Nazi Ideology

 

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924 (emphasis added)

 

The Importance of Race:

No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow.

                Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cul­tured people. North America, whose popula­tion consists in by far the largest part of Ger­manic elements who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different hu­manity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin im­migrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale. By this one example, we can clearly and distinctly recognize the effect of racial mix­ture. The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to defilement of the blood.

                The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following:

(a) Lowering of the level of the higher race;

(b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely pro­gressing sickness.

                To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator....

Everything we admire on this earth today— science and art, technology and inventions— is only the creative product of a few peoples and originally perhaps of one race.  On them depends the existence of this whole culture. If they per­ish, the beauty of this earth will sink into the grave with them....

                All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.

                The ultimate cause of such a decline was their forgetting that all culture depends on men and not conversely; hence that to preserve a cer­tain culture the man who creates it must be pre­served. This preservation is bound up with the rigid law of necessity and the right to victory of the best and stronger in this world....

                If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture, only the Aryan could be considered as the representa­tive of the first group. From him originate the foundations and walls of all human creation. . . . .

                Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood.

                All who are not of good race in this world are chaff....

                A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial ele­ments must some day become lord of the earth.

Anti-Semetism

The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is rep­resented by the Jews....

. . . The Jewish people, despite all apparent intellectual qualities, is without any true cul­ture, and especially without any culture of its own. For what sham culture the Jew today pos­sesses is the property of other peoples, and for the most part it is ruined in his hands.

                In judging the Jewish people’s attitude on the question of human culture, the most essen­tial characteristic we must always bear in mind is that there has never been a Jewish art and accordingly there is none today either; that above all the two queens of all the arts, archi­tecture and music, owe nothing original to the Jews. What they do accomplish in the field of art is either patchwork or intellectual theft. Thus, the Jew lacks those qualities which dis­tinguish the races that are creative and hence culturally blessed....

                On this first and greatest lie, that the Jews are not a race but a religion, more and more lies are based in necessary consequence. Among them is the lie with regard to the language of the Jew. For him it is not a means for express­ing his thoughts, but a means for concealing them. When he speaks French, he thinks Jew­ish, and while he turns out German verses, in his life he only expresses the nature of his na­tionality. As long as the Jew has not become the master of the other peoples, he must speak their languages whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they became his slaves, they would all have to learn a universal language....

                With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus steal­ing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate....

                For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bas­tards and bastards alone.

                And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of indi­viduals.

And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the prole­tariat .

In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to sub­jugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

                He works systematically for revolution in a twofold sense: economic and political.

Around peoples who offer too violent a resis­tance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary plants the flag of revolution on the very battle­fields.

                In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become un­profitable are taken from the state and sub­jected to his financial control.

                In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-reservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.

                Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublim­ity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature.

                Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen....

And so the Jew today is the great agitator for the complete destruction of Germany. Wherever in the world we read of attacks against Germany, Jews are their fabricators, just as in peacetime and during the War the press of the Jewish stock exchange and Marxists systematically stirred up hatred against Germany until state after state abandoned neutrality and, renouncing the true interests of the peoples, en­tered the service of the World War coalition.

                The Jewish train of thought in all this is clear.  The Bolshevization of Germany—that is, . . . to make possible the sweating of the German working class under the yoke of Jewish world finance [which] is conceived only as a preliminary to the further extension of this Jewish tendency of world conquest. As often in history, Germany is the great pivot in the mighty struggle. If our people and our state be­come the victim of these bloodthirsty and ava­ricious Jewish tyrants of nations, the whole earth will sink into the snares of this octopus; if Germany frees herself from this embrace, this greatest of dangers to nations may be regarded as broken for the whole world....

 

Lebensraum

Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation of freedom of existence....

                If the National Socialist movement really wants to be consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be permeated by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this world; boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against the aimlessness and incompetence which have hitherto guided our German nation in the line of foreign affairs. Then, without considera­tion of “traditions” and prejudices, it must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.

                The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area—viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics—between our historical past and the hopelessness of our present impotence.

. . . The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich’s frontiers in 1914 were anything but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geo­military expediency....

                As opposed to this, we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. . . .

[Hitler concludes that Germany will have to wrest by force additional land in Eastern Europe, including Russia]

                Just as our ancestors did not receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil for us and hence life for our people, but only the might of a victorious sword.  Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole of our aim in foreign policy.  It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers the rear cover for an enlargement of our people’s living space in Europe.

                If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states . . . .

 

Racial Teaching in German Schools under the Nazis

 

Hereditary and Racial Biology for Students (1935), a school textbook for German students.

 

How We Can Learn to Recognize a Person’s Race

Assignments

1. Summarize the spiritual characteristics of the individual races.

2. Collect from stories, essays, and poems examples of ethnological illustrations. Under­line those terms which describe the type and mode of the expression of the soul.

3. What are the expressions, gestures, and movements which allow us to make conclusions as to the attitude of the racial soul?

4. Determine also the physical features which go hand in hand with the specific racial soul characteristics of the individual figures.

5. Try to discover the intrinsic nature of the racial soul through the characters in stories and poetical works in terms of their inner attitude. Apply this mode of observation to persons in your own environment.

6. Collect propaganda posters and carica­tures for your race book and arrange them ac­cording to a racial scheme. What image of beauty is emphasized by the artist (a) in posters publicizing sports and travel? (b) in publicity

for cosmetics? How are hunters, mountain climbers, and shepherds drawn?

7. Collect from illustrated magazines, news­papers, etc., pictures of great scholars, states­men, artists, and others who distinguish them­selves by their special accomplishments (for example, in economic life, politics, sports). De­termine the preponderant race and admixture, according to physical characteristics. Repeat this exercise with the pictures of great men of all nations and times.

8. When viewing monuments, busts, etc., be sure to pay attention to the race of the person portrayed with respect to figure, bearing, and physical characteristics. Try to harmonize these determinations with the features of the racial soul.

9. Observe people whose special racial fea­tures have drawn your attention, also with re­spect to their bearing when moving or when speaking. Observe their expressions and ges­tures.

10. Observe the Jew: his way of walking, his bearing, gestures, and movements when talking.

11. What strikes you about the way a Jew talks and sings?