as "niggers".[188]

Hitler remarked during the war that the Ukrainians were "every bit as idle, disorganized, and nihilistically Asiatic as the Greater Russians".[189] He also speculated that blue-eyed Ukrainians were descended from ancient German tribes.[158]

Koch on 5 March 1943 said:

We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here.[190]

In 1943, Himmler foresaw the publication of a pamphlet which showed photographs illustrating the alleged racial superiority of the Germans and the racial inferiority of the Ukrainians.[191]

An Austrian postcard in 1919 endorsing the Stab-in-the-back myth by showing a caricatured Jew stabbing a personified German Army soldier in the back with a dagger

A fragment of the exposition Der Ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew"), which demonstrates "typical" anatomical traits of the Jews

Hitler shifted the blame for Germany's loss in the First World War upon the "enemies from within". In the face of economic hardship as triggered by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), Jews who resided in Germany were blamed for sabotaging the country. The Nazis, therefore, classified them as the most inferior race and used derogatory terms such as Untermensch (sub-human) and Schwein (pig). Nazi propaganda endorsed the anti-Semitic Stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory which claimed that the Germans did not lose the First World War, but instead were betrayed by German citizens, especially Jews.

On 24 February 1920, Hitler announced the 25-point Program of the Nazi Party. Point 4 stated, "None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed may be. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."

In his works, for instance, in Rassenkunde des jüdischen Volkes ("Ethnology of the Jewish people"), Günther wrote that Jews predominantly belonged to the "Near Eastern race" (often known as the "Armenoid race").[192] He thought that Jews had become so racially mixed that they could possibly be regarded as a "race of the second-order".[192] He described Ashkenazi Jews as being a mixture of Near Easterners, Orientals, East Baltic peoples, Inner-Asians, Nordic peoples, Hamites and Negroes, and he described Sephardi Jews as being a mixture of Orientals, Near Easterners, Mediterranean peoples, Hamites, Nordic peoples, and Negroes. He also believed that Jews had physical characteristics which were different from the physical characteristics of Europeans.[193] After concluding the racial origins of Jews, Günther began to develop theories about why Jews were so distinguishable as a people and different to European peoples; he wrote that it was because of the way they looked, spoke, gestured and smelled.[194]

In 1934, the Nazis published a pamphlet titled "Why the Aryan Law?" in which they attempted to justify their segregation of non-Jewish Germans from Jewish Germans.[195]

In 1935, the Nazis announced the passage of the Nuremberg Laws which forbade sexual relations and marriages between non-Jewish Germans and Jewish Germans. The laws also stated that Jews were not allowed to employ non-Jewish Germans who were under 45 years old in their households and they also stated that Jews were not allowed to fly the Reich or national flag nor were Jews allowed to display the colors of the Reich.

German anthropologist Eva Justin measuring the skull of a Romani woman

The Nazis believed that the Romani were originally Aryans, but over the centuries due to their nomadic lifestyle they had mixed with non-Aryans and therefore regarded them as an "alien race".[196] Romani were subjected to the Nuremberg Laws and were forbidden from having sexual relations and marriages with people of "German or related blood" and were stripped of their citizenship.

The Nazis established the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit in 1936. It was headed by Robert Ritter and his assistant Eva Justin, this Unit was mandated to conduct an in-depth study of the "Gypsy question (Zigeunerfrage)" and to provide data required for formulating a "Gypsy law".

After extensive fieldwork in the spring of 1936, consisting of interviews and medical examinations to determine the racial classification of the Roma, the Unit decided that most Romani, whom they had concluded were not of "pure Gypsy blood", posed a danger to German racial purity and should be deported or eliminated. No decision was made regarding the remainder (about 10 percent of the total Romani population of Europe), primarily Sinti and Lalleri tribes living in Germany. Several suggestions were made. Himmler suggested deporting the Romani to a remote reservation, as had been done by the United States for its Native Americans, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered. According to him:

The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation.[197]

Although the law Himmler wanted never was enacted, in 1938 he advised that to solve the "Gypsy question" it could be done "on the basis of race".[198]

Nazi propaganda showing the difference between Aryan Germans and non-Aryan black people

In Mein Kampf, Hitler described the children who resulted from relationships between European women and French occupation soldiers of African origin as a contamination of the Aryan race "by Negro blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe."[199] He blamed the Jews for these so-called Rhineland Bastards, writing that "[Jews] were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate."[199] He also implied that this was a plot on the part of the French, saying the population of France was being increasingly "negrified".[199]

The Nazis banned jazz music because they considered it "corrupt Negro music".[200] The Nazis believed that the existence of jazz in Germany was a Jewish plot to dominate Germany and the non-Jewish German people and destroy German culture.[201]

Nazi eugenicist Eugen Fischer, who was also a professor of anthropology and eugenics, thought that Germany's small black population should be sterilised in order to protect the German people. In 1938, at least 400 black children were forcibly sterilised in the Rhineland.

Black people were subjected to discrimination under the Nuremberg Laws and as a result, they were not allowed to be Reich citizens and they were also forbidden from having sexual relations or marriages with people who were of "German or related blood" (Aryans).[202]

Nazi Germany was inspired to develop its Lebensraum doctrine by the American doctrine of manifest destiny, Hitler and Himmler were both admirers of the conquest of the Old West and they tried to imitate it in their plans of Drang nach Osten, likening their projects of Generalplan Ost on the Eastern Front to the American Indian Wars, seeking to reconfigure the demography of Eastern Europe (against the Slavs so it would become favorable to Germanics) in the same way that the US reconfigured the demography of North America (against Native Americans so it could become favorable to Anglo-Saxons), Nazi leaders routinely referred to Eastern Europe as "East Germany" or they referred to it as the "Wild East," and sometimes, they referred to its inhabitants as "Indians."[203][204] In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler discussed U.S. laws and policies and noted that the United States was a racial model for Europe and that it was "the one state" in the world that was creating the kind of racist society that nacionalsocialists wanted, praising the way the "Aryan" US conquered "its own continent" by clearing the "soil" of "natives" to make way for more "racially pure" occupiers and laying the foundation of their economic self-sufficiency and growing global power.[205] Himmler even believed Eastern Europe "could be a paradise, a California of Europe"[206] and Nazi plans called for the removal of tens of millions of German Jews and Poles to Eastern "reservations", that were the Nazi ghettos.[207] According to Holocaust historian, Timothy Snyder, the US was "the exemplary land empire" on which the Nazis based their colonizing vision of Eastern Europe. Also, Hitler spoke of his intention to similarly "Germanize" the east "by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives [slavs] as Redskins."[208] For example, in a 1928 speech, Hitler stated that Americans had "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage...".[209] Also, the anti-miscegenation spirit of US Indian law were an inspiration to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws,[210] specially in Heinrich Rieger, Roland Freisler, Herbert Kier, and Johann von Leers.[205][211] The Nazis frequently referred to "the bloody conquest of the American West [as] the historical warrant [they] needed to justify the clearance of the Slav population."[212] This analogy was used by the Nazis to compare their conquest to the conquest of the Wild West, and it informed their strategies for handling Jews, Polish, Russians, Slavs, and other peoples who were viewed as inferior and, thus, comparable to American Indians as untersmenchen.[205]

However and paradoxically, Nazis pragmatically utilized popular tropes of Indian imagery (Indianthusiasm) to portray Germans as the Indians of Europe, in a sense of asserting the image of Germans as an original indigenous people who were distinct from other Europeans, and to present National Socialism as the political and spiritual manifestation of natural law. So, the imagery of Native Americans was appropriated in Nazi propaganda and used both against the US[213] and to promote a "holistic understanding of Nature" among Germans,[214] which gained widespread support from various segments of the political spectrum in Germany.[215][216] The connection between anti-American sentiment and sympathetic feelings toward the underprivileged but authentic Indians was common in Germany, and it was to be found among both Nazi propagandists such as Goebbels and left-leaning writers such as Nikolaus Lenau as well. The pro-Nazi German American Bund tried to persuade Indians not to register for the draft, for example using the swastika with some Native Americans as a symbol depicting good luck in order to gain sympathy.[217] In 1938 the first outdoor Karl May festivals took place at the Rathen Open Air Stage. The influence of Karl May's writing in Hitler youth and German society generate the believe that native people somehow possessed a quasi-Aryan nature.[218] The open-air theater was laid out in 1936, inspired by the ideas of the Thingspiele movement, which was active in the early stages of the Nazi period.[219] The Thingspiele movement failed in staging neopagan and Nordic mythical aspects of the völkisch movement, while May's all-Christian legends found more approval with the mainstream. In general, tried to use May's popularity and his work for their purposes.[220] Also, in the late 1930s, Nazis even attempted to enlist American Indian support, mostly from Sioux and Lakota peoples, for Nazi Germany,[221] also they were interested in exploiting the plight of indigenous peoples, hoping to incite an uprising by the "hemispheric Indian" against their brutal treatment, creating allies and instability to undermine American arguments for the moral superiority of democracy.[222] Certain Native American advocate groups, such as the fascist-leaning American Indian Federation, were to be used to undermine the Roosevelt administration from within by means of propaganda.[223][224] Fictitious reports about Berlin declaring the Sioux as Aryans were circulated by the German-American Bund with the aim of increasing tensions between Native Americans and the government of the United States, impelling Native Americans to resist being drafted or registered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nazi propagandists went as far as declaring that Germany would return expropriated land to the Indians, while Goebbels predicted they possessed little loyalty to America and would rather rebel than to fight against Germany; such rumours were reported by John Collier, commissioner of Indian Affairs, to the Congress as true, thus not merely spreading them further but also legitimating them in the eyes of many.[225][226][227] However, Native American authorities, like the Iroquois Confederacy, declared war to Axis powers, based that the racial policy of Nazi Germany and fascism ideology were against their traditional values, also as a protest against Indian New Deal (reclaiming their authority to declare war, independent from US government).[228] Also, the declaration, about Sioux being apparently Aryans, resulted from a request by a German immigrant, descended from a Sioux grandmother, for German citizenship. Ruling that the immigrant fell within the pale for citizenship, this declaration stated that Indians were Aryans. However, this was a propaganda move in order to foment unrest among Native American groups in the US, but the Nazis did not actually believe this.[227]

About the pre-hispanic Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Nazis thought that Andean civilizations (like Tiwanaku Empire, Wari Empire, Chimu Empire, or Inca Empire) were founded by an elite of Aryans who were lost of the historical record, and believing without a doubt that the ancestors of Lake Titicaca's local peoples, the Aymaras and Quechuas, because his rural 'uncivilized' condition, would have been incapable of accomplishing such a magnificent feat. The amateur archeologist and SS commander, Edmund Kiss, proposed that Tiwanaku ruins were built a million years ago by his Aryan ancestors—an ancient Nordic race—who had migrated from the Lost City of Atlantis. Nazi officials seized on Kiss's work and featured the ancient Nordic city of Tiwanaku in party newspapers and Hitler Youth publications. Even Heinrich Himmler wanted to send Kiss, as representative of Ahnenerbe, to lead a trip to Bolivia and demonstrate that Tiwanaku were an ancient Nordic civilization in the Andes that revealed the presence of the Aryan Master Race in prehistoric South America, but that wasn't possible due to the war.[229]

The exiled French Nazi and archaeologist, Jacques de Mahieu (member of Charlemagne Division), after settling in Argentina, started to analyze the pre-Hispanic cultures and concluded, throughout his works La Agonía del Dios Sol [The Great Voyage of the Sun-God] and El Rey Vikingo del Paraguay [The Viking King of Paraguay], that a certain Nordic named Ullman (from Siesvig, the southern province of Denmark, and related to the god of hunters, Ull) arrived in Ancient Mexico, around the year 1067 AD in Panuco, and after making contacts with the Aztecs (which adored him as Quetzalcoatl), gradually descended from Mesoamerica across the American continent, to go to found, on South America, the Cara culture, until he settled in present-day Tiahuanaco (in Bolivia), where he established another kingdom (thus denying Aymara legends), the Tiahuanaku civilization, around the middle of the 10th century, which was a "Viking empire" and that was proved by the similarity of Nordic religion and pre-Inca religion, in addition to supposed inscriptions and figures about animals typical of European fauna.[230] Then, after the whites lost their capital by Diaguita invaders in 1290, this Aryan elite fled along the coast to present-day Puerto View on Ecuador, built rafts, and headed for the Oceanian islands. Other Aryans managed to take refuge in the mountains where they rebuilt their forces with the help of loyal tribes and, later, they went down to Cusco where they founded the Tahuantinsuyo. Other Aryans hid in the eastern jungles (Amazon rainforest and Gran Chaco) where they would slowly degenerate, but founding Chachapoya culture and Guaraní culture. So, Inca civilization also had to be a Viking empire because of some coincidences in Quechuan languages and Nordic languages, especially because he believed that Inca folklore contained stories (especially those stories which were documented by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega) about viracochas, which he believed were stories about white and bearded men, he also believed that in Paracas (Peru) there was a mummy of a blonde Inca child. All of these pieces of evidence had to be proof of the existence of an Aryan elite of white and bearded Incas who were pure Nordics and constituted a minority with royal blood that ruled over the Indian rabble and constructed great volkisch empires, a claim which could be proven true because the Quechua and Aymara languages supposedly contain proto-German traces [The word Viracocha (the Andean civilizing god) has its alleged roots in the German words wirth (white) and goth (god); and the name Inca comes from the German ing (descendant)].[231] Mahieu also stated, with the help of Hermann Munk (German runologist) and Paraguayan historian Vicente Pistilli, that in Paraguay existed a lost Viking empire, saying that they were in the Cuenca del Plata and settled in the 14th century (at least a century before Columbus) and they left traces like; the countless of runes he perceived in cerro guazú, seeing the Guaraní village as a copy from the Viking fortress, concluding that the Guaraní language was having (apparently) numerous words from the Norse spoken by the Vikings, and appealing that the names collected by the Jesuits -Weibingo, Storting, Tocanguzir, etc.- undoubtedly have to had Viking origins, and being confirmed with the legend of the white apostle.[232]

Other Nazi racial theorists believed that the elites of pre-Hispanic empires may have been Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chinese, Aramaic, Celts, Mediterranean, Semite or Etruscans, nations of merchants and intrepid navigators which had a superior volk than Native Americans mass of people, this elite (mostly Aryans) gave laws to the Indians, converted them to their religion, taught them agriculture and metallurgy and gave them works of art and architectural, while the mass of Native Americans were untersmensch that were incapable of replicate those prehistoric cities and empires developed by Aryan men who arrived in their lands as representatives of a special civilization from the other side of the sea.[229] That status of the indigenous people as untersmensch was proved after the European colonization of the Americas and the existence of Criollo elites (related to aryans because their Iberian heritage) controllings Latin Americans countries. About mestizo people in Spanish America, neither Hitler nor any other major Nazi leader showed much interest in them, except to warn the German population that they were a clear example of the negative consequences of "racial mixing".[233]

Romani woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter

Different Nazis offered a range of pseudo-religious or pseudoscientific arguments to prove that the Aryan race was superior to all other races. The central dogma of Aryan superiority was espoused throughout the party by officials who used scientific racist propaganda.

A person deemed to be a "subhuman" would be stripped of all of his/her rights, he or she would be treated like an animal, his or her life would be considered a Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of living) and he or she would only be considered fit for enslavement and extermination.[234][235][236][237]

In schools, Nazi ideology taught German youths to understand the differences which supposedly existed between the Nordic German "Übermenschen" and the "ignoble" Jewish and Slavic "subhumans".[238] An illustration of this ideology was described in the 1990s by a German-Jewish woman, who vividly recalled hearing Nazis march by her home in central Germany in the mid-1930s while they were singing, "When Jewish blood squirts from my knife."[239] A biography of Lise Meitner says "In the Reichstag the NSDAP deputies stretched their arms in the Nazi salute and sang their party anthem, the Horst Wessellied: "SA marching... Jew blood in the streets".'[240]

Richard Walther Darré, Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942, popularized the expression "Blut und Boden" ("Blood and Soil"), one of the many terms in the Nazi glossary ideologically used to enforce popular racism in the German population. There were many academic and administrative scholars of race who all had somewhat divergent views of racism, including Alfred Rosenberg and Hans F. K. Günther.[241]

Fischer and Lenz were appointed to senior positions overseeing the policy of racial hygiene. The Nazi state used such ideas about the differences between European races as part of their various discriminatory and coercive policies which culminated in the Holocaust.

The first (1916) edition of the American eugenicist Madison Grant's popular book The Passing of the Great Race[242] classified Germans as being primarily Nordic,[243] but the second edition, published after the US had entered WWI, reclassified the now-enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines, a tradition which was echoed in Harvard Professor of Anthropology Carleton Coon's book The Races of Europe (1939).[244]

Günther's book stated that the Germans are definitely not a fully Nordic people, and it also divided them into Western (Mediterranean), Nordic, Eastern (Alpine), East Baltic and Dinaric races. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism in public for this very reason. The simplistic tripartite model of Grant which divided Europeans into only Alpine, Mediterranean, and Nordic, Günther did not use, and erroneously placed most of the population of Hitler's Germany in the Alpine category, especially after the Anschluss. This has been used to downplay the Nordic presence in Germany. Gunther considered Jews an "Asiatic race inferior to all European races".[128]

Many German nationalists in Weimar Republic viewed the Armenian genocide as a justified act. This was related to their categorization of Armenians as an inferior race.[245]

J. Kaup led a movement opposed to Günther. Kaup took the view that a German nation, all of whose citizens belonged to a "German race" in a populationist sense, offered a more convenient sociotechnical tool than Günther's concept of an ideal Nordic type to which only a very few Germans could belong. Nazi legislation identifying the ethnic and "racial" affinities of the Jews reflects the populationist concept of race. Discrimination was not restricted to Jews who belonged to the "Semitic-Oriental-Armenoid" and/or "Nubian-African/Negroid" races, but was directed against all members of the Jewish ethnic population.[246]

The German Jewish journalist Kurt Caro, who emigrated to Paris in 1933 and served in the French and British armies,[247] published a book under the pseudonym Manuel Humbert unmasking Hitler's Mein Kampf in which he stated the following racial composition of the Jewish population of Central Europe: 23.8% Lapponoid race, 21.5% Nordic race, 20.3% Armenoid race, 18.4% Mediterranean race, 16.0% Oriental race.[248]

By 1939, Hitler had abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favor of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct "spiritual" qualities. Nevertheless, Nazi eugenics policies continued to favor Nordics over Alpines and other racial groups, particularly during the war when decisions were being made about the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Reich. The Lebensborn program sought to extend the Nordic race.[249][250][251]

In 1942, Hitler stated in private:

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.[17]

Hitler and Himmler planned to use the SS as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism. The SS was to be a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities.[252][253]

Addressing officers of the SS-Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler" Himmler stated:

The ultimate aim for those 11 years during which I have been the Reichsfuehrer SS has been invariably the same: to create an order of good blood which is able to serve Germany; which unfailingly and without sparing itself can be made use of because the greatest losses can do no harm to the vitality of this order, the vitality of these men, because they will always be replaced; to create an order which will spread the idea of Nordic blood so far that we will attract all Nordic blood in the world, take away the blood from our adversaries, absorb it so that never again, looking at it from the viewpoint of grand policy, Nordic blood, in great quantities and to an extent worth mentioning, will fight against us.[254]