German. Austrian. What is the relation of the one to the other? How does language, culture, race (coloring) fit in? National Socialist's spoke of a blonde, blue-eyed ideal. If you happen to be non-blonde, non-blue-eyed, did this, from their viewpoint, denote a lesser infusion of this ideal? Wonder if there were games of "more Germanic than the next guy" --other than having no 'foul blood' predecessors? Just find this line of thought intriguing given how the 'race game' is still played throughout the world even within a country's own borders among a more or less homogenous population. Thanks.
I believe it may be next to impossible to deduce just exactly which ethnicity Hitler was, one reason may be that when his father Alois was born, almost 50% of the live births were "out of wedlock". The two brothers who raised him (Alois) did manage to change his baptismal record to the parentage in the Heidler line. In an odd twist the one who filled the petition was doing so for his deceased brother, an illegal action. That was compounded by the fact that Hitler's Grandmother Maria was also deceased, another illegal move, and the alteration of the name from Schickelgruber to Hitler on the baptismal was signed with a set of "X"s by two illiterate local men who were paid to do so. Now, Hitler's father Alois, being illegitimate and sporting questionable baptismal records would have eliminated Hitler from his own race purity law. Couple all of those with the idea and possible truth that the name Heidler (Hitler), spelled in any number of ways is most likely Czech, not Bavarian or German, or Austrian. Since Hitler himself was born on the Austrian side of the border with Germany, by simple inference he was an Austrian. Remember he had to become a naturalized German citizen so that he could run against Hindenburg in the Presidential race, so Hitler must have still been registered as Austrian citizen at the time. The rumor that he was of Jewish decent has been pretty much debunked over the years, and was most likely started while the Nazi Party was still in its infancy to try and oust him from the party. BTW, Hitler had very blue eyes, and while his hair was "dark", it was not as brown as it looks in most photos. The hair dressing he was forced to use to try and manage a "nasty cowlick" made it appear much darker than it really was.
Interesting. Had not heard much of that, at least not that detailed. Even tho the thread heading refers to the Fuhrer's lineage, the body of the post questions a more general descriptive of the Reich's racial attitudes. Are you familiar with any of the other questions I raise? (side note: comes to mind the oft repeated black humor of Hitler, Gobbles, and Goering's physical appearance vs the Nordic Adonis ideal.)
What I always found funny was that racially speaking, he couldn't even qualify for his own "elite" bodyguard (at least during it's early years).
I myself believe this was a "goal", i.e. the blonde, blue-eyed, tall individual. And was to be reached through a combination of selective breeding (eugenics were all the rage at the time), and removal or sterilization of those individuals who didn't meet the qualifications. Whille Dr. Goebbels did have one leg shorter than the other, it wasn't a congenital defect, but the result of an unsuccessful operation in his youth to combat a bone disease (osteomylitis [sp?]) which left him with one thigh bone shorter than the other. Goering was a quite handsome man in his youth, but his addiction to pain-drugs after his injury in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, left him both less ambulatory and devoted to overeating somehow. Hitler himself, might have been closer to the ideal than some of his photos seem to show, in his own youth he was quite athletic, and he was about average or slightly above in height. With his blue eyes, decent height, and brown hair he wasn't as far away as some of the others in the Party. But, it was a "goal" to work toward not an absolute requirement for all alive at the time. However, "overstocking" the German population with those attributes would be the first step toward a controlled racially pure population. Himmler was the really devote eugenics proponent, he figured that since selective breeding worked so well in livestock it would be simple to extend the policy toward the German people. This is further complicated by the way "race" was determined in this era, and not just by the Nazis. By the time Hitler began to "research" race theories; large groups of people who happened to speak the same language (more or less), who had a common history (more or less), and had developed certain modes of thought and social behavior were seen as the same "race." It was estimated that only 7% of Europe was populated by non-Aryan language/race groups such as Ural-Altaic (Hungarians, Turks, etc.), Semitic (Jews, Arabs, etc.), and other "darker-skinned" types who, for the most part, had followed the Aryans into Europe. It was propounded, however, that "three great racial groups" accounted for 93% of the total population of Europe. First were the Nordic or Germanic races which for the most part consisted of the Germans, English, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, some Swiss and "probably" the Albanians and the "hopelessly mixed" Greeks. Second was the "Latin race" which included the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. And third, the "Slavic races" consisting mainly of the Russians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, and Poles. (Van Loon, Geography; p. 84)
