Historically and linguistically, "Aryan" was never a racial category, nor did it refer to blond, blue-eyed Germanic or Nordic peoples. The Nazi regime appropriated the term from 19th-century European pseudo-scientific racial theories to justify their ideology of racial supremacy.
Historically and linguistically, Aryans are exclusively Indo-Iranian peoples.
- The word originates from the ancient Sanskrit (ārya) and Avestan (airya), which were self-designations used by ancient Indo-Iranian tribes.
- The modern name of the country Iran literally means "Land of the Aryans."
The Nordic peoples including the Germans were never and are not Aryan. In fact the only Aryan peoples in Europe are: 1. the Alanii and their descendants the Ossetians 2. Gypsies/Roma
Yes, for the most part they didn’t care about genuine history. They built up a whole (semi-historic, loosely) mythology in the 1930s, and relied more on seances, science fiction writers (like where vril came from, or hollow earth), or occultists like Blavatsky (Atlantis, ascended masters, etc. etc.) than they ever did on real science or history. I think that some at the top knew it was all crazy bunk, but some were believers and all they really wanted was the mythos.
Unfortunately, it just so happened that they were also aggressive industrialists and fantastic engineers.
Ironically, the Nazis treated the Gypsies, who were true Aryans, as they did the Jews.
For those who are interested in the finer details of the English language, “yours faithfully” is the way to close a formal letter in proper British English.
The thing is without what I call race insanity (which yes, I know is at the very heart of Nazism) Germany probably could have successfully appealed to many Jews in Poland and throughout eastern Europe. After all many of them spoke Yiddish which is basically a German dialect and its not like they were treated very well in much of eastern Europe.
The Germans had legitimate grievances after WWI (Austria voted democratically to join Germany and was not allowed to, the Sudetenlanders were never consulted before being placed as an oppressed minority in a newly created Czech-Slovak state, ethnic Germans in the “Polish Corridor” were similarly never consulted nor were those in Sud Tyrol before their land was given to Italy nor were those in Elsass Lothringen before their land was given to France nor those few whose land was given to Belgium. But of course all that was lost when instead of getting a sane nationalist who would press their legitimate claims, they got a raving lunatic.
Nazi ideology was a cooked up mish mash of late 19th century crackpot spiritualism, with socialist, nationalist, and racialist thinking animated by Jew hatred and Germany's deep sense of grievance over losing the Great War (WW I). The Nazis cared little for scientific and historic accuracy in a conventional sense but sought to fashion what they claimed was a new science and history based on race.
Nevertheless, although Norse and German mythology and history provided the Nazis with a supposed link to Germany's past, even Hitler though thought that Himmler was a bit of a kook about the whole thing, with his oddball medieval style ceremonies in robes in a specially built SS castle. In the end, the Nazis were essentially a movement based on aggressive political gangsterism in a country weakened and unhinged by defeat in war and economic catastrophe. The flags, symbols, ceremonies, and ideology were just contrived elements of costume.
Indeed! As are so many young people today. I related a story yesterday on another topic and thread about my wife and I going to the bank to get new cards,and the bank employee had never heard of D-Day. She was probably around 30, I would guess. Either the schools she attended were failures at teaching history, or she was a failure at learning history.
This was a person with a college degree, I’m sure….
I wouldn’t call her a Nazi, however.
Hmmm....
Fascinating!
One of the hallmarks of a proper world view is to possess far more interest in one descendents than in one’s ancestors.