To rally the German people behind his policy of exterminating the Jews, Hitler adopted the concept of a superior “race”: the Aryan race. Germans were supposed to belong to this “race.” The goal of Aryanization was to eliminate Jews from economic life and to confiscate all their property, whatever it might be.
As early as 1925, in his book *Mein Kampf*, Hitler wrote: “The Germanic race is superior to all others, and the struggle against foreigners, against the Jews, against the Slavs, and against inferior races is a sacred one.”
To control the people, the Nazi regime established a propaganda system based on the ideology of the Aryan race—a “pure” race supposed to represent absolute perfection that must be preserved from any interracial mixing. The white populations of Europe, particularly the Nordic and Germanic peoples, were deemed “Aryan.” The image portrayed them as “tall, strong, with blond hair and blue eyes, fair skin, and straight features.”
Nazi ideology is based on the concept of “race,” which has no scientific basis. Aryanization led to the expulsion of the “Jewish race” from economic life. A series of laws and ordinances, beginning with the First Jewish Statute of October 3, 1940, barred Jews from public office and, soon after, from other professions as well.
Businesses owned by Jews were marked with yellow signs “Jews,” and, beginning in the fall of 1940, new red signs appeared, indicating that these businesses had been taken over by Aryan provisional administrators or managing commissioners. Initially, these administrators were appointed by the German authorities through the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ), acting through the police prefects. A total of 6,057 administrators were quickly appointed in the occupied zone.
By the end of 1941, this “Aryanization” and confiscation had deprived more than 50% of the Jewish population of their means of livelihood: merchants, artisans, and professionals in the fields of journalism, film, the arts, education, and the judiciary… The disappearance of Jews from economic life was accompanied by their exclusion from cultural and scientific life.
The goal of the Nazi regime, through the “Aryanization” carried out by the Vichy regime, was to eliminate “all Jewish influence in the national economy” before the final elimination of the people themselves.
References:
– Poznanski, Renée, 1997 , *The Jews in France During World War II*, Hachette Littératures.
– Laloum, Jean, 1998, *The Jews in the Paris Suburbs from the 1920s to the 1950s*, Paris, CNR Éditions.
