Hitler/Non-Aryan appearance
Dan
as being associated with a master race or superior beings when he had none
of the qualities.
Did he or his followers ever address this?
Thanks,
Dan M.
--
Dave Gower
news:a5mk88$1b0s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> I have always wondered why Hitler spoke about Aryan physical
characteristics
> as being associated with a master race or superior beings when he had none
> of the qualities.
By this I presume you mean tall and blond. Actually Hitler was not as
short
as legend has it. I forget his height but it was fairly average for
Germans
of the time. His hair and complexion were also quite typical of the
populace.
The myth of the tall blond Aryan was only an ideal, portrayed as such
in
Nazi propaganda. Like all ideals it could live comfortably alongside a
more
mundane everyday reality. This was also true of another characteristic
much
lauded by the Nazis: bravery. Faced with the horrors of war, Germans
had as
much fear as anyone else, but that did not stop the propaganda of the
fearless German soldier.
Actually, Nazi propaganda had an "out" for the fact that not all
Germans
were tall and blond. Their doctrine declared that the pure-blooded
Aryans of
old had been debased by interbreeding with "inferiors". The claim was
that
the German race contained a high degree of Aryan blood, but was not
pure.
That type of thinking made it easier to contemplate mass murder as a
means
of "racial cleansing"
Don Phillipson
news:a5mk88$1b0s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> I have always wondered why Hitler spoke about Aryan physical
Dan may have missed the point.
It appears Hitler said almost nothing
about "Aryan physical characteristics"
(e.g. blonde hair, blue eyes, height,
musculature, etc.) He just spoke about
(undefined) races, specifying the Aryan
was the best and the Jewish "degenerate,"
"racial bacteria," etc.
The Aryan aesthetic was fleshed out in
detail by others, e.g. Goebbels as political
authority on "degenerate art," all those SS
racial scientists in archaeology and biology, etc.
Himmler and Goebbels both looked very unlike
the heroic Aryans sculpted by Arno Breker
etc.: but this did not inhibit their roles as
cultural bosses. Newspaper commentators
wrote about this in the prewar 1930s.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
dphil...@trytel.com
Cub Driver
>Did he or his followers ever address this?
Well, I'm not sure who was qualified to bring it up. Himmler?
I suppose that if he ever thought about it, Hitler would have that the
blond, blue-eyed uebermensch was a goal the nation was working toward,
not necessarily what it had at the moment.
After all, not many Americans looked like Gary Cooper, even when they
regarded him as the archetype.
all the best -- Dan Ford (email: let...@danford.net)
see the Warbird's Forum at http://www.danford.net
Vietnam | Flying Tigers | Pacific War | Brewster Buffalo | Piper Cub
--
Ian Wyld
Jewish. Apparently his father was conceived when his grandmother was working
as an unmarried domestic servant in a wealthy Jewish household.
Does anyone know any more about this?
Regards Ian
"Dan" <mow...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:a5mk88$1b0s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
--
Bill Shatzer
On 1 Mar 2002, Dan wrote:
> I have always wondered why Hitler spoke about Aryan physical characteristics
> as being associated with a master race or superior beings when he had none
> of the qualities.
It is simply impossible to approach the Nazi "racial" theories from
any sort of rational or scientific basis or even to apply modern concepts
of "race" to Nazi philosophy. The Nazi concept of race was tied up
with semi-mythical or even semi-metaphysical concepts like "blood",
"Kulture" and "Volk".
While the blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic might be held up as the ideal
physical specimen of an "Aryan", that wasn't what the Nazi concept of
"Aryan" was all about. One could be an "Aryan" without having blond
hair or blue-eyes just as one could be a "Jew" without having a hooked
nose.
The whole thing was psuedo-science with a strong intermixture of folklore.
And, you'll go crazy trying to understand it on a rational level.
"I know perfectly well that in the scientific sense there is no such
thing as race. As a politician I need an idea which enables the order
which has hitherto existed on a historic basis to be abolished and an
entirely new order enforced and given an intellectual basis. And for
this purpose the idea of race serves me well." [Quoted in John
Toland, Adolf Hitler]
Cheers and all,
--
Ukes
>
>>Did he or his followers ever address this?
>
>Well, I'm not sure who was qualified to bring it up. Himmler?
>
Nazi West Prussian Gauleiter Albert Forster said of Himmler: "If I
looked like him, I would not speak of race at all"
--
Ian Wyld
Jewish. Apparently his father was conceived when his grandmother was working
as an unmarried domestic servant in a wealthy Jewish household.
Does anyone know any more about this?
Regards Ian
"Dan" <mow...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:a5mk88$1b0s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
--
Ian Wyld
Jewish. Apparently his father was conceived when his grandmother was working
as an unmarried domestic servant in a wealthy Jewish household.
Does anyone know any more about this?
Regards Ian
"Dan" <mow...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:a5mk88$1b0s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
--
Bill Fischer
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_325b.html
Thank you very much.
Best Wishes.
Bill Fischer
--
--
William T. Fischer Montclair Public Library
fis...@panix.com
http://www.panix.com/~fischer
Edward Tannen
> A good article on the question of whether Hitler was part Jewish is at
>
> http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_325b.html
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> Best Wishes.
>
> Bill Fischer
>
>
--Article is interesting, but see "Explaining Hitler" by Ron
Rosenbaum for a complete discussion of this rumor.
Edward Tannen
--
Nils K. Hammer
>
there used to be an excellent website of german anti-nazi jokes, that
seems
to be gone now. One of them was;
"the true national socialist will be:
as blonde as Hitler!
as fit as Goering!
as honest as Goebbels!"
I think the joke went on a bit longer, listing all of the big players.
I'm
sorry the website is gone, I only translated a few of them into
english, and
I was hoping I could use it to help people understand that the Germans
were
not really very pro-nazi as a whole.
As I recall another related joke was:
"A national socialist can be honest, but then he isn't intelligent."
"A national socialist can be intelligent, but then he isn't honest."
"A man can be honest and intelligent, but then he isn't a national
socialist."
Nils