Editing Master race (section)

==Historical background==
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 is [[biology|biologically]] superior to its ruled subjects. In his book ''History 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 old [[Franks|Frankish]] ruling class. In contrast, the majority of the population descended from the subject [[Gauls]]. As a result, two qualitatively different races faced off, and the only way to abolish the Franks' superiority was to destroy their civilization.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4179816/mod_resource/content/1/THE%20DESTRUCTION%20OF%20REASON.pdf |title=Lukács, György (1952), ''The Destruction of Reason'', p. 668}}</ref> [[Classical liberal]] theorists such as [[Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney|Volney]] and [[Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès|Sieyès]] refuted this theory by demonstrating that the French nobility was primarily composed of [[Nouveau riche|nouveaux riches]] from all over the country. Thus, the concept of a racially pure Frankish lineage was false.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4179816/mod_resource/content/1/THE%20DESTRUCTION%20OF%20REASON.pdf | title=Lukács, György (1952), ''The Destruction of Reason'', p. 669}}</ref>

In 1855, French count [[Arthur de Gobineau]] published his infamous work ''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]''. Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use of [[ethnography]] to defend the [[Ancien Régime]] against the [[Third 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 the [[Aryan]] race to be the pinnacle of human development, serving as the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable [[miscegenation]] led to the "downfall of civilizations".

Gobineau's influence was minimal at first. In his letters to [[Alexis 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 rejected the book, explaining that it was in accordance with the interests of [[Slavery in the United States|slave owners]] in the Southern states.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4179816/mod_resource/content/1/THE%20DESTRUCTION%20OF%20REASON.pdf |title=Lukács, György (1952), ''The Destruction of Reason'', pp. 670–71}}</ref> However, in the 1880s, the book gained popularity in Germany thanks to [[Cosima Wagner]]'s efforts. In 1899, [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]], a [[Germanophile]] Englishman and Cosima Wagner's son-in-law, published ''[[The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century]]''. Expanding on Gobineau's earlier theories, he argued that the [[Teutons|Teutonic]] peoples had a profound influence on [[Western culture|Western civilization]]. Chamberlain classified all European peoples, including Germans, [[Celts]], [[Slavs]], [[Greeks]], and [[Latins (Italic tribe)|Latins]], as the "[[Aryan race]]", which was built on ancient [[Proto-Indo-European]] culture. He saw the [[Nordic race|Nordic]] or Teutonic peoples as the leaders of the Aryan race, and essentially all races.

The German philosopher [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] introduced the concept of ''[[Übermensch]]'', which translates to "Overman" or "Superman". In his 1883 book [[Thus Spoke Zarathustra|Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen]] (''Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None''), he proposed the idea of the ''Übermensch'' as a goal for humanity. However, Nietzsche never developed the concept based on race. Instead, the ''Übermensch'' "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal".<ref>{{cite book|last=Solomon|first=Robert C.|author-link=Robert C. Solomon|author2=Higgins, Kathleen M.|author2-link=Kathleen Higgins|title=What Nietzsche Really Said|publisher=Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.|year=2000|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780805241570/page/47 47]|isbn=0-8052-4157-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780805241570/page/47}}</ref> 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 as [[Aryan]]s) were the highest branch of humanity due to their technological advancement. This reasoning was simultaneously linked with [[Nordicism]], which claimed that the "[[Nordic race]]" was the "purest" form of the Aryan race. Today, this view is regarded as a form of [[scientific racism]]. It contradicts the belief in [[racial equality]] by advocating the view that one race is superior to all other races.

===Eugenics===
[[Eugenics]] came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as a way to improve and maintain the [[Racial purity|purity]] of the Aryan master race. Many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s adhered to Eugenics, such as [[Margaret Sanger]],<ref>Margaret Sanger, quoted in {{cite book|last=Katz|first=Esther|author2=Engelman, Peter|title=The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Champaign|year=2002|page=319|isbn=978-0-252-02737-6|quote=Our ... campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Franks|first=Angela|title=Margaret Sanger's eugenic legacy|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, NC|year=2005|page=30|isbn=978-0-7864-2011-7|quote=...&nbsp;her commitment to eugenics was constant ... until her death}}</ref> [[Marie Stopes]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[Woodrow Wilson]], [[Theodore Roosevelt]], [[Madison Grant]],<ref>Grant, Madison. ''The Passing of the Great Race'', Scribner's Sons, 1922.</ref> [[Émile Zola]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[John Maynard Keynes]],<ref>{{cite journal|title=Opening remarks: The Galton Lecture|journal=[[The Eugenics Review]]|author=Keynes, John Maynard|volume=38|number=1|year=1946|pages=39–40}}</ref> [[John Harvey Kellogg]], [[Linus Pauling]],<ref>Everett Mendelsohn (March–April 2000).[http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/03/the-eugenic-temptation.html "Pauling's Eugenics]: The Eugenic Temptation", ''Harvard Magazine''.</ref> and [[Sidney Webb]].<ref>{{cite book
  | last =Gordon
  | first =Linda
  | author-link =Linda Gordon
  | title =The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America
  | publisher =University of Illinois Press
  | year =2002
  | page =196
  | isbn =0-252-02764-7 }}</ref>

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 the [[Kansas State Fair]], a "Fitter Family" contest, sponsored by the [[American 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 the [[Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)|Pilgrims']] arrival on the [[Mayflower]] or the [[American Revolutionary War]] had an advantage.<ref>Speier, Susanna (June 29, 2011) [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/beauty-pageants-and-the-misunderstanding-of-evolution-meet-again/ "Beauty Pageants and the Misunderstanding of Evolution Meet....Again"] ''[[Scientific American]]''</ref>

The Nazis took this concept to an extreme by establishing a [[Lebensborn|program to systematically genetically enhance]] the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program of [[Nazi eugenics]], based on the [[Eugenics in California|eugenics laws]] of the US state of California,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php|title=Eugenics and the Nazis – the California connection|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle|date=November 9, 2003|first= Edwin|last= Black|department=Opinion-editoral}}</ref> to create a [[super race]].<ref name="hitler1925"/>

===Hierarchy===
The modern concept of the ''master race'' is generally derived from a 19th-century [[racial theory]], which posited a [[hierarchy]] of races that was based on darkness of [[Human skin colour|skin colour]]. This 19th-century concept was initially developed by Count [[Arthur de Gobineau|Joseph Arthur De Gobineau]]. Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed in [[Nazism]], placed black [[Indigenous Australians]] and [[Black people|Equatorial Africans]] at the bottom of the hierarchy, while white Northern and Western Europeans (which consisted of [[Germans]], [[Swedes]], [[Icelanders]], [[Norwegians]], [[Danes]], British, [[Irish people|Irish]], [[Dutch people|Dutch]], [[Belgians|Belgian]] and Northern French) were placed at its top; [[olive skin]]ned white Southern Europeans (who consisted of Southern French, [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]], [[Spaniards]], Italians, [[Romanians]], and [[Greeks]], i.e., those who were called the [[Mediterranean race]], were regarded as another sub-race of the [[Caucasian race]]) and placed in its upper middle ranks; and the [[Semitic race|Semitic]] and [[Hamitic race]]s (supposed sub-races of the Caucasian race) were placed in its lower-middle ranks (because the Jews, were [[Semitic people|Semites]], the Nazis believed their cleverness made them extremely dangerous{{snd}}they had their own plan for [[Jewish world domination]], a [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy]] which needed to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans).<ref name="hitler1925"/> [[Slavs]] such as [[Polish people|Poles]] and [[Russians]] were not considered Aryans;{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=241}} and neither were the members of the [[Mongoloid race]] (including its offshoots such as [[Malayan race|Malayans]], [[American Indian race|American Indians]]) and [[Multiracial|mixed-race]] people such as [[wikt:Eurasian#Adjective|Eurasian]]s, the [[Bronze race|bronze]] [[Mestizos]], [[Mulatto]]s, [[Afro-Asian]]s, and [[Zambo]]s were placed in its lower middle ranks. However, the Japanese were considered [[honorary Aryan]]s.<ref>Snyder (1976). ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', p. 170.</ref>

[[File:No entrance for poles1.jpeg|thumb|German warning in Nazi-occupied Poland 1939 – "[[Nur für Deutsche|No entrance for Poles]]!"]]
In their attempt to scientifically prove the racial inferiority of [[Slavs]], German (and Austrian) racial scientists were forced to gloss over their findings which consistently proved that Early Slavs were [[Cephalic index|dolicocephalic]] and fair haired, i.e., "Nordic", while the South Slavic "Dinaric" sub-race was often viewed favourable.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wingfield|first=Nancy Meriwether |title=Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe|year=2003|publisher=Berghahn Books|location=New York|isbn=978-1-57181-385-5|page=203}}</ref> Nazis used the term "Slavic race", and considered Slavs to be non-Aryan.<ref>{{cite book|author = Mark Mazower|title = Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe|date =  2013|publisher = Penguin Books Ltd.|isbn = 978-0-14-191750-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Fischel|first=Jack R.|title=Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust|year=2010|publisher=Scarecrow Press|location=Lanham, MD|isbn=978-0-8108-7485-5|page=175|quote=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.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Stephenson|first=Jill|title=Hitler's Home Front: Wurttemberg Under the Nazis|year=2006|publisher=Hambledon Continuum|location=London; New York|isbn=978-1-85285-442-3|page=135|quote=Other non-'Aryans' included Slavs, Blacks and Roma.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Levine|first=Alan J.|title=Race Relations Within Western Expansion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DN5w7wPHi6kC|date=1996|publisher=Greenwood|location=Westport, CT|isbn=978-0-275-95037-8|page=98|quote=Preposterously, Central European Aryan theorists, and later the Nazis, would insist that the Slavic-speaking peoples were not really Aryans}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Timm|first=Annette F.|title=The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin|year=2010|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge; New York|isbn=978-0-521-19539-3|page=118|quote=The Nazis' singleminded desire to "purify" the German race through the elimination of non-Aryans (particularly Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs)}}</ref> The concept of a Slavic "[[Untermensch]]" accompanied their political goals, and it was particularly aimed at [[Polish people|Poles]] and [[Russians]]. Germany's immediate goal was ''[[Drang nach Osten]]'' or expansion into the East, which was the first phase in its ultimate plan to conquer Europe, and [[Ukraine]]'s "[[chernozem]]" (black earth) soil was regarded as a particularly desirable zone for colonization by the "'''''Herrenvolk'''''" ({{Audio|De-herrenvolk.ogg|listen}}) ("master people").

In relation to the Nazis' belief in [[Racial hygiene|racial purity]], author and historian [[Lucy Dawidowicz]] wrote:

{{blockquote|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.&nbsp;... 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."<ref>[[Lucy Dawidowicz]], ''The Holocaust and the Historians'', p. 10.</ref>}}