Did the Nazis consider their "non-Aryan" allies to be racially inferior?

[Anglii]

Like Italians, Hungarians, Croats, Romanians, or Japanese for example. Did the Nazis see them as partners, and therefore equals, or were they thought of as expendable, albeit quite useful pawns?

[BarKokhba]

Fascinating topic. I've read that somewhere that in Nazi Party writings there are lists of racial hierarchies, from top to bottom, including ethnicities that eventually became military allies of Germany. One point to consider is that Nazi racial theory was (obviously) not scientific, but was a
stream of mainstream cultural thought in Europe from the 1880s, appropriated by the Nazi and other parties as an element of propaganda, membership attraction, and race baiting of 'non-Aryan' peoples. These theories eventually evolved and were used for direct action economic boycotting and then military attacks, the Holocaust and atrocites against POWs, etc. Also, it must be noted that some in the Nazi Party, especially those who joined for economic enhancement and upward mobility reasons, or were coereced into joining may not have fully ascribed to the racial theories as much as the top eshcelon true believers did. Also, many top brass in the military, especially the old-line professional military, understood the racial theories to be total rubbish.

[wm]

Only the Japanese weren't Arians, the others were. You could have been an Arian and subhuman simultaneously - they had no problem with it.
Arian basically meant non-Jewish.
From 1943 it was forbidden to insult the East-Europeans [by calling them subhumans for example], it seems crushing defeats restore friendly feelings quickly...

[BarKokhba]

How did 'non-Aryan' but pro-nazi ethnic Slavs, such as Ukrainians get into the SS on an individual basis? Seems like the racial theories became flexible when volunteers came calling, or when there were manpower shortages.

[Stiltzkin]

Did the Nazis see them as partners, and therefore equals, or were they thought of as expendable, albeit quite useful pawns?

The Prussian military traditionalists saw them as allies (a good example are planned operations with Antonescu and the OKH), the Nazi "elites" thought of them as subhumans. Romanian soldiers were beaten by German soldiers for failures during Fall Blau.
Take this analogy, even today richer countries look down on poorer nations, being condescending. Racism and nationalism will always exist. Europe and Asia are one of the most xenophobic areas of the world.
I spoke to a Veteran, he stated that they were taught that the slavic race was inferior to their own, but hey everyone needed cannon fodder.

[Anglii]

How did 'non-Aryan' but pro-nazi ethnic Slavs, such as Ukrainians get into the SS on an individual basis? Seems like the racial theories became flexible when volunteers came calling, or when there were manpower shortages.

Yes, indeed. The Nazis recruited thousands of so-called Mischlings, Germans of mixed Jewish and Gentile heritage. Also notable is that one of the divisions that slaughtered thousands of civilians during the Warsaw uprising, the Sturmbrigade RONA, was made up of mostly Russian and Belarusian recruits

[Sergey Romanov]

How did 'non-Aryan' but pro-nazi ethnic Slavs, such as Ukrainians get into the SS on an individual basis? Seems like the racial theories became flexible when volunteers came calling, or when there were manpower shortages.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Again, the tensions between the ideology and practical considerations.

[michael mills]

When one examines National Socialist racial theory without any preconceptions, it becomes obvious that it is simply ancient Judaic racial theory turned on its head. The basis of Judaic racial theory was the division of humanity into two opposed groups, Jews and Gentiles, with the former being a "Chosen People" and hence morally superior to the latter, who were essentially evil. National Socialist racial theory made exactly the same division into Jew and Gentile, except with the roles reversed, the Jews being the evil race, the people of the Devil rather than the people of God.

Traditional Jewish identity was also racially based, in that Jews defined themselves as a group of people with a putative common descent from Yaakov, alternatively known as Yisrael. Gentiles who converted to Judaism in ancient times were rationalised as descendants of the Tribe of Dan, one of the 10 Tribes taken into captivity by the Assyrians and scattered among the nations; they were seen as lost descendants of Yaakov who were "obeying the call of the blood" and rejoining their racial brethren.

National Socialist racial theory had the same basis, in that any person who was not Jewish by descent was eligible to be accepted as an equal of the "Aryan" peoples. For example, Himmler considered that the Slavic peoples were partially descended from ancient Germanic tribes which had once inhabited the whole of Eastern Europe but had lost their Germanic ethnic identity; in his view it was therefore possible that many of them could be "re-germanised". The parallel with the Judaic theory of the descendants of the Tribe of Dan is obvious.

Of course, National Socialist racial theory posited hierarchies among the non-Jewish peoples, with the Germanic peoples being at the top, with various layers under them. However, there was often disagreement among National Socialist leaders as to how those hierarchies were constructed. For example, Rosenberg, who had grown up and been educated in the Russian Empire, distinguished between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians; he considered the former to be an "Eastern" people and hence inferior, while the latter were a "Western" people and hence worthy of being allies of the Germans, even worthy of having their own university (essentially the same view of Russians and Ukrainians as propagated in the West today).

By contrast, Erich Koch, the ruler of German-occupied Ukraine, considered the Ukrainians to be just another variety of Russian and hence just as inferior. He treated the Ukrainians under his control as "Untermenschen", and frustrated all the attempts of Rosenberg to win them over by better treatment, in which he had the support of Hitler, who also had a very negative view of Ukrainians, most probably derived from his early association with Ludendorff, who had acquired a similar negative view from his experiences on the Eastern Front during the First World War.

The treatment of Slavic peoples by their National Socialist rulers also varied from place to place. In the Lemberg District of the Generalgouvernement, the Ukrainian population, which was under the rule of Frank rather than Koch, was treated better than the Polish population, since they were considered to be less hostile to Germany than the Poles. In occupied Belarus, the ethnic Polish population was treated better than the ethnic Belarusian population, since the ethnic Poles were considered to be thoroughly anti-Communist whereas the Belarusians were considered to be too bolshevised to be trusted.

As the above two examples show, the decision as to how a particular Slavic group was treated was based essentially on political criteria rather than on racial theory.

[wm]

Well, you don't have to be a Jew or a Nazi to divide humanity into two opposed groups: we and they. Most sane people do it, this is why the words "we" and "they" were invented.
And most people thinks "we" are better or at least more useful. It's in people's genes.

The Ukrainians were Germany's (sometimes unloved) allies well before 1939.

[BarKokhba]

Umm, MM, you've taken a snippet of Jewish tradition from the Hebrew Bible and bizarrely contorted it to be a mirror of Nazi racial theory, which it never was, and is not now. Jewish 'chosenness' was never intended to be a badge of superiority or authority over HaGoyim (the Nations). Ask any Rabbi that. The idea was that Jews were 'chosen' by God to enter into a covenant, or 'contract' to spread God's goodness and laws, such as the 10 Commandments or the 7 Laws of Noah, to the rest of the world. Over the centuries, in the face of pagan (Babylonian, Greek, Roman, etc) oppression, and later Christian and Muslim oppression, the Jewish civilization became a very insular but global religion, instictively relying on separateness and 'otherness' to survive. But racially superior? No, that's not really in the doctrine.

[wm]

Leviticus 19:33-34
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

[Sergey Romanov]

If every single word Mills wrote about Judaism were true, it would still be pretty irrelevant to the question of the Nazi ideology since there is no evidence it was based on Jewish religious particularism. So I think Michael is projecting his own private hatreds here, which is not exactly useful.

[James Paul]

Like Italians, Hungarians, Croats, Romanians, or Japanese for example. Did the Nazis see them as partners, and therefore equals, or were they thought of as expendable, albeit quite useful pawns?

Italians, Hungarians, Croats and Romanians were all considered to be of "related blood" and thus "Aryans". Japanese people were considered racially non-Aryan but were given the status of "honorary Aryans".

[The Black Rabbit of Inlé]

When one examines National Socialist racial theory without any preconceptions, it becomes obvious that it is simply ancient Judaic racial theory turned on its head. The basis of Judaic racial theory was the division of humanity into two opposed groups, Jews and Gentiles, with the former being a "Chosen People" and hence morally superior to the latter, who were essentially evil. National Socialist racial theory made exactly the same division into Jew and Gentile, except with the roles reversed, the Jews being the evil race, the people of the Devil rather than the people of God.

Traditional Jewish identity was also racially based, in that Jews defined themselves as a group of people with a putative common descent from Yaakov, alternatively known as Yisrael. Gentiles who converted to Judaism in ancient times were rationalised as descendants of the Tribe of Dan, one of the 10 Tribes taken into captivity by the Assyrians and scattered among the nations; they were seen as lost descendants of Yaakov who were "obeying the call of the blood" and rejoining their racial brethren.

National Socialist racial theory had the same basis, in that any person who was not Jewish by descent was eligible to be accepted as an equal of the "Aryan" peoples. For example, Himmler considered that the Slavic peoples were partially descended from ancient Germanic tribes which had once inhabited the whole of Eastern Europe but had lost their Germanic ethnic identity; in his view it was therefore possible that many of them could be "re-germanised". The parallel with the Judaic theory of the descendants of the Tribe of Dan is obvious.

If every single word Mills wrote about Judaism were true, it would still be pretty irrelevant to the question of the Nazi ideology since there is no evidence it was based on Jewish religious particularism.

There's Streicher's testimony at the IMT:

DR. MARX: Yes. The so-called "Racial Law" was promulgated at the Reich Party Day in Nuremberg in 1935. Were you consulted about the planning and preparation of the draft of that law; and did you have any part in it, especially in its preparation?

STREICHER: Yes, I believe I had a part in it insofar as for years I have written that any further mixture of German blood with Jewish blood must be avoided. I have written such articles again and again; and in my articles I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the Jews should serve as an example to every race, for they created a racial law for themselves-the law of Moses, which says, "If you come into a foreign land you shall not take unto yourself foreign women." And that, Gentlemen, is of tremendous importance in judging the Nuremberg Laws. These laws of the Jews were taken as a model for these laws. When, after centuries, the Jewish lawgiver Ezra discovered that notwithstanding many Jews had married non-Jewish women, these marriages were dissolved. That was the beginning of Jewry which, because it introduced these racial laws, has survived throughout the centuries, while all other races and civilizations have perished.

DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, this is rather too much of a digression. I asked you whether you took part in planning and working out the draft of the law, or whether you yourself were not taken by surprise when these laws were promulgated.

STREICHER: I was quite honest in saying that I believe I have contributed indirectly to the making of these laws.

DR. MARX: But you were not consulted on the law itself?

STREICHER: No.

[IMT 12:315-6]

[wm]

Streicher argued in bad faith and from ignorance.
The "law of Moses" didn't forbid "inter-national" marriages. Moses actually married a non-Jewish woman, of different religion to boot.
The Bible (including the New Testament) prohibits inter-faith marriages, even today the Catholic Church regards them as non-sacramental. This prohibition was introduced hundreds of years before Ezra. "Inter-national" marriages were/are allowed and require a formal conversion.