Modern Germany up to 1914:
Antisemitism: Rise of Racial Nationalism

Edith Shaked
Adjunct Faculty at Pima Community College

Synopsis

The conditions in Germany that preceded WWI, Adolph Hitler & the Nazi rise to power - volkish thought, the Aryan myth, racial nationalism; racial theorists; political antisemitism. National unification, a traditional authoritarian militaristic regime; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Industrialization. Germany on the Eve of War.

Instructional Objectives - Students will learn:

* the historical circumstances behind the question: Why Germany?


Chapter Content

Introduction

“No purposeful investigation of the Holocaust can be divorced from the social, political & psychological conditions prevalent in modern German society. ... Nor, it must be stressed, is the Holocaust explicable -if it is explicable at all- in terms of German history alone.”¹

“Modern antisemitism emanated from 2 related sources: nationalism & racism. (the term was introduced in Germany by Wilhelm Marr).”² Extreme nationalists claimed that Jews are forever aliens. Racists asserted that innate racial differences prevent Jews from assimilating with the superior culture of the host countries. German nationalists had laid the groundwork for anti-Jewish prejudice.

Nationalism

Nationalism - pride in one’s national heritage; a modern political movement, which roots lie in a shared sense of regional and cultural identity. People with a shared culture, language, history, race and value systems, bonded together into political, economic, and social entities with distinct continuous geographical boundaries which we refer to today as nations. The group had a shared loyalty to the nation.

In Germany, nationalism went beyond the commonality of language & heritage, and combined sentimentality & patriotism to create a mystical concept of Germanness - the Voelkisch spirit acquired only by birth. You are truly German because of your connection to German blood & German soil. To be a German was not acquired by citizenship. Jews were forever aliens.


Extremist nationalism

‘In the 1st half of the 19th c., nationalism and liberalism -equal natural rights of the individuals & national independence and unification- went hand in hand. But pride in one’s national heritage became a competitive destructive chauvinism. Nationalism grew extreme, and its difference from liberalism became very apparent. Jews, as outsiders who did not share the common language, culture, religion, & values, were seen as a threat by extremists in the nationalist movement. As such, they became the targets of antisemitic persecution.

The extreme nationalism of the late 19th & early 20th centuries contributed to World War I & to the rise of Nazism & Fascism after the war; it was the seedbed of totalitarian nationalism. Concerned exclusively with the greatness of the nation, extreme nationalists rejected the liberal emphasis on political liberty. They attacked parliamentary government as a barrier to national unity and greatness and maintained that authoritarian leadership was needed to meet national emergencies. The needs of the nation, they said, transcended the rights of the individual. Extreme nationalists also rejected the liberal ideal of equality.

Placing the nation above everything, nationalists accused national minorities of corrupting the nation’s spirit; and they glorified war as a symbol of the nation’s resolve and will. In the name of national power and unity, they persecuted minorities at home and stirred up hatred against other nations. In the pursuit of national power, nationalists increasingly embraced militaristic, imperialistic, and racist doctrines.

Interpreting politics with the logic of emotions, extreme nationalists insisted that they had a sacred mission to regain lands once held in the Middle Ages, to unite their kinfolk in other lands, or to rule other peoples considered inferior. They organized patriotic societies, denounced national minorities, particularly Jews, and created a cult of ancestors and a mystique of blood, soil, and a sacred national past. Loyalty to the nation-state was elevated above all other allegiances. The ethnic state became an object of religious reverence; ... worship of the nation-state. In 1902, Friedrich Paulsen, a German philosopher, warned of nationalism’s threat to reason and morality:

A supersensitive nationalism has become a very serious danger for all the peoples of Europe; because of it, they are in danger of losing the feeling for human values. Nationalism, pushed to an extreme, just like sectarianism, destroys moral and even logic consciousness. Just and unjust, good and bad, true and false, lose their meaning; ...

Antisemitism in Germany - by-product of German racial nationalism

Extreme nationalism was a general European phenomenon, but the combination of extreme nationalism & racism was more evident and more dangerous in Germany where racist nationalism was expressed in volkish thought’ - ‘the most ominous expression of German nationalism & a clear example of mythical thinking,(Volk= folk, people, race; people-integral nation).

Romanticism & Nationalism + Volkish Thought

Romanticism

Romanticism, in reaction against the rationalism of the 18th century, it was a movement in philosophy & the arts, & a set of attitudes, in the latter part of the 18th c., initiated in Germany and England; it glorified feeling, emotion, sentimentality & the special characteristics of the historic past. In Germany, these ideas were expounded by Johann Gottfried von Herder,1744-1803, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Grimm. But there, sentimentality merged with patriotism to create a mystical concept of Germanness. To be truly German was not a matter of citizenship, it was based on an obscure sense of commonality, based on Germanic blood & German soil. German

With fanatical devotion, Volkish thinkers embraced all things German: medieval past, German landscape, the simple peasant, the village; they sought to bind together the German people through a deep love of their language, traditions, and fatherland. These thinkers felt that Germans were animated by a higher spirit than that found in other peoples. To Volkish thinkers, the Enlightenment and parliamentary democracy were foreign ideas that corrupted the pure German spirit; they denounced the liberal-humanist tradition of the West as alien to German soul.

And “only birth could infuse that volkisch spirit. ... To be German truly German was not a mere matter of citizenship. ... Clearly, Jews could only pretend to be German; they were forever aliens.”³ Ernst Arndt and Friedrich Jahn promoted and exalted the notion of a mystical ‘Volk,’ in which the Jew could have no part. So, in the 19th c., the Romantic ‘Volkish’ movement excluded the Jews as strangers and second-class citizens, because

- it exalted folkway and emphasized the purity of the national tradition
- it evoked the image of a mythical golden past, with a supposed superiority
- it produced an idealization of the Middle Ages with Christian knights

Thus, German nationalism was burdened with a romantic quixotic aspect from the outset.
“Volkish thought attracted German frightened by all the complexities of the modern age -industrialization, urbanization, materialism, class conflicts, and alienation. ... The Volkish movement appealed mainly to farmers and villagers who regarded the industrial city as a threat to native values; ... to artisans and small shopkeepers, threatened by big business; and to scholars, writers, teachers, and students, who saw in Volkish nationalism a cause worthy of their idealism. Schools were leading agents for the dissemination of Volkish ideas... Volkish thinkers glorified the ancient Germanic tribes ... courageous and vigorous German ancestors.

“Such attitudes led German to see themselves different from and better than the English and French. It also led them to see German culture as unique -innately superior to and in opposition to the humanist outlook of the Enlightenment. Volkish thinkers, like their romantic predecessors, held that the German people and culture had a special destiny and a unique mission. ... Volkish thought was becoming increasingly widespread.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in 1807, proclaimed the German ethos to be the seedbed for human perfection; argued against Jewish emancipation; in 1808 he delivered a series of ‘Addresses to the German Nation,’ in which he rallied German-speaking people to resist the French, and spoke of the superiority of the Germans.

The Aryan Myth - German nationalism become racism

Volkish thinkers were especially attracted to racist doctrines, & extreme nationalism was combined with racism -belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others; discrimination or prejudice based on race.

Like their Nazi successors, Volkish thinkers claimed that the German race was purer than, and therefore superior to, all other races. Its superiority was revealed in such physical characteristics as blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin -all signs of inner qualities lacking inn other races. German racists Claimed that Germans were descendants of ancient ‘Aryans’ (Aryan tongue became the basis of most European languages. Aryan Originally, a term for peoples speaking the languages of Europe and India. Twisted by Nazis, who viewed those of Germanic background as the best examples of "superior," "Aryan race." )

“Racial volkish thinkers held that race was the key to history and ... , a race demonstrated its vigor and achieved greatness when it preserved its purity; intermarriage between races was contamination that would result in genetic, cultural, and military decline; and that Jews were international conspirators plotting to dominate the world.

Racial theorists

In the 19th c., national-racial considerations supplemented a traditional, biased Christian perception of Jews & Judaism. However, whereas Christian anti-Judaism believed that through conversion, Jews could escape the curse of their religion, racial antisemites who used the language of Social Darwinism, said that Jews were racially stained and eternally condemned by their genes. Their evil & worthlessness derived from inherited racial characteristics, which could not be altered by conversion,’ or expulsion. Racial theorists of the 19th century, were the first to confuse the term ‘Aryan’ -a linguistic term, with race; the term ‘Semitic’ also had a linguistic origin). ‘

Modern antisemitism in Germany

“In a climate of fervent nationalism & jingoism, there were increasing allegations of Jewish ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘clannish separatism.’ Books & pamphlets appeared in France & Germany alleging that the ‘Semites’ were responsible for everything that was dark, ... menacing & destructive, whereas all that was pure, creative, heroic & good was the product of ‘Aryan’ influence. This biological view of human potential & moral worth was, in effect, a pseudo-scientific hotchpotch of the new racial, linguistic & anthropological theories, blended with the vestige of old religious hatreds and fears. The Jews, it was argued, were racially incapable of improvement. No matter how hard they tried to be German - ... to convert to Christianity -no matter how great the impression of integration, the Jews were depicted as parasitic, scheming, manipulative & venomous, constantly plotting to ‘take over’ economic control of the state. ...

The actual categories of Semite & Aryan were borrowed very loosely from the filed of linguistics, in which these terms related to families of languages (and not to ‘racial’ groups). Social Darwinism, with its theory of natural selection ... in the late 19th century also provided a rationale for the new antisemitism.” ⁴

Influence of Arthur Joseph de Gobineau

Of particular interest among the early racial theorists was a Frenchman, Arthur Joseph de Gobineau. In 1854, published Essay on the Inequality of Human Races. The author saw in what he called the ‘Aryan’ race -blond, tall, blue-eyed-‘a cultural people superior to the others, and ... that the Germans had inherited their superior racial qualities;’ in line with Social Darwinist thought. However, Gobineau warned that cross-breeding and race-mixing were threatening its very survival.

Richard Wagner (1813-83)

Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of Human Races was translated into German forty years later; it had a powerful influence on Germans such as composer Richard Wagner. ‘Wagner fueled a racial difference theory, and expressed a German nationalistic terminology called volkisch (people-integral nation) in racist terms. He talked about emancipation - but emancipation from Judaism & Christianity ... Hence his artistic attempts to glorify a Germanic religion based on pagan elements.’⁵ He denounced the Jews for ‘Judaizing’/corrupting German culture.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927)

Volkish thinkers also embraced the ideas of Wagner’s son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Englishman, who adopted German citizenship, & influenced Nazi racial doctrine. His book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 1900, emphasized the ‘spirit’ of race, & idealized the pure German spirit - ‘race-soul,’ which made Germans honest, loyal, & industrious. Everything Jewish was black & demonic, destructive & corruptive. Jews were materialistic, legalistic, & devoid of tolerance & morality. These 2 peoples were locked in a struggle, in which Jews must be defeated.

Chamberlain asserted that races differed not only physically, but also morally, spiritually, and intellectually; that the Germans, the only pure descendants of ancient Aryans, were physically superior & bearers of a higher culture; that the Jews were undermining German society; to save Western civilization from lower races -Jews, Negroes, Orientals. This book gave Nazis the text for their racial myth & was very popular in Germany.

Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891)

In late-19th c., ‘Lagarde, a racist German oriental scholar and a volkist antisemite developed the anti-Judaic & anti-Christian element still further -than Wagner. ... If the decisive element in a person ... was race, which was hereditary, then no amount of baptismal water could change a Jew.’⁶ He “ called for a German faith ... that would unite the nation; he saw the Jews as enemies of Germany,” and said of them: ‘One does not have dealing with pests and parasites; ... one destroys them.’

‘To the imagery of the Jew as Satan, derived from earlier Christian antisemitism, was added the biologically oriented imagery of the parasite. Both images, that of the Devil and that of the parasite, dehumanized the Jews & made theorizing about their physical destruction possible.’⁷

Racist writers of the 19th c. did not advocate mass murder, yet their theories played an important role in the coming disaster. The ground for annihilation had been laid. Biological racism, the theory of an innate, unalterable Jewish malignancy, and the claim that Jews were the bearers of an organic genetic flaw, enabled the Nazis to rationalize their nearly successful genocide. The social Darwinist notion of the struggle of races for survival became a core doctrine of the Nazi party after World War I and provided the “scientific” and “ethical” justification for genocide. Jews’ destruction is a must.

Modern Unified Germany - Before World War I (up to 1914)

Germans has no tradition of democracy. The 1st Reich (German Empire),part of the Holy Roman Empire for over a 1000 years, had been a loosely patchwork of independent regions.

Unification of Germany. Autocratic Military Leaders German Empire in 1871

Following the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), Germany was finally unified under Count Otto von Bismarck's (1815-1898)‘blood and iron’ policy. Under Prussian leadership, a new German Empire was proclaimed on January 18, 1871, at Versailles. King William of Prussia became kaiser or Emperor William I of the 2nd Reich -German Empire; & Jewish emancipation confirmed. The new German Reich of 1871 was dominated by Prussia, by Junker, and by militaristic interests.

The Prussian leadership of German unification meant the triumph of authoritarian, militaristic values over liberal, constitutional sentiments in the development of the new German state. Chancellor Bismark & the Junkers, powerful noble army officers, continued to rule over the new nation with an iron hand. The Junkers were the commanders of the German army, held the majority of high government positions, and owned nearly all the land of Prussia, the largest of the 25 German states. The new imperial Germany continued as an authoritarian, conservative, military-bureaucratic power state, during Emperor William II (1888-1918). Men served in army until 45 yrs-old. Thus, obeying orders of military authorities had become acceptable long before Hitler and the Nazis arrived on the scene.

In this new autocratic militaristic German nation, German nationalism was now able to move farther away from liberal, democratic ideas. In 1878, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed, and democratic efforts were stifled.

Political Antisemitism - The power & danger of mythical thinking

This period also coincided with a new cycle of antisemitism, with Jews being blamed for the severe economic depression of 1873, for manipulating peasants and small businessmen into resisting the traditional social and economic order. Jews, who could never belong to the world of German blood and soil, were held responsible for socialism, capitalism, stock market failures, & for labor strikes. Antisemitism became a cohesive political issue.

‘German racial nationalists insisted that as a superior race Germans had a national right to dominate other peoples, particularly the ‘racially inferior’ Slavs of the East’ and to make conquest -combined this belief in the superiority of German culture with the sense of a universal mission for the German people.

‘German racial nationalists singled out Jews as the most wicked of races & a deadly enemy of the German people. Antisemitism, which was widespread in the late-19th c. Europe, provides a striking example of the perennial appeal, power, and danger of mythical thinking. Antisemitic organizations and political parties sought to deprive Jews of their civil rights, and antisemitic publications proliferated.

The radical right saw Jew-hatred as a popular formula for mobilizing & uniting all social classes - a precondition for strengthening the nation & destroying liberal democracy. By manufacturing the myth of the wicked Jew, the radical right demonstrated the truth of Sorel’s insight that people are moved & united by myths that give emotionally satisfying explanations of life and history and simplify and clarify the complexities of the modern world.’

Coining the word ‘antisemitism’

Wilhelm Marr, a 19th century German racial thinker and a journalist, coined and was the 1st to use, in 1879, the term antisemitism, the ‘modern,’ ‘scientific’ term for Jew-hatred & anti-Jewish movement, in a secular society (calling Jews, a physically and mentally inferior group). He wrote a pamphlet, ‘The Victory of Jewry over Germandom.’ It was very successful, going through 12 editions in six years. Using ideas of race and Volkisch nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the ‘first major power in the West’ in the 19th century. He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans ‘beyond salvation.’

Antisemitism is spelled unhyphenated & in the lower case. This spelling is more historically & etymological correct since Semitic refers not to a race of people, as Marr & other racists wrongly believed, but to a group of languages which includes Arabic as well as Hebrew.

The birth of antisemitic political parties

*’In late 19th century, hatred of the Jews developed into a systematic body of beliefs, in Germany & Austria. As historian Hans Kohn says, ‘Germany became the fatherland of modern antisemitism; there the systems were thought out and the slogans coined.’ ... Like conservatives in other lands, German conservatives -traditional opponents of liberalism on the political right, deliberately fanned the flames of antisemitism to win the masses over to conservative causes.

“In Germany, political parties which sought to disenfrahise or in some other way to victimize Jews, described themselves from the first as ‘socialist.’ Hitler’s parti, in step with this tradition, would later call itself national Socialist. ...

In Germany (unlike in France) ... a ‘Jewish issue’ (the Dreyfus affair) would hardly have aroused such a furor, and antisemitism was allowed to creep slowly, almost imperceptibly -& virtually unchallenged- into the body politic. It was ... the supreme indifference ... of most Germans that would permit the fanaticism of a relative few to wreak such havoc.

Indifference is, in most societies, a neutral force which can be harnessed either for good or ill by those who hold the reins of power. ... However, the indirect impact of the majority who, through their silence may condone or rubber-stamp the decisions and policies of others, should not be underestimated. Nor should it be overlooked that silence or indifference is a choice that individuals make. This, surely is one of the central lessons of the Nazi era.”⁸

The rise of mass politics & the new right, 1880-1900

Conservatives founded right-wing antisemitic political parties based on race -using antisemitism in party platforms. The 1st was the Christian Socialist Workers Party, founded in Berlin in 1878, to recruit the lower bourgeoisie to the cause of Prussian monarchy, and to rally working-class supporters of socialism; founded by Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), a chaplain of the imperial court, a prominent Protestant preacher. Stocker blamed Jews for business failures, domination of liberal political movements, and for being "a foreign drop of blood in the German body one with destructive power. He appealed to many Germans in the lower economic & social middle classes the same groups to whom Hitler appealed who yearned for status and a strong state.

In 1879, Stocker joined Marr in founding the League of Antisemites. Other parties included the German Social Antisemitic party, and the Antisemitic People’s Party. At their peak, in 1898, they attracted 250,000 votes (4% of the vote)

In German-speaking Austria, Karl Lueger (1844-1928), leader of the Christian Socialist party, founded by conservative German nationalists, was elected mayor of Vienna, exploiting antisemitism. In Austria, Georg von Schonerer, founder of the German National party wanted to eliminate Jews from all areas of public life.

Historian Heinrich Treitschke began writing in 1879, that ‘the Jews are our misfortune,’ to repeated in Nazi propaganda, and that an unbridgeable chasm existed between the German and Jewish spirit. In 1881, the philosopher Eugen Karl Duhring wrote ‘The Jewish Question as a Racial, Moral & Cultural Question,’ in which he argued that Jews were causing Germany's decline, and that they constituted a ‘counter-race’ which neither conversation nor assimilation could change. His influence among university students was considerable.

In 1893, 250,000 voters sent 16 deputies (out of 397) pledged to antisemitic measures to the Reichstag, German legislature. In 1900, H. S. Chamberlain, an Englishman who settled in Germany, wrote The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he idealized the German
"race-soul," which made Germans honest, loyal, and industrious. By contrast, Jews were materialistic, legalistic, and devoid of tolerance and morality. These two peoples were locked in a struggle, in which the Jews must be defeated. This book gave Nazis the text for their racial myth and had enormous sales success in Germany.

‘Antisemites invented a mythical evil to be blamed for all the social & economic ills caused by the rapid growth of industries & cities & for all the new ideas that were undermining the old order. Their anxieties & fears concentrated on the Jews, to whom they attributed everything they considered to be wrong with the modern age, all that threatened the German Volk.

The thought process of Volkish antisemites demonstrate the mind’s monumental capacity for irrational thinking. In the mythical world of Volkish thinkers, Jews were regarded as foreign intruders -stranger, outsider, the ‘other’- who could never be loyal to the fatherland; as racial inferiors whose genes could infect & weaken the German race and debase its culture; and as international conspirators who were plotting to dominate Germany and the world, by gaining control over political parties.’

The world-conspiracy theme - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

“A favorite image from the turn of the century was that of the power-crazed Jews engaged in an international conspiracy to undermine the safe & peaceful world of the gentiles, fomenting wars, revolutions & the collapse of organized religion. The ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is the single most notorious antisemitic publication of this type.”⁹

In 1807, the Prussian Friedrich Buchholz accused the Jews of plotting with the aristocracy to rule society. In 1816, the world-conspiracy theme was repeated by Johann Ehrmann, a German anti-Napoleonic nationalist. ‘In the 1890s the myth of a Jewish conspiracy, to take over the world, found its culminating expression in the notorious forgery, written in France by an unknown author: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; forged by Russian emigres in France, with the assistance of the Russian secret police, it alleged a massive Jewish international conspiracy to seize power all over the globe, to start wars and depressions. The Protocols purported to be minutes of part of the 1897 international meeting of Jewish leaders, known as the 1st World Zionist Congress, called by Theodor Herzl. The Protocols were 1st published in Russia in 1903, in Germany after World War I in 1919 & widely believed, in France & the US by Henry Ford in 1920, and in Britain in 1921.

This forgery was poorly-written, and was totally implausible from beginning to end. Preposterous as it was, however, The Protocols were believed by those among the populace who found Jews to be convenient scapegoats. The document was translated into at least seven languages. It was not until 1921 that a London Times newspaper reporter uncovered that the story described in The Protocols was a direct plagiarism of two obscure fictional works, one a satire on Napoleon by a French writer, Maurice Joly, and the other a story by Herman Goedsche. The damage, however, could not be erased.

‘German antisemites regarded the Protocols as convincing evidence that the Jews were responsible for starting WWI, for Germany’s defeat, & for the revolution that toppled the monarchy.’ In the 1920s, the Nazis exploited The Protocols to justify persecution of the Jews - in 1925, a German brochure advertise the book; and the worldwide publication of the document persisted in fanning the flames of antisemitism years after the hoax of this forgery was proven. One can find copies of The Protocols today, as it remains one of the most popular tracts for distribution by individuals and groups which hate Jews.

‘German antisemitic organizations & political parties failed to get the state to pass antisemitic laws; by the early 1900s, these groups had declined in political power & importance.

Pan Germanism

But the mischief had been done. In the minds of many Germans, the image of the Jew as an evil & dangerous creature had been firmly planted. It was perpetuated by schools, youth groups, the Pan-German Association, & an array of racist pamphlets & books. The Pan-German association founded in 1893, had a membership of professors, schoolteachers, journalists, lawyers, and aristocrats. Pan Germanism, a growing force made blatant use of antisemitic slogans.

In 1908 the Pan-German Association spread racial nationalist theories, racist antisemitism, and glorified war as an expression of national vitality;’ (after Bismark’s triumphs, many Germans yearned to expand German power in the world). The pan-Germans wished to dominate ‘inferior’ races in central & eastern Europe. The Jews & the Slavs were targeted as their special enemies.

Late 19th c. racial antisemites had constructed an ideological foundation on which Hitler would later built his movement.

Socio-Economic Changes: Industrialization

Rapid industrialization in the late 19th c., led to accelerated urbanization, explosion of population, & more peasants to become factory workers - a new industrial working class had emerged. So had a new middle class of shopkeepers, small farmers, & tradesmen. Socialist factory workers demanded more rights & better working conditions; formed labor unions, & their own political party, the Social Democratic Party. Tensions developed because of the changes. Jews blamed for problems of industrialization by new middle class, aristocratic landlords & wealthy industrialists, who resented the competition of Jews; ‘Jewish socialists’ were also blamed for organizing labor unions that they loathed.

Germany on the Eve of War

The Social Democratic party was the largest single party in Germany. The socialists talked revolutions. By 1914, Germany had become the strongest military & industrial power on the continent.

‘The constitution was a peculiar mixture of aristocratic Prussian power in the upper house and democratic universal male suffrage that was manipulated to nonliberal ends. Bismark’s maneuvers against Catholic, liberals, & socialists had undermined the development of a viable parliamentary government. In 1914, the most highly industrialized & powerful European nation with the largest & most successful socialist party was nevertheless subject to a political regime that preserved aspects of an absolute monarchy.’


Vocabulary

Aryan - Originally used to denote a member or descendant of the prehistoric people that spoke Proto-Indo-European. As used by the Nazis, the term refers to a non-Jewish Caucasian, especially of the Nordic type.

Nationalism - The popular sentiment that places the existence and well-being of the nation-state highest in the scale of political loyalties.

Racial theorists - Those who developed theories, which were based primarily on opinions, prejudices, and non-scientific observation, to prove that one race was superior to another.

Volk - A word for "people" or "nation." Nationalist Germans used the term to exclude Jews, Gypsies, and other "non-Aryan" people.

¹ Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. London-New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers,1992, p. 75.

² Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust - From Ideology to Annihilation, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996, p. 23.

³ Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust - From Ideology to Annihilation, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996, p. 23.

⁴ Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. London-New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers,1992, pp. 59-60.

⁵ Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust, Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1982, p. 42

⁶ Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust, Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1982, p. 42

⁷ Ibid., p. 43

⁸ Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. London-New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers,1992, 62-63

⁹ Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. London-New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers,1992, p. 60