Misplaced Pages

#624375

90-454: One thousand and sixteen people, of whom the largest number were Poles, were burned alive or shot trying to escape. The crime was discovered two days later by Company F, 2nd Battalion, 405th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 102nd Infantry Division , when the U.S. Army occupied the area. Eleven prisoners were found alive – seven Poles, three Russians and a Frenchman. The testimonies of survivors were collected and published by Melchior Wańkowicz in 1969, in

180-469: A conspiracy which needed to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans). Slavs such as Poles and Russians were not considered Aryans; and neither were the members of the Mongoloid race (including its offshoots such as Malayans , American Indians ) and mixed-race people such as Eurasians , the bronze Mestizos , Mulattos , Afro-Asians , and Zambos were placed in its lower middle ranks. However,

270-523: A program to systematically genetically enhance the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program of Nazi eugenics , based on the eugenics laws of the US state of California, to create a super race . The modern concept of the master race is generally derived from a 19th-century racial theory , which posited a hierarchy of races that was based on darkness of skin colour . This 19th-century concept

360-502: A Slavic " Untermensch " accompanied their political goals, and it was particularly aimed at Poles and Russians . Germany's immediate goal was Drang nach Osten or expansion into the East, which was the first phase in its ultimate plan to conquer Europe, and Ukraine 's " chernozem " (black earth) soil was regarded as a particularly desirable zone for colonization by the " Herrenvolk " ( listen ) ("master people"). In relation to

450-473: A copy of Schopenhauer's book The World as Will and Representation with him wherever he went throughout World War I . The postulated superiority of these people was said to make them born leaders, or a "master race". Other authors included Guido von List , his associate Lanz von Liebenfels , and the British-born German racial theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain , all of whom felt that

540-560: A danger to the Aryan or Germanic master race. According to the Nazi secret Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost , the Slavic population was to be removed from Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination, except for a small percentage who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus suitable for Germanisation . Early attempts to claim

630-409: A medal for his work in anthropology. Although the physical ideal of these racial theorists was typically the tall, fair-haired , and light-eyed Nordic individual, such theorists accepted the fact that a considerable variety of hair and eye colour existed within the racial categories they recognised. For example, Adolf Hitler and many Nazi officials had dark hair and were still considered members of

720-529: A racial division between "masters" and "slaves", or the belief that a nation's ruling class is biologically superior to its ruled subjects, were made in the 18th century. Henri de Boulainvilliers in his book History of the Ancient Government of France (published posthumously in 1727) tried to prove that in France, the nobility represented the descendants of the old Frankish ruling class, whereas

810-444: A train into an empty barn measuring approximately a hundred by fifty feet on the outskirts of the town. The barn was then set afire, killing those inside. About 1,016 people were killed. However, two men survived, buried under a shield of dead bodies, protecting them from the gunfire and flames. When the first soldiers arrived at the barn, the two came crawling out from under the dead and burning bodies. Major General Keating ordered that

900-402: A way to improve and maintain the purity of the Aryan master race. Eugenics was a concept adhered to by many thinkers in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, such as Margaret Sanger , Marie Stopes , H. G. Wells , Woodrow Wilson , Theodore Roosevelt , Madison Grant , Émile Zola , George Bernard Shaw , John Maynard Keynes , John Harvey Kellogg , Linus Pauling , and Sidney Webb . In 1908,

990-754: Is located at the historic scene of the massacre of Gardelegen. It is a reminder of the 1016 concentration camp prisoners from many European countries who were murdered there on 13 April 1945 in a field barn near the Hanseatic city of Gardelegen. The site also includes the Memorial Cemetery, where the victims of the massacre are buried. A new visitor/documentation centre with a permanent exhibition opened in 2020. 52°32′16″N 11°25′19″E  /  52.53778°N 11.42194°E  / 52.53778; 11.42194 102nd Infantry Division (United States) The 102nd Infantry Division (" Ozark ")

SECTION 10

#1732783131625

1080-458: Is never the expression of superior or inferior, but alien racial admixtures. For the "Greater Aryan certificate" Germans had to prove that as far back as January 1, 1800 "none of their paternal nor their maternal ancestors had Jewish or coloured blood". SS officers had to prove this reaching back to 1750. During a speech he made in 1936, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said: Today arises in young and old, high and low, poor and rich,

1170-607: The Aryan certificate . This document, which was required by law for all citizens of the Reich, was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" ( Kleiner Ariernachweis ) and could be obtained through an Ahnenpass , which required the owner to trace their lineage through baptism , birth certificates, or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent". The Slavs , Roma , and Jews were defined as being racially inferior and non-Aryan " Untermenschen ", and were thus considered to be

1260-513: The Aryan race under Nazi racial doctrine, because the determination of an individual's racial type depended on a preponderance of many characteristics in an individual rather than on just one defining feature. Hitler and Himmler planned to use the SS as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism. The SS was to be a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities. Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936)

1350-572: The Mediterranean Sea , while the peoples of Northern Europe and Western Europe remained pure. Proponents of the Nordicism further argued that Nordic peoples had developed an innate toughness and determination due to the harsh, challenging climate in which they evolved. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the earliest proponents of a theory presenting a hierarchical racial model of history, attributing civilisational primacy to

1440-746: The Mediterranean race , were regarded as another sub-race of the Caucasian race ) and placed in its upper middle ranks; and the Semitic and Hamitic races (supposed sub-races of the Caucasian race) were placed in its lower-middle ranks (because the Jews, were Semites , the Nazis believed their cleverness made them extremely dangerous – they had their own plan for Jewish world domination ,

1530-484: The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 forbade sexual relations and marriage between an "Aryan" and a "non-Aryan" in order to maintain the purity of the Aryan race. Such relations became a punishable crime which was known as Rassenschande or "racial shame". The League of German Girls was particularly required to instruct girls to avoid Rassenschande because according to Nazism, maintaining racial purity

1620-520: The " Nordic race " was descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans , who he believed had pre-historically dwelt on the North German Plain and may have ultimately originated on the lost island of Atlantis . The Nazis declared that the Aryans were superior to all other races, and believed they were entitled to expand territorially. The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in

1710-460: The "inferior races" and "subgeneation" to describe the ‘normal’ relation of such inferior races to whites, something which he considered to be the "very corner-stone of democracy"; but these words never entered the dictionary. The racial term Untermensch originates from the title of Klansman Lothrop Stoddard 's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man . It

1800-580: The "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous north. The highest civilisation and culture, apart from the Ancient Indians and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Incas, and

1890-409: The 'under man.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."] The origins of the Nazi version of the master race theory were in the 19th-century racial theories of Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau , who argued that cultures degenerated when distinct races mixed. It was believed at this time that the peoples of Southern Europe were racially mixed with the non-European Moors from across

SECTION 20

#1732783131625

1980-440: The 102d Army Reserve Command was formed as a regional headquarters for Army Reserve units within the same general area where the 102d Infantry Division had been located, the shoulder sleeve insignia was authorized for wear by units of the 102d ARCOM, such as the military police unit stationed at Richards Gebaur AFB near Belton, Missouri . The lineage of the 102d Division is perpetuated by the 102d Training Division. The division

2070-471: The 1920s and 1930s Harry S. Truman , a lieutenant colonel in the Officers' Reserve Corps, commanded the division's 1st Battalion, 379th Field Artillery Regiment. After promotion to colonel , Truman advanced to command of the 379th Field Artillery Regiment. Before Organized Reserve infantry divisions were ordered into active military service, they were reorganized on paper as "triangular" divisions under

2160-442: The 1940 tables of organization. The headquarters companies of the two infantry brigades were consolidated into the division's cavalry reconnaissance troop, and one infantry regiment was removed by inactivation. The field artillery brigade headquarters and headquarters battery became the headquarters and headquarters battery of the division artillery. Its three field artillery regiments were reorganized into four battalions; one battalion

2250-654: The Army of the United States U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950 . United States Army Center of Military History . Master Race Final solution Parties The master race (German: Herrenrasse ) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative " Aryan race " is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as " Herrenmenschen " ("master humans"). The Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg believed that

2340-475: The Aryan race, and, indeed, all races, he saw the Nordic or Teutonic peoples. The " Übermensch " (German) ("Overman" or "Superman") is a concept in the philosophy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche  – he posited the " Übermensch " as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra ). However, Nietzsche never developed

2430-656: The German forces defending the town of Gardelegen into believing that American tanks were approaching the city. This induced the German commander to surrender to the American forces. The Americans arrived at the site before the Germans had time to bury all of the bodies. On April 3–4, following the U.S. Army 's crossing of the Rhine River and push into Germany , the SS camp administration at Dora-Mittelbau had ordered

2520-586: The Holocaust . The Nazis also undertook measures to increase the number of Nordics in Germany. The Lebensborn program was only open to German women who fit the Nordic profile. During the Nazi occupation of Poland , the Nazis took young Nordic-looking Polish children who were classified as being descended from ethnic German settlers in order to determine whether or not they were "racially valuable". If that were

2610-587: The Japanese were considered honorary Aryans . In their attempt to scientifically prove the racial inferiority of Slavs , German (and Austrian) racial scientists were forced to gloss over their findings which consistently proved that Early Slavs were dolicocephalic and fair haired, i.e., "Nordic", while the South Slavic "Dinaric" sub-race was often viewed favourable. Nazis used the term "Slavic race", and considered Slavs to be non-Aryan. The concept of

2700-727: The Nazis were responsible for this crime. Others will point to the Gestapo. The responsibility rests with neither — it is the responsibility of the German people....Your so-called Master Race has demonstrated that it is master only of crime, cruelty and sadism. You have lost the respect of the civilized world. An investigation was undertaken by Lieutenant Colonel Edward E. Cruise, Investigating Officer, Ninth Army War Crimes Branch. Text of Lieutenant Colonel Cruise's report and text of other exhibits are stored in US Army file 000-12-242. SS- Untersturmführer Erhard Brauny  [ de ] ,

2790-453: The Nazis' belief in racial purity , author and historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote: In the hierarchy of Nazi racism, the "Aryans" were the superior race, destined to rule the world after the destruction of their racial arch-foe, the Jews. The lesser races over whom the Germans would rule included the Slavs – Poles, Russians, Ukrainians. ... Hitler's racial policy with regard to the Slavs, to

Gardelegen massacre - Misplaced Pages Continue

2880-529: The Nineteenth Century . Expanding upon Gobineau's earlier theories, he argued that Western civilization is deeply marked by the influence of the Teutonic peoples. Chamberlain grouped all European peoples – not just Germans, but Celts , Slavs , Greeks , and Latins  – into the " Aryan race ", a race built on the ancient Proto-Indo-European culture. At the helm of

2970-539: The Old Customhouse. The headquarters remained there until activated for World War II. To encourage esprit de corps, the division adopted the nickname “ Ozark ” after the mountainous region that ran through both states, and the division staff published a newsletter titled “Ozark.” The division formed rapidly and by November 1922, it had 95 percent of the officers as required by its peacetime tables of organization. The designated mobilization and training station for

3060-511: The Revolution, and many of our ablest and most influential men were active in recommending it, and in devising plans for the accomplishment of it. The Legislature encouraged and facilitated emancipation by the owners, and many slaves were so emancipated. The leaning of the courts of justice was always in favorem libertatis . This disposition continued until the impracticability of effecting a general emancipation, without incalculable mischief to

3150-622: The Roer, 4–19 December, the division took over the XIII Corps sector from the Wurm River, north of the village of Wurm, to Barmen on the south, and trained for river crossing. On 23 February 1945, the 102d attacked across the Roer ( Operation Grenade ), advanced toward Lövenich and Erkelenz , bypassed Mönchengladbach , took Krefeld , 3 March, and reached the Rhine . During March the division

3240-537: The Seventh Corps Area, the 102nd Division did not participate in the various Seventh Corps Area maneuvers and the Fourth Army maneuvers of 1937, 1940, and 1941 as an organized unit due to lack of enlisted personnel and equipment. Instead, the officers and a few enlisted reservists were assigned to Regular and Guard units to fill vacant slots and bring the units up to war strength for the exercises. In

3330-525: The Southern press bragged that Northern soldiers would "encounter a master race" and knowledge of this fact would cause Northern soldiers' "knees to tremble". The Richmond Whig in 1862 proclaimed that "the master race of this continent is found in the southern states", and in 1863 the Richmond Examiner stated that "there are slave races born to serve, master races born to govern". In

3420-452: The United States. Tocqueville, who rejected the book in spite of his friendship with Gobineau, pointed out to him that this was because the book was in accord with the slave owners' interests in the Southern states. However, in the 1880s the book gained popularity in Germany thanks to the efforts of Cosima Wagner . In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain , a Germanophile Englishman and Cosima Wagner's son-in-law, published The Foundations of

3510-488: The active units of the 7th Division . For example, the division’s artillery trained at Fort Riley; the 327th Engineer Regiment also trained at Fort Riley with Troop A, 9th Engineer Squadron; the 327th Medical Regiment trained at the Medical Corps training camp at Fort Snelling , Minnesota ; and the 327th Observation Squadron trained with the 16th Observation Squadron at Marshall Army Airfield , Kansas. In addition to

3600-516: The ancestors of the ancient Germanic tribes , who shared their warrior values. Rosenberg opposed Christianity because to him, it was an alien Semitic slave-morality which was inappropriate for the warrior Aryan master race and in its place, he supported a melange of aspects of Hindu Vedic and Zoroastrian teachings (both of these religions were organised by Aryans), along with pre-Christian European Odinistic paganism , which he also considered distinctively Aryan in character. In Nazi Germany ,

3690-440: The black savage from his native land, Trains for each purpose his barbarian mind, By slavery tamed, enlightened, and refined; Instructs him, from a master-race, to draw Wise modes of polity and forms of law, Imbues his soul with faith, his heart with love, Shapes all his life by dictates from above where the phrase denotes the relation between the white masters and negro slaves. By 1860 Virginian author George Fitzhugh

Gardelegen massacre - Misplaced Pages Continue

3780-491: The bodies and the barn, and kill any survivors of the blaze. The swift advance of the 102nd Infantry Division, however, prevented the SS and its accomplices from completely carrying out this plan. On April 14, the 102nd entered Gardelegen and, the following day, discovered the atrocity. They found 1,016 corpses in the still-smoldering barn and nearby trenches, where the SS had the charred remains dumped. They also interviewed several of

3870-506: The book From Stołpców to Cairo . Gardelegen became a part of the newly established German Democratic Republic in 1947 and is now in Saxony-Anhalt , Germany. The discovery of the massacre seems to have been by chance. The consensus account is that American Lieutenant Emerson Hunt, a liaison officer between 102nd Infantry Division headquarters and the 701st Tank Battalion, was captured by German forces on April 14, 1945, and bluffed

3960-488: The case, the young children were taken back to these Lebensborn houses so they could be raised as Germans. In Nazi Germany, the Aryan certificate was an official document which certified that its owner was an Aryan. Aryan certificates could also be obtained by citizens of other countries. In its section which is titled Racial Tenet ( Rassegrundsatz ), the Aryan certificate states: In line with national socialist thinking which does full justice to all other peoples, there

4050-431: The concept on racial grounds. Instead, the " Übermensch " "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal". Nazism distorted the concept's real meaning in order to make it fit its 'master race' view. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was postulated that Indo-Europeans (who were generally referred to as " Aryans ") made up the highest branch of humanity because their civilization

4140-591: The country of the intellectually disabled or those who were born with genetic deficiencies , as well as those who were deemed racially inferior, the T-4 Euthanasia Program was administered by Karl Brandt , one of Hitler's personal physicians. Additionally, a program of compulsory sterilisation was also implemented and as a result of it, forced operations were performed on hundreds of thousands of individuals. Many of these policies are generally seen as being related to what eventually became known as

4230-730: The country, and thus the idea of a racially pure Frankish lineage was fraudulent. In 1855, French count Arthur de Gobineau published his infamous work An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races . Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use of ethnography to defend the Ancien Régime against the claims of the Third Estate , Gobineau divides the human species into three major groupings, white, yellow and black, claiming to demonstrate that "history springs only from contact with

4320-524: The division assumed responsibility for the sector from the Wurm to Waurichen . A realignment of sectors and the return of elements placed the 102nd in full control of its units for the first time, 24 November 1944, as it prepared for an attack to the Roer . The attack jumped off, 29 November, and carried the division to the river through Welz, Flossdorf, and Linnich . After a period of aggressive patrolling along

4410-790: The division outposted the Elbe River, 48 miles from Berlin, its advance halted on orders. Storkau experienced fighting on the 16th, EHRA on the 21st along with Fallersleben . On 3 May 1945 the 102nd shook hands with the Russian 156th Division just outside Berlin. On 15 April the division discovered a war crime in Gardelegen : the Isenschnibbe Barn Atrocity . About 1,200 prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora and Hannover-Stöcken concentration camps were forced from

4500-482: The division was Fort Riley, Kansas . The headquarters and staff usually trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas . The subordinate infantry regiments of the division held their summer training primarily with the 17th Infantry Regiment at Fort Leavenworth. Other units, such as the special troops, artillery, engineers, aviation, medical, and quartermaster, trained at various posts in the Sixth and Seventh Corps Areas, often with

4590-702: The division's headquarters and military police company, which had previously been a combined unit, was split. The 102nd Infantry Division, under the command of Major General Frank A. Keating , arrived on the Western Front in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) at Cherbourg , France , 23 September 1944, and, after a short period of training near Valognes , moved to the German- Netherlands border. On 26 October, elements attached to other divisions entered combat and on 3 November

SECTION 50

#1732783131625

4680-661: The end of hostilities in Europe, then moved to Gotha for occupation duty. On 1 June 1959, the division was reorganized as a Pentomic Division. The division's three infantry regiments were inactivated and their elements reorganized into five infantry battle groups. On 1 April 1963, the division was reorganized as a Reorganization Objective Army Division (ROAD). Three Brigade Headquarters were activated and Infantry units were reorganized into battalions: Two additional Battle Groups were also formed: The division and subordinate elements were inactivated on 31 December 1965. Later, when

4770-619: The evacuation of prisoners from the main camp and a number of its affiliated subcamps. The goal was to transport the inmates by train or by foot to the other north German concentration camps: Bergen-Belsen , Sachsenhausen , or Neuengamme . Within days, some 4,000 people held in the Mittelbau-Dora, its satellite camps, and from the Neuengamme subcamp Hannover-Stöcken arrived in the Gardelegen area, where they had to deboard from

4860-685: The experience of slavery and the pseudo-scientific justifications for racial slavery , but also on the relations between whites in the South and North , particularly during the American Civil War . Benjamin W. Leigh , representing Virginia in the United States Senate , said in a speech of January 19, 1836: There has been in Virginia as earnest a desire to abolish slavery as exists any where at this day. It commenced with

4950-462: The extent that it was formulated, was "depopulation." The Slavs were to be prevented from procreating, except to provide the necessary continuing supply of slave laborers." In the United States, the concept of 'master race' arose within the context of master-slave race relations in the slavery-based society of historical America – particularly in the South in the mid-19th century. It was based upon both

5040-892: The first "Better Babies" competition was held at the Louisiana State Fair. Babies were judged using standards pertaining to livestock: height, weight, unblemished skin, well-formed fingers, lack of unnecessary fat, and cooperative behavior. The purpose was to develop child-breeding health standards. At the Kansas State Fair beginning in 1920, a "Fitter Family" contest, sponsored by the American Eugenics Society 's Committee on Popular Education, family members had to submit an "Abridged Record of Family Traits" and were then administered physical and psychological examinations to determine their "fitness", or eugenic health. Contestants received letter grades and

5130-510: The freight cars because the trains could not advance any further due to air raid damage to the rail lines. Greatly outnumbered by the prisoners, the SS guards began recruiting auxiliary forces from the local fire department, the air force, the aged home guard , the Hitler Youth , and other organizations to watch over the inmates. On April 13, more than a thousand prisoners, many of them sick and too weak to march any further, were taken from

5220-427: The local commander of the 102nd ordered between 200 and 300 men from the town of Gardelegen to give the murdered prisoners a proper burial. Over the next few days, the German civilians exhumed 586 bodies from the trenches and recovered 430 bodies from the barn, placing each in an individual grave. On April 25, the 102nd carried out a ceremony to honor the dead and erected a memorial tablet to the victims, which stated that

5310-541: The master race, and danger of utter destruction to the other, and the evils consequent on partial emancipations, became too obvious to the Legislature, and to the great majority of the people, to be longer disregarded. The Oxford English Dictionary records that William J. Grayson used the phrase "master race" in his poem The Hireling and the Slave (1855): For these great ends hath Heaven’s supreme command Brought

5400-598: The nearby civilian population be forced to view the site and to disinter and rebury the victims in a new cemetery. After digging the graves and burying the bodies, they erected a cross or a Star of David over each grave and enclosed the site with a white fence. Today both the former crime scene and the Cemetery of Honour are parts of the Isenschnibbe Barn Memorial Gardelegen. The division patrolled and maintained defensive positions until

5490-514: The parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilisation. Despite this, he was adamantly against differing treatment of races, was fervently anti-slavery, supporting the abolitionist movement in the United States. He describes the treatment of "[our] innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into [the slave master's] devilish clutches" as "belonging to the blackest pages of mankind's criminal record". Hans Frank , Hitler's personal lawyer, stated that Hitler carried

SECTION 60

#1732783131625

5580-547: The prisoners who had managed to escape the fire and the shootings. U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers soon arrived to document the Nazi crime and by April 19, 1945, the story of the Gardelegen massacre began appearing in the Western press. On that day, both the New York Times and The Washington Post ran stories on the massacre, quoting one American soldier who stated: I never was so sure before of exactly what I

5670-617: The remaining wall of the barn, applied by officials of the German Democratic Republic, reads: You stand in front of the ruins of a barn, where one of the most cruel crimes of fascism was taking place. In the night of their liberation, a few hours before Allied forces approach, 1016 international fighters of resistance against fascism were brutally and inhumanely burned alive. Whenever you feel apathy or weakness in fighting against fascism and imperialistic threat of war, get new power from our unforgettable dead. The memorial

5760-526: The rest of the population was descended from the subject Gauls . Therefore, two qualitatively different races were confronting one another, and the only way to abolish the superiority of the Franks was to destroy their civilization. Classical liberal theorists such as Volney and Sieyès discredited this theory by showing that the French nobility consisted mostly of nouveaux riches who came from all parts of

5850-414: The rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is because necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for

5940-419: The town of Gardelegen to a large barn on the Isenschnibbe estate and forced inside the building. The assembled guards then barricaded the doors and set fire to gasoline-soaked straw. Those who escaped the conflagration by digging under the barn's walls were killed by the guards. The next day, the SS and local auxiliaries returned to dispose of the evidence of their crime. They planned to incinerate what remained of

6030-460: The townspeople of Gardelegen are charged with the responsibility that the "graves are forever kept as green as the memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the hearts of freedom-loving men everywhere." Also on April 25, Colonel George Lynch addressed German civilians at Gardelegen with the following statement: The German people have been told that stories of German atrocities were Allied propaganda. Here, you can see for yourself. Some will say that

6120-423: The transport leader for the prisoners evacuated from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp who subsequently wound up in Gardelegen, appeared before the Dachau Military Tribunal in 1947, and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died of leukemia in 1950. Statements of the survivors were gathered by Polish writer Melchior Wańkowicz and published in 1969. Gardelegen is now a national memorial, which

6210-410: The unit training camps, the infantry regiments of the division rotated responsibility to conduct the Citizens Military Training Camps held at Fort Leavenworth each year. On a number of occasions, the division participated in Seventh Corps Area and Fourth Army command post exercises in conjunction with other Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserve units. Unlike the Regular and Guard units in

6300-501: The white race in general, and Germanic peoples in particular, were superior to others, given the purification of both the white race and the German people from the other races which were "polluting" them, a new millenarian age of Aryan god-men would arrive. Nazi policy stressed the superiority of the Germanic " Übermenschen " ("superhuman") Nordic race , a sub-race of the white Caucasian race European population defined by anthropometric models of racial difference. The Nordic race

6390-411: The white races." Among the white races, he distinguishes the Aryan race as the pinnacle of human development, the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable miscegenation led to the "downfall of civilizations". Gobineau's influence was slight at first. In his letters to Alexis de Tocqueville , he complained that his book was being hushed up in France and was having a real effect only in

6480-437: The will that the German nation must again be a world people. All of us are convinced of it: we must participate in the ruling of the world. We must become a master race, and therefore we must educate our people to be a master race. This must begin with the smallest child, who must be educated in this master-ethic. In 1943, Reichskommissar for Ukraine Erich Koch reminded Germans: We are a master race, which must remember that

6570-749: The winners – almost always white and of Western and Northern European background – were awarded trophies. Some years later, contestants in the Miss America contest beginning in 1935 were required to be "of the white race" and had to submit a detailed account of their ancestry; those who had backgrounds connecting them to the Pilgrims' arrival on the Mayflower or the American Revolutionary War received an advantage. The Nazis took this concept to an extreme by establishing

6660-598: The word Iran (from Middle Persian Ērān , " the Ēr s ") is the Persian word for [the land/place of] the Aryans . Following the ideas of Gobineau and others, the Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg determined that these people, who, he claimed, were originally from Atlantis , were a dynamic warrior people who dwelt in northern climates on the North German Plain in prehistoric times , from which they migrated southeast by riding their chariots , eventually reaching Ukraine , Iran , and then India. They were supposed to be

6750-566: The works of John H. Van Evrie , a Northern supporter of the Confederacy , the term was interchangeable with white supremacy , notably in White Supremacy and Negro Subordination, Or, Negroes a Subordinate Race and (so-called) slavery its normal condition (1861). In Subgeneation: the theory of the normal relations of the races; an answer to miscegenation (1864) Van Evrie created the words "subgen" to describe what he considered to be

6840-817: Was a unit of the United States Army in World War II . The unit is currently active as the 102nd Training Division (Maneuver Support) . The division was constituted in the Organized Reserve on 24 June 1921, allotted to the Seventh Corps Area , and assigned to the XVII Corps, with Arkansas and Missouri as its home area. The headquarters was organized on 2 September 1921 at 3rd and Olive Streets in St. Louis , and relocated in 1923 to

6930-480: Was acknowledged by Günther in his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Racial Science of the German People") from 1922, in which he described the German people as being made up of all five of his European racial categories: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric , Alpine , and East Baltic . Most official Nazi comments on the Nordic race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with

7020-495: Was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. His concept of the Mediterranean race became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century. The term Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit word (ā́rya), which is derived from arya , the original Indo-Iranian autonym . Also,

7110-472: Was fighting for. Before this you would have said those stories were propaganda , but now you know they weren't. There are the bodies and all those guys are dead. Eleven prisoners survived the burning of the barn and were found alive by U.S. soldiers – seven Poles, three Russians and one severely wounded Frenchman. According to eyewitnesses, 20 men who participated in the massacre were summarily executed by U.S. soldiers after being identified. On April 21, 1945,

7200-652: Was initially developed by Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau . Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed in Nazism , placed black Indigenous Australians and Equatorial Africans at the bottom of the hierarchy, while white Northern and Western Europeans (which consisted of Germans , Swedes , Icelanders , Norwegians , Danes , British, Irish , Dutch , Belgian and Northern French) were placed at its top; olive skinned white Southern Europeans (who consisted of Southern French, Portuguese , Spaniards , Italians, Romanians , and Greeks , i.e., those who were called

7290-409: Was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925). An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by " coloured " peoples to white civilization, with his most famous book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. Alfred Rosenberg

7380-584: Was on the defensive along the Rhine, its sector extending from Homburg south to Düsseldorf . Crossing the river on 9 April on pontoon bridge, the division attacked in the Wesergebirge , meeting stiff opposition. After 3 days and nights of terrific enemy resistance Wilsede and Hessisch-Oldendorf fell, 12 April 1945, and the 102d pushed on to the Elbe , meeting little resistance. Breitenfeld fell, 15 April, and

7470-579: Was particularly important for young females. Aryans found guilty of this crime could face incarceration in a concentration camp, while non-Aryans could even face the death penalty. The Nazis recognized the Germanic people as the master race, and several policies were implemented in order to improve and maintain the Germanic-Nordic ubermenschen Aryan "master race," including the practice of eugenics . In order to eliminate "defective" citizens and rid

7560-430: Was reactivated on September 16, 2008 as the 102nd Training Division; with headquarters concurrently activated at Fort Snelling , Minnesota . The division's location was changed on April 1, 2017 to Fort Leonard Wood , Missouri , As of 2017 the following units are subordinated to the division: [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from The Army Almanac: A Book of Facts Concerning

7650-638: Was rearranged by East Germany from 1952 till 1971. The sign at the cemetery, founded by the U.S. Army, reads: Here lie 1016 allied prisoners of war who were murdered by their captors. They were buried by citizens of Gardelegen, who are charged with responsibility that graves are for- ever kept as green as the memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the hearts of freedom-loving men everywhere. Established under supervision of 102nd Infantry Division, United States Army. Vandalism will be punished by maximum penalties under laws of military government. Frank A. Keating Major General, U.S.A. Commanding The sign at

7740-734: Was said to comprise only of the Germanic peoples : Scandinavians and the rest of the Nordic countries (Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, and Faroese), ethnic Germans (including Austrians , Banat Swabians , as well as Sudeten , Baltic and Volga Germans ), Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Luxembourgers, the Dutch, Flemings, Afrikaners, Frisians and the English. The Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther first defined "Nordic thought" in his programmatic book Der Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen . The fact that Germans were not purely Nordic

7830-473: Was taken from each of the two 75 mm gun regiments to form two 105 mm howitzer battalions, the brigade's ammunition train was reorganized as the third 105 mm howitzer battalion, and the 155 mm howitzer battalion was formed from the 155 mm howitzer regiment. The engineer, medical, and quartermaster regiments were reorganized into battalions. In 1942, divisional quartermaster battalions were split into ordnance light maintenance companies and quartermaster companies, and

7920-543: Was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard. As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Referring to Russian communists, Rosenbeg wrote in his Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930) that "this is the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called

8010-435: Was the most technologically advanced. This reasoning was simultaneously intertwined with Nordicism , which proclaimed that the " Nordic race " was the "purest" form of the Aryan race . Today, this view is regarded as a form of scientific racism and contradicts the belief in racial equality by advocating the view that one race is superior to all other races. Eugenics came to play a prominent role in this racial thought as

8100-427: Was using the "challenging phrase 'master race', which soon came to mean considerably more than the ordinary master-slave relationship". Fitzhugh, along with a number of southern writers, used the term to differentiate Southerners from Northerners, based on the dichotomy that Southerners were supposedly descendants of Normans / Cavaliers whereas Northerners were descendants of Anglo-Saxons / Puritans . In 1861,

#624375