Misplaced Pages

Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

The Office of Racial Policy was a department of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that was founded for "unifying and supervising all indoctrination and propaganda work in the field of population and racial politics". It began in 1933 as the Nazi Party Office for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare ( German : Aufklärungsamt für Bevölkerungspolitik und Rassenpflege der NSDAP ). By 1935, it had been renamed to the Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy ( German : Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP or RPA ).

#76923

39-653: Walter Gross was tasked with creating the office, and remained its leader until his death at the end of the Second World War in April 1945. The main role of the RPA was to oversee the production and maintenance of propaganda regarding the ethnic consciousness of the Nordic Aryan master race . This was termed "enlightenment" rather than "propaganda" by the Nazi authorities, because it

78-416: A "higher" one. As with most eugenicists at the time, racial hygienists believed that the lack of eugenics would lead to rapid social degeneration , the decline of civilization by the spread of inferior characteristics. The German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz introduced the term "racial hygiene" ( Rassenhygiene ) in 1895 in his Racial Hygiene Basics ( Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene ). He discussed

117-643: A physician in Braunschweig between 1929 and 1932. He was appointed leader of the National Socialist German Doctors' Alliance in 1932. Gross was an anti-Semite , committed believer of German racial purity , and called for the extermination of the Jews . He and Alfred Rosenberg held similar opinions on the alleged threats posed by racial contamination and the presence of Jews in Germany. In 1933, Gross

156-508: A task carried out by 1937. Another problematic area that came to the attention of Gross and demanded a solution—beyond sterilizing certain groups—was the alleged impact to the German people brought on by caring for the weak and crippled. Such thinking eventually contributed to the formation of the Nazi euthanasia program, where a vast array of factors (including many highly subjective illnesses) were cited as justification for murdering persons under

195-568: The English Channel . The precursors of this notion were earlier medical experiments which German doctors performed on African prisoners of war in concentration camps in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide . A key aspect of National Socialism was the concept of racial hygiene and it was elevated to the primary philosophy of the German medical community, first by activist physicians within

234-664: The Holocaust , the German National Socialist effort to purge Europe of Jews, Romani people , Slavs , Blacks , mixed race people , and physically or intellectually disabled people. In the Aktion T4 program, Hitler ordered the execution of mentally-ill patients by euthanasia under the cover of deaths from strokes and illnesses. The methods and equipment that had been used in the murder of thousands of mentally ill persons were then transferred to concentration camps, because

273-499: The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring , called for the sterilization of any person who had a genetically determined illness. The Sterilization Law was drafted by some of Germany's top racial hygienists, including: Fritz Lenz , Alfred Ploetz , Ernst Rudin , Heinrich Himmler , Gerhard Wagner and Fritz Thyssen . Robert N. Proctor has shown that the list of illnesses which

312-549: The Nordic race " ( Entnordung ) which would come to dominate its philosophy in Germany from the 1920s to the Second World War . During the last years of the 19th century, the German racial hygienists Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer regarded certain people as inferior, and they opposed their ability to procreate. These theorists believed that all human behaviors, including crime , alcoholism and divorce , were caused by genetics. With significant post-war activity During

351-510: The RKFDV . The RPA checked and passed all Nazi Party press releases on issues of race . It also provided input for drafting Nazi legislation regarding racial issue. The RPA produced Neues Volk , a monthly magazine aimed at a general readership rather than towards a specialist audience. But while containing articles on topics such as travel tips, its central theme was the promotion of eugenics and ethnic consciousness. Other publications created by

390-641: The Treaty of Versailles forced the relocation of young Walter (then 15 years old) and his parents from eastern Germany in 1919. Gross studied medicine at the University of Göttingen, where he was attracted to and joined its reactionary antisemitic socio-political circles. While training as a physician in 1925, he became a member of the Nazi Party ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or NSDAP). Gross obtained his doctorate from Göttingen in 1929 and worked as

429-630: The 1930s and 1940s, institutes in Nazi Germany studied genetics, created genetic registries and researched twins. Nazi scientists also studied blood, and developed theories on the supposed racial specificity of blood types, with the goal of distinguishing an "Aryan" from a Jew by examining their blood. In the 1940s, Josef Mengele , a doctor in the Schutzstaffel ( SS ), provided human remains that were taken from Auschwitz  – blood, limbs and other body parts – to be studied at

SECTION 10

#1732852147077

468-738: The Bavarian State Ministry for Instruction and Education, the leader and founder of the Reich Association of Kinship Researchers and Heraldists, Achim Gercke , the leader of the National Socialist German Doctors' League , Gerhard Wagner , and the General Commissioner for Medical and Health Service, Dr. Karl Brandt , who was ultimately responsible for overseeing the T4 extermination program ; this assemblage of "experts"

507-629: The Final Solution was being carried out—evoked "zoological anti-semitism" and contained verbiage portending the horrors of Nazi carnage; its title for posterity, Die rassenpolitischen Voraussetzungen zur Lösung der Judenfrage (The Racial Political Prerequisites for Solving the Jewish Question). Between 1942 and 1945, Gross acted as one of the heads with the Rosenberg Bureau . Throughout his career, Gross advocated for sterner measures against

546-651: The German population in any way. Over time, he signaled for the racial anthropological theories associated with Nordicism to "adopt a lower public profile", while hereditary psychology gained comparative favor regarding inherited characteristics along with evolutionary biology and human genetics. Gross participated in a meeting at the NSDAP Supreme Party Court in Munich during December 1934 along with other Nazi authorities on genealogical and racial matters. This late 1934 meeting included: Dr. Rudolf Kummer from

585-453: The Jews to Nazi policymakers, and while he never attained the levels of power and influence achieved by Adolf Eichmann or Reinhard Heydrich , his "blend of scientific vocabulary" appealed to and impressed the highest levels of Nazi leadership since it accorded with their views on race and justified aggression. As late as March 1945, Gross was still sending reports from his Racial Policy Office to

624-581: The Party Chancellery concerning ethnic matters. Covering some of his own tracks, Gross burned his files in Berlin at the closing of World War II, thereby, in the opinion of Claudia Koonz , erasing significant evidence "that would have incriminated the more than 3,000 members of his national network of racial educators." Gross committed suicide on 25 April 1945, shortly before the German surrender. Racial hygiene#Nazi Germany The term racial hygiene

663-483: The auspices of racial cleansing. Sometime in 1938, Gross was made an honorary professor and taught racial anthropology at the University of Berlin. That same year, Gross, then head of the Reich Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, contributed a chapter entitled "National Socialist Racial Thought" to an English language book, Germany Speaks , wherein he elaborates with religious fervor

702-399: The beginning of the war—which urged German soldiers to think racially at all times. Even asocial people within the German population were not safe from Nazi categorization by Gross, who in a 1940 speech, avowed their problems were not derived via environmental determinism but were inescapably and immutably a part of their familial heritage. Along with Peter Heinz Seraphim, Gross was one of

741-791: The ideal Aryan type as unchanging in contrast to subhuman types. In its first year, the office had published 14 pamphlets for racial education. This led to the establishment of intensive training courses to create ethnic educators. More than a thousand Sturmabteilung personnel and recent medical school graduates were indoctrinated each year on Nazi racial topics until 1945. 52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E  /  52.50722°N 13.38250°E  / 52.50722; 13.38250 Walter Gross (politician) Dr. Walter Gross (written Groß in German ) (21 October 1904 in Kassel – 25 April 1945 in Berlin )

780-530: The importance of German racial purity often served as the theoretical backbone of Nazi policies of racial superiority and later genocide . The policies began in 1935, when the National Socialists enacted the Nuremberg Laws , which legislated racial purity by forbidding sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans as Rassenschande (racial shame). Racial hygienists played key roles in

819-418: The importance of avoiding "counterselective forces" such as war, inbreeding, free healthcare for the poor, alcohol and venereal disease. In its earliest incarnation it was more concerned by the declining birthrate of the German state and the increasing number of mentally-ill and disabled people in state-run institutions (and their costs to the state) than it was by the " Jewish question " and the "degeneration of

SECTION 20

#1732852147077

858-554: The institutes. Harnessing racial hygiene as a justification, the scientists used prisoners from Auschwitz and other concentration camps as test subjects for their human experiments. Theories on racial hygiene led to an elaborate sterilization program, with the goal of eliminating what the Nazis regarded as diseases harmful to the human race. Sterilized individuals, reasoned the Nazis, would not pass on their diseases to their children. The Sterilization Law, passed on July 14, 1933, also known as

897-528: The law targeted included " feeblemindedness , schizophrenia , manic depression , epilepsy , Huntington's chorea , genetic blindness, and 'severe alcoholism.'" The estimated number of citizens who were sterilized in Nazi Germany ranges from 350,000 to 400,000. As a result of the Sterilization Law, sterilization medicine and research soon became one of the largest medical industries. In Nazi propaganda ,

936-468: The materials and resources needed to efficiently murder large numbers of people existed and had been proven successful. The nurses and the staff who had assisted and performed the killings were then moved along with the gas chambers to the concentration camps, which were being built in order to be able to replicate the mass murders repeatedly. The doctors who carried out experiments on the prisoners in concentration camps specialised in racial hygiene and used

975-459: The medical profession, particularly amongst psychiatrists. That was later codified and institutionalized during and after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933, during the process of Gleichschaltung (literally, "coordination" or "unification"), which streamlined the medical and mental hygiene (mental health) profession into a rigid hierarchy with National Socialist-sanctioned leadership at the top. The blueprint for Nazism's attitude toward other races

1014-583: The office included a ten-point plan to marriage. The guidelines, rather than focusing on love, stressed the ideal criteria for marriage in the Nazi state was the consideration of race and health. The pamphlet urged investigation of the ancestry of potential mates, and that the hereditarily fit should not remain single, concluding with the injunction to hope for many children. Other works included " Can You Think Racially? " and " Peasantry between Yesterday and Today ". The RPA also created traveling exhibitions that presented

1053-616: The only academics to speak publicly in support of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question as early as March 1941. In a 1943 brochure designed for the Hitler Youth , Gross railed against the dangers of foreign blood threatening German purity and stated therein that racial policy would be ineffective "without a clear awareness of our own blood, self-respect, and racial pride". One of his later pseudo-scientific works—written in 1943 as

1092-606: The supposed science to back their medical experiments. Some of the experiments were used for general medical research, for example by injecting prisoners with known diseases to test vaccines or possible cures. Other experiments were used to further the Germans' war strategy by putting prisoners in vacuum chambers to see what could happen to pilots' bodies if they were ejected at a high altitude or immerse prisoners in ice water to see how long they would survive and what materials could be used to prolong life if worn by German pilots shot down over

1131-418: The term "race" was often interchangeably used to mean the " Aryan " or Germanic " Übermenschen ", which was said to represent an ideal and pure master race that was biologically superior to all other races. In the 1930s, under eugenicist Ernst Rüdin , National Socialist ideology embraced this latter use of "racial hygiene", which demanded Aryan racial purity and condemned miscegenation . That belief in

1170-530: The usual pseudo-scientific Nazi rhetoric about Aryan racial purity, the dangers of foreign blood, the need for additional arable soil, as well as the menace caused by Jews and other identified Nazi enemies. According to the Nazi worldview and Gross in particular, the world was not a single humanity but consisted only of varied groups of peoples "with certain racial characteristics and hybridizations". Messaging from Gross remained consistently focused on race, indicated by his pamphlet You and Your Volk —disseminated at

1209-534: The view where people thought of themselves as individuals rather than as single links in the great chain of life. In its first year, it published fourteen pamphlets for racial education. In 1933, Gross founded a mass-market glossy magazine, Neues Volk , which achieved wide popularity. Historian Dan Stone explains that as a key leader on Nazi racial policies, the "task of making racial propaganda simple and consistent fell to Walter Gross". Echoing Stone's comments, historian Wolfgang Bialas likewise quipped that Gross

Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy - Misplaced Pages Continue

1248-433: Was "entrusted with the racial education of Germans, who should from that point on be encouraged to develop biased biological sentiments". In this role, Gross promulgated the message of Aryan procreation to German women explicitly, evidenced by a speech he gave on 13 October 1934. Also in 1934, Gross published his fanatically antisemitic book, Rasse und Politik (Race and Politics). Gross insisted that human inequality itself

1287-447: Was "not a call for immediate action but a long-term change in attitude". Gross did not want people thinking of themselves as individuals but rather as "single links in the great chain of life". All Nazi Party racial information required the approval of Gross' office before publication. The department dealt with all measures concerning the field of population and racial policies in cooperation with other Nazi and SS agencies , such as

1326-638: Was a "fact of nature" and notions of "human equality stood in contrast" to it. Instead of focusing on the racial value of each individual, Gross made the Volkskörper or "racial body" the "measurement of social value and worth" and enthusiastically contended it was the "voice of the blood streaming through history" that would be a counterweight to Jewish ideals of effete democracy. Unlike some Nazi racial ideologues who idealized Germany's distant Nordic relatives, Gross recommended caution with this theory, so as not to alienate or cause feelings of inferiority with

1365-591: Was a German physician appointed to create the Office for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare ( Aufklärungsamt für Bevölkerungspolitik und Rassenpflege ) for the Nazi Party . He headed this office, renamed the Office of Racial Policy ( Rassenpolitisches Amt ) in 1934, until his suicide at the close of World War II . Walter Gross was born in Kassel on 21 October 1904. Mandated territorial losses consequent to

1404-520: Was appointed to create the National Socialist Office for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, which was designed to educate the public and build support for the Nazi sterilization program and other "ethnic improvement" schemes through the 1930s. This was termed "enlightenment" rather than "propaganda" by Nazi authorities, because it was not a call for immediate action but for a long-term change in attitude, aiming at undermining

1443-584: Was called together to establish the Nazis' fundamental position on "racial policy". To this end, Gross played an important role "in the formulation of both the eugenic legislation and the Nuremberg racial laws " enacted by the Nazi regime. After a committee meeting of "racial experts" brought together in March 1935 to deliberate the fate of Germany's Rhineland bastards , Gross recommended—following an anthropological investigation—that they all be compulsorily sterilized;

1482-406: Was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany ( Nazi eugenics ). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation , analogous to an animal breeder seeking purebred animals. This was often motivated by the belief in the existence of a racial hierarchy and the related fear that "lower races" would "contaminate"

1521-538: Was written by Erwin Baur , Fritz Lenz , and Eugen Fischer and published under the title Human Heredity Theory and Racial Hygiene (1936). After World War II, the idea of "racial hygiene" was denounced as unscientific by many, but there continued to be supporters and enforcers of eugenics even after there was widespread awareness of the nature of Nazi eugenics. After 1945, eugenics proponents included Julian Huxley and Marie Stopes , but they typically removed or downplayed

#76923