This chapter explores the evolution of racial ideas before and after the First World War, comparing German-speaking central Europe with the rest of Europe, the USA, or Japan. It analyzes nuances and tensions in German racial discourse between conceptions of Volk and Rasse, both of which might connote “race” in the broader English sense of the term; between Germandom, which privileged the idea of a pure Nordic race native to northern Europe, and Aryanism, which emphasized the racial superiority of multiple “Aryan” nations and peoples; and competing notions of eugenics, including concepts such as “Systemrasse” and “Vitalrasse,” with the former highlighting the differential quality of nations and races and the latter focused on improving the quality of a given population. Finally, it highlights the porous boundaries between conceptions derived from science and eugenics and those emerging from humanist, religio-mythological, and esoteric conceptions of blood and soil. Nazism drew equally on “scientific” eugenic and more “humanist” traditions, which were not unique to Germany but together created the syncretic apotheosis of race-thinking that undergirded the Holocaust.

Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of the Weimar Republic just before noon on January 30, 1933. Before taking office, the Nazi leader had consented to an alliance with a conservative party in which the latter would hold most of the cabinet seats in the new government. While their coalition would not enjoy a majority in the Reichstag, there had been minority governments and cabinets before this one. And the chancellorship Hitler was assuming was not the most powerful office under the Weimar Constitution; that position was held by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who had soundly defeated Hitler in the presidential election the previous year. The Field Marshal, in fact, retained authority to dismiss the chancellor and his new government at any time. In all respects, the ritual surrounding Hitler’s oath complied with the formalities of the Weimar Constitution as they had been performed by previous chancellors as they took office. In these respects, the event that ushered Hitler and the Nazi Party into power appeared to be nothing more than another round in the play of parliamentary politics. However, that evening, tens of thousands of uniformed storm troopers, men of the SS (Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s Praetorian guard), and other members of right-wing paramilitary organizations marched through the streets of Berlin in celebration.1 As they saluted the new chancellor, there was no doubt that they embraced his assumption of power as a new founding for the German state.