Germans and Slavs intermarriage

[gebhk]

From what I have heard, generally speaking the Nazis (although some Nazis may have thought differently) regarded the Slavs collectively as racially inferior, but they seemed to have persecuted their enemies during WW2, namely the Poles and the Russians, much more than other Slavs like their allies such as the Romanians. Also, the Nazis didn't even consider some Slavs to be Slavs - they thought that Croats were of Germanic origin because they were allegedly descended from the Germanic tribe the Goths, Hitler considered the Czechs to be descended from the Mongoloids, etc. What is the most important thing to remember is that the Slavs who were considered to be fit to be Germanized weren't actually regarded as Slavs but people living in Eastern Europe who were descended from ancient Germanic tribes who still had their Nordic blood

.

Hi George
Romanians are not considered Slavs - so perhaps Slovaks would be a better example. However, I think the basic tenet holds. Hitler was perfectly willing to make nice with the Poles until they wouldn't go along with his plans for the East. Like a spiteful child he felt the need to torment those who would not slavishly fall in with his plans. But then, few would say that he was a well-balanced mature human being. The only thing I would perhaps disagree with is that there was some uniform agreement on how those who were fit to be Germanised were viewed. I think we thrashed that one to death in another thread though.

The problem with all the race and nation-state hooey is that clearly there are no discrete pigeonholes but a multi-layered 2-dimensional continuum with peaks and troughs of genetics, culture, environment and experience/history. Bulgarians are considered Slavs but their population genetics suggest they are more closely related to the Romanians who are not based on language, predominantly. The reason genetic maps give rise to pages of expletive-riven spleen is because folk insist on believing some genes are better than others, usually based on some stereotypical generalisations (the British are phlegmatic, the Germans are efficient, the Italians are excitable). In reality they are not - a haplogroup is just a haplogroup. By and large, at present, we can't even pinpoint when and where they originated beyond very vague generalisations.

[George L Gregory]

From what I have heard, generally speaking the Nazis (although some Nazis may have thought differently) regarded the Slavs collectively as racially inferior, but they seemed to have persecuted their enemies during WW2, namely the Poles and the Russians, much more than other Slavs like their allies such as the Romanians. Also, the Nazis didn't even consider some Slavs to be Slavs - they thought that Croats were of Germanic origin because they were allegedly descended from the Germanic tribe the Goths, Hitler considered the Czechs to be descended from the Mongoloids, etc. What is the most important thing to remember is that the Slavs who were considered to be fit to be Germanized weren't actually regarded as Slavs but people living in Eastern Europe who were descended from ancient Germanic tribes who still had their Nordic blood

.

Hi George
Romanians are not considered Slavs - so perhaps Slovaks would be a better example. However, I think the basic tenet holds. Hitler was perfectly willing to make nice with the Poles until they wouldn't go along with his plans for the East. Like a spiteful child he felt the need to torment those who would not slavishly fall in with his plans. But then, few would say that he was a well-balanced mature human being. The only thing I would perhaps disagree with is that there was some uniform agreement on how those who were fit to be Germanised were viewed. I think we thrashed that one to death in another thread though.

The problem with all the race and nation-state hooey is that clearly there are no discrete pigeonholes but a multi-layered 2-dimensional continuum with peaks and troughs of genetics, culture, environment and experience/history. Bulgarians are considered Slavs but their population genetics suggest they are more closely related to the Romanians who are not based on language, predominantly. The reason genetic maps give rise to pages of expletive-riven spleen is because folk insist on believing some genes are better than others, usually based on some stereotypical generalisations (the British are phlegmatic, the Germans are efficient, the Italians are excitable). In reality they are not - a haplogroup is just a haplogroup. By and large, at present, we can't even pinpoint when and where they originated beyond very vague generalisations.

Sorry, I made a mistake, I was meant to post Bulgarians. But, Hitler thought that the Bulgarians were descended from Turks.

You are right that Hitler's views on Poles were pretty neutral until the late 1930s when he realised that they weren't going to budge and accept his demands - I mean, who could have blamed them? The Poles saw what had happened to the Czechs and Slovaks when the Nazis annexed the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia and then annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia.

I think that the German historian Christian Leitz summed it up perfectly well:

Consequently, in the 1920s, Germany's attitude vis-à-vis Poland was predominantly hostile. In view of this widespread anti-Polish sentiment it is surprising that Poland barely surfaced in Mein Kampf. There, Hitler did not exploit or even refer to these obvious anti-Polish sentiments. Hitler, in fact, did not comment on Germany's past and present relations with Poland or about its future relations under a National Socialist government. If Mein Kampf tells us anything at all about Poland, it is that Hitler rated the 'racial value' of the Poles as low - though without going into any detail.

Apart from this rather brief comment, Hitler mentioned Poland only in the context of his opposition to an alliance with Russia. According to Hitler's conclusion, accurate in the context of the Polish-Russian antagonism of the early 1920s and the Polish-French alliance, 'Russia would first have to subdue Poland' before it could join Germany in a war with 'Western Europe'. Only from Hitler's very curt assessment that Poland was 'completely in French hands' can it be assumed that he had little time for Germany's eastern neighbour.

Hitler's 1928 manuscript offers a slightly better insight into his views on Poland and the Poles. Again, he refers to the lower 'racial value' of the Poles - this time, however, in more detail and in stronger language. Again he deemed Poland a major obstacle in a potential Russian military move westward. More clearly in fact than in Mein Kampf Hitler concluded that 'a subjugation of Poland by Russia . . . is quite improbable' while he also discussed, in more detail, Poland's role as an ally of France and thus as a very likely enemy of Germany. In contrast to Mein Kampf, the Secret Book refers explicitly, though with surprising brevity, to the fate of those Silesians, East and West Prussians 'enslaved under Polish rule'. In attacking anti-Italian 'agitators' in Germany, Hitler reminded them that other nations, including Poland, had also committed crimes against the Germans.

By and large, however, Poland played only a marginal role in Hitler's major writings. What stands out from Mein Kampf and the Secret Book is Hitler's disapproval of the Polish 'race' and his agreement with the powerful anti-Polish and revisionist sentiment in Germany. Other sources of the 1920s reveal a similar attitude ('Poland was created from German blood') though again Hitler mentioned Poland only infrequently.

Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1941: The Road to Global War, pages 63-64.

When it came to sexual relations between Germans and Poles, Heinrich Himmler wrote a letter to Rudolf Hess shortly before the Polish Decrees were enacted on 8 March 1940 and wrote:

to prevent expressions of the justified anger of the German people about such shameful behaviour. On the contrary, I believe the impact of public defamation to be a most effective deterrent: I have no reservations if, for example, a German woman, in the presence of the female youth of the village or such, has her hair shaved off or is led through the village with a sign telling of her act. Still, the defamation must be kept roughly within these bounds and ought not to lead to the injury of the persons involved.

Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945, page 224.

If a German woman was found guilty of having sexual relations with a Pole (typically a worker - often a forced labourer), she had her head shaved and was walked around her town/village/city with a placard that stated something along the lines of "I have been a dishonourable German woman in that I sought and had relations with Poles. By doing that I excluded myself from the community of the people."

Eisenach, 15 November 1940:

Hedwig H. and Polish forced laborer Eduard P. are forced to carry posters at the market square reading “I have had relations with a Pole” and “I am a race defiler.”

Source: Stadtarchiv Eisenach

https://www.ausstellung-zwangsarbeit.or ... tions.html

The Nazis went to such extreme measures to segregate Germans and Poles that:

The practice went so far that even two young women from a village near Würzburg, one of whom (aged 16) was raped, and the other (aged 17), who was sexually assaulted by Polish prisoners of war in May 1940, had their heads shaved by the Storm Troopers and, with the permission of the magistrate and Party boss, then marched through the streets with signs round their necks that stated they were 'without honour'. The reaction of Catholic townsfolk, was 'complete rejected' of such measures. The injustice became doubly clear when a court later ruled that both women were innocent. Far from that giving pause to the Nazis, the Security Service (SD) that tracked public opinion noted that because of the deep shock of parents and family, these public defamation practices (unjust or not) showed the greater social impact of 'people's justice' over sending cases to court. The SD noted that the public relations effects lasted 'for weeks' as word of the events circulated. 'The most salutary effect' was the fear that such a thing could happen again, so that 'at least for the indefinite future' women would consider it prudent to avoid the Poles.

Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, page 182.

The Gestapo continued to carry out public executions (by hanging) of Polish men, but did so away from spectators, still to the dismay of judicial authorities. In July 1941 a mildly phrased letter of complaint by the Nuremberg Higher Court President to the Minister of Justice in Berlin noted that the Gestapo hanged Julian Majlca for having an affair with a German who became pregnant (she was later given ten months in jail). After the execution all the Poles in the vicinity were marched past the body. ‘The fact that this execution took place without previous judicial hearing, was the subject of lively discussion.’ Apparently even the local Nazi Party boss was opposed. The same letter mentioned a case where the Gestapo in Regensburg went to the court jail, picked up another Pole being held for having forbidden relations and executed him. In November the same thing happened in the forest near Eschelbach, where the Pole Jarek was hanged for having relations with a 20-year-old woman. Again, 100 or so Poles from the area were led past. As a judicial report from mid-1942 makes clear, justice authorities were often left in the dark, knowing neither the charges nor even the number of such executions.

The issue of what should become of the German woman was much discussed among police authorities and the people. A popular response, as we have already seen, was that she should not be allowed to get off lightly. In a case from the Düsseldorf area (in June–July 1941), the minimum demand was that the woman have to witness the execution.

[...]

How the Poles were treated elsewhere is suggested by correspondence from other areas in Germany. Thus, a report from the Higher Court President in Jena on 31 May 1940 noted that two courts were supposed to deal with a Polish man who was accused of having sexual relations with a German woman; she was given seven years by the court, but before he could be tried, ‘an official of the Secret State Police appeared, took the files, and declared that the RSHA in Berlin had issued orders to hang the Pole’. In another case from the same area on 24 August 1940 the Gestapo took a man from the court prison in Gotha and hanged him in the presence of 50 Poles on the side of the road; the body remained there for 24 hours.

Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany

A typical incident occurred on 24 August 1940 in Gotha, when a seventeen-year-old Polish worker was publicly hanged without trial in front of fifty Poles (who were forced to attend) and 150 Germans (who attended voluntarily). His offence was to have been caught having sexual intercourse with a German prostitute.

Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster

There were no boundaries when it came to the Nazis' desire to stop sexual relations between Germans and Poles.

[George L Gregory]

Hitler was perfectly willing to make nice with the Poles until they wouldn't go along with his plans for the East. Like a spiteful child he felt the need to torment those who would not slavishly fall in with his plans.

John Connelly also agrees with you:

Hitler's views on Poland changed radically in the course of 1939. After the Munich crisis of the previous year, the Germans had made three demands of Poland: the surrender of Danzig, the construction of an extraterritorial rail- and highway through the Polish Corridor, and Polish collaboration in the Anti-Comintern Pact. In return, they offered to guarantee Poland's borders, and dangled a share of the spoils of war with the Soviet Union. Poland decisively refused these proposals, and to Hitler's outrage, received promises of support from Great Britain in late March 1939, should its sovereignty be "clearly threatened." The following month, Hitler renounced the pact of 1934, and began planning Poland's destruction; if he could not immediately have the space he desired in Russia, he would seize what he could in Poland.

Soon after launching war against Poland in September 1939, the Nazi leadership and the supporting scientific community convinced themselves of Polish racial inferiority. With the ruins of Warsaw still smoldering, leading Eastern expert and historian Albert Brackmann of the University of Berlin hurried a booklet into print relegating the Poles and other Slavs to non-European status:

"The German people were the only bearers of culture in the East and in their role as the main power of Europe protected Western culture and carried it into uncultivated regions. For centuries they constituted a barrier in the East against lack of culture (Unkultur) and protected the West against barbarity. They protected the borders from Slavs, Avars, and Magyars."

Later that fall Joseph Goebbels noted after a visit that Poland was already "Asia." Hitler and Rosenberg too learned from new experiences. The latter noted in his diary in late September:

"The Poles: a thin Germanic layer, underneath frightful material. The Jews, the most appalling people one can imagine. The towns thick with dirt. He's [Hitler] learnt a lot in these past few weeks. Above all, if Poland had gone on ruling the old German parts for a few more decades everything would have become lice-ridden and decayed."

Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice, pages 13-14.

Nazi intentions toward the Poles and other Slavic groups in Eastern and Southeastern Europe were relatively open. If the Polish state had
been willing to collaborate with Hitler in 1939, it might have survived as a satellite similar to Slovakia, that is, a land to the south of the corridor
leading to Lebensraum. It was by blocking that path that the Poles became the sort of "Slavs" destined for destruction. Thus it was not longstanding Nazi plans to destroy the Poles which engendered Polish resistance in 1939 and thereafter, but rather Polish resistance which brought forth such plans.

Ibid, page 22.

German historian Diemut Majer wrote:

Analogously, no convincing race-theoretical explanation could be found to justify the discrimination against Poles. According to National Socialist racial doctrine, all European peoples belonged to the family of the Aryans and were thus fundamentally "racially equivalent," that is, recognized as equal before the law. Discrimination against Poles was justified, however, because, like all Slavs, they represented a major völkisch and racial threat to Germany. Yet here, too, such reasoning was merely pretext. In his early statements on the Slavs, Hitler did not even mention the Poles, because at that time Poland was signatory to the Non-Aggression Treaty of 1934, and its position in the National Socialist scheme of conquest was not yet settled. The "ethnic threat" posed by the Poles was not discovered until the invasion of Poland. The placement of the Poles under rule of special law was done from fundamentally political motives, which were considerably intensified by the antipathy toward the Poles that, for reasons both political (voting disputes [Abstimmungskampf] in the East and West Prussia, fighting in West Prussia and Upper Silesia, and the activities of the Freikorps) and religious, had been present in the eastern part of Germany in a particular intense form since 1918. The main reason, however, was that the Nazi leadership considered the Poles to be the most dangerous of all peoples in Eastern Europe on account of their staunch insistence upon their national rights and identity as a people. The race-political grounds for hatred of the Poles were merely the ideological mask justifying the National Socialist policy of violent force.

The political bias for the systemically fomented hatred of and malice against Poles reveals itself in the thesis, invented ex post facto, of their "threat to the community," which then became the dominant argument in both theory and practice. According to this, the Poles had to be excluded from the European community of rights on account of their "Germanophobia" and their political incompetence and "lack of culture." In contrast with this political argument, neither the racial window dressing of Nazi propaganda that commenced in 1939, according to which the Poles were "racial foes" with regard to whom restraints were not to be observed, nor the elaborate attempts of the Race Policy Office to set up a racial classification of the Poles achieved much of an echo.

"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich, pages 63-64.

Even after Poland was defeated, Hitler toyed with the idea of Poland being a rump state to use to fight against the Soviets, but that was quickly abandoned.

[George L Gregory]

The only thing I would perhaps disagree with is that there was some uniform agreement on how those who were fit to be Germanised were viewed. I think we thrashed that one to death in another thread though.

The Germanisation policies were all over the place and in constant flux. Despite the fact that the Nazis Germanised many different peoples during WW2, Hitler actually stated that people couldn't be Germanised and only soil could be! The Gauleiters Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser had very different views on who could be Germanised. Forster was willing to allow any Poles in Danzig-West Prussia who professed to having "German blood" to be Germanised whereas Greiser pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing in Warthegau against the Poles (and Jews). The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) caused many problems for the Nazis and was never fully settled.

The different policies carried out between Forster and Greiser became apparent at the back end of 1941:

Greiser was concerned about segregation violations. At the end of 1941, he issued a decree concerning those civil servants delegated to the East who had ‘failed catastrophically with respect to Volkstum-political matters,’ that is, who had engaged in ‘improper interaction with foreign people.’ These individuals were to receive a stamp in their personnel file stating that they were ‘unsuited for deployment in the Reichsgau Wartheland.’ Greiser, though, was particularly vexed by Germans having sexual relations with Poles. In April 1941, he made an example of six NSDAP men who had had sex with Polish women. Two were sent to a concentration camp for an undetermined length of time; the other four were sent for a period of two weeks. In June 1942, Greiser was confronted with a case in which a woman resettler, whose husband was a soldier, had forced a Polish farmhand to have repeated sexual encounters. As Greiser wrote to Freisler, he was able to punish the Pole, but he had no legal means to prosecute the German. He now asked the Justice Ministry to issue a regulation that would generally punish ‘undignified racial (volksunwürdiges) conduct’ of Germans toward Poles. Greiser even included a draft of such a regulation; it provided penitentiary or prison sentences for those found guilty. In May 1943, Greiser sought permission from the Party Chancellery and the ministers of interior and justice to issue the decree for the Reichsgau Wartheland. (Since the decree was directed against Germans, Greiser did not feel that he could issue it on his own.) Some weeks later, a Justice Ministry official informed Greiser that such a regulation was in the works, and asked him to hold off on issuing a decree.112 But no Reich decree ever appeared.

Although Greiser was unable to uphold a complete separation of Germans from Poles, the Warthegau was known as the area in which the harshest discriminatory policies against Poles obtained. In March 1942 a local Gau Office of Volkstum Affairs reported that ‘since the Poles know about the good treatment [of Poles] in Danzig–West Prussia, they yearn to move there.’ In December, Goebbels noted that Greiser ‘deals with this problem [the ‘Polish Question’] with somewhat stricter and harsher methods than Forster. As congenially as Forster judges individual cases, Greiser’s methods, in principle, strike me as correct. In any event he can point to significant successes for the correctness of his practice.’ As these comments underscore, Greiser was now the Nazi radical, Forster the Nazi moderate. Greiser’s strict segregation had also had ‘successes.’ Many segregation measures were on the books, and Germans and Poles led largely separate and very unequal lives in the Warthegau. Poles, once proud citizens of a sovereign nation-state, were now downtrodden Helots under a savage occupation regime.

Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland, pages 207-208.

Hans Frank was quite open about Germanising Nordic Poles:

I speak openly of Germanization. How often have we not seen with astonishment some blond, blue-eyed child speaking Polish. To which I say: ‘If this child learned German, it would be a pretty German girl’.

Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, page 193.

Forster certainly had a point about Heinrich Himmler's physical appearance and his racial ideas when he remarked, "if I looked like Himmler, I wouldn't talk about race".

[gebhk]

The Germanisation policies were all over the place and in constant flux.

Indeed, very much the conclusion we came to.

The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) caused many problems for the Nazis and was never fully settled.

The interesting point was that by and large the desire to be a German counted for a lot more than actually being one (ie having German 'blood') when it came to stratifying the Volksliste.

Forster certainly had a point about Heinrich Himmler's physical appearance and his racial ideas when he remarked, "if I looked like Himmler, I wouldn't talk about race".

Indeed - taking it further, I am desperately trying to remember the definition of the perfect Aryan and who first said it. It went something like: the perfect Aryan was a man blond like Hitler, slim like Goering, tall like Goebbels and handsome like Himmler.......

[George L Gregory]

The Germanisation policies were all over the place and in constant flux.

Indeed, very much the conclusion we came to.

Do you have a link to the thread? I'm interested in other people's opinions about the Third Reich's Germanisation policies.

Hitler himself during WW2 stated that he was happy with Germanising people as long as their blood would improve the German people:

There is one cardinal principle. This question of the Germanisation of certain peoples must not be examined in the light of abstract ideas and theory. We must examine each particular case. The only problem is to make sure whether the offspring of any race will mingle well with the German population and will improve it, or whether, on the contrary (as is the case when Jew blood is mixed with German blood), negative results will arise. Unless one is completely convinced that the foreigners whom one proposes to introduce into the German community will have a beneficial effect, well, I think it's better to abstain, however strong the sentimental reasons may be which urge such a course on us. There are plenty of Jews with blue eyes and blond hair, and not a few of them have the appearance which strikingly supports the idea of the Germanisation of their kind. It has, however, been indisputably established that, in the case of Jews, if the physical characteristics of the race are sometimes absent for a generation or two, they will inevitably reappear in the next generation.

The fact that there was no universal agreement on who should be Germanised caused so many problems that it goes without saying really!

The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) caused many problems for the Nazis and was never fully settled.

The interesting point was that by and large the desire to be a German counted for a lot more than actually being one (ie having German 'blood') when it came to stratifying the Volksliste.

Exactly. The Nazis had an extremely difficult time in determining who was an 'ethnic German' so it allowed pretty much anyone who wanted to be a German to be a German.

People joined the German People's List because of the special privileges and status it gave them.

I should point out that even before WW2 had started and the Nazis had carried out ethnic cleansing against the Poles, deporting Poles from their homes, created the German People's List, etc, in March 1939 the Nazi Karl Frank said:

Whoever professes himself to be a member of the German nation is a member of the German nation, provided that this profession is confirmed by certain facts, such as language, upbringing, culture, etc. Persons of alien blood, particularly Jews, are never Germans. . . . Because professing to be a member of the German nation is of vital significance, even someone who is partly or completely of another race—Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, or Polish, for example—can be considered a German. Any more precise elaboration of the term "German national" is not possible given current relationships.

Thus, the Nazis themselves allowed the option for a non-Jewish European to become a "German national".

The Nazis did that because they never actually defined who was a "German":

By 1942, the mind-boggling complexity and multiplicity of peoples in Eastern Europe had led to many racialists to declare that the "Slavs" were not a race. No unambiguous definition of what made a German existed, however. Nazi legal experts had defined "German member of the state," "citizen of the Reich," "[legal] member of the German Volk," "ethnic German," "German abroad," and many more terms, but rarely, if ever, did they decide what made a German. "Race" promised Nazi officials positive, concrete criteria based on biological precepts that could determine what made, or could make, a person German. Yet, like the word "German," it was equally unclear what "race" really meant.

Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism, page 155.

In practice, however, the first term to be widely employed was of Aryan descent; yet from 1935 on, the expressions German or related blood or German-bloodedness were substituted, as the term Aryan was purely linguistic in origin and not capable of even pseudoscientific justification. But these terms were just as imprecise as the terms previously used, Aryan and non-Aryan, for they either exhausted themselves in purely negative definitions (non-Jewish, noncolored), or else they defined German blood as being the "blood of the various races" of which the German yolk was composed, as the blood of "peoples racially related" to it; but they never did define what race or racially related actually meant.

Diemut Majer, "Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich, page 40.

Whereas the earlier provisions under special law had used the terms Aryan descent or non-Aryan descent, after the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, took effect, the only term in use was German or racially related blood or non-German or racially unrelated blood—even though these terms were never officially defined. Persons of "German or racially related blood" were in future to be grouped together under the expression German-blooded, a term, however, that did not take hold to any great extent until the relevant regulations were promulgated beginning in 1939.

Ibid, page 113.

Forster certainly had a point about Heinrich Himmler's physical appearance and his racial ideas when he remarked, "if I looked like Himmler, I wouldn't talk about race".

Indeed - taking it further, I am desperately trying to remember the definition of the perfect Aryan and who first said it. It went something like: the perfect Aryan was a man blond like Hitler, slim like Goering, tall like Goebbels and handsome like Himmler.......

What's also important to note is that Hitler himself wanted to distance himself and the Nazi Party from Himmler's "race mysticism" and despite the fact that Hitler previously described the Slavs as an "inferior race" in Mein Kampf, he later changed his mind:

Hitler himself thought Himmler’s race mysticism was impractical and, while hostile to Serbs and Russians in general, he felt differently about other groups of Slavs. He praised the Czechs as “industrious and intelligent workers” and speculated that blue-eyed Ukrainians might be “peasant descendants of German tribes who never migrated.” In fact, he came round to the view – common among German anthropologists – that there was, racial speaking, no such category as “Slavs”; it was a linguistic term, nothing more.

Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, page 198.

Nevertheless, Hitler wanted to separate Germanic people and Slavic people:

The real frontier is the one that separates the Germanic world from the Slav world. It is our duty to place it where we want it to be. If anyone asks where we obtain the right to extend the Germanic space to the east, we reply that, for a nation, its awareness of what it represents carries this right with it. It is success that justifies everything. The reply to such questions can only be of an empirical nature. It is inconceivable that a higher people should painfully exist on a soil too narrow for it, while amorphous masses, which contribute nothing to civilization, occupy infinite tracts of a soil that is one of the richest in the world ...

We must create conditions for our people that favour its multiplication, and we must, at the same time, build a dike against the Russian flood ... Since there is no natural protection against such a flood, we must meet it with a living wall. A permanent war on the eastern front will help form a sound race of men, and will prevent us from relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself. It should be possible for us to control this region to the east with two hundred and fifty thousand men, plus a cadre of good administrators ...

This space in Russia must always be dominated by Germans.

What's actually interesting is that although the term 'Aryan' was still used by the Nazis, racial anthropologists who influenced Nazi ideology consistently rejected the term 'Aryan' as a racial concept. In fact, the Nazis listened to them because during the Nuremberg Laws they had replaced 'Aryan' to 'German or related blood' and the latter was what mostly appeared on documents.

In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws established a new term for racially acceptable origin: German or related blood. This remained the standard wording in legal documents until the end of World War II. Nevertheless, even experts continued to use the term Aryan well after 1935.

In any event, changing Aryan to German or related blood did nothing to clarify who was racially acceptable and who was not. The "racial status" of Finns, Hungarians, and other Eastern Europeans, for example, was in constant flux during the Nazi era. In October 1934, while evaluating the naturalization of a Hungarian citizen, the Interior Ministry informed the Saxon State Chancellery in Dresden that not all Hungarians were "non-Aryans." According to the Interior Ministry, Hungarians are "tribally alien" (fremdstammig) but not necessarily "blood alien" (fremdbliitig)—two additional terms adding to the definitional confusion. On the other hand, a 1934 brochure from the series Family, Race, Volk in the National Socialist State simply stated that the Magyars (which it did not define) were Aryans. Four years later, a major commentary to the Nuremberg Laws likewise baldly stated that “the overwhelming majority” of present day Finns and Hungarians were of Aryan blood. Yet the following year an article in the Journal for Racial Science, on the “Racial Diagnosis of the Hungarians," noted that "opinions on [t]he racial condition of the Hungarians are still very divided."In 1942, Hitler decreed that the Finns, at least, were definitely "racially related Germanic neighboring peoples." There is no indication, however, that this determination was based on new racial-scientific findings. And as late as 1943, no less than four agencies became involved in a dispute over whether a private first-class should receive permission to marry a Hungarian woman. They debated whether the woman was, as initially determined, "German-blooded (Aryan)."

Such arbitrariness and imprecision in classification could also be construed as an indication of the “unscientific” nature of the theory undergirding the racial laws. Nazi "racial experts," however, sought to address this problem. A standard explanation was that: "[o]ne cannot pose the question to which race this or that Volk belongs but rather, one can only correctly ask to which race this or that individual member of a Volk belongs." Thus, as early as October 1934, in relation to the case of the Hungarian citizen, the Interior Ministry informed the Saxon State Chancellery that racial decisions, for Hungarians at least, needed to be made on an individual basis. Similarly, a November 1940 decree of the office of Hitlers deputy for party affairs held that no party member, or member of a party organization, could marry a person who had at least two grandparents who were members of the Czech, Polish, or Magyar "Volk groups" without permission of the regional party official (Gauleiter). Indeed, even with regard to "Gypsies," another expert, writing in 1941, noted that while they "cannot be seen in their totality as [German or] related-type blood," nevertheless, "[t]o the degree persons of German or related blood appear amongst vagrants living the Gypsy lifestyle, they are to make an ancestral proof."

Yet, in direct contradiction to that policy, racial laws invariably treated "Jewish" as if it were a pure race despite the Jews’ "racial-scientific" status as a Volk. The Nuremberg Laws, for example, distinguished between persons of "German or related blood" and "Jews." This foreclosed the possibility of a person with three or more "Jewish" grandparents from proving their individual "racial makeup." A 1941 work on the ancestral proof indicated that "[t]hose of foreign race, in first place the Jews and Negroes, are excluded from the concept of German or related blood." The authors explanation for this apparent disregard of racial-scientific findings was that the Jewish Volk was composed of "foreign races." But this directly contradicted the assertion that one could only determine an individual’s racial composition by examining the individual, not through his Volk affiliation.

Eric Ehrenreich, The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution, pages 8-11.

The notion that Nazi race theorists promoted the notion of a superior Aryan race is deeply embedded in academic and popular perceptions of Nazism. The term 'Aryan' was widely used in Nazi Germany, and 'non-Aryan' became in many contexts a synonym for 'Jewish'. However, Nazi race theorists opposed the promotion of 'Aryan' as a racial concept. By 1935, the National Socialist regime had accepted that this use of the term was unscientific. Almost every academic commentary - outside specialist writings on race science in the Third Reich - fundamentally misrepresents the intellectual history of this question. The notion that the Nazis 'confused language with race' or Volk with Rasse in relation to the Aryan question is completely false.

In the early years of Nazi rule, there was a collision between this populist-political term and the basic tenets of racial anthropology. From the point of view of the National Socialist regime, there were a number of fundamental problems with the term 'Aryan'. Firstly, if used in a positive sense ('of Aryan descent'), it failed to distinguish between Germans from non-Germans, since the concept 'Aryan' was much wider than 'German'. Used in the negative, the term also caused problems in relations to the status of foreign nationals resident in Germany. Though it was primarily targeted at Jews, it actually failed to pick them out in any precise or legally defined way, even if everyone knew what 'non-Aryan' intended to mean. There was the question of long-standing European populations such as the Finns and the Hungarians who did not speak an Indo-European or Aryan language. Furthermore, it had been long argued by scholars that the term 'Aryan' referred to a language family and connoted a linguistic not a racial identity. In short, the term 'Aryan' was unable to make the required racial distinctions, though one suggestion was to reject use of 'non-Aryan' for Jewish but retain 'Aryan' for peoples which consisted of predominantly Nordic racial elements.

The term 'Aryan race' (arische Rasse) was not favoured in official documents in Nazi Germany, and instances of this phrase are extremely rare, though it is used in reporting the views of earlier race theorists. Laws passed in the early years of the Nazi regime used the notion of 'Aryan descent', but exclusively in its negative form, so that those 'of non-Aryan descent' were excluded from different aspects of public life. In the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, 7 April 1933, Reichsgesetzblatt I s. 175), civil servants who were 'of non-Aryan descent' ('Beamte, die nicht arischer Abstammung sind') were to be compulsorily retired (with exceptions made for those who were appointed before 1 August 1914, or who had served at the front in the First World War, or whose father or son had been killed in the war). Non-Aryan descent was defined so as to include those with one (or more) Jewish grandparent(s). The Minister of the Interior also had discretionary powers to make recommendations in other cases (ss. 3.1, 3.2). Similarly, the Defence Law (Wehrgesetz, 21 May 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt 1935 I, s. 609) made Aryan descent a prerequisite for active miliary service, and for the taking of positions of authority (ss. 15.1, 15.3) But the racial use of the term 'Aryan' was politically and legally problematic.

The question of how a non-Aryan was to be defined in relation to this and subsequent laws was controversial. There was concern from some of the bureaucrats responsible for policy that valuable and hitherto loyal racial elements were being alienated from the Volk. Someone who was a quarter Jewish was also three-quarters 'Aryan'. For Party radicals such as Julius Streicher this was much too lenient; there were calls for the compulsory sterilization of Mischlinge. The expert on Jewish affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, Bernhard Lösener, wrote an account of the behind-the-scenes debates about how official anti-Semitism was to be translated into legal form. Lösener subsequently defined his role as that of trying to moderate policy with regard to Mischlinge, since in this regard there was room for flexibility that was absent with the 'full-blooded' Jews (Volljuden). What is clear is the fundamental confusion about the nature of the racial hybridity involved. In contrast to the 1933 law, the 1935 laws defined any individual with three Jewish grandparents as a Jew. In the case of the Mischlinge with one Jewish grandparent (Mischling 2. Grades) or two (Mischling 1. Grades), the definition of who counted as a Jew merged the ostensibly 'race-biological' and cultural criteria, including membership of the Jewish community and marriage to a Jew.

In late 1935, a terminological shift took place in the language of the law, and the term' Aryan' ceased to be used. The Citizenship Law (Reichsbürgergesetz. 15 September 1935, ReichsgesetzblattI 1935 1 s. 1146) restricted citizenship to those of 'German or cognate blood' ('deutschen or artverwandten Blutes', s. 2.1), and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre, 15 September 15 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I. S. 1146) forbade marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and those 'of German or cognate blood' (ss. 1.1, 1.2). These laws did not speak of a 'Jewish race', but of Jews defined 'according to race' ('der Rasse nach'), as opposed to converts to Judaism ('Erste Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz, 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I s. 1333). This law also evoked the concept of 'the purity of blood' ('die Reinheit des Blutes', ss. 6.1, 6.2). The phrase 'of German or cognate blood' was used in the later Civil Service Law ('Beamtengesetz, 26 January 1937, Reichsgesetzblatt I s. 41 ss. 25.1, 72.1).

The official solution was to replace the problematic term 'Aryan' with the notion of 'German blood ties'. Setting out the argument for a Sippenamt (Genealogical Office), Achim Gercke (1934) argued that such an office would 'water over the purity of the blood' (Blutsreinheit) of the Volk. Its task would be to awaken the 'racial will of the people', and those who worked in the office should represent the best 'German blood' (deutsches Blut). Dr Ernst Brandis, a senior legal bureaucrat, in his commentary on the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German people Gesetz zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes or Ehegesundheitsgesetz, 18 October 1935), defined 'German blood' in the following terms:

"The German people is no unitary race, rather it is composed of members of different races (of the Nordic, Phalian, Dinaric, Alpine, Mediterranean, East-Elbian race) and mixtures between these. The blood of all these races and their mixtures, which thus is found in the German people, represents 'German blood’."

Günther consistently rejected the racial use of the term 'Aryan', fearing that it would lead to the misleading classification of non-Nordic racial elements. Günther argued against its use in any scholarly context, including linguistics, ethnography and racial anthropology. The juxtaposition of 'Aryan' with 'Semitic' confused linguistic with racial identity. The use of 'Aryan' in linguistics instead of Indogermanic was also ill-advised, as the term would be again used to designate anthropological race in a confusing way.

Christopher Hutton, Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk.

In French propaganda:



In Russian propaganda:



What I do think is funny is when you get neo-Nazis/Holocaust deniers/revisionists who use the argument that because there were some Waffen-SS divisions made up entirely of Slavic people that means that the Nazis weren't anti-Slavic!

[George L Gregory]

Himmler's secret memorandum "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East" dated 25 May 1940, which Hitler read and described as "very good and correct" gives us an insight to the Nazis' plans for the "subhuman people of the East" (Untermenschenvolk des Osten). The non-Germans in the East were to only be allowed to have elementary schools with four classes and no higher level schools. The elementary schools were to teach simple things: basic counting up to 500, how to write one's name and to be obedient to Germans.

But, the memorandum also mentioned the Germanisation of children in the East:

Apart from this school there are to be no schools at all in the East. Parents, who from the beginning want to give their children better schooling in the elementary school as well as later on in a higher school, must take an application to the Higher SS and Police Leaders. The first consideration in dealing with this application will be whether the child is racially perfect and conforming to our conditions. If we acknowledge such a child to be as of our blood, the parents will be notified that the child will be sent to a school in Germany and that it will permanently remain in Germany.

Cruel and tragic as every individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best one if, out of inner conviction, one rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people.

The parents of such children of good blood will be given the choice to either give away their child; they will then probably produce no more children so that the danger of this subhuman people of the East [Untermenschenvolk des Ostens] obtaining class of leaders which, since it would be equal to us, would also be dangerous for us, will disappear--or else the parents pledge themselves to go to Germany and to become loyal citizens there. The love toward their child, whose future and education depends on the loyalty of the parents, will be a strong weapon in dealing with them.

Apart from examining the applications made by parents for better schooling of their children, there will be an annual sifting of all children of the Government General between the ages of 6 to 10 years in order to separate the racially valuable and non-valuable ones. The ones considered racially valuable will be treated in the same way as the children who are admitted on the basis of the approved application of their parents.

The General Government was to be reserved for those considered to be racially inferior:

The population of the Government General during the next 10 years, by necessity and after a consistent carrying out of these measures, will be composed of the remaining inferior population supplemented by the population of the eastern provinces deported there, and of all those parts of the German Reich which have the same racial and human qualities for instance, parts of the Sorbs [Sorben] and Wends [Wenden].

viewtopic.php?t=63400

By the summer of 1940, between 30-50,000 Poles had been Germanised. That figure was way too low for Himmler and Hitler who had envisaged around 1,000,000 Poles to have been Germanised.

By October 1940 Himmler had thought about the idea and reduced his target to 100,000 and told Higher SS and Police Leaders in Poland:

People can't be Germanized by the party taking them in hand and politically indoctrinating them, for the German administration and the German military have been trying this kind of thing in West Prussia and Posen for over a hundred years in a different form, with the result that during the period of German rule people served as Germans and were German citizens and during the period of Polish rule they served as Poles and were Poles. This old method has historically been proved to be the wrong one.

Germanization of the eastern provinces can be done only on the basis of racial theory and that is by screening the population of these provinces. The racially valuable people, who in terms of their bloodline can be absorbed into our national body without causing damage (in some cases even with positive results), must be transferred to the old Reich as individual families. The other group, who on racial grounds cannot be absorbed, will remain in the country for as long as we need its labour for the development of the provinces and will then, in the course of the next 5-10 years, without exception or mercy be got rid of to the General Government, which is the place for people for whom on racial grounds Germany has no use.

Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: A Life, pages 452-453.

[GoeringsPetLion]

"The German people is no unitary race, rather it is composed of members of different races (of the Nordic, Phalian, Dinaric, Alpine, Mediterranean, East-Elbian race) and mixtures between these. The blood of all these races and their mixtures, which thus is found in the German people, represents 'German blood’."

Almost all Czech looked like these races and their mixtures. But Hitler again and again described the Czech as if they were largely of Mongolian ancestry. For example, he said during a table talk on 23 January 1942, "Of all the Slavs, the Czech is the most dangerous, because he's a worker. He has a sense of discipline, he's orderly, he's more a Mongol than a Slav." And on 12 May 1942, "And you only need to let a Czech grow a moustache, and you will see by the way it grows downward that he is a descendant of Mongolid tribes." (I translated it more literally than it is in the given source.)

[George L Gregory]

"The German people is no unitary race, rather it is composed of members of different races (of the Nordic, Phalian, Dinaric, Alpine, Mediterranean, East-Elbian race) and mixtures between these. The blood of all these races and their mixtures, which thus is found in the German people, represents 'German blood’."

Almost all Czech looked like these races and their mixtures. But Hitler again and again described the Czech as if they were largely of Mongolian ancestry. For example, he said during a table talk on 23 January 1942, "Of all the Slavs, the Czech is the most dangerous, because he's a worker. He has a sense of discipline, he's orderly, he's more a Mongol than a Slav." And on 12 May 1942, "And you only need to let a Czech grow a moustache, and you will see by the way it grows downward that he is a descendant of Mongolid tribes." (I translated it more literally than it is in the given source.)

Nevertheless, the Nazis in 1940 thought that 50% of Czechs were eligible to be Germanised.

And, despite Hitler's thoughts about the Czechs, they suffered a lot less compared to the Poles.

[GoeringsPetLion]

Nevertheless, the Nazis in 1940 thought that 50% of Czechs were eligible to be Germanised.

On 23 October 1940, the SS-Oberscharführer Dr. Walter König-Beyer, employee of the RuSHA, wrote at the request of Heydrich a memorandum about "the racial-political conditions of the Bohemian-Moravian area and its reorganization". Based on "racial studies conducted in various places of the Czech settlement area" and observations by himself and other race researchers, he gave the following rough estimate of the racial makeup of the Czech.

45% predominantly Nordic, Dinaric, or Mediterranean people and balanced mongrels who are part of these racial groups
40% unbalanced mongrels with predominantly Alpine and East Baltic racial traits
15% racially alien people

Source (German): https://www.herder-institut.de/no_cache ... tails.html

[George L Gregory]

Nevertheless, the Nazis in 1940 thought that 50% of Czechs were eligible to be Germanised.

On 23 October 1940, the SS-Oberscharführer Dr. Walter König-Beyer, employee of the RuSHA, wrote at the request of Heydrich a memorandum about "the racial-political conditions of the Bohemian-Moravian area and its reorganization". Based on "racial studies conducted in various places of the Czech settlement area" and observations by himself and other race researchers, he gave the following rough estimate of the racial makeup of the Czech.

45% predominantly Nordic, Dinaric, or Mediterranean people and balanced mongrels who are part of these racial groups
40% unbalanced mongrels with predominantly Alpine and East Baltic racial traits
15% racially alien people

Source (German): https://www.herder-institut.de/no_cache ... tails.html

I've found some more information about the SS-Oberscharführer Dr. Walter König-Beyer.

By the same token, SS anthropologists shaped Nazi views of the Czechs. In October 1940, SS racial expert Dr. Walter König-Beyer, an official in the RuSHA in Berlin, wrote a policy paper concerning the Czechs. He estimated that about 55 percent of the Czech population would have to be deported but thought that 45 percent were racially suitable for Germanization. König-Beyer, like many other anthropologists, believed that many Czechs were originally Germans who had over the past decades adopted Czech culture. However, rather unexpectedly, he suggested that the Sudeten Germans had lower percentages of Nordic blood than did the rest of the Czech population.

Anton Weiss-Wendt, Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-dominated Europe, page 70.

Also:

Shortly after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the German Interior Ministry issued a decree governing racial policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The decree provided for those Czechs deemed racially superior to be assimilated into the German racial community. However, this right was denied to Jews, Gypsies and members of non-European races. Karl Hermann Frank, an SS leader in Prague, composed a position paper on the treatment of Czechs in August 1939. He advocated separating the racially valuable Czechs from the racially inferior ones. Those deemed inferior would be deported to make room for German settlers. He proposed that racial determinations would be made by special commissions, possibly under the auspices of public health. Frank's essay on to Hitler, who approved of it.

Nazi policy in the Protectorate became more apparent in September and October 1940, when Hitler met with Karl Hermann Frank and the Reich protector Konstantin von Neurath. Hitler told Neurath that many Czechs would be assimilated into the German Volk, but "those Czechs who are racially useless and hostile to the Reich will be eliminated." While estimating that one-half of the Czechs could be Germanized, he requested a thorough racial screening in order to determine the racial composition. Hitler obviously wanted Germanization only for those with Nordic racial traits.

Ibid, page 71.

[GoeringsPetLion]

"Hitler obviously wanted Germanization only for those with Nordic racial traits." [Anton Weiss-Wendt]

Interestingly, König-Beyer included predominantly Dinaric and Mediterranean people.

[George L Gregory]

"Hitler obviously wanted Germanization only for those with Nordic racial traits." [Anton Weiss-Wendt]

Interestingly, König-Beyer included predominantly Dinaric and Mediterranean people.

Well that certainly seems to be the case.

Drawing on information from interwar conscription records, Dr. König-Beyer wrote a forty-two-page report for Heydrich and top Protectorate officials, affirming Frank and Neurath's claims that over half the Czech population could be assimilated. "From a racial point of view," his calculations of height, weight, eye color, and other physical characteristics determined, the Czech nation was not a "foreign body" in relation to the Germans. Instead, making the Czechs German was necessary not only in order to take control of the Bohemian and Moravian territory but also for "the rewinning of racially valuable German blood predominant in the Nordic and Dinarian race." Beyer claimed that most Czechs possessed more "German blood" than did their Sudeten Germans rivals, who had been weakened by a long history of living in cities, mixing with Jews, and even falling under the evil influence of foreign-blooded Jesuits.

Chad Carl Bryant, Prague in Black Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism, page 126.

Racial surveys carried out concluded that the Czechs had more Nordic blood than Austrians, Bavarians, Sudeten Germans and East Prussians and because of the findings they were kept secret.

Source: Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs Under Nazi Rule The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942, page 131.

Mark Mazower in his book Hitler's Empire Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe wrote the following about the Nazis' treatment of Czechs:

This dire fate [systematic racial separation], however, faced the Poles in particular rather than the Slavs as a whole. Despite the Nazis’ rhetoric, in theory, and increasingly in practice, racial scientists and policy advisers distinguished between different groups of Slavs. The Slovaks were allowed to govern themselves, and even in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia the Germans ruled through a Czech bureaucracy and a figurehead Czech president – something denied to the Poles.

Page 74.

The government managed to continue to fund the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Czech rations remained as high if not higher than those in the Reich itself.

Ibid, page 75.

In the Academy of German Law, traditionalists argued daringly that the unilateral annexation of Polish territory and the subsequent occupation of the General Government were illegal.

Ibid, page 76.

The Czechs were simply too important economically, and too obedient politically, to make it worth alienating them.

By late 1942 the Germans [. . .] were reduced to promoting their own bizarre brand of Czech nationalism. They founded a new youth organization and tried to foster what they called “Reich-loyal Czech Nationalism.” Schoolchildren marched under the swastika singing Czech songs and spent their vacations on “Heydrich’s Summer Relaxation Camps” [sic!]. By the summer of 1944,they were helping organize a Week of Czech Youth in Prague.

Ibid, pages 188-189.

In the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia [. . .] national income even rose above prewar levels despite massive net outflows of resources to the old Reich.

Ibid, 261.

John Connelly in his pamphlet Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Practice wrote:

If any Slavic people provoked Hitler's ill will it was the Czechs, about whom he had formed opinions as a young man in Austria. Yet as will be shown, the Czechs survived the war in relative peace.

Page 3.

The Czechs fared worse under Nazi rule. In March 1939 post-Munich Czechoslovakia was divided, and the Czech/Moravian/Silesian part made into the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. The Protectorate had to endure six years of German occupation, and the Czech intelligentsia, as the putative national leadership, suffered severe repression. Yet for the overwhelming majority of Czechs life went on in relatively normal fashion: businessmen continued making profits, the working class increased earnings due to wartime demand, and the birthrate edged upward. The rations allotted to Czech workers were on a par with those of German workers. Czech administration was kept intact to a degree that was unparalleled in Nazi-occupied Europe—with the possible exception of Denmark. Though universities were closed, substantial publishing and education in the Czech language continued. The Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences continued its meetings throughout the war, and received a budget for research from the Czech officials at the Protectorate Ministry of Education. The journal of the Prague linguistic circle, Slovo a Slovesnost (Word and Literature), appeared until 1943, and the Czech sociological society continued meetings and publishing until 1945. Likewise, the major philosophical journal Česká mysl(The Czech Mind) received a budget and continued publishing throughout the war.

Ibid, pages 5-6.

As the learning process continued, Nazi leaders began to recognize that certain Slavs could be useful. Hitler, though harboring the strongest suspicions of germanizing foreign populations, ruled in September 1940 that the assimilation of the greater part of the Czech people is possible for "historical and racial reasons" In March of the following year he praised to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels the "hard work and inventiveness of the Czechs" and in 1942 he told his dinner companions that the Czechs were "industrious and intelligent workers." Nazi racial experts estimated that up to half of the Czechs were of Nordic origin, and Hitler agreed. He also came to view the Croats as fully assimilable, though he never wavered in antipathy toward Serbs.

Ibid, page 14.

Only in the Czech lands did Nazis actually get around to "measuring" Germanic blood, and discovered to their surprise that the Czechs were actually of higher racial value, i.e., more Germanic, than the Sudeten Germans.

Ibid, page 16.

In the Czech lands there was no initial spark of defiance; German troops moved unopposed into border areas in the fall of 1938, and completed their occupation without a shot in March of the following year. Neither Czechs nor Germans had an incentive to upset the relative calm; the Germans valued the steady production of war materials from Czech industry, and the Czechs the significant spaces that remained for pursuit of economic and cultural interests. So powerful was the dynamic of mutual accommodation that even the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 could not upset it. After the Germans had obliterated two villages and executed hundreds of suspected and actual opposition members, both sides returned to a strained coexistence which lasted until shortly before Russian and American troops liberated the Czech lands in the spring of 1945.

Ibid, page 22.

The Nazis used a bust portraying the Dinaric race in exhibitions and racial hygiene classes.



https://www.ushmm.org/information/press ... pe-dinaric

The Nazis also published a pamphlet for members of the SS to read titled "SS Race Theory and Mate Selection Guidelines" and it we can read the following:

Finally, conspicuous in certain parts of the Reich are short, round-headed people with wide faces, brown eyes, brown to black hair and dark skin color (physical appearance of the EAST BALTIC race).

Although Nazi propaganda emphasised the racial superiority of the Nordic race and claimed that people of the Nordic race were those who created culture, etc, Nazi propaganda also emphasised that it didn't really matter if a German didn't have the physical characteristics of the Nordic race:

Race

Race means to be able to think in a certain way. He who has courage, loyalty and honor, the mark of the German, has the race that should rule in Germany, even if he does not have the physical characteristics of the “Nordic” race. The unity of the noble and a noble body is the goal to which we strive. But we despise those whose noble body carries an ignoble soul. §A variety of related European races have merged in Germany. One trunk grew from these roots. Each race gave its best strength. Each contributed to the German soul We Germans have a fighting spirit, a look to the horizon, the “desire to do a thing for its own sake” of the Nordic race. Another racial soul gave us our cozy old cities and our depth. Yet another racial soul gave us mastery of the magical realm of music. Yet another gave us our ability to organize, and our silent obedience. §We can not hold it against anyone if he carries a variety of racial lines, for the German soul does as well, and created out of it the immeasurable riches which it possesses above all other nations. The greatness of our Reich grew out of this soul. §But the Nordic race must dominate in Germany and shape the soul of each German. It must win out in the breast of each individual. Today our ideal is not the artist or the citizen, but the hero. §Our highest treasure is the soul that we have been given. He who mixes his blood with that of foreign inferior races ruins the blood and soul that have been given to him to pass on in purity to his children. He makes his children impure and miserable, and commits the greatest crime that he as a National Socialist can commit. §But he who follows the laws of race fulfills the great commandment that only like should be brought together with like, keeping apart those things like fire and water which do not mix.

https://research.calvin.edu/german-prop ... lauben.htm

[George L Gregory]

Another interesting point to make is that while there was talk of a 'Mongoloid' element of the Czech population, Himmler even thought that the Mongols and Huns had left some sort of descent among some Poles.

Himmler – lost in his own historical theories – might talk about a 'racial selection' (Auslese) and 'sieving' (Siebung) in order to make sure that 'Mongols, mixed Mongols and Huns' were carted off into the General Government.

Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe.

In many respects, Nazi racial policy toward Poles and Czechs was similar. In his capacity as the Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom, Himmler began formulating plans to Germanize Poles deemed racially suitable, while deporting others. Himmler discussed Polish policy in an address that he delivered to Gauleiter and other Nazi Party officials in February 1940. He remarked that when they look at some Poles with blond hair and blue eyes, they recognize that "that is surely our blood, our best blood." Other Poles, however, were Huns, according to Himmler. "thus," he avered, "the question there is so terribly difficult, if one considers the composition of these Slavic peoples." The question could only be settled in the future by racial screening, but this would take a good deal of time. Until such racial surveys could be done, Poles would have to be kept strictly segregated from Germans.

Anton Weiss-Wendt, Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-dominated Europe, page 75.

[gebhk]

Do you have a link to the thread? I'm interested in other people's opinions about the Third Reich's Germanisation policies.

Hi George

I wasn't ignoring you, just was looking in the Polish Section when in fact the relevant thread

Related blood peoples - the Poles - citizenship after the invasion of Poland

In in this one!

Bestest
K