The idea of an Aryan "super race" and human "races" as seperate species was rejected even way back during the WW2 era:
"Don't Be A Sucker" (1944) Official US Army Anti-Nazi Film
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=15mThis article was published in the Scientific Monthly (Vol. 59, No. 4, pp 296-300) in October of 1944.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/18253The Great Aryan Myth
Knight Dunlap
The Scientific Monthly
The Aryan myth is now completely discredited among scholars. Ethnologists (outside of Germany) do not speak of an Aryan race any more than they speak of a Jewish race. Linguists no longer speak of an Aryan family of languages, preferring the less succinct but more accurately descriptive term "Indo-European". Popular thought, however, seems still somewhat confused by the word "Aryan."
The actual origin of the myth is obscure. Hankins (The Racial Basis of Civilization, 1926) traces it back to the early period of the nineteenth century, and if its roots extend further into the past, they are not clearly uncovered. The German warmongers, in the latter part of the century, avidly adopted the myth as dressing for the doctrine sometimes called "Pan-Germanism": the doctrine of a race of supermen, destined to dominate the world with the ruthlessness of ancient savagery. This doctrine of a great German race, however, is older than the Aryan myth. It was well established before Nietzsche fulminated against morality and humanitarianism. Perhaps the German paranoia can be traced back to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, as Hankins implies, and as Kolnai (The War Against the West, 1938) seems to think it can be. This possibility is not important for our present purposes. The doctrine of a German race of supermen is certainly older than the Aryan myth.
In its commonest form, the Aryan myth postulated a group of people calling themselves "Aryans", who invaded India at some time before the Christian Era and settled in the Indus Valley. Various speculative theories as to the location of the original "home" of these Aryans were invented by scholars who credulously accepted the myth. All the theories agreed, however, that from some place of origin, whether in Europe or Asia, groups of this Aryan stock migrated into India, Iran, and Europe.
If, however, we seek for historical evidence for the existence of this early Aryan stock or for legendary accounts of their migrations and activities, we find that the evidence is nonexistent and that there were no legends about an Aryan racial stock until a century or so ago. The myth is a modern invention.
Many foreign groups have invaded India during the last few thousand years, but there is no reference in Hindu traditions to a group of invading Aryans. There is no reference to such a group in Persian traditions. This is inconvenient for the adherents of the Aryan myth, for although the Vedas and the Avestas were not written until after the beginning of the Christian Era, they presumably embody legends handed down from earlier periods, or are based on "such legends". The word "Aryan", and its cognates, appear, it is true, in various writings and inscriptions (see "Aryans", Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth ed.) ; but there is no passage or inscription which clearly refers to an Aryan stock or racial group. The word, it is established, means "noble", "illustrious", or of "aristocratic lineage". Only a purblind devotion to a doctrine could twist any of the passages into evidence for an Aryan racial stock.
The myth was the creation of German linguists and philologists, who confused language relationships with racial stock relationships; or who, at least, accepted the former as valid evidence for the latter. We cannot date the origin of the myth earlier than the nineteenth century, because it was not until 1788 that Sir William Jones pointed out that the Greek, Latin, Celtic, French, and Germanic languages had definite affinities with the Sanskrit. In 1808 Friedrich Schlegel declared that Sanskrit was the parent language of the Indo-European group and identified it as the language of a parent Aryan race. Jones' concept of an Indo-European family of related languages was rapidly accepted, and is accepted today, although the "family" has been rather drastically revised in recent years; but Schlegel's notion that Sanskrit was the original Indo-European language was soon discarded, even by those who gave credence to the myth of an Aryan race.
The myth was developed in Germany during the middle of the nineteenth century by many philologists and literati. Its spread in England and France, and further in America, was greatly promoted by F. Max Muller, a German philologist who became professor of comparative philology in Oxford University. In his lectures before the Royal Institution, in 1861 and 1863, on the Science of Language (shortly published under that title) Muller employed the term "Aryan" for the Indo-European family of languages, and insisted that the various peoples speaking the languages of that family must have had a common ancestry. Somewhat chastened by the critical attacks of anthropologists, archaeologists, and the more enlightened philologists, Muller, in 1888, explicitly retracted his doctrine and admitted emphatically that language affinities are not evidence for racial relationships. By this time, however, the impetus which Muller's endorsement had given to the Aryan myth had carried it so far that his retraction could not undo the damage.
Meanwhile, a presentation of the myth which antedated Muller's endorsement had come to the attention of influential Germans. This was the presentation by an obscure Frenchman who had changed his residence to Germany, and who eventually became famous (or infamous) throughout the western world: the Count de Gobineau. De Gobineau had published his Essai sur l'inegalite des races in four volumes, in the years 1853-55. In this book he adopted the myth of the ancient Aryan race and attributed superiority to those descendants of the Aryans whose blood was least degraded by mixture with inferior stocks. As to which modern types best represented the original Aryans, de Gobineau seems to have been somewhat uncertain, although he expressed the conviction that the modern Germans are not good representatives and that for the purest descendants of the noble race one would have to look to England where the stock has been better protected by the insularity of Britain.
De Gobineau's Essai received little attention for twenty years after its publication, and a second edition did not appear until 1884. The first volume only was eventually translated into English (New York, 1914). In Germany, after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), de Gobineau came in contact with Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. Nietzsche, the half-Polish proponent of savagery, was apparently much impressed by de Gobineau's ideas; but it was Wagner who gave them publicity through articles in the Bayreuther Matter and brought de Gobineau to the attention of influential persons. Wagner already had the notion of the superiority of the old savage culture of central Europe and its degeneration in modern culture, and was attempting to express this devotion to the dismal past in his music, as Nietzsche did in his pseudo philosophy. Wagner's efforts, it seems, were further stimulated by de Gobineau. Wagner put Gobinism in a conspicuous position, although the Gobineau Vereinigung was founded (Leipzic, 1894) after Wagner's death. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a renegade Englishman, whose writings were influential in France, England, and America in promoting the Aryan myth, was Wagner's disciple and son-in-law.
De Gobineau's suggestion that the English, not the Germans, are the best modern representatives of the Aryans was curiously overlooked or ignored in the spread of Gobinism in Germany. We may surmise (but it is only a surmise) that de Gobineau, after he was taken up by the Germans, soft-pedalled this detail of his theory. At any rate, the doctrine that the Germans are the great Aryans, destined to suppress the decadent humanitarianism represented by Christianity and by ruthless savagery to enslave and rule the non-Aryan nations, became practically the state religion of Germany. This doctrine began to be impressed on the German population very soon, and by 1914 the war lords found it a useful factor in building morale in the first war against civilization. We can understand the avidity with which the warmongers adopted the Aryan myth as an adjunct to Pan-Germanism as well as we can understand Hitler's partiality for the music of Richard Wagner.
The Aryan myth has been relegated to the files of astonishing superstitions, and with it has gone the Max Mullerism (as Reinach called it) which naively assumed that language affinities are dependable indexes of stock relationships. On the other hand, it must not be concluded that the theory that certain patterns of mental abilities and attitudes go with certain racial stocks is now scientifically discredited. Those who assume that there are no mental differences correlated with racial stock differences are speaking from armchairs which are not far from the seats of those who broadcast the claims for the inherent superiority of this race or that. There is no foundation at present for either extreme theory. The problem of racial differences has not been solved; it has not yet even been scientifically approached.
The mixed constitutions of the nations of the world have long been recognized by ethnologists, but in the past, theorists have contrasted the French with the Italians and with the Germans and other national groups, blissfully ignoring the variety of discernibly different stocks entering into the make-up of each of these groups. It is encouraging to note that this sort of blundering does not find a hearing as easily as it did a short generation ago. Our attitudes towards the problems of differences of racial stock are so improved and our delusions so cleared that we may reasonably expect that after this war beginnings will be made on the scientific aspects of the problems.
The delusion that language is an indication of racial relationship was one of the obstacles to the approach to the problems. Another delusion, equally obstructive, was the notion that the form of the head remains constant in a given stock over a long period of time, regardless of environmental conditions. The "holy cephalic index", however, is no longer a sacred symbol to ethnologists. Aside from the reductio ad absurdum of the cephalic doctrine subtly given in Dixon's Racial History of Man (1923), cumulative evidence concerning changes in the head form in man and in domestic animals moving from one region to another where climate, food, and water are different has shattered the prestige of this symbol and relegated it to the class of growth characteristics, along with other body proportions which have long been admitted to be unreliable signs of racial stock. The fact that the "goiter regions" of the world (regions in which immigrants from other areas are conspicuously subject to goiter) are also regions in which the peoples long resident are brachycephalic is a significant item in the list of weaknesses of the cephalic theory.
The signs of racial stock which must be employed in scientific studies of the racial problems are those physical characteristics which are least affected by the environment. These signs are eye coloration and hair coloration. A third characteristic which may eventually be of use is that of the skin; but the skin characteristic is complex, and the three factors involved - bleached brightness, rate of darkening (tanning) in the sun, and limits of darkening, are associated in various ways in different individuals and have never been analytically studied. Genetic studies which have confused or ignored these factors have given us no useful information, and the employment of skin characteristics in racial investigations must wait on scientific study of these factors, as well as of the actual colour features of skin. Classification of peoples as "white", "brown", "yellow", and "black" has so far been thoroughly confusing, for some "whites" become almost black in the sun, while some "browns" darken very little; and some persons who darken rapidly do not tan as deeply as others who tan more slowly.
Hair colorations blend in mixtures of stocks, giving rise to gradations between red and blond, red and dark brown, and dark brown and blond. Eye colours may blend, but in most cases combine in mosaic patterns which are overlooked in casual observations; the eyes which have greater areas of brown than of blue often being classed as "blue." These casual observations gave rise to the popular superstitions, once approved by geneticists, that eye colour is inherited in an all-or-none way, with (in the later Mendelian formulation) brown dominant and blue recessive. Few eyes among mixed populations show single colours, but we may infer from the types of mixtures that some "original" stocks were blue-eyed and others brown-eyed, although violet, green, orange, and even red colorations occur in various stocks. It has been commonly assumed that in the skin there is only one pigment, of brownish hue; but the stock significance of the blue "Mongol spot" has not been investigated. As for hair colour, we may assume three "original" sorts: red, blonde, and dark brown (often called "black"), of which the blonde is perhaps the most recent in development.
In the European populations various "original" stocks are blended, of which at least five are historically identifiable, although the common names of these stocks are applied in various ways and always need careful definition. These five stocks are: Celtic, Nordic, Mediterranean, Autochthonous, and Mongolian.
The Celts are properly the peoples who were known to the ancient Greeks as Keltoi and to the Romans as Gatti (Gauls). The early Thracians and Achaeans in Europe, and the Phoenicians and other Canaanites in Asia were apparently of the same stock; and groups from Europe settled in Asia Minor (Galatians) in the third century B.C. The Celts were red-haired and blue-eyed, although under the influence of the "holy cephalic index" the name has in modern times been applied to dark-haired peoples residing in the same or adjacent areas. In ancient times these Celts were distributed across central Europe and down into present France (Gaul), but they did not penetrate Britain until about the beginning of the Christian Era.
The Nordics (as we use the term here) were a blonde-haired, blue-eyed people known to the Greeks as "Hyperboreans" and to the Romans as "Germans". They were located, when first known, in the Baltic area, although the blond Slavs of eastern Europe were obviously branches of the same stock. The Nordics were people of an extremely savage culture, given to cannibalism and wanton cruelty; but under the influence of the Romans, and later when they were Christianized, they adopted civilized ways.
By "Mediterraneans" we mean the descendants of the "Pelasgi of Herodotus" accounts, who entered the Mediterranean area from the east in prehistoric times and laid the foundation for the civilization which we have inherited. They were modified by mixture with Celtic and autochthonous stocks, but apparently the original type was brunet and brown-eyed. Ethnologists of the nineteenth century confused the Mediterraneans, unfortunately, with the Hamites, who are of a different breed.
The autochthonous peoples of Europe, that is to say, the earliest known inhabitants whose stock still persists, have been given no collective name. The variations in body form and in head form, according to the areas of long residence, are probably responsible for this. The type is brunet of hair, with brown eyes. They were widely distributed in Europe and in the British Isles. Various ancient groups in western and southern Asia were probably the results of eastward movements of this stock.
The autochthones were apparently driven northwards from south-eastern Europe by the Mediterraneans and Celts, into the mountains. After the exhaustion of the nations of the Mediterranean area and Asia Minor by the Trojan War, the autochthones seized the opportunity to move down upon the civilized areas of the South. The "Return of the Dorians" was but a sample and symbol of the migration of wild tribes which upset the southern populations, ended the power of Egypt in Asia, extinguished the lingering fragments of civilization in Mesopotamia, and would have extinguished the Ionian civilization of Greece except for its flight for refuge to the shores of Asia Minor. In Greece the Dorians eventually weakened and adopted some features of the culture of the peoples they had enslaved; but the savage invasion was a terrible setback to the growth of civilization.
The term "Mongol", "Mongolian," or "Mongoloid" covers a variety of peoples of central and western Asia who have migrated into Europe at various times. The various groups known as Ugrian, Turki, Tatar, Hun, true Mongol, etc., are of uncertain relationship to one another; and the use of the terms above is not intended to be more than the convenient adoption of popular phraseology.
The first mass invasion of Mongolians in historic times was that of the Chazars (Khazars), who moved into the Black Sea region about 500 B.C. and later moved northward and eastward up the great river valleys. They were converted to Judaism en masse about 700 A.D. According to one theory, they have been absorbed into the autochthonous populations, whereas another theory identifies their descendants as the present eastern Jews (the Ashkenasim). There were, however, groups of savage Asiatics already in the eastern regions of Europe when the Khazars moved in, in addition to Asiatic nomads who had infiltrated the whole Balkan area.
The Bulgars, who gave their name to the Volga (Bulga), were a savage group not distinguished by early modern writers from the Huns, whom they equalled in ferocity, cruelty, and destructiveness. The Magyars, whose stock is still an important factor in the Hungarian population, were originally Asiatic nomads, thought by Keane to have been akin to the Khazars. The early Prussians were a mixture of a Mongolian stock with autochthonous and Slavic stocks. An Asiatic stock called "Ugrian" (the term is properly the name of a language, not a race) entered Europe in prehistoric times, and their hybridization with Nordics and autochthones produced the Finns, in whom today all three types, or approximations to them, appear.
The second mass invasion of Asiatics in historical times was that of Attila in 445 A.D. The horde of Attila included Mongolians of many types, who are commonly designated as "Huns". The Huns penetrated central and south-western Europe, but their power was crushed in 451 A.D. The horde, however, never withdrew, but remained to mingle their blood with the native populations of central Europe. The German warlords of 1914 appropriately adopted the name "Huns" as a symbol of the ruthless slaughter and destruction which was, and still is, the ideal of their Aryan doctrines.
Although Attila's Huns were not the last groups of Mongolians to move westward, the hordes of Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) did not reach Europe. They unsettled, however, the already mongolized populations of the Near East and probably accelerated infiltration westward by these peoples. The Turks, who entered Anatolia in the thirteenth century and later and eventually subjugated south-eastern Europe, apparently left little of their blood in the European populations.
As far west as central Germany there is an appreciable amount of Mongolian blood in the population. From Hitler's place of origin and from his portraits, we may well surmise that he is of partly mongoloid extraction, although Mussolini may be of straight descent from the old autochthones of the forests. The mongoloid autochthonous element is now in the ascendancy in Germany, and the Nordic and Celtic elements are definitely the underdogs. Although, as we have above warned, racial stock may in itself be of no consequence, it is nevertheless true that when a people enthusiastically adopt the ideals of their savage ancestors and attempt to make these ideals actual, their boasted continuity with their savage progenitors is an asset in the building of the immoral morale which contributes to the carrying out of their purposes.
The association of the dominant German group with the Japanese in the present war is curiously appropriate. Although Japan has been under the control of various racial groups since the time of the Ainus, the control at present is in the hands of the Malays, who entered Japan from the south and have gained the ascendancy over the older Manchurian element. The place of origin of the Malays is uncertain, but they are classed as "Southern Mongols". They have as good claim as the Germans to the name "Huns", but we may well assign to both Axis groups the title "Aryans". This name has had a foul aroma for fifty years; and since the Germans claim it, and nobody else wants it, we may reasonably assign it to them and their allies, the Japs.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2020 09:26AM by anybody.