Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk

Race and the Third Reich aims to set out the key concepts, debatesand controversies that marked the academic study of race in NaziGermany. It looks in particular at the discipline of racialanthropology and its relationship to linguistics and human biology.

Christopher Hutton identifies the central figures involved in thestudy of race during the Nazi regime, and traces continuities anddiscontinuities between Nazism and the study of human diversity inthe Western tradition. Whilst Nazi race theory is commonlyassociated with the idea of a superior "Aryan race" and with theidealization of the Nordic ideal of blond hair, blue eyes and a"long-skull," Nazi race theorists, in common with their colleaguesoutside Germany, without exception denied the existence of an Aryanrace. After 1935 official publications were at pains to stress thatthe term "Aryan" belonged to linguistics and was not a racialcategory at all. Under the influence of Mendelian genetics, racialanthropologists concluded that there was no necessary link betweenideal physical appearance and ideal racial character. In the courseof the Third Reich, racial anthropology was marginalized in favourof the rising science of human genetics. However, racialanthropologists played a key role in the crimes of the Nazi stateby defining Jews and others as racial outsiders to be excluded atall costs from the body of the German Volk.

Anyone studying the Third Reich or who is interested in race theorywill find this a fascinating, informative and accessible study.