The central tenets of National Socialist ideology include the superiority of the Aryan people, the drive to rule over other peoples, and the opposition to both Western democracy and Marxist communism. Contrary to popular misconception, the Nazi view of the superiority of the Aryan people is not reducible to mere racism. More than a biological or anthropological category, “race” in this instance is a metaphysical category. In Nazi ideology, the notion of race is rooted not only in color or physiognomy or even in the genes but in a concept of human essence: it is an ideological category in which body and soul, biology and being, are fused into one. The category has a name: it is Rasenseele. Explaining the Nazi concept of Rasenseele or “race-soul,” chief Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) wrote, “Soul means race viewed from within. And, vice versa, race is the externalization of soul.”