The Nazi Worldview
- According to the Nazi’s ideology, there was no equality between people , but only a racial hierarchy.
- According to this ideology, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were at the bottom .
- Jews came to be regarded as an anti-race , the arch-enemies of the Aryans.
- Hitler's racism was influenced by thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
- Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection .
- Herbert Spencer gave the idea of the survival of the fittest.
- According to the survival of the fittest idea , only those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions
- The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive while the weak would perish. The Aryan race was the dominant race.
- The Aryans had to maintain its purity , build up strength , and rule the world.
- The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.
- He believed that new territories needed to be acquired i n order to be settled. This would increase the area of the mother country while allowing settlers on new lands to maintain an intimate connection with their place of origin.
- It would also increase the German nation's material resources and power .
Establishment of the Racial State
- Once in power, the Nazis established an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those deemed 'undesirable' throughout the empire.
- Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans ’
- Along with the Jews many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were c onsidered as racial ‘inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity of the ‘superior Aryan race.
- When Germany conquered Poland and parts of Russia, captured civilians were forced to work as slave labour .
- J ews remained the w orst sufferers in Nazi Germany.
- They had been s tereotyped as killers of Christ and usurer .
- Jews were lived i n the separately marked area called ghettos.
- From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis terrorized, pauperized and segregated the Jews , compelling them to leave the country.
- During 1939-1945 , aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.
The Racial Utopia
- Hitler occupied North-Western Poland.
- Poles were forced to leave their home and properties.
- Poles were then herded like cattle in the other part and called the General Government , the destination of all ‘undesirables’ of the empire.
- Many members of the Polish intelligentsia were murdered in order to keep the entire population intellectually and spiritually servile.
- Polish children who resembled Aryans were taken from their mothers and examined by 'race experts’.
- If they passed the race tests, they were raised in German families ; if not, they were placed in orphanages, where the majority died.
- With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers, the General Government also served as the killing fields for the Jews.
