Aryanism is an ideology of racial supremacy which views the supposed Aryan race as a distinct and superior racial group which is entitled to rule the rest of humanity. Initially promoted by racial theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Aryanism reached its peak of influence in Nazi Germany. In the 1930s and 40s, the regime applied the ideology with full force, sparking World War II with the 1939 invasion of Poland in pursuit of Lebensraum, or living space, for the Aryan people. The racial policies which were implemented by the Nazis during the 1930s came to a head during their conquest of Europe and the Soviet Union, culminating in the industrial mass murder of six million Jews and eleven million other victims in what is now known as the Holocaust.
Background By the late 19th century, a number of later writers—such as the French anthropologist Vacher de Lapouge in his book L'Aryen—argued that this superior branch of Aryans could be identified biologically by using the cephalic index (a measure of head shape) and other indicators. He argued that the long-headed "dolichocephalic-blond" Europeans, characteristically found in Northern Europe, were natural leaders, destined to rule over more "brachycephalic" (short-headed) peoples.. Similar theories were promoted by Nordicists like Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Nazism and Aryanism
The ideology of Nazism was based upon the conception of the ancient Aryan race being a superior race, holding the highest position in the racial hierarchy and that the Nordic-type Germanic peoples were the most racially pure existing peoples of Aryan stock. The Nazi conception of the Aryan race arose from earlier proponents of a supremacist conception of the race as described by racial theorist figures such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther identified the European race as having five subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic.Bruce David Baum. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity. New York, New York, USA; London, England, UK: New York University Press, 2006. P. 156. Günther applied a Nordicist conception that Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy amongst these five European subtype races. In his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) (Racial Science of the German People), Günther recognized Germans as being composed of all five European subtypes, but emphasized the strong Nordic heritage amongst Germans.Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Eastbourne, England: UK; Portland, Oregon, USA: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2008, 2010. P. 150. Günther believed Slavic people to be of Eastern race, one that was separate from Germans and Nordics, and warned about mixing German blood with Slavic one.Racisms Made in Germany, Wulf D. Hund 2011 page 19 He defined each racial subtype according to general physical appearance and their psychological qualities including their racial soul – referring to their emotional traits and religious beliefs, and provided detailed information on their hair, eye, and skin colours, facial structure. He provided photographs of Germans identified as Nordic in places like Baden, Stuttgart, Salzburg, and Schwaben; and provided photographs of Germans he identified as Alpine and Mediterranean types, especially in Vorarlberg, Bavaria, and the Black Forest region of Baden. Adolf Hitler read Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, which influenced his racial policy and resulted in Günther's Nazi-backed attainment of a position in the anthropology department at the University of Jena in 1932 where Hitler attended Günther's inaugural lecture.John Cornwell. Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact. Penguin, Sep 28, 2004. , p. 68
Günther distinguished Aryans from Jews, and identified Jews as descending from non-European races, particularly from what he classified as the Near Asian race (Vorderasiatische Rasse), more commonly known as the Armenoid race, and said that such origins rendered Jews fundamentally different from and incompatible with Germans and most Europeans.Alan E Steinweis. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, 2008. P. 28. This association of Jews with the Armenoid type had been utilized by Zionist Jews who claimed that Jews were a group within that type.Mitchell B. Hart. Jews & Race: Writings on Identity & Difference, 1880–1940. Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA: Brandeis University Press, 2011. P. 247. He claimed that the Near Eastern race descended from the Caucasus in the fifth and fourth millennia BC, and that it had expanded into Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and eventually to the west coast of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Aside from ascribing Armenians and Jews as having Near Eastern characteristics, he ascribed them to several other contemporary peoples; he included some Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Iranians as having these characteristics as well.Alan E Steinweis. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, 2008. P. 29. In his work Racial Characteristics of the Jewish People, he defined the racial soul of the Near Eastern race as emphasizing a commercial spirit (Handelgeist), and described them as artful traders – a term that Günther ascribed as being used by Jewish racial theorist Samuel Weissenberg to describe contemporary Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. Günther added to that description of the Near Eastern type as being composed primarily of commercially spirited and artful traders, by claiming that the type held strong psychological manipulation skills that aided them in trade. He claimed that the Near Eastern race had been bred not so much for the conquest and exploitation of nature as it was for the conquest and exploitation of people.
Hitler's conception of the Aryan Herrenvolk (master race) explicitly excluded the vast majority of Slavs, regarding the Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences.André Mineau. Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity. Rodopi, 2004. Pp. 34-36. Because of this, the Nazis declared Slavs to be Untermenschen (subhumans).Steve Thorne. The Language of War. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2006. P. 38. Exceptions were made for a small percentage of Slavs who were seen by the Nazis to be descended from German settlers and therefore fit to be Germanised to be considered part of the Aryan folk or nation.Wendy Lower. Nazi Empire-building And The Holocaust In Ukraine. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005. P. 27. Hitler described Slavs as a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master.Marvin Perry. Western Civilization: A Brief History. Cengage Learning, 2012. P. 468. Hitler declared that the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to Slavs because they were subhumans, and German soldiers were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in World War II with regard to Slavs.Anne Nelson. Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. Random House Digital, Inc., 2009. P. 212. Hitler called Slavs a rabbit family meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized.David Downing. Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty Two Days That Decided World War II. P. 48. Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had media speak of Slavs as primitive animals who were from the Siberian tundra who were like a dark wave of filth.David Downing. Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty Two Days That Decided World War II. Read How You Want, 2010 P. 48. The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior non-Aryans was part of the agenda for creating Lebensraum (living space) for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe that was initiated during World War II under Generalplan Ost: millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed, or enslaved.Joseph W. Bendersky. A concise history of Nazi Germany, Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007. p. 161-2. Nazi Germany's ally the Independent State of Croatia rejected the common conception that Croats were primarily a Slavic people and claimed that Croats were primarily the descendants of the Germanic Goths.Rich, Norman (1974). Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order, p. 276-7. W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York. However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as a subhuman in spite of the alliance.Norman Davies. Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Pan Macmillan, 2008. Pp. 167, 209. Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, in which it accepted Slavs to serve in its armed forces within occupied territories, in spite of them being considered subhuman, as a pragmatic means to resolve such manpower shortages.
Shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933 they passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service law which required all civil servants to provide proof of their Aryan ancestry and defined non-Aryan as a person with one Jewish grandparent.Ehrenreich, The Nazi ancestral proof, p.10 In 1933, the German Interior Ministry official Albert Gorter drafted an official definition of the Aryan race for the new law which included all non-Jewish Europeans, this definition was unacceptable by the Nazis.Eric Ehrenreich. The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, pp.9-10 However, Achim Gerke revised Gorter's draft of the Civil Service Law classifying Aryans as people tribally related to German blood. The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 classified people with "German or related blood" as being racially acceptable.Ehrenreich, The Nazi ancestral proof, p.70