Following the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service decree, the Nazis briefly used the following definition of 'Aryan':
But, this was quickly changed because it included non-Europeans.The Aryans (also Indo-Germans, Japhetiten) are one of the three branches of the Caucasian (white race);they are divided into the western (European), that is the German, Roman, Greek, Slav, Lett, Celt [and] Albanesen, and the eastern (Asiatic) Aryans, that is the Indian (Hindu) and Iranian (Persian, Afghan, Armenian, Georgian, Kurd). Non-Aryans are therefore: 1. the members of two other races, namely the Mongolian (yellow) and the Negroid (black) races; 2. the members of the two other branches of the Caucasian race, namely the Semites (Jews, Arabs) and Hamites (Berbers). The Finns and the Hungarians belong to the Mongoloid race; but it is hardly the intention of the law to treat them as non-Aryans. Thus . . . the non-Jewish members of the European Volk are Aryans...
Eric Ehrenreich, The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution, pages 10-11.This definition of Aryan was clearly unacceptable. Not only did it include large numbers of non-European peoples such as Kurds and Afghans, but it also made the racial laws seem to be based on political expedience rather than science. Gercke replied that he would use the definition of Aryan established by the Expert Advisor for Population and Racial Policy ( Sachverstandigenbeirats fur Bevolkerungs- und RassenpolitiH)-. “An Aryan is one who is tribally related ( stammverivandte ) to German blood. An Aryan is the descendant of a Volk domiciled in Europe in a closed tribal settlement ( Volkstumssiedlung) since recorded history.” This definition managed to include Finns and Hungarians, and exclude Kurds and Afghans. Why this definition was more scientifically accurate, however, Gercke did not say.
In any event, changing Aryan to German or related blood did nothing to clarify who was racially acceptable and who was not. The “racial status” of Finns, Hungarians, and other Eastern Europeans, for example, was in constant flux during the Nazi era. In October 1934, while evaluating the naturalization of a Hungarian citizen, the Interior Ministry informed the Saxon State Chancellery in Dresden that not all Hungarians were “non-Aryans.” According to the Interior Ministry, Hungarians are “tribally alien” (ifremdstammig) but not necessarily “blood alien” (fremdbliitig)—two additional terms adding to the definitional confusion. On the other hand, a 1934 brochure from the series Family, Race, Volk in the National Socialist State simply stated that the Magyars (which it did not define) were Aryans. Four years later, a major commentary to the Nuremberg Laws likewise baldly stated that “the overwhelming majority” of present day Finns and Hungarians were of Aryan blood. Yet the following year an article in the Journal for Racial Science, on the “Racial Diagnosis of the Hungarians,” noted that “opinions on the racial condition of the Hungarians are still very divided.”
In 1942, Hitler decreed that the Finns, at least, were definitely “racially related Germanic neighboring peoples.” There is no indication, however, that this determination was based on new racial-scientific findings. And as late as 1943, no less than four agencies became involved in a dispute over whether a private first-class should receive permission to marry a Hungarian woman. They debated whether the woman was, as initially determined, “German-blooded (Aryan).” Such arbitrariness and imprecision in classification could also be construed as an indication of the “unscientific” nature of the theory undergirding the racial laws. Nazi “racial experts,” however, sought to address this problem. A standard explanation was that: “one cannot pose the question to which race this or that Volk belongs but rather, one can only correctly ask to which race this or that individual member of a Volk belongs.” Thus, as early as October 1934, in relation to the case of the Hungarian citizen, the Interior Ministry informed the Saxon State Chancellery that racial decisions, for Hungarians at least, needed to be made on an individual basis. Similarly, a November 1940 decree of the office of Hitler's deputy for party affairs held that no party member, or member of a party organization, could marry a person who had at least two grandparents who were members of the Czech, Polish, or Magyar “Volk groups” without permission of the regional party official (Gauleiter).
Did the Nazis ever clarify their position on the racial status of Hungarians?
