The master race ( ) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology, in which the putative Aryan race is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as master humans ( ).
The Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg believed that the "Nordic race" was descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans, who he thought had pre-historically dwelt on the North German Plain and it was not impossible that the Nordic race ultimately originated on the lost island of Atlantis.Rosenberg, Alfred, The Myth of the 20th Century. The term Atlantis is mentioned two times in the whole book; the term Atlantis-hypothesis is mentioned just once. Rosenberg (p. 24): "It seems to be not completely impossible, that at parts where today the waves of the Atlantic ocean murmur and icebergs move along, once a blossoming land towered in the water, on which a creative race founded a great culture and sent its children as seafarers and warriors into the world; but if this Atlantis-hypothesis proves untenable, we still have to presume a prehistoric Nordic cultural center." Rosenberg (p. 26): "The ridiculed hypothesis about a Nordic creative center, which we can call Atlantis – without meaning a sunken island – from where once waves of warriors migrated to all directions as first witnesses of Nordic longing for distant lands to conquer and create, today becomes probable." Original: "Es erscheint als nicht ganz ausgeschlossen, dass an Stellen, über die heute die Wellen des Atlantischen Ozeans rauschen und riesige Eisgebirge herziehen, einst ein blühendes Festland aus den Fluten ragte, auf dem eine schöpferische Rasse große, weitausgreifende Kultur erzeugte und ihre Kinder als Seefahrer und Krieger hinaussandte in die Welt; aber selbst wenn sich diese Atlantishypothese als nicht haltbar erweisen sollte, wird ein nordisches vorgeschichtliches Kulturzentrum angenommen werden müssen. ... Und deshalb wird die alte verlachte Hypothese heute Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass von einem nordischen Mittelpunkt der Schöpfung, nennen wir ihn, ohne uns auf die Annahme eines versunkenen atlantischen Erdteils festzulegen, die Atlantis, einst Kriegerschwärme strahlenförmig ausgewandert sind als erste Zeugen des immer wieder sich erneut verkörpernden nordischen Fernwehs, um zu erobern, zu gestalten." The Nazis declared that the Aryans were superior to all other races, and believed they were entitled to expand territorially.Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf 1925 The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in the Aryan certificate. This document, which was required by law for all citizens of the Reich, was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" (Kleiner Ariernachweis) and could be obtained through an Ahnenpass, which required the owner to trace their lineage through baptism, birth certificates, or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent".
The Slavs, Roma, and Jews were defined as being racially inferior and non-Aryan "Untermenschen", and were thus considered a danger to the Aryan or Germanic master race. According to the Nazi secret Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost, the Slavic population was to be removed from Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination, except for a small percentage who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus suitable for Germanisation.
Historical background The 18th century saw the first scientific attempts to establish a racial divide between "masters" and "slaves", or the belief that a nation's ruling class is biologically superior to its ruled subjects. In his book History of the Ancient Government of France, published posthumously in 1727, Henri de Boulainvilliers attempted to prove that in France, the nobility represented the descendants of the old Frankish ruling class. In contrast, the majority of the population descended from the subject Gauls. As a result, two qualitatively different races faced off, and the only way to abolish the Franks' superiority was to destroy their civilization. Classical liberal theorists such as Volney and Sieyès refuted this theory by demonstrating that the French nobility was primarily composed of nouveaux riches from all over the country. Thus, the concept of a racially pure Frankish lineage was false.
In 1855, French count Arthur de Gobineau published his infamous work An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use of ethnography to defend the Ancien Régime against the Third Estate's claims, Gobineau divides the human species into three major groups: white, yellow and black, claiming that "history springs only from contact with the white races". He considers the Aryan race to be the pinnacle of human development, serving as the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable miscegenation led to the "downfall of civilizations".
Gobineau's influence was minimal at first. In his letters to Alexis de Tocqueville, he complained that his book was getting little attention in France and was only having an impact in the United States. Despite his friendship with Gobineau, Tocqueville rejected the book, explaining that it was in accordance with the interests of slave owners in the Southern United States. However, in the 1880s, the book gained popularity in Germany thanks to Cosima Wagner's efforts. In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a Germanophile Englishman and Cosima Wagner's son-in-law, published The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Expanding on Gobineau's earlier theories, he argued that the Teutonic peoples had a profound influence on Western civilization. Chamberlain classified all European peoples, including Germans, Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and Latins, as the "Aryan race", which was built on ancient Proto-Indo-European culture. He saw the Nordic or Teutonic peoples as the leaders of the Aryan race, and essentially all races.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept of Übermensch, which translates to "Overman" or "Superman". In his 1883 book Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None), he proposed the idea of the Übermensch as a goal for humanity. However, Nietzsche never developed the concept based on race. Instead, the Übermensch "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal".
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was believed that Indo-Europeans (generally referred to as Aryans) were the highest branch of humanity due to their technological advancement. This reasoning was simultaneously linked with Nordicism, which claimed that the "Nordic race" was the "purest" form of the Aryan race. Today, this view is regarded as a form of scientific racism. It contradicts the belief in racial equality by advocating the view that one race is superior to all other races.
Eugenics Eugenics came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as a way to improve and maintain the purity of the Aryan master race. Many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s adhered to Eugenics, such as Margaret Sanger,Margaret Sanger, quoted in Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Madison Grant,Grant, Madison. The Passing of the Great Race, Scribner's Sons, 1922. Émile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling,Everett Mendelsohn (March–April 2000)."Pauling's Eugenics: The Eugenic Temptation", Harvard Magazine. and Sidney Webb.
In 1908, the Louisiana State Fair hosted the first "Better Babies" competition. Babies were judged based on livestock standards such as height, weight, unblemished skin, well-formed fingers, lack of excess fat, and cooperative behavior. The intent was to establish child-breeding health standards. Beginning in 1920, at the Kansas State Fair, a "Fitter Family" contest, sponsored by the American Eugenics Society's Committee on Popular Education, required family members to submit an "Abridged Records of Family Traits" and then undergo physical and psychological examinations to determine their "fitness", or eugenic health. Contests received letter grades, and the winners—almost always white and of Western and Northern European descent—were awarded trophies. Some years later, beginning in 1935, contestants in the Miss America contest were required to be "of the white race" and to submit a detailed account of their ancestry; those with backgrounds connected to the Pilgrims' arrival on the Mayflower or the American Revolutionary War had an advantage.Speier, Susanna (June 29, 2011) "Beauty Pageants and the Misunderstanding of Evolution Meet....Again" Scientific American
The Nazis took this concept to an extreme by establishing a program to systematically genetically enhance the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program of Nazi eugenics, based on the eugenics laws of the US state of California, to create a super race.
Hierarchy The modern concept of the master race is generally derived from a 19th-century racial theory, which posited a hierarchy of races that was based on darkness of skin colour. This 19th-century concept was initially developed by Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau. Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed in Nazism, placed black Indigenous Australians and Equatorial Africans at the bottom of the hierarchy, while white Northern and Western Europeans (which consisted of Germans, Swedes, Icelanders, Norwegians, Danes, British, Irish, Dutch, Belgian and Northern French) were placed at its top; olive skinned white Southern Europeans (who consisted of Southern French, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Romanians, and Greeks, i.e., those who were called the Mediterranean race, were regarded as another sub-race of the Caucasian race) and placed in its upper middle ranks; and the Semitic and Hamitic races (supposed sub-races of the Caucasian race) were placed in its lower-middle ranks (because the Jews were Semites, the Nazis believed their cleverness made them extremely dangerousthey had their own plan for Jewish world domination, a conspiracy which needed to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans). Slavs such as Poles and Russians were not considered Aryans; and neither were the members of the Mongoloid race (including its offshoots such as Malayans, American Indians) and mixed-race people such as Eurasians, the bronze Mestizos, Mulattos, Afro-Asians, and Zambos were placed in its lower middle ranks. However, the Japanese were considered honorary Aryans.Snyder (1976). Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, p. 170.
In their attempt to scientifically prove the racial inferiority of Slavs, German (and Austrian) racial scientists were forced to gloss over their findings which consistently proved that Early Slavs were dolicocephalic and fair haired, i.e., "Nordic", while the South Slavic "Dinaric" sub-race was often viewed favourable. Nazis used the term "Slavic race", and considered Slavs to be non-Aryan. The concept of a Slavic "Untermensch" accompanied their political goals, and it was particularly aimed at Poles and Russians. Germany's immediate goal was Drang nach Osten or "push into the east", which was the first phase in its ultimate plan to conquer Europe, and Ukraine's "chernozem" (black earth) soil was regarded as a particularly desirable zone for colonization by the "Herrenvolk" () ("master people").
In relation to the Nazis' belief in racial purity, author and historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote:
"Master race" in the United States Origins and context In the United States, the concept of 'master race' arose within the context of master–slave race relations in the slavery-based society of historical America – particularly in the South in the mid-19th century. It was based upon both the experience of slavery and the pseudo-scientific justifications for racial slavery, but also on the relations between whites in the South and North, particularly during the American Civil War.
First occurrences