Struggle for Race = Struggle for Space

         Hitler's desire to exterminate the Jewish population was truly an act of terror in order to create a Utopian society. The Nazi's racial ideology only consisted of two options: healthy/expanding or dying/decaying. There was no room for "untermensch" or the "notlos esser"; the space of Germany was to be utilized by the volk. According to Hitler, intending to "turn all of the post-WWI losses around", his government [in order to be deemed responsible] needed to promote good racial stock and growth, thus making it necessary for Germany to expand (as analyzed by Dr. William Meinecke in "Nazi Racial Ideology" - click here to explore more ideas from him). The Nazi's viewed the Jews as competition for the Aryan race, preventing them from owning land and perceiving them as parasites that lived separately.
        Thinking about it from a modern perspective and in a lighter sense, I compare Nazi Germany to a high school environment; the "popular ones" want to get rid of the undesirable for being different. The intuitions of the Nazis pinpointed the fact that Jews were unsimilar from them, and therefore had to go. Hitler and his regime were overwhelmingly concerned with the future and the desire to create this "perfect world" - something that was impossible to achieve.

         This quest for racial purity led to drastic measures taken by the Nazis, such as the Nuremberg Laws or anti-Jewish legislation. How could the people of Germany at this time not have recognized that the laws being enacted were primarily eliminating an entire group? Perhaps it was because Germany was in such turmoil post-WWI, and this promising group [of Nazis] seemed too  legitimate to question in the grand scheme of all of the changes occurring. Or, perhaps the Nazis were purposefully brainwashing the Germans to think that by setting laws such as these ("only those of German blood can be citizens"), a newfound nationalism would rise again and put Germany back on its feet. Either way, these laws being put in place essentially forced every human in Nazi Germany to have an identification; you were either a GERMAN, or you were a JEW.
There was no in between.

the forced comparison of two young boys in this era 

I'm curious...did the Nazis utilize their superior capability to persuade with propaganda in order to identify the Jewish race?

         So what happened once a person was identified as one of the two? As Dr. Meinecke explained, after the long process of going through ancestry and church records, the next step was separation, which eventually led to extermination. But...where would these Jews go? I, siding with functionalists, truly believe that the Nazis just wanted the Jews out of German borders in order for the German race to prevail, and that extermination was a result of having no other options. Hitler's foreign policy clearly promoted war, as his hunger for land (lebensraum) overpowered his happiness being the ruler of Germany as it stood. Oh, human nature: you get an inch and you take a foot. 

         Then there's the intriguing aspect of eugenics; as explained by the USHMM (click here to get some fascinating background on Nazi ideology), the Nazis took on the Social Darwinist theory, leading them to promote "survival of the fittest":

"Since each 'race' sought to expand, and since the space on the earth was finite, the struggle for survival resulted 'naturally' in violent conquest and military confrontation. Hence, war—even constant war—was a part of nature, a part of the human condition." 

        I honestly think that these headstrong Nazi's were just rallied up with such a new sense of pride, that the promotion of the German "better" race was inevitable at the time. This then led to the use of eugenics and the road to extermination. Did the Nazis really  believe they were bettering humanity and the future of their nation? Although this idea boggles my mind, I've come to conclude that the Nazis thought if they "mixed" with others, they would cease to exist as a race. For Germany at the time, being a non-existent race would mean the loss of superiority, which they had struggled with for so long. The only concept I still don't fully understand is: how could they possibly identify the entire Jewish population? Keeping in mind that this was the 20th century, I feel as if there had to have been at least some  hundreds of secret marriages and mixings. 
      This concept will forever remain a mystery in my eyes, along with the rest of the mind-blowing ideology of the Nazi regime. 

fun fact: the word aryan  is derived from the Sanskrit word arya , which means honorable, respectable and noble

Until next time...

Lynds