Untermensch

 ( 1920s Neologisms ) 

The German word Untermensch had been used in earlier periods, but it had not been used in a racial sense, for example, it was used in the 1899 novel Der Stechlin by Theodor Fontane. Since most writers who employed the term did not address the question of when and how the word entered the German language, into English, Untermensch is usually translated as "subhuman". The leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the Eastern Europe "under man" to Stoddard was Alfred Rosenberg who, referring to communists of the Soviet Russia, wrote in his Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (1930) that "this is the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called the 'under man.'" "...den It needs to be mentioned though that despite Nazi official support for The Myth of the Twentieth Century and Rosenberg's prominent role in promoting Nazi ideology Adolf Hitler declared that it was not to be considered official ideology of the Nazi PartyHitler, Adolf; Hugh Trevor-Roper. Adolf Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944, p. 400. and he privately described the book as "mysticism" and "nonsense".

The Nazi party and thereafter also the Nazi Germany repeatedly used the term Untermensch in writings and speeches which they directed against the Jews. In the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization", published in 1936, Himmler wrote:

In his speech " Weltgefahr des Bolschewismus" ("World danger of Bolshevism") in 1936, Joseph Goebbels said that "subhumans exist in every people as a leavening agent".Paul Meier-Benneckenstein, Deutsche Hochschule für Politik Titel: Dokumente der Deutschen Politik, Volume 4, Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin, 2. ed., 1937; speech held on 10 September 1936; In German: "... das Untermenschentum, das in jedem Volke als Hefe vorhanden ist ...". At the 1935 Nazi party congress rally at Nuremberg, Goebbels also declared that, “Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself." Goebbels speech at the 1935 Nuremberg Rally

The most notorious example of the usage of the term Untermensch by the Nazis is a Schutzstaffel (SS) brochure entitled " ", distributed by the Reich Security Main Office under the directives of Heinrich Himmler.Sources:

• (2025). 9781845455019, Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781845455019
• (1992). 9780520085558, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520085558
  Published in 1942 after the start of Operation Barbarossa, it is around 50 pages long and consists, for the most part, of photos portraying the natives of Eastern Europe in an extremely negative way. Nearly four million copies of the pamphlet were printed in the German language and distributed across German-occupied territories. The contents of the " Der Untermensch" brochure extensively emphasized Himmler's racist demonization of Russians as "bestial untermenschen" and Jews as "the decisive leader of untermenschen".Sources:
• (2025). 9781845455019, Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781845455019
• (1992). 9780520085558, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520085558
  It was translated into Greek, French, Dutch, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech and seven other languages. It gives the following definition of an Untermensch:

Once the war was won by the rebel side, Francoism, similar to Nazi Germany (and Soviet Russia as wellNikolay Ustryalov, From NEP to Soviet Socialism (1934) ( text online )

"We have to kill, kill, you know? They are like animals, you know, and we cannot expect them to get rid of the virus of Bolshevism. After all, rats and lice are the carriers of the plague. Now I hope you understand what we mean by the regeneration of Spain... Our programme consists... of exterminating one third of the male population of Spain. That would cleanse the country and get rid of the proletariat. And it is also economically convenient. There will be no more unemployment in Spain, do you understand?"

The Nazis were utterly contemptuous of the Slavs, as even prior to World War II, Slavs – particularly the Poles – were deemed to be inferior to Germans and other Aryans. After Adolf Hitler gained political power in Germany, the concept of non-Aryan "sub-human slave-material" was developed and started to be used also towards other Slavic peoples.Timm, Annette F. (2010) The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 188 Polish people were at the bottom of the Slavic "racial hierarchy" established by the Nazis. Soon after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact expired, Russians also started to be seen as "subhumans". Similarly, Belarusians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Ukrainians were considered to be inferior.

In order to forge a strategic alliance with the Independent State of Croatia – a puppet state created after the invasion of Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Bulgaria, the Nazis deviated from a strict interpretation of their racial ideology, and Croats were officially described as "more Germanic than Slav", a notion supported by Croatia's fascist (Ustashe) dictator Ante Pavelić who maintained that the "Croats were descendants of the ancient Goths" and "had the Pan-Slavism forced upon them as something artificial".Rich, Norman (1974) Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p.276-7.Adolf Hitler and Weinberg, Gerhard (2007) Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations. Enigma Books. p.356. Quoting Hitler: "For example to label the Bulgarians as Slavs is pure nonsense; originally they were Turkomans." Hitler also deemed the Bulgarians to be "Turkoman" in origin. While the Nazis were inconsistent in the implementation of their policy – for instance, mostly implementing the Final Solution while also implementing Generalplan Ost – the Democide death toll was in the range of tens of millions of victims.Rees, L (1997) The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, P126Mazower, M (2008) Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, Penguin Press P197 It is related to the concept of "life unworthy of life", a more specific term which originally referred to the severely disabled who were involuntarily euthanised in Aktion T4, and was eventually applied to the extermination of the Jews. That policy of euthanasia started officially on 1 September 1939 when Hitler signed an edict to the effect, and carbon monoxide was first used to murder disabled patients. The same gas was used in the death camps such as Treblinka, although they used engine exhaust gases to achieve the same end. In directive No. 1306 by Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 24 October 1939, the term "Untermensch" is used in reference to Polish ethnicity and culture, as follows:

Biology classes in Nazi-era Germany schools taught about differences between the race of Nordic German " Übermenschen" and "ignoble" Jewish and Slavic "subhumans". Hitler Youth, 1922–1945: An Illustrated History by Jean-Denis Lepage, page 91 The view that Slavs were subhuman was widespread among the German masses, and chiefly applied to the Poles. It continued to find support after the war. Native Realm: A Search for Self Definition by Czeslaw Milosz, page 132

• Antisemitism
• Anti-Romani sentiment
• Anti-Slavic sentiment
• Aryan race
• Master race
• Nazi racial theories

Notes

Further reading

• (1986). 9780781809016, University of Kentucky Press/Hippocrene Books. ISBN 9780781809016

• Der Untermensch propaganda poster published by the Schutzstaffel.
• " Die Drohung des Untermenschen" This is an example of the term " Untermensch" being used in the context of the Nazi eugenics programme. The table suggests that "inferior" people (unmarried and married criminals, parents whose children have learning disabilities) have more children than "superior" people (ordinary Germans, academics). Note that the heading is the subtitle of the German version of Lothrop Stoddard's book.