NazismNazism (ˈnɑːtsɪzəm,_ˈnæt- ; also, Naziism -si.ɪzəm), the common name in English for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus, natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism (Hitlerfaschismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War.
RassenschandeRassenschande (ˈʁasn̩ˌʃandə, "racial shame") or Blutschande (ˈbluːtˌʃandə "blood disgrace") was an anti-miscegenation concept in Nazi German racial policy, pertaining to sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans. It was put into practice by policies like the Aryan certificate requirement, and later by anti-miscegenation laws such as the Nuremberg Laws, adopted unanimously by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935.
Nazi racial theoriesThe Nazi Party adopted and developed several pseudoscientific racial classifications as part of its ideology (Nazism) in order to justify the genocide of groups of people which it deemed racially inferior. The Nazis considered the putative "Aryan race" a superior "master race", and they considered black people, mixed-race people, Slavs, Roma, Jews and other ethnicities racially inferior "sub-humans", whose members were only suitable for slave labor and extermination.
Aryan raceThe Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.
Nuremberg LawsThe Nuremberg Laws (Nürnberger Gesetze, ˈnʏʁnbɛʁɡɐ ɡəˈzɛtsə) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens.
UntermenschUntermensch (ˈʔʊntɐˌmɛnʃ, underman', 'sub-man', 'subhuman; plural: Untermenschen) is a Nazi term for non-Aryan people they deem as inferior, who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs, and later also Russians). The term was also applied to "mulatto" and black people. Jewish, Polish and Romani people, along with the physically and mentally disabled, as well as homosexuals and political dissidents, and on rare instances, POWs from Western Allied armies, were to be exterminated in the Holocaust.
NordicismNordicism is an ideology which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916); Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853); the various writings of Lothrop Stoddard; Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899); and, to a lesser extent, William Z. Ripley’s The Races of Europe (1899).
Master raceThe master race (Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "Herrenmenschen" ("master humans"). The Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg believed that the "Nordic race" was descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans, who he believed had pre-historically dwelt on the North German Plain and may have ultimately originated on the lost island of Atlantis.
