Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and Their Anthropological Context 1

Johannes Steizinger explores the ideological dimension of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism, focusing on the connection between concepts of humanity and dehumanizing images. National Socialism regarded itself as a political revolution, realizing a new concept of humanity. Nazi ideologues undergirded the self-understanding of National Socialism by developing racist anthropologies. The chapter examines two major strands of Nazi ideology, focusing on their diverging strategies of dehumanization, and arguing that they were dependent on different anthropological frameworks. Richard Walther Darré held a naturalistic concept of humanity and advanced biologistic forms of dehumanization. Alfred Rosenberg developed a dualistic anthropology that combined metaphysical and natural features. He dehumanized certain groups of people by reducing them to being human in a natural sense only. Moreover, Steizinger aims to show that the key motifs of these racist worldviews were prevalent in the scientific and philosophical debates on anthropology in early 20th-century Germany. He thus explores the general orientation of both the naturalistic and the anti-naturalistic strand in anthropological thought, unfolds the animalizing tendencies of these views, and emphasizes their conformity with the key motifs of Nazi ideology. The case of National Socialism should thus exemplify the dehumanizing potential of anthropological theories.