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I was going through this article on the Greek Genocide (1914-1922), and stumbled upon this quote from the 1935 publication, Ankara: An interpretation of the new becoming in Turkey, by Norbert Bischoff:

"Only through the annihilation of the Greek and the Armenian tribes in Anatolia was the creation of a Turkish national state and the formation of an unflawed Turkish body of society within one state possible."

which is found in the book Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination by Stefan Ihrig. The word "tribes" picked my interest quite a bit, and I was wondering if there are any sources on the general racial views that the Nazis had towards the Greeks. I would really appreciate it if anyone (perhaps an expert on racial issues in Europe?) could provide a summary on this with relevant sources. Apparently, simple googling does not bring up anything particularly insightful.

EDITS

  1. Edit 1 (13/12): @Lucian spotted that the quote is not from a Nazi publication, but from a book by Norbert Bischoff, who did not subscribe to the Nazi ideology. I believe that the Wikipedia article's use of the source is incorrect (which is not particularly surprising). Admittedly, the motivation to ask the question from the quote seems a bit off now, but the question still remains.
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    This is my second question on this website, and just like my first one, I got an instant downvote. To the people (or person) that do (does) this, it would be kind of you to explain in the comments why this is not a "good" question, at least with respect to the website's standards. You can also flag this and I will be notified immediately and see what I can change. I am writing about this because I am quite confident that the question is not a duplicate and is quite specific. Thank you.
    – Andreas Mastronikolis
    Dec 13, 2021 at 3:00
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    Seems a reasonable question to me, that I myself was not easily able to answer at all just by googling-around...
    – paul garrett
    Dec 13, 2021 at 3:06
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    this quote from a 1925 Nazi publication - It's from Norbert Bischoff's 1935 book Ankara. Eine Deutung des neuen Werdens in der Türkei, as can be seen on page 285, containing note 63 to page 184.
    – Lucian
    Dec 13, 2021 at 4:37
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    be careful with double negation: (which is not particularly unsurprising) means about the same as (which is surprising). This is probably not your intention.
    – Evargalo
    Dec 13, 2021 at 9:09
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    @Evargalo Thank you for the catch! Indeed, not my intention. I just corrected it.
    – Andreas Mastronikolis
    Dec 13, 2021 at 9:26

1 Answer 1

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Hitler and the Nazis admired ancient Greeks, who they considered "Nordic" conquerors (thus justifying Nazi Germany co-opting classicism). Their modern descendants, however, not so much. Nazi racial theory asserts that the Ancient Greece declined due to the Nordic ruling class interbreeding with "Asiatic" slaves.

The 1933 Directives for History Textbooks for example says:

With the suppression of distinctions between the castes through democracy and the rapid, increasing racial miscegenation that it caused, accentuated to an even further degree by population decline, the fate of the Nordic race in Greece was sealed, and the decline of Greek civilization metastasized so rapidly that in hardly two hundred years the Greek people were reduced to the most utter insignificance.

So basically the Nazis thought the Greeks were their degenerate, bastardised cousins.

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  • "Degenerate" was probably too harsh, but they considered Mediterranean and Balkan people as being lower than "true" Europeans, but higher than Eastern Slavs and of course Jews. This included Greeks, but interestingly even Italians after surrender.
    – rs.29
    Dec 13, 2021 at 23:05
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    @rs.29 Yeah probably, I couldn't think of a better word to describe the idea of "fallen from greatness" lol
    – Semaphore ♦
    Dec 14, 2021 at 7:49

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