Aryanism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with the Christian theology of Arianism.
Arno Breker's 1939 neoclassical sculpture Die Partei (The Party), which flanked one of the entrances to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The sculpture emphasizes what the Nazi Party considered to be desirable Aryan characteristics.

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 racist 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 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.[1] Similar theories were promoted by Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain
.

Nazi Aryanism

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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 Germanic peoples were the most racially pure existing peoples of Aryan stock.[2] 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.[3]

Nazi racial theorist

Schwaben; and provided photographs of Germans he identified as Alpine and Mediterranean types, especially in Vorarlberg, Bavaria, and the Black Forest region of Baden.[5] 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.[7]

Adolf Hitler

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

psychological manipulation skills that aided them in trade.[8] 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".[8]

Hitler's conception of the Aryan

Untermenschen (subhumans).[11][13] 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.[14] Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".[15] Hitler declared that because Slavs were subhumans that the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to them, and German soldiers in World War II were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in regards to Slavs.[16] Hitler called Slavs "a rabbit family" meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized.[17] 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".[18][19] 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.[20] 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.[21] However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as a "subhuman" in spite of the alliance.[22] 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.[22]

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.[23] 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.[24] However, Achim Gerke revised Gorter's draft of the Civil Service Law classifying Aryans as people "tribally" related to "German blood".[24] The Nuremberg race laws of 1935 classified as "racially acceptable" people with "German or related blood".[24][25]

philosemitic rhetoric[a]

Hitler often doubted whether Czechs were Aryan or not, he said in his table talk "It is enough for a Czech to grow a moustache for anyone to see, from the way the thing droops, that his origin is

Magyars (which it did not define) as Aryans.[23] The following year, an article published by the Nazis admitted that there were disputes over the racial status of Hungarians.[23] As late as 1943, there were disputes over whether Hungarians were to be classified as Aryan.[28]
In 1942, Hitler declared that the Finns were "racially related Germanic neighboring peoples", although there is no evidence to suggest that this was based on anything racial.[23]

The idea of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in

antisemitic ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based on the aforementioned linguistic and ethnic history. A complete, highly speculative theory of Aryan and anti-Semitic history can be found in Alfred Rosenberg's major work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century
. Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within Aryan societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by proto-Nazi theorists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain.[citation needed]

These and other ideas evolved into the

euthanasia program).[citation needed
]

SS), the person ordered by Adolf Hitler to implement the Final Solution, or the Holocaust,[29] told his personal masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing – he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.[30]

Italian Fascism and Aryanism

Main article:
Italian Fascism and racism

In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race".[31][32] In this speech Mussolini was referring to Italians as being the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan race, Aryan in the meaning of people of an Indo-European language and culture.[33] Italian Fascism emphasized that race was bound by spiritual and cultural foundations, and identified a racial hierarchy based on spiritual and cultural factors.[33] While Italian Fascism based its conception of race on spiritual and cultural factors, Mussolini explicitly rejected notions that biologically "pure" races existed though biology was still considered a relevant factor in race.[34]

Italian Fascism strongly rejected the common Nordicist conception of the Aryan race that idealized "pure" Aryans as having certain physical traits that were defined as Nordic such as blond hair and blue eyes.[35] The antipathy by Mussolini and other Italian Fascists to Nordicism was over the existence of what they viewed as the Mediterranean inferiority complex that they claimed had been instilled into Mediterraneans by the propagation of such theories by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists who viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate and thus in their view inferior.[35] Mussolini refused to allow Italy to return again to this inferiority complex, initially rejecting Nordicism.[35] However traditional Nordicist claims of Mediterraneans being degenerate due to having a darker colour of skin than Nordics had long been rebuked in anthropology through the depigmentation theory that claimed that lighter-skinned peoples had been depigmented from a darker skin, this theory has since become a widely accepted view in anthropology.[36] Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon in his work The Races of Europe (1939) subscribed to depigmentation theory that claimed that the Nordic race's light-coloured skin was the result of depigmentation from their ancestors of the Mediterranean race.[37]

In the early 1930s, with the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany and with dictator Adolf Hitler's emphasis on a Nordicist conception of the Aryan race, strong tensions arose between the Fascists and the Nazis over racial issues. In 1934, in the aftermath of Austrian Nazis killing Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, an ally of Italy, Mussolini became enraged and responded by angrily denouncing Nazism. Mussolini rebuked Nazism's Nordicism, claiming that the Nazis' emphasizing of a common Nordic "Germanic race" was absurd, saying "a Germanic race does not exist. ... We repeat. Does not exist. Scientists say so. Hitler says so."[38] The fact that Germans were not purely Nordic was indeed acknowledged by prominent Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther in his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), where Günther recognized Germans as being composed of five Aryan subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic while asserting that the Nordics were the highest in a racial hierarchy of the five subtypes.[5]

By 1936, the tensions between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reduced and relations became more amicable. In 1936, Mussolini decided to launch a racial programme in Italy, and was interested in the racial studies being conducted by Giulio Cogni.[39] Cogni was a Nordicist but did not equate Nordic identity with Germanic identity as was commonly done by German Nordicists.[40] Cogni had travelled to Germany where he had become impressed by Nazi racial theory and sought to create his own version of racial theory.[41] On 11 September 1936, Cogni sent Mussolini a copy of his newly published book Il Razzismo (1936).[39] Cogni declared the racial affinity of the Mediterranean and Nordic racial subtypes of the Aryan race and claimed that the intermixing of Nordic Aryans and Mediterranean Aryans in Italy produced a superior synthesis of Aryan Italians.[40] Cogni addressed the issue of racial differences between northern and southern Italians, declaring southern Italians were mixed between Aryan and non-Aryan races, that he claimed was most likely due to infiltration by Asiatic peoples in Roman times and later Arab invasions.[39] As such, Cogni viewed Southern Italian Mediterraneans as being polluted with orientalizing tendencies.[39] He would later change his idea and claim that Nordics and Southern Italians were closely related groups both racially and spiritually. His opinion was that they were generally responsible for what is the best in European civilization.[39] Initially Mussolini was not impressed with Cogni's work, however Cogni's ideas entered into the official Fascist racial policy several years later.[39]

In 1938 Mussolini was concerned that if Italian Fascism did not recognize Nordic heritage within Italians, that the Mediterranean inferiority complex would return to Italian society.[35] Therefore, in summer 1938, the Fascist government officially recognized Italians as having Nordic heritage and being of Nordic-Mediterranean descent. In a meeting with PNF members in June 1938, Mussolini identified himself as Nordic and declared that previous policy of focus on Mediterraneanism was to be replaced by a focus on Aryanism.[35]

The Fascist regime began publication of the racialist magazine

Eneolithic age Nordic Aryans arrived to Italy.[44] Many of the writers took up the traditional Nordicist claim that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was due to the arrival of Semitic immigrants.[44] La Difesa's writers were divided on their claims that described how Italians extricated themselves from Semitic influence.[43]

The Nordicist direction of Fascist racial policy was challenged in 1938 by a resurgence of the Mediterraneanist faction in the PNF.[45] By 1939, the Mediterraneanists' advocacy of a nativist racial theory that rejected ascribing the achievements of the Italian people to Nordic peoples.[45] This nativist racial policy was prominently promoted by Ugo Rellini.[45] Rellini rejected the notion of large-scale invasions of Italy by Nordic Aryans in the Eneolithic age, and claimed that Italians were an indigenous people descended from the Cro-Magnons.[46] Rellini claimed that Mediterranean and Nordic peoples arrived later and peacefully intermixed in small numbers with the indigenous Italian population.[46]

In 1941 the PNF's Mediterraneanists through the influence of Giacomo Acerbo put forward a comprehensive definition of the Italian race.[47] However these efforts were challenged by Mussolini's endorsement of Nordicist figures with the appointment of staunch spiritual Nordicist Alberto Luchini as head of Italy's Racial Office in May 1941, as well as with Mussolini becoming interested in Julius Evola's spiritual Nordicism in late 1941.[47] Acerbo and the Mediterraneanists in his High Council on Demography and Race sought to bring the regime back to supporting Mediterraneanism by thoroughly denouncing the pro-Nordicist Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.[47] The Council recognized Aryans as being a linguistic-based group, and condemned the Manifesto for denying the influence of pre-Aryan civilization on modern Italy, saying that the Manifesto "constitutes an unjustifiable and undemonstrable negation of the anthropological, ethnological, and archaeological discoveries that have occurred and are occurring in our country".[47] Furthermore, the Council denounced the Manifesto for "implicitly" crediting Germanic invaders of Italy in the guise of the Lombards for having "a formative influence on the Italian race in a disproportional degree to the number of invaders and to their biological predominance".[47] The Council claimed that the obvious superiority of the ancient Greeks and Romans in comparison with the ancient Germanic tribes made it inconceivable that Italian culture owed a debt to ancient Aryan Germans.[47] The Council denounced the Manifesto's Nordicist attitude towards Mediterraneans that it claimed was "considering them as slaves" and was "a repudiation of the entire Italian civilization".[47]

Neo-Nazism and Aryanism

sun wheel
has been used as a symbol of the Aryan race by some neo-Nazis.

Since the military defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies in 1945, some neo-Nazis have developed a more inclusive definition of "Aryan", claiming that the peoples of Western Europe are the closest descendants of the ancient Aryans, with Nordic and Germanic peoples being the most "racially pure."[48]

According to

world powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia under a single military command.[49]

This proposed state would be led by a Führer-like figure called the Vindex, and would include all areas inhabited by the "Aryan race", as conceived by Neo-Nazis. Only those of the Aryan race would be full citizens of the state. The "Western Imperium" would embark on a vigorous and dynamic program of

Homo Galactica. The concept of the "Western Imperium" as outlined in the previous three sentences is based on the original concept of the Imperium as outlined in the 1947 book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics by Francis Parker Yockey as further updated, extended and refined in the early 1990s in pamphlets published by David Myatt.[50][51][52]

See also

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ Translation: "For centuries the Church kept people ignorant of their essences: race, blood, and nationality. As recently as 1935, priests publicly declared on Catholic holidays in Germany that a Catholic German was closer to a Catholic Negro than to a non-Catholic German. It was therefore not an offense for the Catholic to engage in racial disgrace with a Catholic Negro or a baptized Jew. On the other hand, it should be "shameful" and "mixing" when a Catholic German married a non-Catholic German! For the Church, therefore, even Judaism is a purely theological matter."

Citations

  1. doi:10.1086/210895
    ..
  2. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 30.
  3. ^ Yenne 2010, pp. 21–22.
  4. ^ a b 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.
  5. ^ a b c d Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Eastbourne, England: UK; Portland, Oregon, USA: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2008, 2010. P. 150.
  6. ^ Racisms Made in Germany, Wulf D. Hund 2011 page 19
  7. ^ John Cornwell. Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact. Penguin, Sep 28, 2004. [1], p. 68
  8. ^ a b c d e Alan E Steinweis. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, 2008. P. 28.
  9. ^ Mitchell B. Hart. Jews & Race: Writings on Identity & Difference, 1880–1940. Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA: Brandeis University Press, 2011. P. 247.
  10. ^ Alan E Steinweis. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, 2008. P. 29.
  11. ^ a b Longerich 2010, p. 241.
  12. ^ André Mineau. Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity. Rodopi, 2004. Pp. 34-36.
  13. ^ Steve Thorne. The Language of War. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2006. P. 38.
  14. ^ Wendy Lower. Nazi Empire-building And The Holocaust In Ukraine. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005. P. 27.
  15. ^ Marvin Perry. Western Civilization: A Brief History. Cengage Learning, 2012. P. 468.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ David Downing. Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty Two Days That Decided World War II. P. 48.
  18. ISBN 978-1-57607-800-6
    .
  19. ^ David Downing. Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty Two Days That Decided World War II. Read How You Want, 2010 P. 48.
  20. ^ Joseph W. Bendersky. A concise history of Nazi Germany, Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007. p. 161-2.
  21. ^ Rich, Norman (1974). Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order, p. 276-7. W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York.
  22. ^ a b Norman Davies. Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Pan Macmillan, 2008. Pp. 167, 209.
  23. ^ a b c d Ehrenreich, The Nazi ancestral proof, p.10
  24. ^ a b c d Eric Ehrenreich. The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, pp.9-10
  25. ^ Ehrenreich, The Nazi ancestral proof, p.70
  26. ISBN 978-1-929631-66-7
    .
  27. ISBN 978-1-134-52706-9
    .
  28. ^ Ehrenreich, The Nazi ancestral proof, p.11
  29. final solution by July and August of 1941. Evans, Richard J.
    The Third Reich at War New York:2008 Penguin Page 240.
  30. ^ Padfield, Peter Himmler New York: Henry Holt, 1990. p. 402.
  31. ^ Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2001, p. 11.
  32. ^ Neocleous, Mark. Fascism. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. p. 35
  33. ^ a b Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2001, p. 39.
  34. ^ Glenda Sluga. The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century. SUNY Press, 2001, p. 52.
  35. ^ a b c d e Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2001, p. 188.
  36. ^ Alan W. Ertl. Toward an Understanding of Europe:A Political Economic Précis of Continental Integration. Boca Raton, Florida, USA: Universal Publishers, 2008, p. 8.
  37. ^ Melville Jacobs, Bernhard Joseph Stern. General anthropology. Barnes & Noble, 1963, p. 57.
  38. ^ Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 45.
  39. ^ a b c d e f Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 60.
  40. ^ a b Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 61.
  41. ^ Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 59-60.
  42. ^ Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 78.
  43. ^ a b c Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 80.
  44. ^ a b Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 81.
  45. ^ a b c Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 110-111.
  46. ^ a b Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002, p. 110-112.
  47. ^ a b c d e f g Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2001, p. 146.
  48. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity New York: 2002--N.Y. University Press, See Chapter 15 for a discussion of Aryan identity politics
  49. ISBN 978-0-8147-3155-0
    .
  50. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity New York: 2002--N.Y. University Press, See Chapters 4 and 11 for extensive information about the proposed "Western Imperium"
  51. ^ "Featured Content on Myspace: "Vindex—The Destiny of the West—Imperium of the West" by David Myatt". blogs.myspace.com. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
  52. National Vanguard magazine Issue 130, January–February 2006: Archived 2010-02-28 at the Wayback Machine

Bibliography

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