untermensch

In a speech which he delivered to the Bavarian regional parliament in 1927, the Nazi Party propagandist Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer, used the term Untermensch referring to the communists of the German Bavarian Soviet Republic:

{{blockquote|It happened at the time of the [Bavarian] Soviet Republic: When the unleashed subhumans rambled murdering through the streets, the deputies hid behind a chimney in the Bavarian parliament."Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938, 05/25/1927, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament, German: "Es war zur Zeit der Räteherrschaft. Als das losgelassene Untermenschentum mordend durch die Straßen zog, da versteckten sich Abgeordnete hinter einem Kamin im bayerischen Landtag."}}

File:Nuremberg laws.jpg introduced in 1935]]

The Nazi party and thereafter also the regime (1933—1945) 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:

{{blockquote|We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.{{cite book

| last = Himmler|first=Heinrich

| author-link = Heinrich Himmler

| year = 1936

| title = Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation

|trans-title=The SS as an Anti-bolshevist Fighting Organization

| publisher = Franz Eher Nachfolger

| location = Munich

| url = https://archive.org/details/Himmler-Heinrich-Die-Schutzstaffel

| language = de

| quote = Wir werden dafür sorgen, daß niemals mehr in Deutschland, dem Herzen Europas, von innen oder durch Emissäre von außen her die jüdisch-bolschewistische Revolution des Untermenschen entfacht werden kann.

}}{{cite book

| author = Office of United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality

| year = 1946

| title = Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression

| publisher = USGPO

| location = Washington, D.C.

| volume = II

| chapter = Chapter XV: Criminality of Groups and Organizations – 5. Die Schutzstaffeln

| page = 220

| oclc = 315871222

| url = https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Nazi_Vol-II.pdf

| format = PDF, 46.2 MB

}}{{cite web

|last = Stein|first=Stuart D.

|date = 8 January 1999

|title = The Schutzstaffeln (SS) – The Nuremberg Charges, Part I

|work = Web Genocide Documentation Centre

|publisher = University of the West of England

|url = http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/ssnur1.htm

|access-date = 10 July 2010

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100817050016/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/ssnur1.htm

|archive-date = 17 August 2010

|df = dmy-all

}}}}

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."[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?MediaId=192 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 "{{ill|Der Untermensch|de}}", distributed by the Reich Security Main Office under the directives of Heinrich Himmler.Sources:

• {{cite book |last1=Müller, R. Ueberschar |first1= Rolf-Dieter, Gerd |title= Hitler's war in the East, 1941-1945 |publisher= Berghahn Books |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-84545-501-9 |location= 150 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, United States |pages=245}}
• {{Cite journal |date=January 1942 |title=Der Untermensch |url=https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |journal=Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126075206/https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-date=26 November 2020}}
• {{cite book |last1=E. Aschheim |first1= Steven |title=The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-520-08555-8 |location= Los Angeles, California, United States |pages=236, 237 |chapter=8: Nietzsche in the Third Reich}} 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:
• {{cite book |last1=Müller, R. Ueberschar |first1= Rolf-Dieter, Gerd |title= Hitler's war in the East, 1941-1945 |publisher= Berghahn Books |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-84545-501-9 |location= 150 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, United States |pages=245}}
• {{Cite journal |date=January 1942 |title=Der Untermensch |url=https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |journal=Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126075206/https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1077/ |archive-date=26 November 2020}}
• {{cite book |last1=E. Aschheim |first1= Steven |title=The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-520-08555-8 |location= Los Angeles, California, United States |pages=236, 237 |chapter=8: Nietzsche in the Third Reich}} It was translated into Greek, French, Dutch, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech and seven other languages. It gives the following definition of an Untermensch:

{{blockquote|The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being. Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Inside this being is a cruel chaos of wild, unrestrained passions, nameless desire for destruction, the most primitive desires, the most naked meanness.{{clarify|date=January 2023|reason=A better translation needed}}}}

{{undue weight section|date=December 2024}}

In Spain, in addition to the term underman, the terms subhuman and degenerate are frequent in speeches and articles, especially from the 1930s. These are words used naturally in the newspapers, without explanations of the specific meaning, so it can be deduced that they were general knowledge. They are terms that increase in intensity during the October Events,Calero, Antonio Mª (1985). "Outubro visto da direita". Em Gabriel Jackson e outros, ed. Outubro de 1934. Cinquenta anos de reflexão . Madri: século XXI. pág. 162-163. {{ISBN|84-323-0515-4}}García, Hugo. “Historia de Un Mito Político: El Peligro Comunista En El Discurso de Las Derechas Españolas (1918-1936).” Historia Social, no. 51, 2005, pp. 3–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40340928. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024. and during the civil war.

As the civil war approaches or takes place, there is a divergence in the meaning of subhuman, on the rebel side it acquires a racial/eugenic meaning,Vinyes Ribas, Ricard. CONSTRUYENDO A CAÍN. Ayer, nº 44, 2001, p.p. 227-250FERNÁNDEZ, José Guillermo Fouce, et al. España y sus derechos humanos: una deuda. Revista Digital Universitaria. 01 de julio 2010 • Volumen 11 Número 7 • ISSN: 1067-6079GUZMÁN, Eduardo de, et al. El terror desde el poder. Tiempo de historia. Año VIII, n. 92-93 (1 jul. 1982),p. 32-45 beside ideologic,Fresán Cuenca, F. J. (1). Un ideólogo olvidado: el joven José Antonio Maravall y la defensa del Estado Nacionalsindicalista. Su colaboración en "Arriba", órgano oficial de FET y de las JONS. 1939-1941. Memoria Y Civilización, 6, 153-187. https://doi.org/10.15581/001.6.33779 while on the republican side it is more of a cultural type.{{Cite book |last=Llaudo |first=Avila |title=Racisme i supremacisme polítics a l'Espanya contemporània |publisher=Parcir edicions |year=2021 |isbn=9788418849107 |edition=7 |language=catalan}}

Once the war was won by the rebel side, Francoism, similar to Nazi Germany, promoted the idea of creating a the new man,Vinyes Ribas, Ricard. Las desapariciones infantiles durante el franquismo y sus consecuencias. International Journal of Iberian Studies, Volume 19, Issue 1, Aug 2006, p. 53 - 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/ijis.19.1.53/1 which led to the brutal repression of the Spanish population.{{Cite book |last=Preston |first=Paul |title=The Spanish Holocaust |publisher=HarperPress |year=2013 |isbn=978-0006386957 |edition=1st |language=english}} Gonzalo de Aguilera, the press officer for the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War, made the following classicidal statements to journalist John T. Whitaker:{{Cite book |last=Moreno Gallo |first=Miguel Angel |title=La prensa en Burgos durante la Guerra Civil |last2=Rilova Pérez |first2=Isaac |last3=Sanz |first3=Clara |publisher=Ed. Frágua |year=2018 |isbn=9788470748257 |location=Madrid |language=spanish}}

"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?"

When faced with increasing military manpower shortages, the Nazi regime used soldiers from some Slavic countries, firstly from the Reich's allies Croatia and SlovakiaAccording to Nazi policy, the Croats were considered more "Germanic than Slavic"; this claim was supported by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić, who maintained the view that the Croatians were the descendants of the ancient Goths along with the view that they "had the Pan-Slav idea forced upon them as something artificial".

Rich, Norman (1974). Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order, p. 276–277. W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York. as well as within occupied territories.Norman Davies. Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Pp. 167, 209. The concept of the Slavs in particular being Untermenschen served the Nazis' political goals; it was used to justify their expansionist policy and especially their aggression against Poland and the Soviet Union in order to achieve Lebensraum, particularly in Ukraine. Early plans of the Nazi officials (summarized as Generalplan Ost) envisioned the ethnic cleansing and extermination of no fewer than 50 million people, who were not considered fit for Germanization, from territories it wanted to conquer in Europe. Nazi planners considered Ukraine's chernozem ("black earth") soil as a particularly desirable zone for colonization.

{{Main|Generalplan Ost}}

During the war, Nazi propaganda instructed Wehrmacht officers to tell their soldiers to target people whom they considered "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans". In addition, Nazi Germany conducted its warfare against the Soviet Union as a racial war targeting Jews, Romanis, Slavs, and various indigenous inhabitants of Eastern Europe who were categorized as "untermenschen" in the Nazi ideology.{{Cite book |last=Burleigh |first=Michael |title=The Third Reich: A New History |date=2000 |publisher=Pan Macmillan |isbn=978-0-330-48757-3 |page=512 |quote=Many wars include instances of brutality and inhumanity, especially when they involve irregulars, but this is rarely cither premeditated or systemic. The German campaign in the Soviet Union was both. As a final reckoning between two antagonistic dictatorships, and a biologistic campaign against Bolsheviks, Jews, Gypsies and Slavic ‘Untermenschen’, the war in the East had a fundamentally different register from that in the West.}} Nazis viewed Russians as animalistic sub-humans who were incapable of mounting any form of collective resistance against a German invasion. Nazi anti-Slavism was also tied to the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory; which claimed that Slavs were inferior people controlled by Jews as pawns in their plots against Aryans.{{Cite book |last=J. Evans |first=Richard |title=In Hitler's Shadow: West German historians and the attempt to escape from the Nazi past |publisher=Pantheon Books |year=1989 |isbn=0-394-57686-1 |location=New York, USA |pages=46, 58}}

Prior to the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht's High Command began issuing orders to enable German soldiers to indiscriminately target the inhabitants of Eastern Europe and unleash systematic violence against entire populations. German Army was instructed to grant carte blanche to the anti-Jewish massacres carried out by the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied territories.{{Cite book |last=J. Evans |first=Richard |title=In Hitler's Shadow: West German historians and the attempt to escape from the Nazi past |publisher=Pantheon Books |year=1989 |isbn=0-394-57686-1 |location=New York, USA |pages=58}} “Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia” issued by the German High Command in 19 May 1941, ordered German troops to target Jews, partisans, Bolsheviks, etc. and described the war in Eastern Europe as a "historic task to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger".{{Cite web |title=Excerpts from "Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia" (May 19, 1941) |url=http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/ryost/hist201/Holocaust/TroopConductMay1941.docx |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240211094127/http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/ryost/hist201/Holocaust/TroopConductMay1941.docx |archive-date=11 February 2024 |website=Kirkwood Community College}} In 1943 Himmler issued a secret order for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in order to eliminate the "living space" of 500,000 Untermenschen, unsuitable for the Germans.[https://nbg-02.lil.tools/documents/4430-orders-to-friedrich-krueger?q=NO-2494#p.1 Orders to Friedrich Krueger for the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto], a photocopy at the Harvard Law School Library Nuremberg Trials Project[https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-monde-juif-1950-4-page-16.htm Deux documents allemands touchant la destruction du ghetto de Varsovie], sourced to Le Monde, Juif 1950/4 (N° 30), page 16; includes a low-resolution photocopy of the original Himmler's orderJosef Wulf, [https://www.bpb.de/system/files/apuz_files/1958-15-/APuZ_1958_15_Vom_Leben_Kampf_und_Tod_im_Ghetto_Warschau._F_r_meinen_Sohn_David.pdf "Vom Leben. Kampf und Tod im Ghetto Warsau"], April 16, 1958, p. 176{{cite book |author1=Yitzhak Arad |title=Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union |author2=Yisrael Gutman |author3=Abraham Margaliot |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-8032-1050-7 |page=292}}

The Nazis divided the people who they considered the sub-humans into different types; they placed priority on the extermination of the Jews, and the exploitation of others as slaves.Quality of Life: The New Medical Dilemma, edited by James J. Walter, Thomas Anthony Shannon, page 63

Historian Robert Jan van Pelt writes that for the Nazis, "it was only a small step to a rhetoric pitting the European Mensch against the Soviet Untermensch, which had come to mean a Russian in the clutches of Judeo-Bolshevism."{{cite journal

| last = van Pelt|first=Robert-Jan

| author-link = Robert-Jan van Pelt

| date = January 1994

| title = Auschwitz: From Architect's Promise to Inmate's Perdition

| journal = Modernism/Modernity

| volume = 1

| issue = 1

| pages = 80–120, here p. 97

| issn = 1071-6068

| doi = 10.1353/mod.1994.0013

|s2cid=145199283

}}

The Untermensch concept included Jews, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and Slavic peoples such as Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians.{{cite web

|title = Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe

|publisher = Northeastern University

|url = http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm

|access-date = 10 July 2010

|archive-url = https://archive.today/20120527021449/http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm

|archive-date = 27 May 2012

|url-status = dead

|df = dmy-all

}} Slavs were regarded as Untermenschen, barely fit for exploitation as slaves.{{cite book | last = Longerich | first = Peter | author-link = Peter Longerich | title = Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews | url = https://archive.org/details/holocaustnaziper00long_973 | url-access = limited | year = 2010 | isbn = 978-0-19-280436-5 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford; New York | page = [https://archive.org/details/holocaustnaziper00long_973/page/n255 241]}}{{cite book|last=Huer|first=Jon|title=Call from the Cave: Our Cruel Nature and Quest for Power|year=2012|publisher=Hamilton Books|location=Lanham, Maryland|isbn=978-0-7618-6015-0|page=278|quote=The Nazis considered any human being in the "east", usually the Slavs, as "sub-human", only fit for slavery to the Germans.}} Hitler and Goebbels compared them to the "rabbit family" or to "stolid animals" that were "idle" and "disorganized" and spread like a "wave of filth".Sealing Their Fate (Large Print 16pt) by David Downing, page 49 However, some among the Slavs who happened to have Nordic racial features were deemed to have distant Germanic descent which meant partially "Aryan" origin, and if under 10 years old, they were to be Germanized (see: kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany).

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 {{isbn|9780521195393}} Poles 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.{{cite book|author=Oliver Rathkolb|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MSa7B9oovacC&q=being+slavs+the+russians%2C+ukrainians|title=Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy: Coming to Terms With Forced Labor, Expropriation, Compensation, and Restitution|publisher=Transaction Publishers|year=2002|isbn=978-1-4128-3323-3|page=84|quote=Being Slavs the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Serbs were only slightly above the Jews in the racial hierarchy.}} Nonetheless, there were Slavs such as Bosniaks, Bulgarians, and Croats who collaborated with Nazi Germany that were still being perceived as not racially "pure" enough to reach the status of Germanic peoples, yet they were eventually considered ethnically better than other Slavs, mostly due to theories about these nations having a minimal amount of Slavic genes and considerable admixtures of Germanic and Turkic blood.Shirer, William L. (1960) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp.937, 939. Quotes: "The Jews and the Slavic people were the Untermenschen – subhumans." (937); "[The] obsession of the Germans with the idea that they were the master race and that Slavic people must be their slaves was especially virulent in regard to Russia. Erich Koch, the roughneck Reich Commissar for the Ukraine, expressed it in a speech at Kiev on 5 March 1943.

We are the Master Race and must govern hard but just ... I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss ... The population must work, work, and work again [...] We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population [of the Ukraine]. (emphasis added)

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 Panslav idea 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.Hitler, Adolf 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.

File:Neues Volk eugenics poster, c. 1937 (brightened).jpeg is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too. Read the Neues Volk, the monthly magazine of the Office of Racial Policy of the NSDAP."]]

While the Nazis were inconsistent in the implementation of their policy – for instance, mostly implementing the Final Solution while also implementing {{lang|de|Generalplan Ost}} – the democidal 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:

{{blockquote|It must become clear to everybody in Germany, even to the last milkmaid, that Polishness is equal to subhumanity. Poles, Jews and Gypsies are on the same inferior level. This must be clearly outlined [...] until every citizen of Germany has it encoded in his subconsciousness that every Pole, whether a farm worker or intellectual, should be treated like vermin.{{cite book|last=Wegner|first=Bernt|title=From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aESBIpIm6UcC&pg=PA50|year=1997|orig-year=1991|publisher=Berghahn Books|isbn=978-1-57181-882-9|page=50}}{{cite book|first=Tomasz |last=Ceran|title=The History of a Forgotten German Camp: Nazi Ideology and Genocide at Szmalcówka|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e-EjCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA24|year=2015|publisher=I.B.Tauris|isbn=978-0-85773-553-9|page=24}}|author=|title=|source=}}

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

{{Portal|Germany}}

{{div col|colwidth=22em}}

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

{{div col end}}

Notes

{{reflist}}

Further reading

• {{cite book |year=1986 |first1=Dr. Richard |last1=Lukas |author-link1=Richard C. Lukas |publisher=University of Kentucky Press/Hippocrene Books |isbn=0-7818-0901-0 |title=The Forgotten Holocaust: Poles Under Nazi Occupation 1939-1944 |location=New York}}

{{wiktionary}}

• [http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/d2b04856/index.html Der Untermensch] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090311011723/http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/d2b04856/index.html |date=11 March 2009 }} propaganda poster published by the SS.
• {{webarchive |date=2012-05-27 |url=https://archive.today/20120527021449/http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm |title=Hitler's plans for Eastern Europe}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929120657/http://www.doew.at/service/ausstellung/1938/17/17_15.html "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.

{{Discrimination}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Untermensch}}

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