Nazi Ideology

The Nazis, supported by scientists and physicians, classified and ranked peoples and individuals according to a hierarchy of “superior” and “inferior” races. Germans and certain other Europeans were regarded as culturally and racially superior peoples who had created civilizations and empires.

Hair color guide, used for the study of racial distinctions. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of the Institut für Humangenetik der Universität Würzburg

Eye color selection guide, used for the study of racial distinctions.US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Dr. Irmgard Nippert

Glass slide depicting portraits of individuals of various ethnicities. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Dr. Irmgard Nippert

Glass slide showing a native man from Zululand as representative of the "Negroid" race. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Dr. Irmgard Nippert

As the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s Department for Human Heredity, Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a physician and geneticist, examined hundreds of pairs of twins to study whether criminality, feeble-mindedness, tuberculosis, and cancer were inheritable. —Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck--Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem

Jews were considered to be a separate race that was parasitical and criminal in nature and dedicated to attaining world domination by feeding off and weakening host nations.

http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/exhibit.html#/records/data/records/cover-poisonous-mushroom.xml

Cover or an anti-Semitic schoolbook titled “the poisonous mushroom”

Poster for the Munich exhibition of “The Eternal Jew,” 1936. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julius Goldstein

German race scientists and Nazi officials also designated Roma (Gypsies) and African Germans as “racial aliens” who had to be excluded from the “national community.”

Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between an "Aryan" and a black woman. The caption states: "The result! A loss of racial pride." Germany, prewar.— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Propaganda illustration from a Nazi film strip. The caption states, in German: "The Jew is a bastard." The illustration links Jews with others the Nazis deemed inferior—eastern peoples, blacks, Mongols, and east Africans.— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Marzahn, the first internment camp for Roma (Gypsies) in the Third Reich. Germany, date uncertain.— Landesarchiv Berlin

After 1933, Nazi racism pervaded the society in Germany. It was taught in schools and penetrated the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, biology, and medicine. In 1935, the Nazi regime issued legislation prohibiting marriages between Germans and Jews, Roma, African Germans, and those diagnosed with mental illness or certain hereditary diseases.

Buses used to transport patients to Hadamar euthanasia center. The windows were painted to prevent people from seeing those inside. Germany, between May and September 1941.— Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden

Eugenics poster titled "The Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and German Honor." The illustration is a stylized map of the borders of central Germany on which is imposed a schematic of the forbidden degrees of marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans, point 8 of the Nazi party platform (against the immigration of non-Ayrans into Germany), and the text of the Law for the Protection of German Blood.