# Hitler, Aryanism, and the Japanese... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2006, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126 "2006-03-05T11:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/1 "2006-03-05T11:47:02Z")
I’m worried I may need to retake World War II history, but I’m wondering if Hitler had reservations about an alliance with the Japanese? I mean, the Japanese aren’t exactly blonde-hair, blue-eyed Aryan fantasy. I know a lot of people often say that the Japanese are also very xenophobic (I’m not supporting it), so was the agreement sort of let’s fight the same fight but stay on our respective sides of the planet? Just curious. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/2 "2006-03-05T11:58:58Z")
Can’t contribute anything factual, but The Onion had a great take on it in _Our Dumb Century_: > [@](#): > > **Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme** > > From the East Asian Correspondent, Sept 1, 1939. – In a course of action praised by many as “far-sighted” and “tactically brilliant,” the Japanese government has sworn its allegiance to the Axis powers led by white-supremacist Nazi Germany. In a formal statement, Japanese leaders declared, “We wish to be counted among the loyal allies of this back-stabbing, racist hate nation.” > > Following the announcement, Japanese General and military leader Hideki Tojo told reporters, “We are pleased to enter into an alliance with the paranoid, xenophobic government of Nazi Germany. We anticipate a deeply enriching exchange of our military aid with their deep-seated hated of our non-white heritage.” [Full story here…](http://www.boosman.com/blog/2004/11/the_funniest_thing_ive_ever_re.html) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/3 "2006-03-05T16:39:55Z")
From all I could tell, it was a marriage of convenience and they actually had relatively little to do with each other throughout the war. (I think a few submarines traveled from Germany to Japan, nothing even remotely like what we gave to the British government before we were even officially fighting anyone.) Germany and Japan had parallels in what they wanted out of the war and the reasons they used to justify their actions, but it was a case of convergent evolution with two countries in similar circumstances taking advantage of things in similar ways. The Nazis were actually flexible when it came to ‘Aryan-ness’. They thought the white English-speaking people (including Americans and the British) were racially pure but lead by Jews and other subhumans to fight against their own racial self-interest. They also had no problems allying with Italy and helping Spain, the natives of which can be quite dark-skinned. (They didn’t officially ally with Spain during the war, as Spain was neutral. But Franco’s Spain was most certainly a Fascist government and got substantial help from Germany during the Spanish Revolution of the thirties.) So my point is that the Nazis didn’t need consistency in their hatred as long as they always had someone to hate. Allegiances were made and revoked due to political and military concerns more than racial. (With allowances made for Nazi stupidity, of course. They _could_ have turned a substantial part of the western Soviet Union, especially the kulaks of the Ukraine, against Stalin had they not been complete morons. The people of the vast, fertile grain-producing Ukraine had been starved under Stalin’s forced economic restructuring plans, and were eager to show Joe exactly where he could shove it.) ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/4 "2006-03-05T16:43:07Z")
It was a marriage of convenience, just like the U.S. and Britain teaming up with the Soviets. The Germans and the Japanese didn’t like each other and probably didn’t trust one another (Japanese? Xenophobic? Naaaaawww), but they had a common enemy (the Soviets) and the world was certainly large enough for each to pursue its expansionist policies without getting in the way of the other. ---
**Author:** ![detop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bcef8e/32.png) [@detop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/detop)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/5 "2006-03-05T16:49:20Z")
IIRC Dodolf made the Japanese “honorary Aryans” or some such when they declared war on the West. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/6 "2006-03-05T17:27:15Z")
My interest in WWII has always tended toward the aircraft. But recently I’ve been reading more about other aspects. I’ve _just_ started reading a small volume on the Genocide. The first chapter, which is as far as I’ve read, talks about the historical repression of the Jews. For a couple-thousand years the’d been persecuted. The Christian Church saw them as a threat. They, as a group, were also seen as economic competition by the merchant sector. Everything the Nazis did – segregation, exile, killings – have parallels in history. Jacques de Biez, a follower of Eduoard Drumont, who merged antisemitism with socialism, said in 1889, ‘We are socialists. We are national socialists. We want France for the French.’ After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 there was an economic crisis, and the unification of the German states into a single nation focused attention on ‘German-ness’. Jewish immigrants from the east did not fit the image of a ‘German’. In October 1918 the German army was advancing. But a month later the Armisice was signed. Germany’s economy had been destroyed. The mutiny at Kiel and the naval blockade obviously were reasons why Germany capitulated. But as they had been advancing, some Germans thought there was another reason. They felt that Jews within the new liberal government had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’, and that the foreign powers, which had imposed harsh conditions on Germany’s surrender, were controlled by ‘International Jewry’. I think that the ‘Aryan’ thing was less about a Nordic Germany, and more about the antisemitism that had been going on for 2,000 years. Certainly there are and were millions of Germans who did not have blond hair and blue eyes. Hitler would rather have not fought the French, English and Americans. The Nazis wanted, because of their antisemitic beliefs and the belief that Jews were to blame for Gernamy’s troubles, to rid the country of them and to defeat Bolshevism. I think Hitler wanted Western Europe and a large part of Eastern Europe in order to have _Lebensraum_ and to be rid of the Communist threat – or at least keep it far away. As far as I know, Hitler did not have aspirations for the control of Asia. He probably thought that ‘Aryans’ were a superior race to Asians, but he had no worries about having an Asian ally that opposed Russia and with whom Germany could trade. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/7 "2006-03-05T18:04:17Z")
> [@Kizarvexius](#): > > they had a common enemy (the Soviets) Their common enemy was the British, not the Soviets (the Japanese signed a non-agression pact with the USSR at the same time). ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/8 "2006-03-05T23:05:14Z")
Also, despite the Nazi disdain for Slavs, they still made an alliance with the Croatian fascists, declaring them, “Honorary Aryans”, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/9 "2006-03-06T00:58:08Z")
Hitler wrote a sequel to Mein Kampf, which wasn’t published until after the war. In that book, he claims that the only way for the race to survive was through constant struggle. IIRC, the Hitler Channel program on the book said that Hitler’s plan was to let the Japanese wreak havoc in the East while he consolidated his power in Europe and the USSR, and _then_ invade the East. So it seems likely that Hitler’s plan was to let the Japanese do all the hard work, and then he’d move in and take control of their empire (and probably wiping them out in the process). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/10 "2006-03-06T01:13:09Z")
The Nazis also had a rather weak and one-sided alliance with Romania which lasted until a successful coup in August 1944, led by a young [King Michael I](http://icreport.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r103:E03AU4-298:), deposed the fascist dictator Ion Antonescu and installed Michael as the leader of his country. King Michael promptly aligned Romania with the Allies and declared open season on all Germans and fascists in Romania – a move which enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the population as a whole. Most of Romania was liberated within a few days. In 1993, Israel’s Yad Vashem Center awarded King Michael’s mother, Queen Elena, for her efforts to save the lives of tens of thousands of Romanian Jews. (Unfortunately, many Romanian Jews had already been deported prior to the coup.) [No cites for the following; I’m just going from memory from my readings on the Battle of Stalingrad.] Before the coup, however, the Romanian troops were frequently assigned the thankless task of protecting German supply lines and flanks and were not well-regarded by the German forces who commandeered them. The alliance between Hitler and Antonescu certainly benefitted the Nazis, as thousands of poorly-supplied and inadequately-armed Romanian troops were sometimes treated as cannon fodder in the battlefields of the Eastern Front, perhaps most notably in the failed attempt to counter Soviet forces encircling Stalingrad in the winter of '42-Jan. '43. Also, Romania’s Plovisti oil fields were a crucial source of petroleum for the Reich; protecting that supply with a buffer zone of German-controlled territory provided an additional incentive for Hitler to expand his reach through the Ukraine and into Southern Russia. ---
**Author:** ![Gestalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/90ced4/32.png) [@Gestalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gestalt)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/11 "2006-03-06T04:12:33Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Also, despite the Nazi disdain for Slavs, they still made an alliance with the Croatian fascists, declaring them, “Honorary Aryans”, IIRC. Indeed, the Nazis had an alliance (or at least a nonagression pact) with the ueberslavs . . . the Russians. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/12 "2006-03-06T08:19:01Z")
> [@Kizarvexius](#): > > Japanese? Xenophobic? Naaaaawww This being GQ and all, gotta a cite for that? Or is that just Ignorance In Action? ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/13 "2006-03-06T15:33:17Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > This being GQ and all, gotta a cite for that? Or is that just Ignorance In Action? How many cites do you want? A simple Google search using the terms “Japan World War II xenophobia” yielded 421,000 hits. Granted, as with any search using such broad terms, only a small percentage of these are applicable. But here are a couple that seem to fit the bill: > [@](#): > > **From the [_World War II Database_](http://www.worldwar2database.com/html/preludejapan.htm) :** > The xenophobia that pervaded Japanese culture started with its government. The Tokugawa bafuku had existed for 250 years; it was peace achieved through a complex systems of checks and balances that essentially was neighbors spying on neighbors. > [@](#): > > **From an on-line essay by Alex Shishin entitled [_The Problems of Xenophobia and the Teaching of English at Japanese Universities_](http://www.uni-erfurt.de/eestudies/eese/artic22/shishin/7_2002.html):** > Japan has a long history of fascination and delight with things foreign. It has an equally long history of suspicion of foreign influences and foreigners themselves. This contradiction extends into every facet of Japanese life… > > An ancient definition of Japan’s fascination with foreign things is akogare. Rimmer (1988) defines this as “a sense of yearning […] for something beyond the confines of ordinary life” in an essay on a No play written between 1500-1650 about a medieval lord, Kamo no Chomeis, who unsuccessfully tries to build a ship to sail to China. China and Korea not simply influenced but defined Japan’s culture in ancient times. Japan went through an extremist xenophobic era beginning in 1633 when shogun Iemitsu almost totally isolated Japan from all foreign contacts, which continued well into the middle of the 19th century… > > After the death of the charismatic Emperor Meiji his physically and mentally weak son, Taisho, became emperor. His reign (1914-1927) has been called “Taisho Democracy.” That fairly liberated time, when interest in Western culture, democracy and socialism flourished, was directly predicated on the weakness of the emperor system (Bix 2000). Emperor Taisho became so debilitated during his short reign that his son, Hirohito, as Prince Regent, had to take over as de facto emperor in 1920. > > So-called Taisho democracy was brought to an abrupt end under Hirohito by the extreme nationalism of the 1930’s when ideology became manifestly anti-foreign. This had an influence on Japanese attitudes toward foreign languages as well as foreign cultures. ---
**Author:** ![WernerGerman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b19c9b/32.png) [@WernerGerman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WernerGerman)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/14 "2011-12-24T00:57:09Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Can’t contribute anything factual, but The Onion had a great take on it in _Our Dumb Century_:[Full story here…](http://www.boosman.com/blog/2004/11/the_funniest_thing_ive_ever_re.html) Reading posts like this makes me think that they’re actually individuals out there that are somewhat jilted that Hilter gave an Aryan title to the Japs all the while referring to Americans as mongrels. Take for instance, the word Aryan is a loanword, made up by the English as an alternative definition to Nordic which was the original categorization within which the English weren’t included. Now, why in the fucking hell would you change Hitler’s definition of who he considered Nordic just to include yourself within his categorization? The English are obviously German admirers in that sense. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/15 "2011-12-24T03:08:50Z")
I can’t figure out what you mean by saying Aryan was a loanword. What isn’t? And Aryan is an older term in English than Nordic, so it couldn’t have been a substitute. > **[Online Etymology Dictionary](https://www.etymonline.com/)** > > The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. > [@](#): > > Aryan > c.1600, as a term in classical history, from L. Arianus, Ariana, from Gk. Aria, Areia, names applied in classical times to the eastern part of ancient Persia and to its inhabitants. Ancient Persians used the name in ref. to themselves (O.Pers. ariya-), hence Iran. Ultimately from Skt. arya- “compatriot;” in later language “noble, of good family.” Also the name Sanskrit-speaking invaders of India gave themselves in the ancient texts, from which early 19c. European philologists (Friedrich Schlegel, 1819, who linked the word with Ger. Ehre “honor”) applied it to the ancient people we now call Indo-Europeans (suspecting that this is what they called themselves); this use is attested in English from 1851. The term fell into the hands of racists, and in German from 1845 it was specifically contrasted to Semitic (Lassen). > > ``` > German philologist Max Müller (1823-1900) popularized the term in his writings on comparative linguistics, recommending it as the name (replacing Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Caucasian, Japhetic) for the group of related, inflected languages connected with these peoples, mostly found in Europe but also including Sanskrit and Persian. Arian was used in this sense from 1839 (and is more philologically correct), but this spelling caused confusion with Arian, the term in ecclesiastical history. Gradually replaced in comparative linguistics c.1900 by Indo-European, except when used to distinguish I.E. languages of India from non-I.E. ones. Used in Nazi ideology to mean "member of a Caucasian Gentile race of Nordic type." As an ethnic designation, however, it is properly limited to Indo-Iranians (most justly to the latter) and has fallen from general academic use since the Nazi era. > > ``` > > 1888, “characteristic Aryan principles,” from Aryan + -ism. As a belief in cultural or racial superiority of “Aryans,” from 1905. > [@](#): > > Nordic > 1898, from Fr. nordique (in J. Deniker’s system of race classifications), lit. “of or pertaining to the north,” from nord “north” (a loan-word from O.E.; see north). Perhaps influenced by Ger. Nordisch. Strictly, the blond peoples who inhabit Scandinavia and the north of Britain. As a type of skiing competition, it is attested from 1954. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/16 "2011-12-24T07:56:12Z")
The Nazis also had an alliance of convenience with the Middle Eastern Arabs, based somewhat on hatred of British imperialism, but primarily on hatred of the Jews. Even though it was common knowledge that the Nazis thought of Arabs as being lower than the Slavs. Barely a half-click above the Jews themselves actually, on a par with Africans (i.e. blacks)… ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/17 "2011-12-24T08:05:57Z")
I think what it comes down to is, when you’re fighting a war, you take the allies you can get. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/18 "2011-12-24T08:54:28Z")
Japhetic. _snort_ ---
**Author:** ![Apollon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Apollon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollon)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/19 "2011-12-24T13:35:56Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > They also had no problems allying with Italy and helping Spain, the natives of which can be quite dark-skinned. There’s an underlying misconception. Nazi racial ideology didn’t exclude everyone who wasn’t nordic-looking. Aryan wasn’t synonymous with blond. The Nazis regarded the Nordics as the most noble of the Aryans, but according to their doctrine, the Italians, Spanish, Greeks, and all the other non-Slavic Europeans were also Aryans. Even the Slovenes and Croatians didn’t cause them any headaches, because it could be argued that they were Slavic only by language, not by race. Someone else mentioned Romania, but Romanians aren’t Slavs at all, so they could be slotted as true “fellow-Aryans” - excluding the sizeable Gypsy minority, of course. As for the Japanese, they may not have been Aryans in the strict sense (although they were granted the status of honorary Aryans), but due to their perceived racial purity, they were regarded as belonging to a separate but similarly “noble” race as that of the Aryans. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126/20 "2011-12-24T22:27:27Z")
The Nazis for a while were quite friendly with the Nationalist Chinese. They helped train troops and such. But the Nationalists made it clear they were not so anti-Russian and if things got nastier, they’d throw in with the Brits and Yanks. Once the war started in the East, the Nazis figured out which side was better militarily and started to cultivate the Japanese. Wikipedia links: > **[China–Nazi Germany relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_(1911%E2%80%931941)#Sino-German_cooperation_in_the_1930s)** > > Nazi Germany and the Nationalist government of the Republic of China maintained bilateral relations between 1933 and 1941. The Chinese Nationalists sought German military and economic support to help them consolidate control over factional warlords and resist Japanese imperialism. Germany sought raw materials such as tungsten and antimony from China. During the mid-1930s, thousands of Chinese soldiers were trained by German officers and German economic investment made its way into China. However,... One Sino-Soviet oddity (Hey, at least they tried. Sort of.): > **[Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_Nonaggression_Pact)** > > The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (traditional Chinese: 中蘇互不侵犯條約; simplified Chinese: 中苏互不侵犯条约; pinyin: Zhōng-sū hù bù qīnfàn tiáoyuē) was signed in Nanjing on August 21, 1937, between the Republic of China and the Soviet Union during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The pact went into effect on the day that it was signed and was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on September 8, 1937. > At first, the pact led to improving relations between the Kuomintang government, led by Chiang Kai-sh... [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-aryanism-and-the-japanese/347126.md?page=2)