Themaster race (German:Herrenrasse[ˈhɛʁənˌʁasə]) is apseudoscientific concept inNazi ideology, in which the putativeAryan race is deemed the pinnacle ofhuman racial hierarchy.[1] Members were referred to asmaster humans (Herrenmenschen[ˈhɛʁənˌmɛnʃn̩]).[2]
The Nazi theoristAlfred Rosenberg believed that the "Nordic race" was descended fromProto-Indo-Europeans, who he thought hadpre-historically dwelt on theNorth German Plain and may have ultimately originated on thelost island ofAtlantis.[3] TheNazis declared that theAryans were superior to all other races, and believed they were entitled to expand territorially.[4] The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in theAryan certificate. This document, which was required by law for all citizens of the Reich, was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" (Kleiner Ariernachweis) and could be obtained through anAhnenpass, which required the owner to trace their lineage throughbaptism, birth certificates, or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent".
TheSlavs,Roma, and Jews were defined as being racially inferior and non-Aryan "Untermenschen", and were thus considered a danger to the Aryan orGermanic master race.[5] According to the Nazi secretHunger Plan andGeneralplan Ost, the Slavic population was to be removed from Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination,[6] except for a small percentage who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus suitable forGermanisation.[7]
The 18th century saw the first scientific attempts to establish a racial divide between "masters" and "slaves", or the belief that a nation's ruling class isbiologically superior to its ruled subjects. In his bookHistory of the Ancient Government of France, published posthumously in 1727,Henri de Boulainvilliers attempted to prove that in France, the nobility represented the descendants of the oldFrankish ruling class. In contrast, the majority of the population descended from the subjectGauls. As a result, two qualitatively different races faced off, and the only way to abolish the Franks' superiority was to destroy their civilization.[8]Classical liberal theorists such asVolney andSieyès refuted this theory by demonstrating that the French nobility was primarily composed ofnouveaux riches from all over the country. Thus, the concept of a racially pure Frankish lineage was false.[9]
In 1855, French countArthur de Gobineau published his infamous workAn Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use ofethnography to defend theAncien Régime against theThird Estate's claims, Gobineau divides the human species into three major groups: white, yellow and black, claiming that "history springs only from contact with the white races". He considers theAryan race to be the pinnacle of human development, serving as the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitablemiscegenation led to the "downfall of civilizations".
Gobineau's influence was minimal at first. In his letters toAlexis de Tocqueville, he complained that his book was getting little attention in France and was only having an impact in the United States. Despite his friendship with Gobineau Tocqueville who rejected the book, explaining that it was in accordance with the interests ofslave owners in the Southern states.[10] However, in the 1880s, the book gained popularity in Germany thanks toCosima Wagner's efforts. In 1899,Houston Stewart Chamberlain, aGermanophile Englishman and Cosima Wagner's son-in-law, publishedThe Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Expanding on Gobineau's earlier theories, he argued that theTeutonic peoples had a profound influence onWestern civilization. Chamberlain classified all European peoples, including Germans,Celts,Slavs,Greeks, andLatins, as the "Aryan race", which was built on ancientProto-Indo-European culture. He saw theNordic or Teutonic peoples as the leaders of the Aryan race, and essentially all races.
The German philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept ofÜbermensch, which translates to "Overman" or "Superman". In his 1883 bookAlso Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None), he proposed the idea of theÜbermensch as a goal for humanity. However, Nietzsche never developed the concept based on race. Instead, theÜbermensch "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal".[11] Nazism distorted the concept's real meaning to suit its "master race" ideology.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was believed that Indo-Europeans (generally referred to asAryans) were the highest branch of humanity due to their technological advancement. This reasoning was simultaneously linked withNordicism, which claimed that the "Nordic race" was the "purest" form of the Aryan race. Today, this view is regarded as a form ofscientific racism. It contradicts the belief inracial equality by advocating the view that one race is superior to all other races.
Eugenics came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as a way to improve and maintain thepurity of the Aryan master race. Many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s adhered to Eugenics, such asMargaret Sanger,[12][13]Marie Stopes,H. G. Wells,Woodrow Wilson,Theodore Roosevelt,Madison Grant,[14]Émile Zola,George Bernard Shaw,John Maynard Keynes,[15]John Harvey Kellogg,Linus Pauling,[16] andSidney Webb.[17]
In 1908, the Louisiana State Fair hosted the first "Better Babies" competition. Babies were judged based on livestock standards such as height, weight, unblemished skin, well-formed fingers, lack of excess fat, and cooperative behavior. The intent was to establish child-breeding health standards. Beginning in 1920, at theKansas State Fair, a "Fitter Family" contest, sponsored by theAmerican Eugenics Society's Committee on Popular Education, required family members to submit an "Abridged Records of Family Traits" and then undergo physical and psychological examinations to determine their "fitness", or eugenic health. Contests received letter grades, and the winners—almost always white and of Western and Northern European descent—were awarded trophies. Some years later, beginning in 1935, contestants in the Miss America contest were required to be "of the white race" and to submit a detailed account of their ancestry; those with backgrounds connected to thePilgrims' arrival on theMayflower or theAmerican Revolutionary War had an advantage.[18]
The Nazis took this concept to an extreme by establishing aprogram to systematically genetically enhance the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program ofNazi eugenics, based on theeugenics laws of the US state of California,[19] to create asuper race.[4]
The modern concept of themaster race is generally derived from a 19th-centuryracial theory, which posited ahierarchy of races that was based on darkness ofskin colour. This 19th-century concept was initially developed by CountJoseph Arthur De Gobineau. Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed inNazism, placed blackIndigenous Australians andEquatorial Africans at the bottom of the hierarchy, while white Northern and Western Europeans (which consisted ofGermans,Swedes,Icelanders,Norwegians,Danes, British,Irish,Dutch,Belgian and Northern French) were placed at its top;olive skinned white Southern Europeans (who consisted of Southern French,Portuguese,Spaniards, Italians,Romanians, andGreeks, i.e., those who were called theMediterranean race, were regarded as another sub-race of theCaucasian race) and placed in its upper middle ranks; and theSemitic andHamitic races (supposed sub-races of the Caucasian race) were placed in its lower-middle ranks (because the Jews wereSemites, the Nazis believed their cleverness made them extremely dangerous – they had their own plan forJewish world domination, aconspiracy which needed to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans).[4]Slavs such asPoles andRussians were not considered Aryans;[5] and neither were the members of theMongoloid race (including its offshoots such asMalayans,American Indians) andmixed-race people such asEurasians, thebronzeMestizos,Mulattos,Afro-Asians, andZambos were placed in its lower middle ranks. However, the Japanese were consideredhonorary Aryans.[20]
In their attempt to scientifically prove the racial inferiority ofSlavs, German (and Austrian) racial scientists were forced to gloss over their findings which consistently proved that Early Slavs weredolicocephalic and fair haired, i.e., "Nordic", while the South Slavic "Dinaric" sub-race was often viewed favourable.[21] Nazis used the term "Slavic race", and considered Slavs to be non-Aryan.[22][23][24][25][26] The concept of a Slavic "Untermensch" accompanied their political goals, and it was particularly aimed atPoles andRussians. Germany's immediate goal wasDrang nach Osten or expansion into the East, which was the first phase in its ultimate plan to conquer Europe, andUkraine's "chernozem" (black earth) soil was regarded as a particularly desirable zone for colonization by the "Herrenvolk" (listenⓘ) ("master people").
In relation to the Nazis' belief inracial purity, author and historianLucy Dawidowicz wrote:
In the hierarchy of Nazi racism, the "Aryans" were the superior race, destined to rule the world after the destruction of their racial arch-foe, the Jews. The lesser races over whom the Germans would rule included the Slavs – Poles, Russians, Ukrainians. ... Hitler's racial policy with regard to the Slavs, to the extent that it was formulated, was "depopulation." The Slavs were to be prevented from procreating, except to provide the necessary continuing supply of slave laborers."[27]
In the United States, the concept of 'master race' arose within the context of master–slave race relations in the slavery-based society of historical America – particularly in theSouth in the mid-19th century. It was based upon both the experience ofslavery and thepseudo-scientific justifications for racial slavery, but also on the relations between whites in the South andNorth, particularly during theAmerican Civil War.
Benjamin W. Leigh, representingVirginia in theUnited States Senate, said in a speech of January 19, 1836:
There has been in Virginia as earnest a desire to abolish slavery as exists any where at this day. It commenced with the Revolution, and many of our ablest and most influential men were active in recommending it, and in devising plans for the accomplishment of it. The Legislature encouraged and facilitated emancipation by the owners, and many slaves were so emancipated. The leaning of the courts of justice was alwaysin favorem libertatis. This disposition continued until the impracticability of effecting a general emancipation, without incalculable mischief to the master race, and danger of utter destruction to the other, and the evils consequent on partial emancipations, became too obvious to the Legislature, and to the great majority of the people, to be longer disregarded.[28]
TheOxford English Dictionary records thatWilliam J. Grayson used the phrase "master race" in his poemThe Hireling and the Slave (1855):
For these great ends hath Heaven’s supreme command
Brought the black savage from his native land,
Trains for each purpose his barbarian mind,
By slavery tamed, enlightened, and refined;
Instructs him, from a master-race, to draw
Wise modes of polity and forms of law,
Imbues his soul with faith, his heart with love,
Shapes all his life by dictates from above
where the phrase denotes the relation between the white masters and negro slaves.
By 1860 Virginian authorGeorge Fitzhugh was using the "challenging phrase 'master race', which soon came to mean considerably more than the ordinary master-slave relationship".[29] Fitzhugh, along with a number of southern writers, used the term to differentiate Southerners from Northerners, based on thedichotomy that Southerners were supposedly descendants ofNormans /Cavaliers whereas Northerners were descendants ofAnglo-Saxons /Puritans.[30]
In 1861, the Southern press bragged that Northern soldiers would "encounter a master race" and knowledge of this fact would cause Northern soldiers' "knees to tremble".[31][32] TheRichmond Whig in 1862 proclaimed that "the master race of this continent is found in the southern states",[33][34] and in 1863 theRichmond Examiner stated that "there are slave races born to serve, master races born to govern".[35][36]
In the works ofJohn H. Van Evrie, a Northern supporter of theConfederacy, the term was interchangeable withwhite supremacy, notably inWhite Supremacy and Negro Subordination, Or, Negroes a Subordinate Race and (so-called) slavery its normal condition (1861). InSubgeneation: the theory of the normal relations of the races; an answer to miscegenation (1864) Van Evrie created the words "subgen" to describe what he considered to be the "inferior races" and "subgeneation" to describe the ‘normal’ relation of such inferior races to whites, something which he considered to be the "verycorner-stone of democracy";[37] but these words never entered the dictionary.
The racial termUntermensch originates from the title ofKlansmanLothrop Stoddard's 1922 bookThe Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.[38] It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German versionDer Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).[39] An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by "coloured" peoples to white civilization, with his most famous bookThe Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920.Alfred Rosenberg was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard. As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Referring to Russian communists, Rosenbeg wrote in hisDer Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930) that "this is the kind of human being thatLothrop Stoddard has called the 'under man.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."][40]
The origins of the Nazi version of the master race theory were in the 19th-century racial theories of CountJoseph Arthur De Gobineau, who argued that cultures degenerated when distinct races mixed. It was believed at this time that the peoples of Southern Europe were racially mixed with the non-EuropeanMoors from across theMediterranean Sea, while the peoples of Northern Europe and Western Europe remained pure. Proponents of theNordicism further argued that Nordic peoples had developed an innate toughness and determination due to the harsh, challenging climate in which they evolved.
The philosopherArthur Schopenhauer was one of the earliest proponents of a theory presenting a hierarchical racial model of history, attributing civilisational primacy to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous north.
The highest civilisation and culture, apart from the Ancient Indians and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is because necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilisation.[41]
Despite this, he was adamantly against differing treatment of races, was fervently anti-slavery, supporting theabolitionist movement in the United States. He describes the treatment of "[our] innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into [the slave master's] devilish clutches" as "belonging to the blackest pages of mankind's criminal record".[42]
Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, stated that Hitler carried a copy of Schopenhauer's bookThe World as Will and Representation with him wherever he went throughoutWorld War I.[43]
The postulatedsuperiority of these people was said to make them born leaders, or a "master race".[44] Other authors includedGuido von List, his associateLanz von Liebenfels, and the British-born German racial theoristHouston Stewart Chamberlain, all of whom felt that the white race in general, andGermanic peoples in particular, were superior to others, given thepurification of both the white race and the German people from the other races which were "polluting" them, a newmillenarian age of Aryan god-men would arrive.[45]
Nazi policy stressed the superiority of the Germanic "Übermenschen" ("superhuman")Nordic race, a sub-race of thewhite Caucasian race European population defined byanthropometric models of racial difference. The Nordic race was said to comprise only of theGermanic peoples: Scandinavians and the rest of the Nordic countries (Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, and Faroese),ethnic Germans (includingAustrians,Banat Swabians, as well asSudeten,Baltic andVolga Germans), Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Luxembourgers, the Dutch, Flemings, Afrikaners, Frisians and the English.
The Nazi racial theoristHans F. K. Günther first defined "Nordic thought" in his programmatic bookDer Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen. The fact that Germans were not purely Nordic was acknowledged by Günther in his bookRassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Racial Science of the German People") from 1922, in which he described the German people as being made up of all five of his European racial categories: Nordic, Mediterranean,Dinaric,Alpine, andEast Baltic.[46] Most official Nazi comments on the Nordic race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with a medal for his work in anthropology.
Although the physical ideal of these racial theorists was typically the tall,fair-haired, andlight-eyed Nordic individual, such theorists accepted the fact that a considerable variety of hair and eye colour existed within the racial categories they recognised. For example,Adolf Hitler and many Nazi officials had dark hair and were still considered members of theAryan race under Nazi racial doctrine, because the determination of an individual's racial type depended on a preponderance of many characteristics in an individual rather than on just one defining feature.[47]
Hitler andHimmler planned to use theSS as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism. The SS was to be a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities.[48][49][50]
Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936) was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. His concept of theMediterranean race became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century.
The termAryan is derived from theSanskrit word (ā́rya), which is derived fromarya, the originalIndo-Iranianautonym. Also,the wordIran (fromMiddle PersianĒrān, "theĒrs") is thePersian word for [the land/place of] theAryans.[51]
Following the ideas of Gobineau and others, the Nazi theoristAlfred Rosenberg determined that these people, who, he claimed, were originally fromAtlantis, were a dynamicwarrior people who dwelt in northern climates on theNorth German Plain inprehistoric times, from which they migrated southeast by riding theirchariots, eventually reachingUkraine,Iran, and then India. They were supposed to be the ancestors of the ancientGermanic tribes, who shared their warrior values. Rosenberg opposed Christianity because to him, it was an alienSemiticslave-morality which was inappropriate for the warrior Aryan master race and in its place, he supported a melange of aspects ofHinduVedic andZoroastrian teachings (both of these religions were organised by Aryans), along with pre-Christian EuropeanOdinistic paganism, which he also considered distinctively Aryan in character.[52]
InNazi Germany, theNuremberg Race Laws of 1935 forbadesexual relations and marriage between an "Aryan" and a "non-Aryan" in order to maintain the purity of the Aryan race. Such relations became a punishable crime which was known asRassenschande or "racial shame".[53] TheLeague of German Girls was particularly required to instruct girls to avoidRassenschande because according to Nazism, maintaining racial purity was particularly important for young females.[54] Aryans found guilty of this crime could face incarceration in a concentration camp, while non-Aryans could even face the death penalty.[55] The Nazis recognized the Germanic people as the master race, and several policies were implemented in order to improve and maintain the Germanic-Nordic ubermenschen Aryan "master race," including the practice ofeugenics. In order to eliminate "defective" citizens and rid the country of theintellectually disabled or those who were born withgenetic deficiencies, as well as those who were deemed racially inferior, theT-4 Euthanasia Program was administered byKarl Brandt, one of Hitler's personal physicians. Additionally, a program ofcompulsory sterilisation was also implemented and as a result of it, forced operations were performed on hundreds of thousands of individuals. Many of thesepolicies are generally seen as being related to what eventually became known asthe Holocaust.[7]
The Nazis also undertook measures to increase the number of Nordics in Germany. TheLebensborn program was only open to German women who fit the Nordic profile. During the Nazioccupation of Poland, the Nazis took young Nordic-looking Polish children who were classified as being descended from ethnic German settlers in order to determine whether or not they were "racially valuable". If that were the case, the young children were taken back to theseLebensborn houses so they could be raised as Germans.[56]
In Nazi Germany, theAryan certificate was an official document which certified that its owner was an Aryan. Aryan certificates could also be obtained by citizens of other countries. In its section which is titledRacial Tenet (Rassegrundsatz), the Aryan certificate states:
In line with national socialist thinking which does full justice to all other peoples, there is never the expression of superior or inferior, but alien racial admixtures.[57]
For the "Greater Aryan certificate" Germans had to prove that as far back as January 1, 1800 "none of their paternal nor their maternal ancestors had Jewish or coloured blood".[58]SS officers had to prove this reaching back to 1750.
During a speech he made in 1936, Nazi Propaganda MinisterJoseph Goebbels said:
Today arises in young and old, high and low, poor and rich, the will that the German nation must again be a world people. All of us are convinced of it: we must participate in the ruling of the world. We must become a master race, and therefore we must educate our people to be a master race. This must begin with the smallest child, who must be educated in this master-ethic.[59]
In 1943,Reichskommissar for UkraineErich Koch reminded Germans:
We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here.[60]
During theMeiji era, a sense of superiority over other Asians existed in the Japanese society, with discrimination being enacted against racial minorities such as theRyūkyū andAinu peoples.[61][62] In July 1943, promotion of Yamato racial superiority was further affirmed by the Japanese government with the publishing ofAn Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus.[63]
The claim that theMediterranean race was responsible for the most important of ancient Western civilisations was a problem for the promoters of Nordic superiority. According toGiuseppe Sergi, the Mediterranean race was the "greatest race of the world" and was singularly responsible for the most accomplished civilisations of ancient times, including those ofMesopotamia,Persia,Egypt,Greece,Phoenicia,Carthage, andRome. The Mediterranean race was also a major influence to the outside world in the modern era: during the 16th century, Spain andPortugal established the firstglobal empires in Western history, placing both nations on the highest level of political and economic powers in Europe.[citation needed]
Charles Gabriel Seligman also stated that "it must, I think, be recognised that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievements to its credit than any other race, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilisation, certainly before 1000 BC (and probably much later), and so shaped not only theAegean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part ofEastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, theHamitic pre-dynasticEgyptians, formed the basis of that ofEgypt."[64]
The Nazis explained this by claiming that the originalLatins andGreeks wereIndo-European Nordic tribes which had migrated into Italy andGreece, during the Iron Age era. The Nazis also claimed that theSpanish andPortuguese Empires were examples of Nordic power since, at the time, their governments were run by the descendants of the GermanicVisigoths who invaded Spain andPortugal fifteen centuries earlier.However, they did admit that the masses of people who lived during the flowering of these four civilizations were Mediterranean. This led to Germans of all European races to be classified as Aryans.[52]
Aryan master race ideology was common throughout the educated intellectual community and literate strata of the Western world until the post-World War II era. Such theories were commonplace in early-20th century fantasy literature.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the originalBuck Rogers stories andnewspaper cartoons, Buck Rogers, in his adventures in the 25th century that takes place on Earth, depicts him fighting forAryan-Americans from the liberated zone aroundNiagara, New York, against theRed Mongol Empire, a Chinese empire of the future which rules most of North America.[65]
In the 1930s, both educational and storybooks for children in Germany taught their readers about the master race. In theSun Koh science fiction series, the protagonist Koh says things like "My forefathers were Aryan", and in a story aboutAtlantis, he says, "If our Atlantis once again rises out of the sea, then we will get from there the blond, steel-hardmen with the pure blood and will create with them the master race, which will finally rule the earth."[66] The German writerMichael Ende, who was born in 1929 and grew up reading such books, wrote his classic novelJim Button and Luke the Engine Driver in the 1950s, as a way of opposing the Nazi propaganda he was taught as a child.Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writerJulia Voss wrote a book[note 1] on Jim Button, uncovering Ende's many references to Nazi symbols in that book.[67] Voss shows how Ende upends the Nazi belief that Atlantis was the original home of the Aryan race by creating his own submerged city and making it rise, but not to restore Aryan master-race rule over the Earth, rather it becomes a multi-racial paradise with Jim Button, who is black and a descendant of the Magi Caspar, as its king.[66]
In the 1948 filmRope byAlfred Hitchcock, one of the central characters, Brandon Shaw, is a firm believer in the master race ideology.[citation needed]
In theDoctor Who series, the Doctor's frequent enemies, theDaleks, consider themselves a master race which must purge the universe of all other life forms;Terry Nation explicitly modeled them on the Nazis.[68] In the 2009 special "The End of Time", whenthe Master transforms the entire human race into copies of himself, he claims that there is no human race, but only "the Master race".
In theHarry Potter series, while the parallels were not originally intentional, there is much similarity betweenLord Voldemort's "pureblood" ideology and the master race ideology of the Nazis, with wizards being "pure" and anyone with Muggle (non-wizard) blood being considered "half-blood" or "mudblood", a word used and treated the same way a racial slur would be in the real world (Neo-Nazis call non-white peoplemud people).[69]
Our ... campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics
... her commitment to eugenics was constant ... until her death
The policy of Lebensraum was also the product of Nazi racial ideology, which held the view that the Slavic peoples of the east were inferior to the Aryan race.
Other non-'Aryans' included Slavs, Blacks and Roma.
Preposterously, Central European Aryan theorists, and later the Nazis, would insist that the Slavic-speaking peoples were not really Aryans
The Nazis' singleminded desire to "purify" the German race through the elimination of non-Aryans (particularly Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs)
Thebattle of Manassas demonstrated, at once and forever, the superiority of the Southern soldiers, and there is not a man in the army, from the humblest private to the highest officer, who does not feel it. Now, this piece of information is extensivelt diffused in the camp of the enemy. They know now that when they go forth to the field they will encounter a master race. The consciousness of this fact will cause their knees to tremble beneath them on the day of battle. It will demoralize them. It has already done so.
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{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)The whole experience of the war is an attestation of the truth long since discovered by impartial observers, that the master race of this continent is found in the Southern States. Of a better stock, originally, and habituated to manlier pursuits and exercises, they have ruled in affairs of State by force of the stronger will and larger wisdom that pertain to and distinguish superior races of men, while on the field of battle they have in every contest held a priority of place, conceded to them by their present adversaries.
The Richmond Examiner evidently means to prepare the world for the new gospel of slaveholding which the Confederacy is to preach and practice to the conversion of nations, in the article in question, one paragraph of which we reprint as a specimen of the whole: "The establishment of the Confederacy is verily a distinct reaction against the whole course of the mistaken civilization of the age. For ' Liberty Equality, Fraternity,' we have deliberately substituted Slavery, Subordination and Government. Those social and political problems which rack and torture modern society we have undertaken to solve for ourselves, in our own way, and upon our own principles. That among equals equality is right;' among those who arc naturally unequal, equality is chaos; that there are slave races born to serve, master races born to govern. Such are the fundamental principles which we inherit from the ancient world, which we lifted up in the face of a perverse generation that has forgotten the wisdom of its fathers; by those principles we live and in their defence we have shown ourselves ready to die. Reverently we feel that our Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations, with great truths to breach. We must speak them boldly; and whose hath ears to hear let him hear."
Heute steckt in jung und alt, in hoch und niedrig, in arm und reich der besessene Wille, die deutsche Nation wieder zu einem Weltvolk emporzuführen. Jedermann bei uns ist davon überzeugt: Wir müssen an der Beherrschung der Welt teilnehmen. Wir müssen deshalb ein Herrenvolk werden, und deshalb müssen wir unser Volk zum Herrenvolk erziehen. Das muß schon beim kleinsten Pimpf anfangen, der schon in dieser Herrenmoral erzogen werden muß.
