Racial Policy of Nazi Germany - Other "non-Aryans"

Other "non-Aryans"

Though the laws were primarily directed against Jews, other "non-Aryan" people were subject to the laws, and to other legislation concerned with racial hygiene. The definition of "Aryan" was imprecise and ambiguous, but was clarified over time in a number of judicial and executive decisions. Jews were by definition non-Aryan, because of their Semitic origins. All white people (Europeans) were considered to be Aryan as long as they had no Jewish ancestry (Nuremberg Laws) under the definition as "Indo-European". The fact that Aryan is essentially a linguistic rather than a racial category led to some difficulty reconciling Nazi-supported racial typologies with the Aryan concept. Slavs (who are white and Indo-European) were seen as a contaminated race by the Nazis due to their ideology of Lebensraum (living space for the German people in Eastern Europe), although a large percentage of Slavs who were willing to be Germanised were accepted as Aryans, including ethnic Poles, Russians, Czechs and other Slavs by the Nazis. Outside of Europe in North Africa, according to Alfred Rosenberg's racial theories (The Myth of the Twentieth Century), some of the Berbers, particularly the Kabyles, were to be classified as Aryans. The Nazis portrayed Swedes, the Afrikaaners who are white European descendants of Dutch-speaking Boers in South Africa and higher-degree Northern/Western Europeans of South America (mainly from Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina) as ideal "Aryans" along with the German-speaking peoples of Greater Germany and Switzerland (the country was neutral during the war). In Asia, only the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian populations of present-day Pakistan, North India, Iran, and Afghanistan were considered Aryan.

The number of black people in Germany when the Nazis came to power is variously estimated at 5 - 25,000. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., “The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder. However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups.”

Prior to Hitler coming to power, black entertainers were popular in Germany, but the Nazis banned Jazz as ‘corrupt negro music’. Mixed marriage and interracial sex became illegal, some blacks were used in medical experiments, and others mysteriously disappeared. However, contrary to popular myth, black American sprinter Jesse Owens', who won four gold medals beating Aryan athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, faced less segregation there than in the USA, and felt snubbed by Roosevelt rather than by Hitler (see Jesse Owens#Berlin Olympics).

The July 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring—written by Ernst Rüdin and other theorists of "racial hygiene"—established "Genetic Health Courts" which decided on compulsory sterilization of "any person suffering from a hereditary disease." These included, for the Nazis, those suffering from "Congenital Mental Deficiency", schizophrenia, "Manic-Depressive Insanity", "Hereditary Epilepsy", "Hereditary Chorea" (Huntington’s), Hereditary Blindness, Hereditary Deafness, "any severe hereditary deformity", as well as "any person suffering from severe alcoholism". Further modifications of the law enforced sterilization of the "Rhineland bastards" (children of mixed German and African parentage).

After the Night of the Long Knives of June 30-July 2, 1934, during which the SS and Gestapo purged the "too revolutionary" leadership of the SA, the SS emerged as the dominant police power in Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler—eager to please Hitler, and hungry for greater power—willingly obeyed his orders. The SS swore a personal oath to Hitler and as his personal bodyguard units, they were more obedient and loyal to Hitler than the SA. They were also supported by the Heer (German Army), which was more willing to comply with Hitler's decisions after he announced the SA would act as an auxiliary to the army, and not the other way around as the SA leadership had wanted.

On August 2, 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg died. No new President was selected; instead the powers of the Chancellor and President were combined. This change, and a tame government with no opposition parties, allowed Hitler full control of law-making. The army also swore an oath of loyalty personally to the "Führer" ("Leader"), giving Hitler complete power over the army. The Nazi ideologues would theorize the "Führerprinzip", which granted preeminence to Hitler’s direct control over the government.