I'm sure this is just another of the countless topics on Nazism that has been endlessly drilled into the ground. My World Lit. teacher wants us to research a creation theory from another culture (besides the traditional gammet of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, etc., etc.) and I thought my interests in WWII Germany might serve me well for something out of the ordinary compared w/the rest of the class. I'm fixin to go to the net on this but if anyone has any suggestions....... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Creation like 'Big Bang' and chaos and those things?

__________________
"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Wil,
They didn't really have a "creation" theory as such, just the idea that in the distant past-the state of nature-Aryans were THE perfect humans. Then they got corrupted by vice etc and went rapidly downhill.
In the 19th century, guys like Kosinna and Vere Gordon Childe considered non-white peoples to be "noble savages". The idea was that this was how man started off, then became ever more civilised until he became like white Anglo-Saxons. This was why there was so much missionary activity: turn the savage into a carbon-copy of the white man, and let evolution finish the job. It's got to be said that even Darwin subscribed to this crap.
By the 20th century, Hitler (who was obsessed with mediaeval Germanic chivalry)gathered like minded individuals around him, and when he came to power there was even a special dept of the SS set up to "prove" Aryan racial superiority. They went looking for Germanic material culture on archaeological sites, reason being that they believed Germanic tribes had occupied much more territory than historians and archaeologists credited them with. If they found Germanic artefacts where history said they shouldn't be, then the books were obviously wrong and the present day population of that area were foreigners who needed ethnically cleansed. These are the guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark, though it never tells why they are there in the first place.
These SS "scientists" used the now discredited method of measuring skulls to determine ethnic origin. As an aside, in the 1880s the British Royal Society used the same method on it's members, and was gratified to find that the skulls of it's Anglo-Saxon members were larger than those of Celtic ones....so they HAD to be more intelligent!
Anyway, apologies: there's a lot more to this than I can remember offhand.

Regards,
Gordon

[ 28. January 2004, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

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Regards,
Gordon
Scotland's Prisoners
www.spanglefish.com/scotlandsprisoners
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

They were more into proving how inferior all other races were instead of proving how superior the aryans were.

__________________

Here's part of an earlier post I made which has a relevance.

People say the nazis thought themselves the ‘Master Race’. Today this is usually a humorous comment but if taken seriously is very sinister and very dangerous and was certainly (in my opinion) the rationale behind the death camps and labour camps, and a major factor in SS atrocities. Coincidence or fact, these ideals are found in the works of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche wrote of man and superman, (overman – ubermensch), not a different race but a special breed among men. He classed men in two ways, the ubermensch and the untermensch – the superman and the underman.

However, the nazis had a further spin on this. They didn’t want a simple ’us and them’ society, the minority superman needs ordinary man to be super over. For a parade you need someone to parade and someone to waive them by. Those who were classified as untermensch were not only less than 'man', they were less than human and as such had no rights, value or significance. Hence it was of no consequence to do anything you wanted with them and think no more of it than having stepped on an ant.

From this standpoint, the message has to be sold to the masses – enter spin and propaganda. You infer to everyone they are ubermensch, but carefully confer the real privileges and trappings to the chosen and approved few. If you want the masses to think they are all ubermensch you need to specify who’s untermensch. These as we know were the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled and anyone else the ‘ubermensch’ picked on. All this philosophy is too involved and laborious to deliver to the public so it was dressed-up with easily digested handles usually themed on ‘disgust’ and/or anything which did not conform to the pure, white, clean image of youth, health and prosperity of a new Germany.

As for categorising Nationals of other countries, there weren’t even German were they!

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment... Nietzsche

Plenty on the web about Nietzsche, for example try:
http://www.pitt.edu/~wbcurry/nietzsche.html

No.9

Pzjgr,
It's the same thing mate. Why bother to prove how inferior everyone else is, unless by doing so you prove your own superiority ?
There's a great book by Renfrew and Bahn called "Archaeology: Theories, Method and Practice" which was the prescribed book for a course I did called Archaeology in Contemporary Society. Wil's query was actually one of the exam questions.
As soon as I (re)discover where I put the book, I'll see what they say.

Regards,
Gordon

__________________
Regards,
Gordon
Scotland's Prisoners
www.spanglefish.com/scotlandsprisoners
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Half full, half emtpy. Its all in the presentation.

__________________

Not at all.

For a full discussion of the Nazi manipulation of archaeology and anthropology to prove their racial superiority:

C. Renfrew & P. Bahn. Archaeology: Theories, Methods & Practice.(4th Ed)
(London. Thames & Hudson.2000)
ISBN 0500281475

R. Skeates. Debating the archaeological heritage
(Bristol. Bristol Classical Press.2000)
ISBN 0715629565

Regards,
Gordon

__________________
Regards,
Gordon
Scotland's Prisoners
www.spanglefish.com/scotlandsprisoners
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Thanks to everyone for their input! My knowledge of this subject is rather convoluded to say the least. However, I was of the understanding that Hitler had proscribed the Aryan or at least ethnic German genealogy back to Atlantis or some other Nordic/Scandinavian (not sure which locale for Atlantis is more accepted- North Atlantic Ocean or around Greece/Agean Sea?) "creation of man theory." As I have learned, they really didn't have a "creation theory" as much as they preferred the "evolution theory" which probably knocks them out of the box for my assignment. As ludicrious as it sounds, did Hitler have some such genealogical history "drawn up" to support Aryan ideology or was it based entirely on evolution of the Ubermensch?
I looked this up on the net and couldn't find anything on the creation theory for Nazism...But, I did find an Atlantean (Atlantis?) "creation story" which probably has a flood theory as well (part of my assignment)although it was similiar to most theories it was exremely vague/ambiguous...probably due to its supposed 9500 B.C. date? Anyway, I just thought with Hitler's fascination with German chivalry, the old knighthood, and Nordic geneaology, there would be some kind of Nazi "creation of man theory" no matter how rediculous it may sound...

Wil,
Glad to help.
The books I mentioned should give you a good background in the subject.
One more I forgot to mention was "Hamlet's Mill". This is a collection of all the creation and great flood myths from around the world. Although it was originally published in 1969, updated versions are still available. It's a good read.

Regards,
Gordon

__________________
Regards,
Gordon
Scotland's Prisoners
www.spanglefish.com/scotlandsprisoners
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Just my view, I wouldn’t tie-in Germans with Atlantis, whose case, in my view, has best been argued for the Atlantic being located on a line with the Atlas Mountains .......somewhere?

Basically head west through the Straights of Gibraltar and keep going. My thoughts are that its disappearance had more to do with rising ocean levels rather than land movements, but, as the experts don’t have an answer, everyone is welcome to join this gravy train for life.

After W.W.I, en masse Germany was demoralised, humiliated and angry. Hitler was looking for symbolism and idealism to fit his concept of convincing the German masses they were members (the approved ones anyway) of some special people, of which he was the head of course. This to address their depression and bond them to a fabricated ‘cause’ which served his intentions. The Aryan story/legend was ripe to be ‘cherry picked’ and distorted accordingly, hence, not everything of the original Aryans may have been incorporated into Hitler’s version.

No.9