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Volume IV · Page 623
| supremacy and taught them that the Germans were more entirely Aryan than any other race. They were the "Nordic Germanic race", the Master Race. Thus, the German people, by purifying themselves, casting out Jews, Slavs, and other non-Aryans, were to become the foremost race on earth. Himmler, in a speech to high-ranking army officers in 1935, said — |
"I am a convinced supporter of the idea that what matters in the world ultimately is only good blood. * * * I have approached my task from this angle. It means that actually the only good blood, according to our reading of history, is the leading creative element in every state, and in particular, the blood engaged in military activity, and, above all, Nordic blood." |
| This reconstituted Aryan people was to be the
strongest race in the world. Therefore, in accordance with nature's law of
survival of the fittest, the Aryan race would conquer the world, enslave all
other races, and everywhere spread Aryan culture (for Aryans only, of course)
in a new Pax Germanica. Inside Germany this racial theory coordinated everything in public and private life according to the tenets of nazism. In foreign affairs, it became the slogan for the unification of all Germans, holding out to them a glittering vision of world mastery as both a possibility and a right. This theory of race matched with the theory behind Lebensraum. The Nazis made much of Germany's over-population with respect to its area. But they were not really concerned with over-population. In fact, the Nazis constantly proclaimed the duty of all good Germans to have as many children as possible. Lebensraum was not, as many think it, a cry of an underprivileged people for the possibility of existence. It was a demand for more and more land, in fact, for more land than the German people could use at the time. The Nazis felt that only by expansion into a great state, territorially, could Germany proceed to become mistress of the world. In short, Lebensraum was a slogan for an aggressive drive by the German people under the Nazi leadership to expand its borders regardless of economic need. This culminated in wars of aggression to gain territory and populations at the expense of neighboring countries. In the course of the war, as the Nazis overran Poland and most of the rest of Europe, they gained the opportunity to put these theories of Race and Lebensraum, this crime of genocide, into practice. The main drive for expansion was in the East. Himmler, in 1942 explained it as follows: |
"It is not our task to Germanize the East in the old sense, that is, to teach the people there the German language and |
