“Exterminate all the Brutes!”
---Mr. Kurtz, in Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902
“History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. If you want to know whether the lower races of man can evolve a higher type, I fear the only course is to leave them to fight it out among themselves, and even then the struggle for existence between individual and individual, between tribe and tribe, may not be supported by that physical selection due to a particular climate on which probably so much of the Aryan's success depended. …There is a struggle of race against race and of nation against nation… I think it may be called the scientific view of a nation.”---Karl Pearson, British mathematician in National Life from the Standpoint of Science (1900)
Introduction: Modern 19th Century European and American Nationalism
Modern 19th century European and American nationalism was the precursor for modern nationalism in the 20th century. Nationalism was based in race and racism. Nazi racism was a direct but extreme outgrowth of modern European nationalism. Nazi racism was a direct outgrowth of the broader trajectory of European nationalism but represented an extreme and even atavistic embodiment of it. Nazi racism was unique in its extreme or exclusive and all-encompassing focus on race or ethnicity as defining a nation. The Nazi ideology of what constituted a nation was not a radical departure from the trajectory of European nationalism. What was radical about the Nazi conception of nationalism in Nazi Germany was the sole and overriding emphasis on race. Nazi racialism was not, however, an inevitable or natural progression of modern European nationalism. The Nazi regime only selected certain strands and features of modern European nationalism and gave them an extremist application and interpretation. Moreover, the Social Darwinist conception of European nationalism that the Nazi regime selected was by the 1930s already outdated and atavistic and an anachronism. The model of European nationalism the Nazis chose was the dominant view of nationalism in Europe during the “new imperialism” period that climaxed by 1900. Nazi racism was not a distinct or separate phenomena or sui generis. The Nazi regime did not derive new and original racial concepts, but adapted and applied racial concepts that were the dominant features of 19th century European nationalism.
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Modern Nationalism
Race is central to Nazism and is the unifying idea of the Third Reich.
Race also was the crucial idea behind the “final solution” or Holocaust.
(1) The Nazi concept of race is crucial to understanding German nationalism
under the Third Reich. But where does race fit in within the broader trajectory
of European nationalism? Is the Nazi concept of race sui generic, new,
original, and unique, created spontaneously by them, and representing a
departure from the broader European nationalism? Was the Nazi concept of
race an outgrowth of modern European nationalism?
The term “nationalism” is based on the word “nation” which derives
from the Latin term, natio, which means, “by birth”. A nation is made up
of a nationality. In Nationalism: A Religion, Carleton Hayes defined
a nationality: “Now what is a nationality? The word derives from the Latin
natio, implying a common racial descent.” So race is the defining characteristic
of a nation according to Hayes. (2) Is the Nazi conception of race a radical
departure from this definition of nationality? To answer this question,
we have to see how Hayes qualifies it: “…[B]ut few, if any, modern nationalities
consist of a distinctive ‘race’ in the biological sense. ...Every nationality
of which I have knowledge has been, or is, biologically and racially, a
melting pot.” (3) So the Nazis applied the basic definition of nationalism
with its reliance on race, but what the Nazis did was to take this definition
to extremes. They were obsessed in attempting to realize the essential
definition of a nation, which did not exist as a practicality. (4) No nation
consisted of a pure race or ethnicity. (5) It was this extremist application
of modern European nationalism that characterized Nazi racialism.
The Nazis were following the overall trajectory of modern 19th century
European nationalism with its emphasis on race as the defining characteristic.
The extreme and literal application by the Nazis meant that they had to
exclude or even eliminate minorities who did not fit this definition of
a “national community” or Volksgemeinschaft made up of a single volk or
people or race or ethnicity. (6) But this definition of the nation and
of nationalism was not created by the Nazis, but was only adopted and adapted
by them, in a very extreme form. So Nazi nationalism did not represent
a departure from modern European or German nationalism, but rather, an
extreme application of its principles. Nazi racialism had historical antecedents
and models in modern European nationalism.
The phrase “by birth”, which is the literal meaning of “nation”, an
entity made up by people created by birth, which defines a national
community in a nation, implies descent and genetic hereditary origins
of a people. It is based etymologically on a tribe or clan or village identification.
The idea implies consanguinity and relationship, a common birth or origin.
Blood kinship is implied but a nation could also be defined by other factors.
The people of a nation could all be of the same religion by birth, can
have the same culture by birth, can speak the same language by birth, and
can be part of the same political entity by birth. Race, or blood, or ethnicity,
do not have to define what constitutes a nation. A common language, a common
culture, a common religion, a common political system, could all define
what constitutes a nation. The Nazi regime selected race or ethnicity as
the defining and exclusive characteristic. (7)
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The Kosovo Scenario
Kosovo is a classic example of defining a “nation” based on “race”. Kosovo is part of Serbia. The nation is Serbia. The borders of the nation enclose Kosovo. But why is Kosovo regarded as a “nation”? On what basis does this nationhood rest upon? It rests upon race, racism, 19th century European “scientific” racism. The Kosovo conflict cannot be understood without a background in 19th century European racial concepts that define a nation based on “blood” and genetic origin, and “by birth”. Kosovo proves that modern nationalism derives from 19th century European nationalism that is fundamentally based on race or “blood”. The way US propaganda and infowar techniques obfuscate this fact is by manufacturing the phony nationality group of “Kosovar”, an absurd propaganda concoction. What is a “Kosovar”? Kosovo is a Serbian term meaning “field of blackbirds”. There is no “nation” of Kosovo. “Kosovars” are, in fact, Albanians, Shqiptari. “Kosovar” is strictly a US propaganda and infowar creation. This neologism is necessary to hide the fact that US policy is motivated by the goal to move the borders of Albania, to create a Greater Albania, in fact. Using the correct term “Albanians” would expose the lie at the heart of US propaganda. It is just the creation of a Greater Albania, a second Albanian “nation”. US policy is totally based in self-delusional psychosis, a psychotic and mentally deranged manipulation of thought and reality. It is a US-orchestrated secession and break-up based on race or ethnic identity. But underneath the US infowar brainwashing and manipulation is a basis in 19th century modern nationalism and its primary basis in race. German Nazism is based in the same 19th century nationalist antecedents. Why is the US basing national identity on race in Kosovo? The national identification can just as easily be based on the larger nation. In this case, it would be Serbia. Why base it on race? The answer is found in 19th century conceptions of modern nationalism based in race.
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Where do ethnic homogeneity and diversity fit in modern nationalism? Do nations have to be exclusionary of minorities, such as Jews, Roma, and Sinti? Gellner argued that one of the most crucial traits of a modern nation was cultural homogeneity, the “capacity for context-free communication, the standardization of expression and comprehension.” For Gellner, homogeneity best explains nationalism: “It is this which explains nationalism---the principle…that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of and acceptability in a given high culture is the precondition of political, economic, and social citizenship.” (11) This definition follows Johann Herder’s conception of nationalism. Nationalism is the free development of every people who have their own cultural, ethnic, linguistic, or religious identity. The term “nationalism” was coined by Herder in a 1774 work but only gained prominence or widespread use in the late 19th century when it became the “sole, binding agency of meaning and justification.”
Nationalism is a concept difficult to define. Peter Alter stated that
nationalism is “one of the most ambiguous concepts in the present-day vocabulary
of political and analytical thought.” Herder’s initial conception offered
an optimistic view of nationalism, as each culture, each people, finding
their own political realization and development. It was a picture that
saw a mutual respect of cultures and ethnic groups; each nation was “Equal
But Separate”. Each culture, each nation was valuable. It was a fraternity
of nations, peaceful and respectful. No conflict was foreseen or anticipated.
Herder wrote that each people had a spirit, or Volksgeist, that developed
as a “tree of life”. (12) Herder based nationalism on language and culture,
not race. What went wrong? Why did Herder’s concept of a peaceful nationalism
transform into a nationalism of struggle and conflict, of mutual antagonism
and war, of races struggling against other races? How did nationalism go
from a peaceful garden where everyone was able to cultivate their own culture,
to a nationalism where struggle for survival was the rule, where people
died out and where only the superior peoples or races or cultures survived,
while the inferior perished?
Was ethnic antagonism and conflict, however, subsumed in nationalism
from the outset. Herder himself anticipated that nationalism would generate
national pride that would result in national narcissism. He warned that
Germans should not perceive themselves as a chosen race at the expense
of other nations: “The historian of mankind, however, must take care, that
he chooses no tribe as his favourite, and exalt it at the expense of others…to
esteem them God’s chosen people in Europe…would be to display the base
pride of a barbarian.” (13) So even in Herder’s time, there was a tension
inherent in nationalism itself that assumed conflict and a hierarchy of
nations.
Why is there a gap in the historiography of the evolution and development
of modern European nationalism? What is missing in the way the modern trajectory
of European nationalism is presented? How do you go from Herder to Hitler?
How do you go from developing folk languages, customs, and traditions,
to setting up concentration camps and gas chambers and euthanizing the
“unfit”? This is the key to understanding the racial policies of the Nazi
regime and how they fit into the European history of nationalism.
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The Nazi conception of nationalism ultimately rested on their plan to create “a barbaric, racially-based utopia.” (13) All aspects of Nazi social and nationalist policy revolved around creating a healthy and “pure” race. The Nazi regime sought the elimination from German society of Jews, Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, the asocial, the mentally ill, and the impaired. NDH Croatia sought the extermination and elimination of Orthodox Serbs, Jews, Sinti, and Roma. In Kosovo under NATO/US/EU/UN military occupation, Albanians were able to expel over 250,000 Kosovo Serbs, Jews, Roma, Turks, and Sinti. These expulsions were based on race. Those expelled were of a different race or ethnicity from the Albanians. That was the only reason they were expelled, based on racism. In Nazi Germany, even the prevention of crime and the role of women in German society, were tied to creating a “barbarous utopia” based on race.
Was there a “uniqueness” in Nazi racial policy in pursuit of the Final Solution or the Holocaust? Was the Third Reich the inevitable result of a German “separate path” of historical development, the Sonderweg model, or a radical departure from German history and European nationalism? Was the Nazi regime under the total control of Adolf Hitler, or was it a “polycratic” dictatorship, with a competition between state agencies, departments, other leaders? Was the Nazi regime “modernizing” or was it atavistic and reactionary, or pre-modern? As Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann emphasized, this is a controversial and complex issue. They concluded that the Nazi regime was both modern and anti-modern, although it “frequently instrumentalised various ahistorical myths”. (14) They argued that the Nazi regime was unique in that it sought to create a society based on race, not on class. They argued that this is unique in history, sui generis, in fact. They don’t, however, apply a comparative approach to show that this is so. For example, in excluding blacks and Native Americans, and Asians, wasn’t the US also based on just such a racial hierarchy? Wasn’t the extermination of the Tasmanians and aborigines in the process of European colonization by whites also based on concepts of superior and inferior races and cultures? Burleigh and Wippermann dismiss “talk of general genocidal impulses allegedly latent beneath the thin civlised crust of all ‘modern’ societies.” Burleigh and Wippermann dismiss this line of thought as “a fog of relativising, sociological rhetoric.” They do not show why this view is incorrect. They attribute this view to “this inability to digest the fact of the murder by Germans of millions of Jews and others at a particular moment in time.” They state that the reason they wrote The Racial State was to “counteract attempts to relativise this subject.” In other words, their purpose is ahistorical. History seeks to find meaning and a generality in historical events. But a priori, they want to preclude this analytical approach. They argued that Nazi Germany had “a specific and singular character” whose “objects were novel and sui generis”. It was a “singular” regime “without precedent or parallel.” To be sure, it was unique in many respects, but similar in just as many others.
Some historians have argued that Germany took “a peculiar road” to development as a nation or state. Others argue that Nazi Germany was a by product of World War I and could have happened in any country going under those social and economic tensions and strains. Did Nazi Germany represent a return to a pre-industrial, pre-modern past? Did it represent the dark side of modernity? As Antony Polonsky pointed out in his foreword, the Nazi regime was unique in its determination to eliminate every Jew, all Jews. (15) The thoroughness and all-inclusiveness of the Nazi anti-Jewish policies was unique in this regard. But he noted that the Nazi regime was not unique “in that it grew out of a view of the world which regarded individual life as of no value, except in so far as it contributed to the health of the ethnic collectivity as defined by the regime’s leaders.” (xiv) In other words, Nazi racism was also based in 19th century European nationalism.
Burleigh and Wippermann saw the Nazi racial policies as “barbaric” and “reactionary”. They call racial theories “barbarous utopias” and “barbaric notions” and “racial utopias”. They acquired a “prescriptive character” under the Nazis. Racialism became “the official doctrine and policy of the Nazi state.” The goal was to create a utopian society “organized in accordance with the principles of race.” The objective was to create an ‘Aryan national community’. It entailed the “purification of the body of the nation” from “alien”, “hereditarily ill”, “asocial elements”. Jews, Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, “community aliens”, those who were “hereditarily ill”, member sof other ethnic minorities considered “alien”, were excluded based on race. They emphasized the “comprehensive character of Nazi racism” and the “racial policy” intended to create a new “national community”. They concluded: “Nazi racial and social policy was simultaneously modern and profoundly anti-modern.” The Nazis wanted to create “a functioning racial state” based on “healthy”, “Aryan” “national comrades” and the “elements” which were “racially inferior”, “unfit”, or “alien”., who were to be eliminated, excluded, and exterminated. They argue that this was the “most crucial part” of the 12 year agenda of the Third Reich. The Nazis showed “purposiveness” in the realization of this goal, “this racially-determined cleavage”, which received “priority”.
The analytical problem with Burleigh and Wippermann’s discussion of the origins of Nazi racial theory is that it is incomplete and is skewed or manipulated to show a German origin of modern racism and its role in European nationalism. They admit that Hitler’s view of race was not “original” and that racial theories were not an “exclusively German discovery.” They don’t provide a comparative analysis, however, that presents modern 19th century European nationalism so that a comparison can be made. They give a false impression that Germans and Germany originated the concept of scientific racism or embraced it to a greater extent than other nations: “However, in Germany racial ideologies enjoyed the widest currency and the greatest political salience.” There is the false impression that “scientific racism” and Social Darwinism were marginal “barbarous utopias” that had little impact on society and politics and nationalism in Europe or the US. This is highly misleading. Their bogeyman is historical “relativism”. Each event in world history is unique. One should not even attempt to analyze or compare it to other events in world history. Each historical event is sui generic. This, of course, is nonsense. It is another way of precluding thought and preventing critical thinking and debate. It is like saying every person has a unique fingerprint. This is true. But each person also has a finger that is identical in structure and function to every other finger. Medicine and science would not be possible if the uniqueness of each person precluded an examination of the similarities. But this is exactly what the proponents of “relativism” argue. It is patently absurd.
Racial determinism had its origins not in Germany, but in France in the early 19th century with Charles Comte and Augustin Thierry. Thierry argued that race played a dominant role in history. (16) Benjamin Disraeli stated that “race is everything.”
In From Darwin to Hitler, Richard Weikart sought to show the “significant historical connections between Darwinism and Hitler’s ideology.” Why is this historical connection important? It would show the historical continuity between modern European nationalism of the 19th century and Nazi racial ideology. Burleigh and Wippermann concede that Nazi racialism was not original but was based on racial utopias of 19th century nationalism. They do argue, however, that the “objects were novel and sui generic.” That is, the Nazi goal to “realize an ideal future world, without ‘lesser races’, without the sick” was unique. But where did this ideology of race as the essential element of a state, “eugenics”, i.e., literally “well-born”, come from? Is Nazi racism a separate and distinct phenomenon?
Nazi racism is an outgrowth of European nationalism. Burleigh and Wippermann incorrectly imply that racism was unique to Germany. The ultimate origins and roots of Nazi nationalism can be traced back to Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population which had the result of devaluing life. (17) There were more people born than could be supported. This meant there was a “superfluous population” that participated in an “inevitable struggle for resources.” In other words, more people would die before reproducing. Death became a necessary part of survival. Death became “a natural engine of evolutionary progress.” Life was no longer sacrosanct. Charles Darwin would incorporate Malthus’ concept of natural selection. Nature would favor those who were most fit in the struggle for resources and survival. When Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, it threatened the moral order and undermined morality in general. It had a brutalizing and degrading effect on people because it devalued human life. It did so by positing a new theory of man’s origins and development. Indeed, Darwinian evolution was regarded as the greatest scientific discovery of the 19th century. (18)
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A second principle from Darwinism was the biological inequality of people. There was a hierarchy in nature. This insight was immediately incorporated in European nationalism to justify British and French colonialism and imperialism. Darwin himself wrote: “I could not have believed how wide was the difference between the savage and civilized man. It is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal.” In an 1859 letter to Charles Lyell, Darwin wrote about how the “less intellectual races” were “being exterminated.” In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote: “At some future period…the civilized races of man will most certainly exterminate, and replace throughout the world, the savage races.” Darwin created a dichotomy between “civilized races” and “lower races”. These concepts of a racial hierarchy and the extermination of races were adapted to the social sciences and to politics. They became part of European nationalism.
What about Nazi racism? Was it original or unique? Hannah Arendt argued that “race-thinking” or racism, “emerged simultaneously in all Western countries during the nineteenth century.” (19) Arendt argued that Nazi racism “was neither as new nor a secret weapon, though never before had it been used with this thoroughgoing consistency.” The British specifically incorporated Darwinian racism into British nationalism to justify imperialism and colonialism, especially during the “scramble for Africa” and to justify maintaining India as a colonial possession. Houston Chamberlain provided the link between British racial nationalism and the Nazi racial ideology. He showed the subtle relationship and connections between the two. For Chamberlain, British domination of the world was due to race, specifically, the Anglo-Saxon race, i.e., the Angles and Saxons, the “Teutons”, Germanic tribes that settled England from Germany. Not only was there racial inferiority, but also inferiority based on those who were fit and unfit. Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest.” It was Spencer who adapted Darwinism into the social sciences, hence the name Social Darwinism.
A direct outgrowth of Darwinism was eugenics, founded by Francis Galton. He defined Eugenics: “This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful learning of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”
Ian Kershaw emphasized that Social Darwinism was a “key component” of Hitler’s world view or Weltanschauung. (20) As Weikart explained, Hitler “embraced an evolutionary ethic that made Darwinian fitness and health the only criteria for moral standards.” The struggle for survival, which Hitler saw as one between races, as posited by Darwinism was “the sole arbiter for morality”. In a speech Hitler echoed the idea of the survival of the fittest: “All of nature is a constant struggle between power and weakness, a constant triumph of the strong over the weak.” Weikart claimed that the only reason the Jews were a threat to Germany under Hitler’s view was because of the “immoral methods” they used. In fact, Jews were perceived as a threat under Nazi ideology because they were a separate and distinct race that through miscegenation or racial mixing, would destroy the German racial identity. If Weikart is correct, then there would be no reason for the Nuremberg Race Laws, which excluded Jews from German national life based on race. So ultimately, Jews were a threat for Hitler and the Nazis not because of “immoral methods they used”, but because they were a separate race. Hitler saw Jews as a racial threat. Their supposed “immorality” was that they mixed with “Aryan blood”.
What is the relationship between Social Darwinism and Nazi racial policies and Nazi nationalism? As Richard Weikart, in From Darwin to Hitler, and Daniel Gasman, in The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, showed, Hitler’s racial policies and, indeed, his entire world view on nationalism, was derived from 19th century applications of Social Darwinism to modern nationalism. The way in which Social Darwinism was transformed into German nationalism is explained in Darwinism and Social Darwinism in Imperial Germany by Paul Weindling. He examined the life and writing of cell biologist Oscar Hertwig, in the process, detailing how Social Darwinism became incorporated in all aspects of German society by the end of the 19th century. Ernst Haeckel and other German scientists were instrumental in adapting Darwinism to German intellectual life. But this was a widespread phenomenon. Weidling noted: “Darwinism transformed not only science, but interacted with the social bases of science in culture, the professions, education and the family.” What occurred was termed a “biologization” of values, in the broader culture and society in Germany. A new age of materialism resulted, which shattered faith in religion, man-centered ethical systems, and social and political institutions. Instead, society was now based on the natural laws of competition and survival of the fittest. What resulted was an upheaval in social values and the emergence of an “organicist” and biologically based view of society.
Darwinism became a “popular ideology”, influencing family life and culture, as well as political, social, and economic elites. There was the attempt at a systematic implementation of eugenics based on “racial hygiene”. This was also shown in the Jena Prize awarded by Friedrich Krupp before World War I. The fear of racial degeneration was widespread during the Imperial period. Hertwig himself contributed the book The State as a Social Organism, applying Darwinism to German nationalist thinking.
Social Darwinism as the key feature of European nationalism reached its climax in the period before World War I and declined thereafter. It was reflected in literature and fiction such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It became outmoded by the time Hitler applied its tenets in the 1930s. This made it appear as if it was sui generis with the Nazi regime. In other words, the direct connections with 19th century European, especially British nationalism, were overlooked and obscured because the Social Darwinist model of nationalism became outdated by the 1930s in the rest of Europe and in the US. (21) It remained a strand or branch of European nationalism, albeit one that had actually passed its climax and impact, which was around 1900, when Rudyard Kipling implored the US to take up “the White Man’s Burden”. What the Nazis did was to go back to this period to adapt this strand or branch of European nationalism.
The direct connection between European nationalism and Nazi nationalism and racialism can be seen in the book National Life from the Standpoint of Science (1900) by the influential and prominent British mathematician Karl Pearson. Unlike the eccentric Houston Chamberlain, Pearson was a mainstream intellectual elite in Britain and his “scientific” basis of the nation and nationalism accurately reflected European nationalism in 1900. In this book, Pearson anticipated every single aspect of Nazi nationalism and racialism. Pearson explained nationalism as a racial struggle, a “struggle of race with race”, with the “fitter race” being triumphant. He posited “Aryan” superiority. Progress required the “survival of the fitter race.” There was a constant struggle of “nation against nation”. Race should replace class in the societal hierarchy. National development and human progress necessitated the extermination of “inferior races”. The planet was littered with “dead peoples” and the “hecatombs of inferior races.” Racial extermination and extinction was a natural part of human progress and development. Finally, this view of the nation and nationalism was, according to Pearson, based on science. Pearson’s analysis of European nationalism in 1900 was the dominant and mainstream view. (22)
Nazi racism and policies in Eastern Europe, Poland and the occupied regions of the Soviet Union, were also not sui generis, but were a direct outgrowth of the broader European trajectory of nationalism and imperialism. As Christopher Browning explained in The Origins of the Final Solution, “Hitler’s belief in the need for German Lebensraum implied that the Nazis would construct an empire in eastern Europe analogous to what other European imperialist powers had constructed overseas.” This is further proof linking Nazi nationalism and racialism to the general and broader European antecedents. The Nazis were applying in eastern Europe what Britain, France, the US, and other European imperialist nations had applied in Asia, Africa, and other parts of the globe. The rationales or justification the Nazis used were directly based on and derived from those earlier European sources. It there was a distinction, it was that the Nazis were applying these racial theories to other Europeans, other “whites”.
Browning explained that European imperialism was based on and justified by “social Darwinist and racial terms” which had resulted in “horrific population decimation and on occasion even total or near total extinction.” The way the European imperialist powers rationalized this total extinction of “inferior” races was to posit a theory that the people were “backward” and “uncivilized”, and the “inevitable triumph”, based on progress, of the superior “white races” over the inferior “dark races”. The Nazis adopted and adapted this British and imperialist rationale and merely altered it to apply to “subhuman” Slavs and Jews. The Germans were unique in applying these atavistic racial doctrines from British and European imperialism to other Europeans who were considered white. But the whole racial edifice and structure for this “scientific” racism and policy of extermination was created before the Nazis, by imperialist nations of Europe, such as Britain and France. As Browning noted, the only major difference was that “the Nazi regime stood ready to impose on conquered populations in Europe, especially Slavs in the East, the methods of rule and policies of population decimation that Europeans had hitherto inflicted only on conquered populations overseas.” Browning called this Nazi policy “racial imperialism”. Browning explained that “Hitler’s underlying assumptions” were based on the need for Lebensraum in the east “justified by a social Darwinist racism.” Anti-Semitism had been “a pervasive European tradition for centuries.” Moreover, racial imperialism, “justifying the conquest and domination (and not infrequently the decimation if not elimination) of allegedly inferior and backward people’s, had characterized Europe’s expansion for half a millennium.” For Browning, Nazi racialist policies were a direct outgrowth of European nationalism. He maintained that social Darwinism provided a “pseudoscientific gloss” and “racist rationalization”. Browning saw European imperialism as one more “tributary to flow into the river of Nazi ideology.” (23)
The Nazi T4 euthanasia program was a precursor for the Final Solution.
Many of the same personnel who would later run the death camps came from
the T4 program, such as Christian Wirth and Philippe Bouhler. (24) The
central rationale or motive was to create a healthy race based on Darwinist
principles. The terms the Nazis used came right out of Darwinist theory:
They were “unfit for work”, “life unworthy of life”, and “mercy killings.”
Gassing as a means of killing was devised in the euthanasia program. Hitler
rationalized euthanasia in Darwinist terms: “The law of existence requires
uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live.” The euthanasia program
and the sterilization program of 1933 showed that the Nazi regime was applying
social Darwinist principles. These were not sui generis with the Nazis,
but originated with Francis Galton in England in the late 19th century.
The Nazis merely adopted them.
During World War II, these same principles were applied to “inferior”
races. Franz Stangl, a veteran of the euthanasia program, stated that the
“increased severity of the racial struggle” justified the elimination of
Poles and Jews in the “old and new Reich territories” because they were
ethnic “trash”. The Nazis saw Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies (Roma, Sinti), as
“poisoners” of the Aryan race who had to be eliminated. In Death and Deliverance,
Burleigh asked: “Why did many plain people abandon concern for the ‘weak’,
in favor of a vulgar Social Darwinist ideology which entailed a reversion
to the laws of the farmyard or jungle?” The euthanasia program was opposed
by the German population. Although 70,000 “unfit” Germans were killed under
the program, it had to be dismantled by the time of World War II because
of widespread popular opposition. The Nazi regime did, however, attempt
to “sell” or promote euthanasia to the German public, in films and documentaries.
The Nazi euthanasia program is important because it shows the 19th
century Darwinist origins of Nazi racial policy, “racial hygiene”, as it
relates to the nation and nationalism. It also shows where the Final Solution
came from, a wartime extension of the euthanasia and sterilization programs,
but both derived from Social Darwinism and 19th century European nationalism
and imperialism. Finally, the euthanasia program showed the lack of popular
support for such Social Darwinist “utopias”.
There have been arguments that Nazi racism had very little to do with
modern nationalism. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, argued
that Nazism was a “supranational” movement, a movement that disdained the
narrow-concept of the traditional nation-state. Hitler never developed
a static or stable conception of the German nation or state. Improvisation
and expansion were the norms of the Nazi state. Hitler created no constitution
and no political mechanisms to ensure continuity. Hitler also saw the destruction
of Jews not in national, but in international terms, a global crusade.
Indeed, Hitler’s anti-Jewish obsession went against the national interests
of Germany. Railway cars and transport was being diverted from vital military
needs to the transportation of Jews to concentration camps. (25) Finally,
the Final Solution was being carried out clandestinely and without the
overt knowledge of the German people.
What nation prior to Nazi Germany was based solely on race? Isn’t Nazi Germany the only country and society to be based on race? No other country was ever based on racism? What other country was based on race? The United States was a country based on race. Native American “Indians” and African-Americans were denied citizenship and human and civil rights. They were segregated from the mainstream society in a pre-Apartheid system of “reservations”, ghettos, and slave plantations. Indeed, in the Dred Scott case, the US Supreme Court ruled that African-Americans were property. The displacement, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the Native American Indians has been referred to as the “American Holocaust.” African-Americans were deprived of any and all human and civil rights and systematically murdered by lynching. How is this different from Nazi Germany? Moreover, Ottoman Turkey carried out the first genocide of the twentieth century by the mass murder and extermination of Armenians, solely on the basis of race. There are countless instances that prove that Nazi Germany was not the first or only country and society to be based on race and racism. Was Nazi Germany the first and only “racial state”? What about the United States? Wasn’t the United States a “racial state”? Why weren’t Native Americans and African-Americans, although born in America, denied citizenship? On What basis were they denied citizenship? Wasn’t it on the basis of race?
Was Nazi racialism a smorgasbord then, an ad hoc mixture of racial theories
and scientific racial concepts? To be sure, Nazi racism was Euro-centric
and selective. Nazi racialism selected those strands of racial theories
that supported their positions. Was it a melting pot of racial theories?
The selection process was not totally arbitrary and ad hoc. Nazi racial
theory and eugenics were based on the mainstream theories and concepts
of 19th and twentieth century Europe. There was an accepted racist paradigm
that Nazi Germany selected, a paradigm that had already been applied in
Britain and the United States in the 19th century.
It is true that Nazi racialism does not fit the traditional national
model of defined borders and static populations. But Hitler’s policies
are completely understandable when the Social Darwinist model of nationalism
is applied. Hitler’s anti-Semitism was the radical or racial or biological
anti-Semitism, or a Social Darwinist anti-Semitism based not on religion,
but on race. Hitler diverted vital military transport for the deportation
of Jews to the camps because for the Nazis, racial mixing, and thus, racial
degeneration was the greatest threat to the vitality of a nation, under
Darwinist principles. Finally, under Nazi racial theory, the Nordic racial
type was superior to other European races. This would give population groups
in Scandinavia, for example, pre-eminence over German nationals who did
not exhibit Nordic traits. Arthur de Gobineau was not a “nationalist” in
the generally accepted sense of that term as support for a country with
clearly defined borders. In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,
(1853-55), he postulated that race mixing, miscegenation, would lead to
the collapse of any nation. But he was a nationalist in the American conception
of the nation in the 19th century as one based fundamentally on race. Borders
and regimes did not define the nation, genes did. You were or were not
a citizen of the United States not by whether you were born in the U.S..
or were native to that country, but whether you were a white, Anglo-Saxon.
You were a citizen of the U.S. based on race. This is a return to the literal
meaning of a nation. It is not to deny nationalism, but to reassert it
more forcefully based on its essential meaning. How does this fit in with
nationalism? This also fit in Nazi racial theory because Social Darwinist
conceptions of the nation were based on genetics and not changeable borders.
National borders or boundaries were artificial constructs. What mattered
most was race, not arbitrary borders on a map. Nazi racial and nationalist
policies were consistent with the Social Darwinist conception of the nation
as based on race or ethnicity. The Nazi regime did not develop this racial
concept of nationalism sui generesis, but adapted it from the European
tradition of 19th century modern nationalism.
Conclusion
Nazi racism was a direct outgrowth of the broader trajectory of European
nationalism, but was an extreme application of selective strands in modern
European nationalist thought. By no means was Nazi racialism a natural
or inevitable development of modern European nationalism. But by the same
token Nazi racism was not a separate and distinct phenomenon. The Nazi
regime has been classified as an extreme form of 19th century European
nationalism known as integral nationalism, known also as “radical”, “extreme”,
“right-wing”, “reactionary”, “aggressive-expansionist”, “derivative”, and
“militant” nationalism. The Nazi conception of race was not sui generis,
an original or new definition or explanation of race, but merely and extreme
adaptation or application of race as defined during the 19th century
throughout all of Europe. Moreover, the Nazi concept of race was atavistic
by the 1930s. The Social Darwinist model of European nationalism that the
Nazis applied had reached its climax in 1900. Finally, the model the Nazis
applied was only one strand in many that the Nazis selected. There were
also Marxist-Leninist models of nationalism, liberal models, traditional
models, and socialist models. The Nazis selected one strand in European
nationalism. To use Browning’s analogy, the 19th century European model
of nationalism was only one tributary that ran into the river of Nazi ideology,
but it was a major tributary.
The Kosovo conflict is derived from 19th century nationalism that bases the nation in race. Legal borders are regarded as irrelevant under this conception. The only borders that really matter are “racial” or “ethnic” or “blood” borders. Race defines national borders. Albanians have successfully created an ethnically and racially pure statelet with US/NATO/EU/UN help. The origins of this conception of the nation are found in 19th century European and American modern nationalism.
Footnotes
(1) Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State (NY: Cambridge, 1991), 3.
(2) Carleton Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion (NY: Macmillan, 1960), 21-25.
(3) Hayes, 24-29.
(4) Burleigh, 23.
(5) Geoffrey Eley and Ronald Suny, eds., Becoming National (NY: Oxford, 1996), 81-92.
(6) Burleigh, 3-6.
(7) Eley, 73-81.
(8) Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1983), 1-3.
(9) Gellner, 4-7.
(10)Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (NY: Cambridge, 1993), 23-34.
(11) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities ( NY: Verso, 1991), 23-29.
(12) George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (NY: Fertig, 1978), 35-37.
(13) Burleigh, xiii..
(14) Burleigh, 306.
(15) Burleigh, xiv.
(16) Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (NY: Basic Books, 1974), 332-339.
(17) Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 222-227.
(18) Weikart, 223.
(19) Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1966), 151-158.
(20) Weikart, 192-195.
(21) Weikart, 223-227. Weikart showed that Social Darwinist publications and writings applied to race and nationalism permeated in Germany, but that they were only one strand. The Nazis selected this one particular strand out of a multitude. The Darwinist approach to race was by no means the only available approach.
(22) Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science, 2nd Ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), 23-42. The original edition came out in 1900. Pearson was heavily influenced by Francis Galton.
(23) Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 184.
(24) Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia” in Germany c.1900-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 12-23.
(25) Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 178-185.
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