The crimes that Nazis committed were linked to a system of belief and a set of practices. Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler�s worldview. According to this, there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung.

They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All other colored people were placed in between depending upon their external features. Hitler�s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection.

Herbert Spencer later added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to this idea, only those species that survived on earth could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions. We should bear in mind that Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of selection.

However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered peoples. The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world. The other aspect of Hitler�s ideology or Nazi Ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.

He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement. This would enhance the area of the mother country while enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin. It would also enhance the material resources and power of the German nation.

Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.

The Nazi Ideology: Establishment of the Racial State

Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as �undesirable� in the extended empire. Nazis wanted only a society of �pure and healthy Nordic Aryans�.

They alone were considered �desirable�. Only they were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all others who were classed as �undesirable�. This meant that even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist.

Under the Euthanasia Programme, Helmuth�s father along with other Nazi officials had condemned to death many Germans who were considered mentally or physically unfit. Jews were not the only community classified as �undesirable�. There were others.

Many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial �inferiors� who threatened the biological purity of the �superior Aryan� race. They were widely persecuted. Even Russians and Poles were considered subhuman, and hence undeserving of any humanity.

When Germany occupied Poland and parts of Russia, captured civilians were forced to work as slave labor. Many of them died simply through hard work and starvation. Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. Nazi hatred of Jews had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews.

They had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and usurers. Until medieval times Jews were barred from owning land. They survived mainly through trade and money lending. They lived in separately marked areas called ghettos. They were often persecuted through periodic organized violence and expulsion from the
land.

However, Hitler�s hatred of Jews was based on pseudoscientific theories of race, which held that conversion was no solution to �the Jewish problem�. It could be solved only through their total elimination.

From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis terrorized, pauperized, and segregated the Jews, compelling them to leave the country. The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.

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