Herrenvolk

The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "''Herrenmenschen''" ("master humans").

The Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg believed that the "Nordic race" was descended from " Proto-Aryans", who he believed had pre-historically dwelt on the North German Plain and may have ultimately originated on the lost continent of Atlantis. The Nazis declared that the Aryans were superior to all other races, and believed they were entitled to expand territorially. Hitler, Adolf '' Mein Kampf'' 1925 The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in the Aryan certificate. This document, which was required by law for all citizens of the Reich, was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" (''Kleiner Ariernachweis'') and could be obtained through an ''Ahnenpass'', which required the owner to trace their lineage through baptism, birth certificates, or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent".

The Slavs, Gypsies, and Jews were defined as being racially inferior and non-Aryan "''Untermenschen''", and were thus considered to be a danger to the Aryan or Germanic master race. According to the Nazi secret Hunger Plan and ''Generalplan Ost'', the Slavic population was to be removed from Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination, except for a small percentage who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus suitable for Germanisation.

Historical background

Early attempts to claim a racial division between "masters" and "slaves", or the belief that a nation's ruling class is biologically superior to its ruled subjects, were made in the 18th century. Henri de Boulainvilliers in his book ''History of the Ancient Government of France'' (published posthumously in 1727) tried to prove that in France, the nobility represented the descendants of the old Frankish ruling class, whereas the rest of the population was descended from the subject Gauls. Therefore two qualitatively different races were confronting one another, and the only way to abolish the superiority of the Franks was to destroy their civilization. Classical liberal theorists such as Volney and Sieyès discredited this theory by showing that the French nobility consisted mostly of nouveaux riches who came from all parts of the country, and thus the idea of a racially pure Frankish lineage was fraudulent.

In 1855, French count Arthur de Gobineau published his infamous work ''An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races''. Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use of ethnography to defend the Ancien Régime against the claims of the Third Estate, Gobineau divides the human species into three major groupings, white, yellow and black, claiming to demonstrate that "history springs only from contact with the white races." Among the white races, he distinguishes the Aryan race as the pinnacle of human development, the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable miscegenation led to the "downfall of civilizations".

Gobineau's influence was slight at first. In his letters to Alexis de Tocqueville, he complained that his book was being hushed up in France and was having a real effect only in the United States. Tocqueville, who rejected the book in spite of his friendship with Gobineau, pointed out to him that this was because the book was in accord with the slave owners' interests in the Southern states. However, in the 1880s the book gained popularity in Germany thanks to the efforts of Cosima Wagner. In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a Germanophile Englishman and Cosima Wagner's son-in-law, published ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century''. Expanding upon Gobineau's earlier theories, he argued that Western civilization is deeply marked by the influence of the Teutonic peoples. Chamberlain grouped all European peoples—not just Germans, but Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and Latins—into the "Aryan race", a race built on the ancient Proto-Indo-European culture. At the helm of the Aryan race, and, indeed, all races, he saw the Nordic or Teutonic peoples.

The "''Übermensch''" (German) ("Overman" or "Superman") is a concept in the philosophy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche—he posited the "''Übermensch''" as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' (german: Also Sprach Zarathustra). However, Nietzsche never developed the concept on racial grounds. Instead, the "''Übermensch''" "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal". Nazism distorted the concept's real meaning in order to make it fit its 'master race' view.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was postulated that Indo-Europeans (who were generally referred to as " Aryans") made up the highest branch of humanity because their civilization was the most technologically advanced. This reasoning was simultaneously intertwined with Nordicism, which proclaimed that the "Nordic race" was the "purest" form of the Aryan race. Today, this view is regarded as a form of scientific racism and contradicts the belief in racial equality by advocating the view that one race is superior to all other races.

Eugenics

Eugenics came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as a way to improve and maintain the purity of the Aryan master race. Eugenics was a concept adhered to by many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, such as Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells