The mythology of the Third Reich: racial theory
As noted in the article VO - The mythology of the Third Reich: the idea of "pure blood", the myth of "blood purity" was the basis of the ideology of the Third Reich. “Blood Purity” was of such great importance to German Nazis, since it was associated with the inheritance of racial qualities.
The Nazis divided the races into "higher", having creative beginnings and ability to maintain order and self-organization, and "lower", respectively, not having voiced beginnings. At the top of the hierarchical ladder was the “Nordic” race (Germanic-Scandinavians), the East Baltic, Dinaric (Adriatic) and other subraces of the Europeoid race were below. Even the French were considered "degenerate, negroid, spoiled." Therefore, they belonged to the group of "semi-cordy" peoples.
Down the stairs were white half-breeds with other races and at the very bottom - representatives of the “black” (Negroids) and “Yellow” (Mongoloids) races. Representatives of the “lower” races were not generally considered as people in the full sense of the word - they were “subhumans” (German Untermensch). In this group - "subhumans", in the Reich also recorded Slavs, Jews and Gypsies.
Even in the prisons of the Third Reich, the principle of racial segregation was respected. Prisoners were divided on the basis of "blood purity": the first (highest) category consisted of Germans; in the second, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Dutch and other representatives of the “Nordic race” (they were not “superhumans”, from him. Übermensch); in the third - the French, Italians, Belgians (semi-cordial race); in the fourth - Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs (“subhumans” with an admixture of Nordic blood).
13 July 1941, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, speaking in Stettin, told the SS fighters: “This is a war of ideologies and a struggle of races. On one side is National Socialism: an ideology based on the values of our German, Nordic blood .... On the other side is the 180-million people, a mixture of races and peoples whose names are unpredictable and whose physical essence is such that the only thing that can be done with them is to shoot without any pity and mercy. ... When you, my friends, fight in the East, you continue the same struggle against the same subhumanity, against the same lower races that once spoke under the name of the Huns, and later - 1000 years ago in the days of Kings Heinrich and Otto I, - under the name of the Hungarians, and later under the name of the Tatars; then they appeared again under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they are called Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism. ”
The division of peoples into "higher" and "lower" races was given almost religious significance. The "Nordic race" personified all the best, good, and the "lower races" were part of darkness, chaos, destruction. All story humanity was filed as a struggle of the "higher" and "lower" races. Adolf Hitler in “My struggle” figuratively compared the “Aryan” with Prometheus, who carried the light to humanity.
Naturally, on the basis of this theory, it was concluded that since only the “Nordic race” is capable of developing humanity, then the “non-Aryan peoples” need to be controlled by the “Aryans.” This was especially true of the Slavs. The ideologists of the Reich were supporters of the "Norman theory" of the creation of the Russian state. According to Himmler, "this low-grade human rabble, the Slavs, today is just as incapable of maintaining order as they were not capable of 700-800 years ago when they called on the Vikings ...". Therefore, it was necessary to deal with them in accordance with the words of the chronicler: “Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it, come and volodyite us.”
It should be noted that the ideas of racism had old roots in Europe, including in Germany. That is why the “Nordic theory”, popularized by Alfred Rosenberg, occupied such a significant place in the German people. Rosenberg created a coherent picture of history from ancient times, where the “Aryan” was the only creative beginning. From Aryan India, Persia, Doric Hellas and Italy of Rome to German Europe. By order of September 13, 1933 of the year introduced compulsory study of "racial theory" in schools (at least 2-3 hours per week) and universities.
This theory was not invented by the Germans, it was created long before the Third Reich. Count Joseph Arthur de Gobino (1816 — 1882), a famous French novelist and sociologist, in the 1853-1855 years published a four-volume work entitled “The Experience of Inequality of Human Races.” The de facto graph became the first author to formulate the thesis on racial inequality as the main principle of historical development in the 19 century. According to Gobino, racial inequality is the most fundamental, primary, and initial principle. According to the graph, all other social hierarchies flow from it. Gobino distinguished three main races: white, yellow and black. All races the author arranged in the form of a three-step hierarchical ladder. The white race is at the top of the ladder, and the black race is at the bottom. Inside the white race, in the opinion of J. Gobino, “Aryans” occupy the highest place. Races, according to the author of the theory, are distinguished by the constancy of physical and spiritual properties. The white race is superior to the other two races in physical beauty, strength and perseverance. But its most important feature, which defines leadership and a place in the racial hierarchy, is reason. Gobino believed that the mixing of races is a necessary source for the birth and development of civilizations (with the obligatory participation of the white race), but it later becomes the cause of their degradation and death. Gobino held an anti-colonial position, since the colonial conquests contributed to the confusion and degeneration of the white race, the European civilization. In general, he believed that the white race and European civilization is on the path of recourse and its end is near. Recognition and fame came to Count Gobino only after his death and not at home, but in Germany. In 1894, the Gobino Society was created in the German Empire, by 1914, the number of members of the organization reached 360. The founder of this society, Ludwig Sheman, played a particularly important role in spreading the ideas of Gobino in Germany. He published a number of works by Joseph Gobino and research about him. In addition, Sheman in 1897 — 1900 for the first time published the Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in German. The ideologists of the Third Reich evaluated Gobino’s works very highly and in 1930-ies specially selected fragments from his works were published in popular anthologies about races and were quoted in school textbooks. As a result, the ideas of the French Gobino became part of the ideology of the Third Reich.
The real "father of the spirit", "pioneer" and "pioneer" (as Joseph Goebbels called him) in the field of racial theories was the British writer, sociologist, philosopher Houston (Houston) Stuart Chamberlain (1855 — 1927). His worldview was based on the ideas of Richard Wagner and Joseph Gobino. His main work, which brought him popularity, was the work of "Foundations of the XIX century." She came out in Munich in 1899 year. According to Chamberlain, European culture was the result of a synthesis of five main components: culture, literature and philosophy of ancient Greece; the legal and governmental system of ancient Rome; Christianity in its Protestant version; resurgent creative Teutonic (German) spirit; and the destructive influence of Jewry and Judaism in general. Only the “Aryans” can resist the power of the Jews. The Aryans are, according to the British, the only pillar of world development, and the Jews are the negative racial force that destroys and leads to the degeneration of humanity. "Fundamentals" of Houston Chamberlain became extremely popular in the German Empire even under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
One of the most important “racologists” of the Third Reich was Hans Friedrich Karl Gunter (1891 - 1968). A linguist by education, in May 1930 of the year, he headed the Department of Social Anthropology at Jena University, which was created by special order of the Thuringian government (in the upward elections won by the National Socialists). His introductory lecture was called "Causes of the racial decline of the German people after the Great Migration." Hermann Goering spoke with him and highly appreciated the teacher. At the 11 September party congress, 1935 of the year A. Rosenbeng handed Hans Günther as the first winner the NSDAP science prize and stated in his speech that the professor “laid the spiritual foundations of the struggle of our movement and the Reich legislation”.
The ancestor of the concept of "scientific racism" was the American anthropologist Samuel George Morton (1799-1851). This theory in the first quarter of the 19 century quickly spread among supporters of slavery, because it is scientifically justified the impossibility of the liberation of blacks. The United States accepted this theory even at the official level. In 1844, US Secretary of State John Caldwell Calhoun (senator from South Carolina, so-called “uncrowned king of the South”), after consulting with Morton, gave an official response to a note from European countries about slavery in the United States, saying that the abolition of the slave-owning system impossible, since the negros belong to the "lower human type." In the same year 1844, Samuel Morton published the book Egyptian Skull, where he argued that the ancient Egyptians belonged to the white (according to the terminology of the time “Caucasian”) race. His followers D. Gleddon and N. Nott published the book Types of Humanity in 1854, where, based on studies of skulls, they argued that negros are closer to monkeys than to other human races. In the USA, similar views on the “black” population prevailed for a rather long time, even after the Second World War. In 1896, racial segregation was legalized in the United States. The law introduced the Supreme Court in the Plessy vs Ferguson case: in 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law on separate travel on trains, which introduced special and worst places for blacks. In 1892, Homer Plessy, who had one-eighth of Negro blood, was arrested for violating this law. The Supreme Court, to which Plessy appealed for justice, confirmed the correctness of the state authorities and said that such a law does not contradict the Constitution. Therefore, in the United States, quite a significant period of time, even after the official abolition of slavery, negros and mulattos (and other “colored” ones) could not enter the “white” quarters, shops, theaters, cars and other places and institutions.
A major role in the development of the racial theory of the Third Reich was played by studies of British and German scientists dedicated to India. The arrival of the Aryan tribes to India from the North, the conquest of “blacks” by them, and the creation of a tough caste system by them, was considered as a role model. In 1849, the publication of the translation of the full text of the Rig Veda prepared by Max Muller began in London. Muller suggested that the “Aryan race” excelled other races (Turan and Semitic) in cultural development. The Aryans became the "movers of history." But the "mixing of races" led to the fact that the Aryans gradually lost their creative potential and degraded. By the arrival of the British, India had lost its creative potential. On the basis of these ideas, British Indologists prepared the official history of India in the first quarter of the 20 century. In the 1938, the work of the Sanskritologist Paul Tim (1905-2001) was published in the Third Reich. He argued that in the ancient Indian Vedas the term "ariy" was supposedly synonymous with "man", and black people were regarded as "subhuman." As a result, the reality of the Third Reich was reinforced by the authority of the Rig Veda and the orders of Ancient India.
Another ancient country from which the ideologists of the Reich deduced the beginning of the “Nordic race” was Persia. The first ideas about the common Germans and Aryan Persians appeared at the beginning of the 19 century. In 1808, the German scientist Otto Frank, a professor of philology in Bamberg, in the book "Light from the East" put forward the theory that Iran was the ancestral home of the Aryans. Arians from Iran fell into India, Egypt, Greece, Germany, and settled all of Europe. According to him, the Germans were descended from the East "all traces of its ancient history, as well as its ... living language - all this indicates that the Germans are not brothers to the Greeks and not Romans, but to the Persians." Frank called for restoring the “original state” —the Persian-German power. Similar views were held by the Nazis in the Third Reich. Berlin tried to turn Iran into an ally in the Middle East, creating a threat to the geopolitical interests of Britain and the Soviet Union. Therefore, theories about the common Aryan origin of the Germans and Iranians occupied a central place in the propaganda of the Nazis in Iran. A special decree of Berlin, the Iranians as "purebred Aryans" were exempted from the "racial" (Nuremberg) laws. In the 1934 year, on the recommendation of German diplomats, in order to glorify the role of Iran as the ancestral home of the Aryan race, the state of Persia was officially changed to Iran. German architects designed the National Bank building in Tehran in a Neo-Persian style. The SS racial administration planned marriages of German girls with prominent members of the military-political and economic elite of Iran in order to “refresh” the blood of the Iranian leadership. The center of the Nazi movement in Iran was the magazine Ancient Iran, which was published weekly in the 1933-1937 years. The magazine promoted the success of the Third Reich, reported on the most important events in the military-political life of Germany. The magazine’s editor was Iranian nationalist Safe Azad. The magazine spoke against the dominance of foreigners in Iran and at the same time reported on friendly and kindred German people who are ready to help the country in its development.
The head of the Heritage of Ancestors Institute, the rector of the University of Munich, Professor Walter Wust (1901-1993) in 1943 published the book Indo-German Confession. It should be noted that German scientists almost entirely attributed the heritage of Indo-European Aryans (they called them Indo-Germans) to the Germans. According to Vyusta, the task of Germanism was to recreate not only the history of Indo-German civilization, but also the formation of the Indo-German empire. The beginning of this process in Western Europe, Wust attributed to the empire of Charlemagne, and in world history the origins of this empire date back to at least the time of the Achaemenids.
With great respect, the Nazi leadership belonged to the ancient Greek culture. Hitler believed that the culture of the ancient Greeks was perfect. Rosenberg in “The Myth of the 20 Century” wrote: “The dream of Nordic humanity in Hellas became the best dream.” Nazi explorers linked the origins of the ancient Greeks with ancient Germany. German scientists have advanced the theory that Dorians who came from the north to Greece were Germanic in origin. Hitler even stated: “When we are asked about our ancestors, we must always point to the Greeks.” Among scientists, this theory was developed by the already mentioned Hans Gunter. In "The racial history of the Hellenic and Roman peoples" (1928 year), he reports that the Hellenes migrated to Greece from the valley of the Middle Danube and reported on the similarities between the Germans and the ancient Greeks. Rosenberg brought the ancient Greeks directly from Germany - from the land of Brandenburg.
In one of the ancient Greek states-polis - Sparta, Hitler saw "the purest sample of a racial state in history". German historians idealized Dorian Sparta. In the Spartans, the Nazis saw a pure "Nordic" element, a true master race, in the state itself - the perfect embodiment of political organization. I must say that to identify ancient Greece with the ancient Germans and Scandinavians began even before the Third Reich. The Greek Olympus was associated with the Scandinavian pantheon of gods. Blond and blue-eyed ancient Greek heroes and gods with the heroes and gods of the German-Scandinavian epic.
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