→

←

“Aryan Race”

For years before he rose to power and became the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler was obsessed with ideas about race which he promoted through his speeches and writings. These notions revolved around the concepts of racial “purity” and the superiority of the “Aryan master race”.

At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, a racial hygienist measures a woman’s features in an attempt to determine her racial ancestry. Berlin, Germany, date uncertain
At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, a racial hygienist measures a woman’s features in an attempt to determine her racial ancestry. Berlin, Germany, date uncertain

For Hitler, the ideal “Aryan” was blond, blue-eyed and tall. After the Nazis came to power, they began putting their ideology into practice with the support of scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered to be “inferior”. Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations (making it impossible for the victims to have children) on Roma, people with disabilities, mentally ill people and people born deaf and blind.

Racial science “principles” were also applied in schools by Nazi teachers, who measured the skull sizes and nose lengths of their students, recording the colour of their hair and eyes to determine whether they belonged to the true “Aryan race” and humiliating Jewish and Romani students in the process.

The word “Aryan” has a long history – initially it was used to refer to groups of people who spoke a variety of languages, including most of the European ones and several Asian ones. Over time, the term took on new meanings, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some scholars transformed the Aryans into a mythical “race”, which was a notion later adopted and promoted by the Nazis. Aryans are not a race, and the “Aryan master race” does not, in fact, exist.