A minor French nobleman Joseph Arthur Gobineau was one of the early promoters of the idea that the Aryans, as exemplified (in his opinion) in Europe by Teutons, were the apex of a hierarchy of races ranked by quality. Gobineau societies were formed all over Germany in the late 1800’s to study and promote his theories.
The Wiesenthal Center also has this longer piece on Gobineau. This piece mentions composer Richard Wagner who was a fan of Gobineau’s racial theories. The ideas were also taken up by Huston Stewart Chamberlin, an Englishman who was a great admirer of Germany. Chamberlin was Wagner’s son-in-law and was an habitue of Bayreuth. Hitler spent considerable time with the Wagners at Bayreuth and most likely met Chamberling there. Hitler had long railed against 'the Jews" as even a casual reading of Mein Kampf shows and he probably ate up Chamberlin’s racial ideas.
The book Rise and Fall of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer has quite a long discussion of this whole subject.
Hitler certainly met Houston Stewart Chamberlain on several occasions from 1923 onwards in Bayreuth before the latter’s death in 1927, meetings which seem to have mainly been the occasion for expressions of mutual admiration. There are also plenty of references by Hitler to Chamberlain as one of the writers he read a lot of in the early 1920s, though, as usual with him, one can doubt whether any of this reading was either particularly close or systematic.
Similarly, Alfred Rosenberg frequently mentioned Chamberlain as a major influence and authority in his writings.
Why is being blonde a superior characteristic? Because being blonde is part of belonging to a superior race like the Aryans.
Why are Aryans a superior race? Because they have superior characteristics like being blonde.
Well, first of all, keep in mind, it’s not good logic…it’s twisted, evil logic. (and while I shouldn’t have to include the disclaimer that I don’t believe the bullshit I’m posting below, I’m doing so anyway) But the idea isn’t that Aryans are a superior race because they’re blond. Aryans are a superior race because they’re the only ones intelligent and driven enough to create culture.
Here’s how the idea went. The most advanced of the human races is the Aryan race, who are able to create culture and society. Because of that, they’re naturally a race of rulers.
Underneath that, you have races that can’t create culture themselves, but can maintain it…they can use the Aryan as their example and mimic him…so they’re neither cultural creators or cultural destroyers…if they have a place in the world, it’s subordinate to their Aryan masters, because they’re like children, who need someone to tell them what to do. These are groups like the Slavs, the Chinese, Japanese, etc.
Underneath that, you have the races that destroy culture…they can neither create or maintain culture themselves, and they have no wish to…instead they live like parasites off the first two groups, and those are the Jews and the African races.
The blond hair is just a physical trait common in certain groups of Aryans. It’s not in itself beneficial.
The Nazis did not necessarily equate Aryan to German. They were quite happy to include nordic folk like Norweigans, Swedes, and Finns in this category and Hitler even felt that the English were brother Aryans. In a screwy example of twisting ideology to meet politics, Hitler declared the the Japanese were “Yellow Aryans” to rationalize his treaty with Japan.
I was aware of this when I made my first post. I think it is fair to see Charlemagne’s empire as a collaboration between the Franks and the Gallo-Romans. The later Holy Roman Emire was centered on what is now modern Germany. It too had connections to the earlier romans, but also was the foundation of what ended up being the modern German culture and therefore probably deserves to be considered German, whereas Charlemagne’s Empire also contained the seeds of Modern French culture.
But yeah, you are right and I probably should have been more explicit.
As mentioned, he was pretty Germanic, if not German, of course. His actual name was “Karl” to which people added Magnus to signify he was a great guy. This got bastardized through French into Charlemagne.
Anyway, although clearly illogical, the idea of Germans as a master race would ahve made some sense in terms of the Germany of the day. Remember that this was a people fed heavily on not-entirely incorrect rhetoric from Kaiser Wilhelm about other nations not allowing Germany any space or overseas posessions. They had done very well in WW1, especially considering they were outgunned on all sides, and were unfairly picked on at Versailles. By the time of Hitler, German science was probably the most advanced in the world, and their technological-industrial economy the most advanced overall. Germans may not have been the best at inventing, but they were very good at adapting and using inventions and engineering them into something useful.
Obviously he wasn’t referring specifically to folks with German citizenship. But Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes are all quite assuredly Germanic, and ethnically very close to Germans. (Finns, I’m not sure about, but they’re not Germanic.) The English have substantial Germanic ancestry, at least, though I don’t know how much Britain’s earlier Celtic population contributed to the Germanic gene pool.
By “Aryan”, though, he was apparently referring to Indo-Europeans in general (so I gather from the above posts, at least); conveniently, though, in his opinion the Germanic ethnic group was most purely Indo-European.
So his view of who the “master race” comprises is much more expansive than you’re supposing.
Coincidentally, just now as I was driving home, the car in front of me had a vanity license plate that said “ARYAN.” I was astonished since the Nazis had ruined the word for everyone else. Trying to make sense of this, I thought how Afghanistan’s airline is named Ariana and wondered if the driver were Afghan, there being a lot of Afghans around where I live.
So then I passed the driver and he was a dark brown skinned Hindu looking guy apparently from India. He is in the right on this after all, calling himself Aryan, since Hindi and the other languages of northern India, and Pakistan and Bangladesh, belong to the language group called Indo-Aryan. It’s still called that by linguists today. I guess the prefix “Indo-” is sufficient to detoxify “Aryan.” It’s OK… I’m from India, sahib.
What about zombie Nazi pirates who are skilled in the art of ninjitsu? That would be SWEET!
I agree with the supposition that the blond hair/ blue eyes thing were just markers for the “superior” race, and not the superior characteristics, but these recessive traits were pretty good markers for a “pure” Nordic bloodline, unpolluted by mixing with the “inferior” races.
random question… I’ve heard that the population Iceland is the most racially pure people, due to things like very little immigration. Any truth to this?
> . . . Indo-Aryan. It’s still called that by linguists today. . .
Maybe. There are Indic and Iranian branches of the Indo-European language family. Usually it’s considered that the Indic and Iranian branches are a little closer to each other than they are to the other branches, so some linguists talk of them as a subfamily. Usually this subfamily is called the Indo-Iranian subfamily. There’s a disagreement in the sources I just checked. One says that “Indo-Aryan” is an alternate name for his subfamily. The other says that “Indo-Aryan” is an alternate name for just the Indic branch. In any case, most linguists do not like to use the name “Aryan” in describing any parts of the Indo-European language family for the bad connotations that the name has.
From a practical point of view, it’s much more convenient to declare yourselves the “master race” and try to eliminate everyone else than it is to declare another group the “master race” and kill yourself.
I believe it’s just another manifestation of the tribal human tendency.
Yeah. It’s quite disturbing that Himmler actually had people working for him who were looking for, among other things, the Holy Grail and Atlantis.
Though the bright side of this was that, each Mark spent on Himmler’s little crackpot theories was one less mark that could be spend on fuel, bullets and tanks.
Well, maybe the Holy Grail is in Atlantis. Ever think of that, smart guy?
People have a capacity to believe whatever makes them feel good; there are people of all different colors with crackpot theories about their group’s superiority.
The Finns are not Germanic; heck they don’t even speak an Indo-European language. Hitler however lumped them in with the master race because Finland was unfortunatly forced into an alliance with Germany against the Soviet Union; Finland fended off a Soviet invasion during the Winter War (1939-40), prior Germany invading Russia, and Finland was forced to ally with Germany when the Soviets invaded again in the continutation war. Finns also look the part, with lots of blond and blue eye people
