Lies usually involve at least a little truth; otherwise people would not believe them. So it was with the lies promoted by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)—leader of the Nazi Party and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945—concerning the Aryans. It is true that there was a group called the Aryans, a term for the Indo-European tribes that invaded Iran and India in about 1500 B. C., and it is also true that they were historically linked with the peoples who later settled Europe. But the Aryans never moved to Europe. More important, they were never what Hitler said they were: a race of blond-haired, blue-eyed people that included the Germans and other western Europeans.
The Aryans, Hitler taught, were racially superior to the dark-eyed, darkhaired Jews, and therefore it was his job as an Aryan to wipe them off the face of the earth—as he tried to do during World War II (1939-1945), when the Nazis killed millions of Jews. In fact Hitler and many other Nazi leaders had dark hair and dark eyes; also, the word "Jew" describes a religion, not a race. It is true that the majority of Jews are descendants of the Semitic-speaking peoples who inhabited
Palestine in ancient times, but so are Arabs—and Nazi Germany had friendly relations with various Arab groups, simply because they also were in conflict with the "Jews" over control of Palestine.
In addition, Hitler, who claimed that white "Aryans" were superior to the darker-skinned peoples of the world, nonetheless allied his country with the non-Caucasian Japanese. Of course, most people from India, though classified racially as Caucasians, are not whiteskinned either. But in part because they considered the Indians to be their Aryan "brothers," the Nazis made a minor effort to encourage them to join Germany in making war against Britain.
If all this seems complicated, it is. Lies usually are. The truth, on the other hand, is simple: there is and was no such thing as an Aryan "race." But this did not stop the Nazis from taking as their emblem the swastika (SWAHS-ti-kuh), an ancient Aryan symbol. In Sanskrit, the word swastika means "well-being," and Hindus considered it a sign of good luck. to the Nazis, however, the swastika came to be a symbol of evil.
KUSH) that separate the Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan, a difficult journey. Once they went down on the other side, however, they discovered a lush river valley containing dark-skinned groups of people, the descendants of the Harappan civilization.
Eventually the Indo-Europeans spread across the two great river valleys of India, some moving eastward into the valley of the Ganges (GAN-jeez), others settling in the Indus Valley. Because a number of rivers fed into the Indus, the latter area came to be known as Punjab (POON-jahb), an Indo-Aryan term meaning “five rivers.”
World History
