Dr Walter Gross was a German physician who oversaw the Office of Population Policy and Racial Welfare. In this speech from October 1934, Gross addressed a gathering of German women on Nazi racial policy:

“Our last principle is that the people on this world, in America, Africa or China, are different both in body and soul. They are not equal, as yesterday’s lie had it. People are different. They not only speak different languages and look different: no, they are different in the depths of their hearts and natures, and in their abilities for good and evil. In the past, people believed that these differences were accidental, the result of climate or civilisation and that one could overcome these differences and create a unified man in a unified state in which all would be equally happy. We have learned that such ideas are false. We have learned that the differences between the major blood groups of the world, between the major races, are not the result of human action, but of the laws of Creation. We have learned that the lines between blood and blood, race and race, are also the lines between soul and soul and spirit and spirit.

The others may not be better or worse, but they are different than we are, and because they are different than we are, there is a kind of wall between us that is part of the laws of life. That is the core of National Socialism’s racial thinking. Our goal is not to insult others, to say: “What a great guy I am!” Rather, we hold to the humble recognition that each healthy piece of life has its corner of the world and its special tasks. This is just as true of humans as it is of plants and animals in all their multiplicity. We know that one type is no more valuable than another. But we also know that each variety of life has a right to exist only as long as it keeps itself pure and strong. Only when a tree bears the proper fruit does it have a right to live. Otherwise, it will be cut down and destroyed.

We do not know why things are the way they are, and it would be foolish to ask the reason. That is how things are. Our task is to humbly accept the laws that govern our human existence and to accept the fact that we are born Germans in Germany, not as Chinese or Eskimos. That is not because of our virtues, nor it is our fault, nor was it our will. It was fate that came from above. We have no choice but to accept this fate and to develop the abilities that fate has given us according to necessity and law.

Others may develop in their own way, in their own land. We must listen to the depths of our own people, to draw from blood and inheritance the strength we need to build our homeland. Let us then together follow the path to a new worldview. Let us go the path of blood and race, which does not ignore faith and knowledge and a sense of higher powers. Let us go this path, not a path of matter, superstition and heresy, but rather a path of deep humility and piety before the laws of God.

Let us go along this path together and listen to the deepest depths where blood and soul rule. Let us draw from there the strength to build the state, and even more important the Reich. It will be a Reich not only of politics, a Reich of organisation, or the economy, but a Reich of a people.