Untermench -

The Untermensch concept was not mere rhetoric; it had legal force. Under the Nuremberg Laws (1935), Jews were stripped of citizenship, but the Untermensch doctrine went further: it declared that certain groups had no claim to humane treatment under any law. In occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, SS courts refused to prosecute German soldiers for killing Untermenschen unless the killing harmed military discipline. Himmler’s 1941 “Commissar Order” explicitly ordered the execution of Soviet political commissars as “bearers of the subhuman Bolshevik ideology.”

Education was key. Hitler Youth manuals included chapters on “Racial Hygiene” that taught children to identify Untermenschen by skull shape, nose form, and behavior. One school exercise asked: “Why must the German people fear the Untermensch ? Answer: Because he breeds faster, lives like an animal, and will drown our culture in his filth.” untermench