Untermensch

Cover of the Nazi propaganda brochure "Der Untermensch" ("The Subhuman"), 1942. The SS booklet depicted the natives of Eastern Europe as "subhumans".[1]

Untermensch (German pronunciation: [ˈʔʊntɐˌmɛnʃ] ⓘ; plural: Untermenschen) is a German language word literally meaning 'underman', 'sub-man', or 'subhuman', which was extensively used by Germany's Nazi Party to refer to non-Aryan people they deemed as inferior. It was mainly used against "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Russians).[2][3]

The term was also applied to "Mischling" (persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry) and black people.[4] Jewish, Slavic, and Romani people, along with the physically and mentally disabled, as well as homosexuals and political dissidents, and on rare instances, POWs from Western Allied armies, were to be exterminated[5] in the Holocaust.[6][7] According to the Generalplan Ost, the Slavic population of East-Central Europe was to be reduced in part through mass murder in the Holocaust for Lebensraum, with a significant amount expelled further east to Siberia and used as forced labour in the Reich. These concepts were an important part of the Nazi racial policy.[8]

  1. ^ "Booklet". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 30 June 2016.
  2. ^ Connelly, John (March 1999). "Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice". Central European History. 32 (1). Cambridge University Press: 1–33. doi:10.1017/S0008938900020628. PMID 20077627. S2CID 41052845.
  3. ^ Gumkowski, Janusz; Leszczynski, Kazimierz; Robert, Edward (1961). Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe. Poland Under Nazi Occupation (First ed.). Polonia Pub. House. p. 219. ASIN B0006BXJZ6. Archived from the original (Paperback) on 9 April 2011. Retrieved 12 March 2014. The category of sub-human (Untermensch) included Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, Serbs, etc.) Gypsies and Jews.
  4. ^ Berenbaum, Michel; Peck, Abraham J. (1998). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Indiana University Press. pp. 59 & 37. ISBN 978-0253215291.
  5. ^ Snyder, Timothy (2011) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin London:Vintage. pp.144-5, 188 ISBN 978-0-09-955179-9
  6. ^ Mineau, André (2004). Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. p.180. ISBN 90-420-1633-7
  7. ^ Gigliotti, Simone and Lang, Berel (2005) The Holocaust: A Reader London:Blackwell Publishing. p.14
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hitlers_Plans was invoked but never defined (see the help page).