The theory of the racial supremacy of the Nordic, i.e., the German,
which was developed by Wagner and Stewart Chamberlain reaches its
culmination in the writings of Alfred Rosenberg, the high priest of
Nazi racial theory and herald of the _Herrenvolk_ (master race).
Rosenberg developed his ideas in the obscure phraseology of _Der
Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (_The Myth of the Twentieth Century_)
(document 3, _post_ p. 174). "The 'meaning of world history'," he
wrote, "has radiated out from the north over the whole world, borne by
a blue-eyed blond race which in several great waves determined the
spiritual face of the world ... These wander-periods were the
legendary migration of the Atlantides across north Africa, the
migration of the Aryans into India and Persia; the migration of the
Dorians, Macedonians, Latins; the migration of the Germanic tribes;
the colonization of the world by the Germanic Occident."[36] He
discusses at length Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and European
cultures; in each case, he concludes, the culture is created by the
ruling Nordic element and declines through the racial decay of the
Nordics resulting from their intermixture with inferior races.
It has long been accepted, Rosenberg claims, that all the states of
the west and their creative values have been generated by Germans; and
it follows that if the Germanic blood were to vanish away completely
in Europe all western culture would also fall to ruin.
Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the
non-German religion of Christianity. "A _new_ faith is arising today:
the myth of the blood, the faith to defend with the blood the divine
essence of man. The faith, embodied in clearest knowledge, that the
Nordic blood represents that _mysterium_ which has replaced and
overcome the old sacraments."[37]
Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the _Volk_, which he
relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no
longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the
state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of
the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass
away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the
first and _last_, that to which everything else has to be
subordinated."[38] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the
state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important
than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or
the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than
high treason against the state."[39]
The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of
the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but
members of the nation [_Volk_] may be citizens of the State. None but
those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the
nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."[40] After
the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German
citizenship law of September 15, 1935.
Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, _Nature,
Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP_, Rosenberg wrote:
An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in
the German _Volk_ consciousness: The right of nationality
should not represent something which is received in the
cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which
must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the
state, the rights of nationality should only be received
when at the age of twenty or twenty-two he has completed his
education or his military service or has finished the labor
service which he owes to the state and after having given
evidence of honorable conduct. The right to nationality,
which must be earned, must become an opportunity for every
German to strive for complete humanity and achievement in
the service of the _Volk_. This consciousness, which must
always be kept alive, will cause him to regard this earned
good quite differently from the way it was regarded in the
past and today more than ever.
The prevailing concept of state nationality completely
ignores the idea of race. According to it whoever has a
German passport is a German, whoever has Czech documents is
a Czech, although he may have not a single drop of Czech
blood in his veins ...
National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure
and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite
character in the _Volk_. If one permits a wholly foreign
race--subject to other impulses--to participate therein, the
purity of the organic expression is falsified and the
existence of the _Volk_ is crippled....
This whole concept of the state [parliamentary democracy] is
replaced by National Socialism with a basically different
concept. National Socialism recognizes that, although the
individual racial strains in German-speaking territory
differ, they nevertheless belong to closely related races,
and that many mixtures among the members of these different
branches have produced new and vital strains, among them the
complex but still _German_ man, but that a mixture with the
Jewish enemy race, which in its whole spiritual and physical
structure is basically different and antagonistic and has
strong resemblances to the peoples of the Near East, can
only result in bastardization.[41]
True to the tradition of German imperialism, Rosenberg does not
confine his ideas of racial supremacy to the Germans in the Reich
alone. He even extends them to the United States, where he envisages
the day when the awakening German element will realize its destiny in
this country. In _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, for example, he
writes, "After throwing off the worn-out idea upon which it was
founded ... i.e., after the destruction of the idea represented by New
York, the United States of North America has the great task ... of
setting out with youthful energy to put into force the new
racial-state idea which a few awakened Americans have already
foreseen."[42]
This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin
Ross. In his book _Unser Amerika_ (_Our America_) (document 4, _post_
p. 178), published in 1936, Ross develops the thesis that the German
element in the United States has contributed all that is best in
American life and civilization and urges it to become conscious of its
racial heritage and to prepare for the day when it may take over
complete control of the country.
Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's _Education in
the Third Reich_. On the subject of racial supremacy Beck points out
that certain new branches of learning have been introduced into the
National Socialist schools and certain old ones have been given a new
emphasis. The most important of these are the science of race and the
cultivation of race (_Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege_), which teach the
pupil to recognize and develop those racial powers which alone make
possible the fullest self-realization in the national community. An
awakening of a true racial consciousness in the people should lead to
a "qualitative and quantitative" racial refinement of the German
people by inducing a procreative process of selection which would
reduce the strains of foreign blood in the national body. "German
racial consciousness must have pride in the Nordic race as its first
condition. It must be a feeling of the highest personal pride to
belong to the Nordic race and to have the possibility and the
obligation to work within the German community for the advancement of
the Nordic race."[43] Beck points out that pupils must be made to
realize "that the downfall of the Nordic race would mean the collapse
of the national tradition, the disintegration of the living community
and the destruction of the individual."[44]
Under the influence of war developments, which have given the Nazis a
chance to apply their racial theories in occupied territories, their
spokesmen have become increasingly open with regard to the political
implications of the folk concept. In an article on "The Structure and
Order of the Reich," published late in 1941, Ernst Rudolf Huber wrote,
"this folk principle has found its full confirmation for the first
time in the events of this war, in which the unity of the folk has
been realized to an extent undreamed of through the return to the
homeland of territories which had been torn from it and the
resettlement of German folk-groups. Thus the awakening of Germandom to
become a political folk has had a twofold result: the unity of the
folk-community has risen superior to differences of birth or wealth,
of class, rank, or denomination; and the unity of Germandom above all
state boundaries has been consciously experienced in the European
living-space [_Siedlungsraum_]."[45]