During the Third Reich, under the reign of National Socialism, the term "Untermensch" firmly entered into the everyday life of German citizens. This concept served to designate a vast circle of people who, with the easy supply of ideologists, have turned from normal people into “lower human-like creatures,” even inferior in quality to animals. Who are Untermensch? How did they come about? Why was this concept introduced?
How did the concept of non-management come about?
The word untermensch is translated from German as "subhuman." It appeared back in the 20s thanks to the American racist Lotropus Stoddard.
In his work “Riot against civilization: a threat to man,” he wrote with disgust and contempt for the Russian people about its final degradation. From the point of view of the author, he was always an inferior race. And after the October Revolution of 1917 and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the Russian Slavs turned into "masses from the East", with which civilized nations would have to fight.
In Stoddard’s book, the Communists appear to the reader as real criminals, a kind of destructive barbaric force. Their author defined the word underman, which in literal translation from English means "subhuman."
The book of the American racist was published in Germany. And the term underman in the German version was transformed into untermensch ("untermensch"). This concept was adopted by the NSDAP ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and introduced it into his work “Myth of the 20th Century”, which became the second political bestseller after the work of Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf.
Whom did the Germans classify as untermensch?
In the ideology of National Socialism, the meaning of the word "untermensch" underwent some changes. Not only the Bolsheviks, but all Slavs as a whole, as well as Jews, Gypsies, Mongols, Tatars and other peoples who did not have a kinship with the Aryan race, were classified as subhuman. And her Hitler elevated to the highest rank. The Aryans, who allegedly created the entire cultural heritage of the world, could consider themselves mainly Germans.
Moreover, those German citizens who possessed any defects were also called non-entrants and were persecuted. It was believed that the mentally ill, drug addicts, people with disabilities and misleading could spoil the purity of the blood of the Aryans and lead the race of "rulers" to degradation and degeneration. And national socialism, as Hitler argued, is "the will to create a superman."
Untermensch and Ubermensh
He became the ideal sought by the Aryans. The term "superman" ("Ubermench") Hitler borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche. The intellectual and moral ideal, designed to return to people the meaning of life, created by the great German philosopher, the FĂĽhrer endowed with national-ethnic characteristics and presented to the inhabitants of Germany.
He represented the superman as a purebred fair-haired Aryan with blue eyes, having indestructible health, excellent physical form, steel will, powerful self-control and outstanding intellect.
The image created by Hitler was actively cultivated, and the Untermens became its antagonist. This creature, which, according to pamphlets published by ideologists, posed an unprecedented threat to the Germans. He had to fight. The Untermensch needed to be defeated.
Why did the Slavs and the Jews become interim?
The Jews were especially fiercely hatred. Hitler despised them and positioned them as the culprits of all the troubles of the German people. He dreamed of wiping Jews off the face of the earth. Tricky and dodgy people, as the Fuhrer inspired the Germans, took into circulation the Russian people, who also belonged to the sub-world of subhumans.
With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, he lost the intelligentsia on which the state rested. In the tsarist era, according to the guidelines of the fascist leader, it existed thanks to the German core of the higher strata of Russian society. After all, both Catherine II and Peter III were Germans by origin. The Germans effectively ruled the country, Hitler claimed, and now Jews have taken their place. Moreover, they brought only disorganization and chaos. The Germans were supposed to rid the Soviet people of their rule. The Russian Untermensch themselves were presented to the inhabitants of Germany as a kind of barbarian tribe, whose direct purpose was to serve the noble and highly developed Aryan race.
As Heinrich Himmler once stated, the Germans needed slaves to maintain culture. The Slavs, like animals, could become them, and the Aryans, in turn, would provide these “animals” with a dignified existence.
Brochure Der Untermensch
To convict them, the ideologists of the NSDAP even published in 1942 the infamous pamphlet The Underhuman. On 52 pages of the pamphlet, they explained to the citizens of Germany what the Untermensch means.
The main method of influencing the reader was the opposition. Photo illustrations of wealthy Aryan Europeans were printed next to images of poor old people, gloomy youth, exhausted women, their hungry skinny children and Jews from the ghetto.
The conceptual idea of ​​the pamphlet came down to the fact that the Untermensch was only endowed with the external attributes of a person: head, legs, hands. But in reality, he is a backward creature, unburdened with intellect, spiritually and psychologically inferior to an animal, living in a dugout and plowing like an ox on a Jewish master.
Ideologists argued that the lands that in the hands of a developed Aryan would become “European California” are turning into wasteland due to the untimely. Chaos, unbridled passions and a thirst for destruction rule them. And the Jews know about these desires and skillfully use them. Under their leadership, the subhuman barbarian is about to exterminate the Aryan race. This is what Untermensch means. So his ideologists represented the citizens of Germany.
The fate of the Unterman
The subhuman in the era of the Third Reich was doomed to death. The "lower" races were subjected to persecution and all kinds of repression. Jews were consistently expelled from the political and economic life of the country and deprived of citizenship. Ghettos were created for people of this nationality, designed to die of hunger and disease, as well as concentration camps, where they were destroyed: they were shot and sent to gas chambers.
Gypsies, like the mentally ill, as well as other "inferior Aryans" were subjected to forced sterilization and exterminated. The death penalty was awarded to the Slavs who entered into sexual relations with representatives of the German population of Germany. Soviet prisoners of war, especially Asians, were subjected to torture and bullying.
Global idea and its background
As you can see, the German nation, humiliated by the results of the First World War and oppressed by a full-blown economic crisis, eagerly imbued with the idea of ​​its own greatness and rushed to destroy the "universal evil" invented by Hitler and fight with the "aggressors" invented by the Führer, in the name of his global ideas. However, in reality, the goals were different: the conquest of the territories of Eastern Europe and the extermination of nations hated by the fascists, for which the term "untermanent" was created. This racist-eugenic concept, like the Uberns, served as a means for politicians to control the mindset of the masses. And they became only a tool designed to achieve base goals.