Contrary to sustained efforts, the search for the 'Aryan' blood did not materialise into the racial utopia that the Nazi officials had dreamed. This book portrays how the personal motivations of blood scientists influenced their professional research, ultimately demonstrating how conceptually indeterminate and politically volatile the science of race was under the Nazi regime.

In Nazi Germany between the years 1940 and 1944, proof of your Aryan or Semitic roots meant the difference between life and death. How this inhuman and intrinsically absurd theory of racial superiority originated and how it took hold of the German imagination makes for a fascinating, scholarly study. Tracing the origins of the Aryan Myth in the West, the author shows how in the heyday of nationalism, most European people developed legends glorifying their high born ancestry. He shows how these legends developed into pseudoscientific theories, which treated Europeans as the norm and other peoples as inferior--until in 19th-century Germany they culminated in the concept of a superior Germanic "race" in contrast to the inferior Jewish "race." This cultural study sheds horrifying new light on the philosophy that "justified" the mass extermination of millions of "subhumans" during World War II.--From publisher description.

Madman, tyrant, animal—history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler's political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust.

Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, is a perennial bestseller in India, with even street-side bookstalls prominently displaying stacks of it. The name 'Hitler' -- anathema almost everywhere else in the world -- is tossed about casually in the Indian subcontinent, not infrequently invoked in praise. Many Indians still harbour the notion that the Fuhrer was a friend of the Indian people and had extended wholehearted support to their freedom struggle. To journalist Vaibhav Purandare, this clearly suggested that Indians continued to be largely unaware of the German dictator's views on India, in spite of the fact that they are unambiguously expressed in his own writings. This lacuna spurred him on to delve into the archives -- in Germany, India and elsewhere. The result of Purandare's research is this comprehensive and painstaking portrait and analysis of Hitler's outlook on India and its people, his opinion of their struggle against the British Raj, and his take on Indian history, culture and civilisation. Also within these pages are surprising details of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's entanglement with the Reich, the experience of other Indians living in Nazi Germany, the mission that Hitler sent to the Himalayas in search of 'pure-blood Aryans', and a number of other little-known historical nuggets. Accessible and rich in detail, Hitler and India is the very first examination of what India meant to a figure who, perplexingly, remains quite alive in the country.

The notion of a superior ‘Germanic’ or ‘Nordic’ race was a central theme in Nazi ideology. But it was also a commonly accepted idea in the early twentieth century, an actual scientific concept originating from anthropological research on the physical characteristics of Europeans. The Scandinavian Peninsula was considered to be the historical cradle and the heartland of this ‘master race’. Measuring the Master Race investigates the role played by Scandinavian scholars in inventing this so-called superior race, and discusses how the concept stamped Norwegian physical anthropology, prehistory, national identity and the eugenics movement. It also explores the decline and scientific discrediting of these ideas in the 1930s as they came to be associated with the genetic cleansing of Nazi Germany. This is the first comprehensive study of Norwegian physical anthropology. Its findings shed new light on current political and scientific debates about race across the globe.