Page "Master race" Paragraph 7

The modern concept of the master race in general derives from 19th-century racial theory, which posited a hierarchy of races based on darkness of skin color.

This 19th-century concept was largely initially developed by Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau.

Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed in Nazism, places the black Aboriginal Australians and " African savages " at the bottom of the hierarchy, while the white Northern and Western European Aryans ( consisting of Germans, Finnish, Swedish, Icelanders, Norwegians, Danish, British, French, Northern Italians, Irish and Dutch ) were at the top ; white olive-skinned Southern Europeans ( consisting of the Spanish, Southern Italians, Greeks and Portuguese, i. e. those of what is called the Mediterranean race, which was regarded as another subrace of the Caucasian race ) in the upper middle ranks ; Slavs ( Even though the Slavs are white and of Indo-European ancestry, the Nazis placed them lower on the scale because they were regarded as primarily of the Alpine race rather than the Nordic race, and thus fit only to be peasants.

Also, the Nazis wanted to conquer them and take their land so Nazi Germany could obtain Lebensraum — Nazi propaganda referred to the Slavs as the Untermenschen.

) and those of the olive-skinned Semitic race ( another subrace of the Caucasian race ) in the middle ranks ( it was because the Jews, being Semites, were clever that they were so dangerous — they had their own plan for Jewish world domination, a conspiracy that had to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans, declared the Nazis ); and those of the yellow Mongoloid race ( including its offshoots the brown Malayan race and the red American Indian race ), the Dravidian race, the Hamitic race ( regarded as another subrace of the Caucasian race ), and mixed-race people such as Eurasians, the bronze Mestizos, Mulattos, Afro-Asians, and Zambos in the lower middle ranks.