Untermensch
Untermensch. The word itself sounds like a verdict. In German, it literally means 'underman' or 'sub-man', and when the Nazi regime printed nearly four million copies of a pamphlet bearing that title, they were not writing philosophy. They were preparing the ground for mass murder.
The story of this word begins not in Germany but in America, with a Ku Klux Klan member and the 1922 book he wrote. It travels through the speech halls of Nuremberg, the directives of Heinrich Himmler, and the classrooms of Nazi Germany where children learned that certain people were not fully human. Along the way, it touches the Spanish Civil War, the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the plans to depopulate half a continent.
Where did this term come from, and how did a concept from one country get repurposed by another to justify the killing of tens of millions? That is what this documentary sets out to trace.
Lothrop Stoddard, an American author and Ku Klux Klan member, introduced the phrase 'the under man' in his 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man. His definition was sweeping. He wrote on page 23 that the term described collectively 'all those kinds of persons' who 'measure under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives'.
Crucially, Stoddard's version carried no racial dimension. He argued that without eugenics, every civilization across all races, periods, and geographies would eventually decay. Any person, regardless of background, could fall into his category of the 'under man'. The concept was bleak, but it was not the explicitly racial weapon the Nazis would later forge from it.
Scholars have noted that Stoddard may have been constructing a deliberate counterpart to Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch, the 'superman' of philosophical fame. Stoddard does not say this directly, but he does critically engage with the 'superman' idea near the end of his book, on page 262. Word play with Nietzsche's term had in fact been circulating for decades. Nietzsche himself used Untermensch at least once, as a contrast to Übermensch, in his 1882 work Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Theodor Fontane placed the Übermensch and Untermensch pair side by side in chapter 33 of his novel Der Stechlin, published in 1899. Even earlier, the Romanticist writer Jean Paul used Untermensch in his 1795 novel Hesperus, in reference to an orangutan.
The German-language edition of Stoddard's book appeared in 1925 as Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen. Alfred Rosenberg, one of the leading architects of Nazi ideology, cited Stoddard directly in his 1930 work Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Writing about communists in Soviet Russia, Rosenberg called them exactly 'the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called the under man.' The attribution is precise, and it marks the moment a concept from an American racial theorist crossed the Atlantic to become official enemy-language for a European dictatorship.
Julius Streicher, the Nazi propagandist and publisher of Der Stürmer, deployed the term as early as 1927 in a speech before the Bavarian regional parliament. Referring to the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, he described 'unleashed subhumans' who 'rambled murdering through the streets' while parliamentary deputies hid behind a chimney.
From that point forward, the word appeared in an escalating stream of Nazi speeches and publications. In a 1936 pamphlet titled 'The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization', Heinrich Himmler wrote that Germany must ensure the 'Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans' could never again be kindled from within or without. That same year, Joseph Goebbels declared at the Nazi party congress rally in Nuremberg that 'Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself.'
The word 'subhuman' was not incidental language. It was deliberate rhetorical preparation, fusing ideological enemies (communists) with ethnic ones (Jews and Slavs) into a single dehumanized category. Goebbels also declared that 'subhumans exist in every people as a leavening agent', broadening the concept to mean an enemy within any population.
The single most notorious vehicle for this language was an SS brochure also called Der Untermensch, distributed by the Reich Security Main Office under Himmler's directives and published in 1942, after the launch of Operation Barbarossa. Around 50 pages long, it consisted mainly of photographs portraying the people of Eastern Europe in an extremely negative light. Nearly four million copies were printed in German alone, and it was translated into Greek, French, Dutch, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, and seven other languages. The brochure described an Untermensch as 'a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes and mouth, even the semblance of a brain', but insisted this creature was 'lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal', filled with 'a cruel chaos of wild, unrestrained passions' and 'the most naked meanness'.
Jews and Roma were placed at the top of the Nazi extermination priority list. Slavic peoples, including Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and Serbs, were also designated Untermenschen, though the Nazis initially framed their exploitation as a labor resource before turning more fully to mass murder.
Hitler and Goebbels compared Slavs to the 'rabbit family' or to 'stolid animals' that were 'idle', 'disorganized', and spread like a 'wave of filth'. Poles occupied the lowest position in the Nazi racial ranking of Slavic peoples. A directive issued by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on the 24th of October 1939 stated that 'Polishness is equal to subhumanity' and instructed that 'every Pole, whether a farm worker or intellectual, should be treated like vermin'.
The category also extended to people with physical or mental disabilities, homosexuals, transsexuals, political dissidents, and, in rare instances, prisoners of war from Western Allied armies. People classified as 'Mischling', meaning those of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan ancestry, and Black people were also included.
The Nazis were not consistent in applying their own categories. Political goals repeatedly bent racial ideology. Croatia and Slovakia, despite being Slavic nations, provided soldiers for the Reich's military when manpower shortages pressed. Croats were officially reclassified as 'more Germanic than Slav', a position supported by Croatia's Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic, who claimed Croats were 'descendants of the ancient Goths'. Hitler described Bulgarians as 'Turkoman' in origin. Bosniaks, Bulgarians, and Croats who collaborated with Germany were eventually ranked above other Slavic peoples, based on theories about supposed Germanic or Turkic bloodlines. Among Slavic children, those who appeared to have Nordic features and were under 10 years old could be selected for forced Germanization.
Generalplan Ost was the Nazi regime's master plan for Eastern Europe, and the Untermensch concept was its operational backbone. Early projections by Nazi planners envisioned the ethnic cleansing and extermination of no fewer than 50 million people, those deemed unfit for Germanization, from territories the Reich intended to seize.
Ukraine occupied a particular place in these plans. Nazi planners coveted the country's chernozem, or 'black earth', the fertile dark soil that made the region one of the most agriculturally productive in the world. Control of that land was the prize; the removal or destruction of its existing population was treated as a logistical requirement.
The Slavic population more broadly was to be reduced through mass murder in the Holocaust, with a significant remainder expelled eastward toward Siberia and conscripted into forced labor inside the Reich. In 1943, Himmler issued a secret order for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, framing it explicitly as the elimination of the 'living space' of 500,000 Untermenschen who were 'unsuitable for the Germans'.
The Wehrmacht's High Command began issuing enabling orders before Operation Barbarossa even launched. Guidelines issued on the 19th of May 1941 instructed German troops to target Jews, partisans, and Bolsheviks, and described the eastern campaign as a 'historic task to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger'. German Army units were also directed to give free rein to the Einsatzgruppen death squads conducting anti-Jewish massacres in occupied territories. Historian Robert Jan van Pelt has written that for the Nazis, 'it was only a small step to a rhetoric pitting the European Mensch against the Soviet Untermensch, which had come to mean a Russian in the clutches of Judeo-Bolshevism.'
Spain offers a parallel case for how the language of subhumanity traveled and transformed. In the 1930s, Spanish Falangist and Nationalist writings used the words 'subhuman' and 'degenerate' so routinely in newspapers and speeches that no explanation of their meaning was thought necessary. The terms intensified during the October Events and escalated further as the Civil War approached.
As the war progressed, the rebel Nationalist side gave the term a racial and eugenic dimension, while the Republican side used it more as a cultural insult. Once the Nationalists won, Francisco Franco's regime followed a pattern recognizable from both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, promoting the idea of creating a 'new man' through the brutal repression of the population.
Gonzalo de Aguilera, who served as the Nationalist faction's press officer during the war, made his intentions explicit to journalist John T. Whitaker. He said: 'We have to kill, kill, you know? They are like animals, you know, and we cannot expect them to get rid of the virus of Bolshevism. After all, rats and lice are the carriers of the plague.' He went on to describe a programme of 'exterminating one third of the male population of Spain', which he said would 'cleanse the country and get rid of the proletariat' and was 'also economically convenient'. Aguilera's statements stand as one of the starkest examples of how a dehumanizing vocabulary could be spoken aloud, to a foreign journalist, without apparent shame or hesitation.
Biology classes in Nazi Germany's schools formally taught the distinction between Nordic German 'Übermenschen' and 'ignoble' Jewish and Slavic 'subhumans'. The historian's assessment is that the view remained widespread among the German public and continued to find adherents even after the war's end.
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Common questions
What does Untermensch mean and where does the word come from?
Untermensch is a German word literally meaning 'underman', 'sub-man', or 'subhuman'. The term was introduced in English as 'the under man' by American author and Ku Klux Klan member Lothrop Stoddard in his 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man, and the concept was later adopted and radically weaponized by the Nazi Party in Germany.
Who did the Nazis consider Untermenschen?
The Nazi regime primarily applied the label to Jews, Roma and Sinti, and Slavic peoples including Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and Serbs. The category also included people with physical or mental disabilities, homosexuals, transsexuals, political dissidents, and people classified as Mischling, meaning those of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan ancestry.
What was the Der Untermensch SS brochure published in 1942?
Der Untermensch was an SS brochure published in 1942 after the start of Operation Barbarossa, distributed by the Reich Security Main Office under Heinrich Himmler's directives. Around 50 pages long and composed mostly of photographs depicting Eastern Europeans negatively, it was printed in nearly four million copies in German and translated into more than fifteen languages including Greek, French, Dutch, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Czech.
How did Alfred Rosenberg connect the Untermensch concept to Nazi ideology?
Alfred Rosenberg explicitly cited Lothrop Stoddard's 'under man' concept in his 1930 work Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, applying it to communists in Soviet Russia. Rosenberg was one of the leading figures in promoting Nazi racial ideology, though Adolf Hitler privately described Rosenberg's book as 'mysticism' and 'nonsense' and stated it was not to be considered official Nazi Party ideology.
What was Generalplan Ost and how did it relate to the Untermensch concept?
Generalplan Ost was the Nazi plan for Eastern Europe that envisioned the ethnic cleansing and extermination of no fewer than 50 million people deemed unfit for Germanization. The Untermensch designation provided the ideological justification for these plans, which aimed to seize territory for Lebensraum while killing or expelling the existing Slavic population, with Ukraine's fertile chernozem soil identified as a particularly desirable colonization target.
Did the Untermensch concept appear outside Nazi Germany?
Yes. In Spain during the 1930s, Nationalist and Falangist newspapers and speeches used terms like 'subhuman' and 'degenerate' so routinely that they required no explanation. Nationalist press officer Gonzalo de Aguilera told journalist John T. Whitaker that the Nationalist programme involved exterminating one third of the male population of Spain to eliminate what he called the virus of Bolshevism.
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