National Socialist Racial Thought

Dr. Walter Gross

Most open to misinterpretation are National Socialist views on the relations between the various races of the world. It has been questioned whether the fundamental racial principles of the new world theory must not breed condescension, even contempt of people of different race. Quite the contrary; these very principles offer the very best guarantee for mutual tolerance and for the peaceful co-operation of all.

We appreciate the fact that those of another race are different from us. This scientific truth is the basis, the justification and, at the same time, the obligation of every racial policy without which a restoration of Europe in our day is no longer practicable. Whether that other race is "better" or "worse" is not possible for us to judge. For this would demand that we transcend our own racial limitations for the duration of the verdict and take on a superhuman, even divine, attitude from which alone an "impersonal" verdict could be formed on the value or lack of such of the many living forms of inexhaustible Nature. But we of all people are too conscious of the inseparable ties of the blood and our own race to attempt to aspire to such an ultra-racial standpoint, even in the abstract.

History, science and life itself tell us in a thousand ways that the human beings inhabiting the earth are anything but alike; that, moreover, the greater races are not only physically but especially spiritually and intellectually different from each other. Yesterday one passed this fact by, and in attempting to unify political, economic, cultural and religious standards for all nations of the earth, one was sinning against Nature, violating the natural attributes of various racial and national groups for the sake of a false principle. Today we bow to the racial differences existing in the world. We want every type of being to find that form of self-expression most fitted to its own particular requirements.

The racial principles of National Socialism are, therefore, the surest guarantee for respecting the integrity of other nations. It is incompatible with our ideas to think of incorporating other nationalities in a Germany built up as a result of conquests, as they would always remain, because of their alien blood and spirit, a foreign body within the German State. Such foolhardy thoughts may be indulged in by a world which has as its goal economic power or purely territorial expansion of its frontiers, but never by a statesman thinking along organic, racial lines whose main care is the preservation of the greatness and along with it the essential unity of his people held together by the ties of blood relationship.

For this reason, we have nothing in common with chauvinism and imperialism because we would extend to other races peopling the earth the same privileges we claim for ourselves: the right to fashion our lives and our own particular world according to the requirements of our own nature.

And if National Socialism would wish to see the unrestricted mixing of blood avoided for the individual, there is nothing in this to suggest contempt. After all, we Germans ourselves, viewed ethnologically, are a mixture. The National Socialist demand is only that the claims of the blood and the laws of biology should be more closely observed in future.

Here again our standpoint is not so very far removed from that of other people with a sound mental outlook. The American Immigration Laws, for instance, are based on definite racial discrimination. The Europeans and the inhabitants of India, the Pacific Islands, and so on, have instinctively held aloof from a mingling of the blood, and both sides genuinely regard any transgression as very bad form. Nevertheless, this natural attitude in no way detracts from the possibility of close co-operation and friendly interaction. And, speaking on behalf of the new Germany, let me once more emphasize:

We do not wish our people to intermarry with those of alien race since through such mingling of the blood the best and characteristic qualities of both races are lost. But we will always have a ready welcome for any guests who wish to visit us whether of kindred or foreign civilization, and our racial views only lead us to a fuller appreciation of their essential peculiarities in the same way as we would want our own peculiarities respected.


 

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