The Second World War (Report)

Odin Waters

Scientific Racism as a Precursor to the Holocaust

The basis for classifications or distinctions between and within groups has varied among human societies. Before there were races or ethnicities, there were families, clans, bands, villages, and dynasties. Historians may never be able to pinpoint the exact origins of inequity predicated on physical characteristics. Some of the oldest evidence regarding discrimination due to differences in melanin can be traced back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries during the expulsions of Jews, Muslims, and Romani by Spanish Christians. Soon after, as European colonization expanded around the world, the concept of skin-based segregation would become institutionalized, taking codified forms, such as caste systems and blood purity laws.

The legacy of racial persecution, as witnessed during centuries of chattel slavery and oppression of Indigenous communities, would reach its apex and arguably most sinister phase during the years of the Third Reich's genocidal mission. The Nazis' central tenets revolved around racial theories that placed "Aryan" people above all others, and "Nordic" types were considered the most superior among Aryans. Had the Nazis' racial theories been limited to pseudoscientific discourses they would have been just one of many ethno-centric coalitions. On the contrary, they chose to perpetrate ethnic cleansing campaigns on an unimaginable scale. Theirs were not the fantasies or escapisms of romanticists, but rather the pathological pursuits of bloodthirsty criminals.

The terms, "Nordic," "Race," and "Aryan," were coined in the late eighteenth century, and their usage didn't become prevalent until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Those three terms would become the basis for the Pan-Germanic movements of the early twentieth century. Nordic and Aryan were used to describe contrasts between Germanic descendants and all others, while Race covered an all-encompassing concept by which Anti-Semites and xenophobes, in general, could establish rigid divisions between citizens of numerous ethnicities¹. It should come as no surprise that future Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, were enveloped by the Jewish conspiracy fringe, which they embraced and validated as they strong-armed their way to absolute power.

Instilling the belief of superiority within the German population, throughout the Reich, became the main goal of Nazi rulers. Working class people, academic intellectuals, and soldiers were so taken with the idea of racial primacy that they became less and less concerned with their complicity in hate crimes, wholesale thievery, and mass executions of civilians. The Nazis' distorted biological beliefs would take on a most homicidal form in Central and Eastern Europe.

There is an abundance of evidence from Nazi Party rallies and the diatribes in Mein Kampf confirming that, "To Hitler, and countless other National Socialist leaders the importance of asserting themselves as the master race and other ideological racial considerations had unquestioned priority." ² According to the Nazis' racial theories the Aryans were the virtuous vanguard of humanity and the Nordic phenotype, which comprised blue-eyes and blonde-hair, represented the purest form of Aryan.

The two main socio-political ideologies that made up Nazism were practically disregarded in the ultimate quest to preserve a mythologized version of humans who they prized for their recessive traits resulting from ecological adaptation. Socialism was but a catchword in the face of a Nordic utopia. In similar fashion, "Hitler, in private conversations, expressed a strong conviction that nationalism was a thing of the past and was being replaced by the race concept."³

In 1929 Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reichsfuhrer of the Schutzstaffel (SS). What Himmler lacked in physical prowess or temerity he more than made up for in his organizational skills and penchant for details. Himmler couldn't wait to forge an elite corps as, "he intended to transform the SS into a racial showplace of lanky, golden-haired, blue-eyed men. With this select gene pool, he intended to breed pure Aryans for the new nobility of the Third Reich."⁴ Among the Nazi leadership, Himmler was the most fanatical about the propagation of the Nordic race.

Hitler's obsession was more centered around the eradication of Jewish people and he, "had no objection to twisting and distorting the past - indeed he encouraged it, provided that the results fit with his own political agenda."⁵ There's no argument about their corresponding endorsement of genocidal policies, but of the two, Himmler was genuinely fascinated by the possibility of creating a society of citizens with homogeneous phenotypical traits. Himmler was highly influenced by Richard Walther Darre. Darre was an agriculturalist who specialized in animal breeding. He was convinced that, "The old German farming traditions had refined and biologically honed the Nordic race."⁶ Darre's proclamations fell in line with Himmler and Hitler's desire to establish a eugenics program, based on their interpretation of Darwin's evolutionary theories. Historian, Horst Von Maltitz provides insight into Darre's philosophy: "Germany, he explained, had to exterminate the sick and impure in human society. And it had to encourage members of the Nordic race to use scientific knowledge to select their mates and produce the best human stock."⁷

Himmler founded the Race and Resettlement Office of the SS (RuSHA) in 1931. Not surprisingly, he placed Richard Walther Darre as the head of the new agency. The main task of RuSHA was to select men with the most Nordic traits for the SS. In true vacuous Nazi fashion, the most sought after qualities for potential candidates were restricted to physical attributes and a willingness to absorb racist doctrines. The examiners at the RuSHA offices in Munich looked at photographs and, "rated the bodies of the applicants on a scale of one to nine, then graded them on a five-point scale from pure Nordic to suspected non-European blood components."⁸

Long before the Nazis waged their racial crusades, Gregor Mendel had introduced the concept of heredity and Charles Darwin had espoused the idea of descent with modification. However, the field of genetics was still relatively new when their theories were developed, and DNA wouldn't be discovered until the following century. Not only was the Nazis' entire premise for German identity contrived, their belief that blood was the basis of all genetic and biological development was also completely erroneous. Hitler waxed pure nonsensical slogans in his promotion of White supremacy, "Race is ... not a matter of language but of blood...."⁹ Unfortunately, he was one of millions who had bought into the glamorization of blood, "there were Germans in those days - even people of more than average intelligence - who naively transferred the abstract racial blood concept to the sphere of the purely physiological function of human blood."¹⁰

It's quite difficult to analyze the personalities of individuals that base their entire moral and intellectual impetus on bodily fluids or physical features. Their delusions can impact us in unforeseen ways. Himmler once stated, "I want to create an SS order which will disseminate this idea of Nordic blood, so that we will draw all Nordic blood in the world to us. We must take it for ourselves - and others may not have any...."¹¹ The Nazis gave new meaning to the term - bloodlust. Ironically, their delirium over Nordic blood drove them to perpetuate one of the most sanguinary episodes in human history. To add to the malevolence of the Reich's degrading practices, SS aptitude testers were sent into occupied regions where, "they performed racial measurements on ethnic German residents, assessing whether they were 'racially valuable' - and therefore worthy to be sent as colonists to the German territories in the East - or whether they should be relegated to starvation, slavery, and extermination."¹²

Himmler and his subordinates at RuSHA dared to dream of a Volkish nation consisting solely of large families where women tended hand-and-foot to their husbands and raised many children to be inculcated with Nordic values. The main component of that ideal nation would be that its inhabitants all possessed blue eyes and blonde hair. Like children playing with Barbie dolls, the Nazis objectified people, relegating them to the status of empty vessels designed strictly for utilitarian purposes. They wanted to apply animal husbandry principles to their human subjects.

Many Germans, of both prominent and humble means, got swept up in the racial fundamentalism orchestrated by the propaganda machine of the Reich. For instance, the famous fashion designer, Hugo Boss, supplied form fitting uniforms to the SS because Himmler was, "particularly keen on making his men as attractive as possible to women, but like any other breeder, he did not want his prize stock to mate with just any partner. Potential wives had to undergo racial screening themselves.... only in this way could the SS breed a pure Nordic nobility."¹³ It didn't take much for opportunistic and ambitious men to participate in the mating experiments of the Race and Resettlement Office. RuSHA officials enticed SS members with free land and sizeable homes. All they needed to do was remove the inhabitants of the Eastern territories and form new colonies where they could settle down to become Wehrbauern (soldier-farmers) and breed as many Nordic children as possible. Such an offer "would motivate many to obey even the most odious order."¹⁴

It could be said that the Nazi usurpers would have preferred to enslave non-Aryans and work them to death or eradicate them altogether, leaving behind only a few museum exhibitions in their memory. The hierarchy of human diversity, from the Nazi perspective, would be limited to Aryan farmers and industrial laborers. Regardless of their prescribed roles in the Thousand-Year Reich, self-determination and autonomy were tantamount to treason and insurrection.

The culturally sterile society that Hitler, Himmler and the rest of their ilk conceptualized could only be achieved through the uprooting of non-Germans and the corralling of millions of people who were sent off to be slaughtered. In the tradition of monarchs, oligarchs, and multinationals who've dealt in slave trading, plundering of ecosystems, and the extermination of indigenous populations, the Nazis applied their Lebensraum colonization goals in Central and Eastern Europe. Galvanized by a merciless cause, the SS, Wehrmacht, and regional paramilitary forces murdered untold numbers of civilians.

Claudia Koonz lucidly wrote, "In much the same way that late-nineteenth-century anthropologists amassed information about populations on the brink of annihilation, Nazi scholars examined cultures of the ethnic enemies their government was about to exterminate. They photographed their subjects, appropriated their writings, measured their skulls, stole their artifacts, compiled demographic data banks, and studied their customs."¹⁵ Once we get past the surface of Nazi Germany's pervasive portrait of a mechanized, fixed totalitarian state, we can begin to peel back the layers and get down to the fetid center of a lowbrow brutish organization where ludicrous theories abounded. As should be expected of a government made up of psychopaths who themselves elevate adherents to powerful posts in every sector of a nation, the Third Reich should be remembered as a failed State where "in reality, German racial experts could not separate the fictional Jewish race from its fictional Aryan counterpart."¹⁶

Bibliography

Koonz, Claudia, The Nazi Conscience. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

Pringle, Heather, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. Hyprion, 2006.

Von Maltitz, Horst, The Evolution of Hitler's Germany: The Ideology, the Personality, the Moment. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973.

1 H. Von Maltitz, The Evolution of Hitler's Germany: The Ideology, the Personality, the Moment (New York: McGraw-Hil Book Company, 1973).

2 Von Maltitz, p. 54

3 Von Matltitz, pg. 233

4 Pringle, Heather, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust (New York: Hyprion, 2006).

5 H. Pringle, pg. 92

6 H. Pringle, pg. 40

7 Von Matltitz, 40

8 Pringle, pg. 41

9 Von Maltitz, pg. 235

10 Von Maltitz, pg. 56

11 Von Maltitz, pg. 55

12 Pringle, pg. 254

13 Pringle, pg. 42

14 Pringle, pg 143

15 Koonz, Claudia, The Nazi Conscience (Boston, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), pg. 215.

16 Pringle, 240

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