In the Third Reich’s imagination, Japanese people were somewhere between Germanic gentiles and Jews. In public, Reich officials treated the Japanese courteously, but in private their feelings about the Japanese were mixed at best.
Hitler explained that if mankind were to be divided into three groups — culture‐founders, culture‐bearers, and culture‐destroyers — only the Aryan would qualify for the first category. The Japanese would be culture‐bearers for the following reasons:
It is not the case, as some people claim, that Japan adds European techniques to her culture, but European science and techniques are trimmed with Japanese characteristics. But the basis of actual life is no longer the special Japanese culture but it is the enormous scientific and technical work of Europe and America, that is, of Aryan peoples. Based on these achievements alone the East is also able to follow general human progress […]
But if, starting today, all further Aryan influence upon Japan should stop then the source [of a further development of Japan’s present rise in science and technology] would dry out, […] its culture would stiffen and fall back into the sleep out of which it was startled seven decades ago by the Aryan wave of culture. […] the present Japanese development owes its life to Aryan origin[.]15
Thus in Hitler’s eyes, the Japanese, as a “race”, were clearly inferior to the Aryans. Presseisen mentions that the above words were expressed in Hitler’s early days before his speeches were circumscribed by political expediency. Thus they may come closest to his genuine feelings.16
What follows is a clue on why the Third Reich allied with the Empire of Japan:
At the same time, Hitler identified with the Japanese on one essential point: both Germany and Japan, he thought, were victims of the Jewry. In the section called “Japan and Jewry” in the chapter “German Policy of Alliance After the War,” Hitler wrote:
The Jew knows only too accurately that […] he has it well within his power to undermine European peoples only he would hardly be in a position to subject an Asiatic national State like Japan to this fate […] He dreads a Japanese national State in his millennial Jew empire, and therefore wishes its destruction in advance of the founding of his own dictatorship. Therefore, he is now inciting the nations against Japan, as against Germany[.]17
You see, rather than blaming Imperial America and the British Empire—both of which the Fascists admired—for snatching gains away from the Empire of Japan, the German Fascists instead blamed “the Jews”, who presumably “corrupted” both of the Anglophone empires to some extent or another. Remember that at the time both of the Anglophone empires officially held Asian territories such as Singapore, India, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, among others; the Japanese bourgeoisie had to settle for tablescraps like Korea and Taiwan.
Japan could have been next on the Anglosphere’s chopping block, a possibility that no doubt continued to concern some Japanese Imperialists, yet they remained resilient. The author continues:
Kirby further mentions:
Although the Japanese were said to owe their progress largely to ‘Aryan influence,’ the book [Mein Kampf] showed grudging admiration for the accomplishments of a Japanese state that had remained impervious to the machinations of ‘international Jewry’ and had so completely defeated Russia in 1904–5.19
Kirby’s statements as well as Hitler’s beliefs as expressed in Mein Kampf and other sources lead one to conclude that Hitler’s attitude toward the Japanese encompassed more than just plain racism. While there was no question that Hitler despised the Japanese as “racially inferior,” he admired the Japanese state as an administrative unit. The irony was that these “racially inferior” Japanese made and ran the “admirable” Japanese state of which he was even envious.
Berlin’s mixed feelings towards the Empire of Japan exposes the Fascists’ suppressed Anglophilia:
Japan’s victory in Singapore was welcome news to Hitler, since he hoped that this victory would cause “a crisis for the British Empire.”24 However, on the very same day he made the aforementioned comment to Goebbels, he told a former president of Romania: “I rejoice, yet am terribly sad at the same time.”25 Apparently, Hitler’s deep‐rooted racism did not allow him to heartily welcome successes of the “racially inferior” Japanese.
Furthermore, the former ambassador to Italy and anti‐Nazi Ulrich von Hassell26 recorded on March 22, 1942 that Hitler was apparently not happy with the enormous successes of the [Imperial] Japanese army against the British, and that “he would rather send twenty army divisions to England to roll back the yellow race.”27 Therefore, while the [Axis] victories in the Pacific were clearly welcomed as far as [the Third Reich’s] Realpolitik was concerned, Hitler could not heartily rejoice in any advances of “the yellow race.”
Evidence of Hitler’s seemingly contradictory reactions regarding the [Axis] victory in Singapore shows that Hitler’s admiration for [Imperial] achievements had no bearing whatsoever on his disdain and fearful, racial hatred of the Japanese.
Although Reich officials tried to be polite in public, ordinary Germans were not always so accommodating; there were many recorded cases of discrimination against Japanese people in the Third Reich, sometimes momentarily complicating relations between the Reich and the Empire of Japan. For example:
Councillor Fujii mentioned several instances of racial discrimination against Japanese and Japanese‐German individuals. […] The first instance of discrimination involved a member of the Biologische Reichsanstalt für Land‐ und Forstwirtschaft (Institute of Biology for Agriculture and Forestry), Dr. Otto Urhan, who was dismissed on May 18, 1933 because his mother was Japanese.49 […] The second publicized discrimination case, which took place in Berlin in October 1933, involved the nine‐year‐old daughter of Dr. Takenouchi, a sales representative of the Sumitomo Group. According to Councillor Fujii, the girl was insulted and eventually hit by other children on her way to school because she was “colored.”55
Contrary to popular belief, the Fascists (even strictly within the confines of their own fatherlands) did not agree on everything, nor did they have to do so:
For instance, the prominent historian of East Asian art Otto Kümmel59 implicitly argued against [the] racism toward [the] Japanese in a lecture [that] he gave at the Society for Germanic Pre‐ and Early History: he emphasized the worthiness of the Japanese people by pointing out that their roots went back to Western Europe — hence the Aryan race — in prehistoric times.60 Also, in a lecture entitled “The People and Race of the Great Japanese Empire” given at the DJG and probably also at a lecture‐series open to the public at the Institute for Oriental Languages, Dr. Fritz Härtel stated:
Racial differences are not absolute […] The worth of a race is to be judged less by physical features (i. e. color), than by its cultural and ethical achievements […] Today in the East, Japan is the guardian, not only of the eastern, but also of the western culture‐world[.]61
Most notably, in October 1934, [Fascist] writer and journalist Dr. Johann von Leers produced a twelve‐page “DJG Memorandum on the Question of the Application of the Racial Laws to the Offspring of the German–Japanese Mixed Marriages” (Denkschrift der DJG zur Frage der Anwendung der Rassengetzgebung auf die Abkömmlinge aus deutsch‐japanischen Mischehen).62 > Dated October 25, it was sent the next day by Admiral Paul Behncke, the President of the DJG, to Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Foreign Minister Freiherr von Neurath, Reichsminister and Führer’s Secretary Rudolf Hess, and four days later to Walter Gross, the Head of the Racial Policy Office (Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP). The aim of the Memorandum was to persuade [Reich] authorities to exempt the Japanese from [the] racism toward all non‐Aryans.
This memorandum triggered a debate within the Foreign Ministry. (Admittedly, Dr. Johann von Leers’s status as a respected Fascist, and the fact that the Third Reich was not yet involved in a war, were likely the most important factors that removed the likelihood of any authorities pestering him.) Nevertheless, it is worth noting that even after the Anticomintern Pact’s signature in 1936, the Foreign Ministry failed to affect the Reich’s racial laws.
What is interesting about the laws is that marriages between Germans and Japanese were technically possible (if strongly discouraged, both implicitly and explicitly):
[T]here was no explicit, universal legal restriction on the marriage of a German to a Japanese. As Walter Gross had mentioned in his letter to the DJG, such a marriage was officially highly “unerwünscht” — undesirable. Although this claim came up again and again in [Fascist] papers dealing with race issues, it never became a law.
Several Reich officials drafted a law designed to further tighten restrictions between German gentiles and everybody else, but having already pissed off Tokyo by signing a nonaggression treaty with Moscow, the Fascist bourgeoisie didn’t want to try anything else that might further upset its Imperial ally, so it remained unimplemented. For now, an annoying impediment would have to suffice: bureaucracy.
Japanese capitalists, diplomats, and politicians would suffer no ostensible discrimination while visiting the Third Reich, for obvious reasons. Such tolerance did not always extend to the less ‘important’ people, though:
That racism toward all non‐Aryans had permeated some German communities is evidenced by the experience of Hilde O.122, a half‐Japanese German citizen. She reported to the DJG in January 1936 that she and her Japanese mother had been verbally insulted on the open streets in the rural town of Naumburg, in particular by one retired civil servant and his wife, who yelled after them: “‘Asian, German‐Japanese mish‐mash, African‐Chinese […] Japanese out’, etc.”123
Ms. O. wrote that even their friends had come to alienate them since anybody who interacted with them would be committing a Rassenschande. In such a rural town as Naumburg, she wrote, psychological association between her and a Rassenschande spread so fast that consequently, she was not able to get a job, nor would she be able to marry. Therefore, she requested an official passport‐like certificate proving that she was German.
In a classic liberal maneuver, the Foreign Ministry offered her this advice:
The Foreign Ministry informed O. via DJG that she was definitely not Aryan124, and therefore she should apply to be treated as an exception to the racial laws. This official statement that she was non‐Aryan clearly refuted the often cited rumor that Japanese were “honorary Aryans.” Regarding verbal insults in public, the Ministry advised her to file a libel complaint. As for her employment, Ms. O. would have to have a proof that she was denied a job because of her Japanese descent — i. e. a rejection letter from a company. Evidently, the Foreign Ministry’s response to O.'s case did nothing to improve her situation. What exactly happened with her afterwards is not recorded by the DJG.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Events that happened today (August 30):
1940: The Second Vienna Award reassigned the territory of Northern Transylvania from the Kingdom of Romania to the Kingdom of Hungary.
1941: The Third Reich and the Kingdom of Romania signed the Tighina Agreement, a treaty regarding administration issues of the Transnistria Governorate.
1942: The Battle of Alam el Halfa commenced.
1945: The Axis occupation of Hong Kong came to an end. (Coincidentally, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi Air Force Base while the Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, came into being.)
1954: Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Fascist sympathizer, expired.
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Interesting read, comrade. Thanks for posting. I’ve always been morbidly curious about the relationship of such an overtly white supremacist state aligning with Japan, and I guess this is about what I would expect.
Kind of interesting in the vein of race as a social construct where given the right circumstances, anyone can be drafted into whiteness or excluded from it.
Were Italians considered aryans? I really don’t know what aryan means, I guess. I’ve heard people talk about Italians not being considered white after immigrating and I always privately thought, “what side was Italy on in WW2?” as sort of contradictory to that, though I wouldn’t say that about the Japanese. Probably some American centric problem with my thought.
You are welcome!
Were Italians considered aryans?
That’s a good question! Before the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia in late 1935, relations between Fascist Italy and the Third Reich were mixed at best, thus for a few years many Reich philosophists considered the Italians to have been ‘non‐Aryan’. Quoting from Aaron Gillette’s Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, page 44:
The [anticommunist] ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, building on the ideas of Chamberlain and others, had wondered in his 1927 work The Future of German Foreign Policy (Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik) if the Italians had enough “Aryan” blood in their veins to make the fascist experiment succeed.45 Rosenberg claimed in his address inaugurating the 1934 academic year at the University of Munich that Europe had received its culture “five times consecutively from the ‘Nordic epicentrum.’”46
Rosenberg wrote that the Germans had defended the Aryan race from the legions of Varius, which were not composed of Aryans. Other [NSDAP] writers claimed that Roman law was not a genuine expression of Aryan thought and civilization.47 Nordic racism […] viewed the downfall of the Roman Empire as a consequence of polluted blood. Thus, the Italians were not a pure race, but a motley hybrid of various races, including the black African. Hitler certainly agreed with these sentiments, and informed Mussolini when the two met in June 1934 that all Mediterranean peoples were tainted by [African] blood.48
However, with the gradual improvement in Italo‐German relations throughout the remainder of the Fascist era—both German and Italian Fascists realized that they needed each other—their racial philosophy became more nuanced and they distinguished Northern Italians, an ‘Aryan’ population, from the Southern Italians, a ‘Mediterranean’ one. Page 56:
Mussolini had always resented the inferiority complex many Italians felt based on German and Anglo‐Saxon racial propaganda. By Nordicizing the Italians, he now took an “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude. German propaganda against the non‐Nordic peoples certainly wouldn’t sting if Mussolini decided that the Italians were themselves Nordic. The Italians could now bask in the prestige of the Nordic race, as proclaimed by many of the German, French, and Anglo‐Saxon racist circles.
Mussolini’s […] conviction to assert this racial identity would reach a fever pitch in the summer of 1938, when the racial campaign was launched in earnest. The Aryan element was at that time awkwardly added to the fascist myth in an attempt to translate German martial values into the Italian psyche.
This Nordic transformation was probably aided by his low esteem for Southern Italians, the most indisputably “Mediterranean” element of Italy. Of course, Mussolini was himself a Northerner, from Romagna. Early in his premiership of Italy, Mussolini told Sem Benelli that he had “low esteem for Neapolitans in particular and southerners in general, exclaiming that, from Tuscany on down, the Italians, deep down, were not willing to do anything to be Italians.”39
Thus, after 1936, when [Fascist] Italy was chained ever more tightly to its aggressive German neighbor, and Mussolini felt waves of admiration for the German military juggernaut, we find that the Italian people are transfigured into paragons of the Aryan race.
One of the most striking examples of the new racial orthodoxy transpired during a meeting in June 1938 between Mussolini, Guido Landra, Dino Alfieri, and probably Giuseppe Bottai, the Minister of Education. At the meeting, Mussolini identified himself as a Nordic, and declared that Aryanism would replace Mediterraneanism in fascist propaganda.40
(Emphasis added.)
I once saw several neofascists on a white nationalist forum make a similar contrast between Northern Italians (the ‘good’ ones) and Southern Italians (the ‘bad’ ones), in a thread griping about Italian‐Americans.
I really don’t know what aryan means, I guess.
Page 13:
Friedrich von Schlegel, in 1808, announced that German, Greek, and Latin were derived from Sanskrit. Schlegel concluded that most Europeans and northern Indians must have a common ancestor, which he called the Aryans. Linguistic and historical evidence suggested that the Aryans most likely originated from India or Central Asia, and had migrated as a body to Europe around 1000 BC. These Aryans were thought to embody all the moral and intellectual virtues that had eventually made the Europeans masters of the globe.
Thus began the history of a mythical concept that would cause so much controversy and pathos over the next 150 years. Still, the Aryans remained a great mystery. Were the Aryans one racial group, or simply a linguistic family of varying races? If they were one particular racial group, were they “pure” or “contaminated” by lesser breeds? From precisely where did they originate? What current European people (it being assumed that the Indians were greatly corrupted) had deviated the least from the original Aryan stock? What was the culture of the Aryans, and what of this culture had survived into modern times?
As you can see, even European racial philosophists couldn’t agree on the concept, so don’t feel guilty that you don’t understand it either.
That explains the honorary Aryan.
