The Notion of Racial Diversity in German Academia and National-Socialist Legislation, Part 1
Introduction
What follows below are the translations of several excerpts from rare books and essays on race published by prominent German legal scholars, biologists, and medical doctors who were also high ranking members of the National Socialist Party in before and during World War II. The focus of the translated passages is on verbal, legal and sociological analyses of race. It is not TOO’s, or for that matter my intent, to whitewash National Socialism or glorify the works of its academic or military spokesman. The fact that after the NS seizure of power the number of NS party members skyrocketed from the modest 800,000 to 8 million members by 1943, a number which also included a large number of world-known German scientists and academics, proves time and again that opportunism and intellectual duplicity among scholars is nothing new. Dominant ideas, however bizarre, or dangerous they may ultimately sound, as long as they are shielded by the ruling class and its police, will always attract cheerleaders among herds of glory-hungry academics, limelight searchers, and a host of circumstantial sycophants. Many of them will quickly disavow their beliefs when different cultural or ideological trends start lurking on the political horizon.
The great danger, however, lies in the fact that dominant political ideas invariably have an impact on the definition of natural science — and never the other way around. Hence it is a waste of time today trying to convince the political adversary on racial differences by inundating him/her with empirical data, especially if dominant ideas espoused by elites are hostile in advance to any discussion about race. Facts are seldom important—what counts is the interpretation of facts.
The sole intent of these essays is to point out significant semantic and conceptual errors arising today with the usage of former German political and legal concepts related to the issue of race which, while common in higher education and politics in NS Germany, often turned after World War II into demonic misnomers. Following Donald Trump’s election to US presidency, accompanied by the ongoing language distortions in the media and higher education, aka “fake news”, and in light of the mass arrival of non-White migrants to the US and EU, as well as the increased racialization of political discourse, some parallels in intellectual climate between Weimar and NS Germany and the EU and the US today can be drawn. Read more