e racial decay of the
Nordics resulting from their intermixture with inferior races.

It has long been accepted, Rosenberg claims, that all the states of
the west and their creative values have been generated by Germans; and
it follows that if the Germanic blood were to vanish away completely
in Europe all western culture would also fall to ruin.

Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the
non-German religion of Christianity. "A _new_ faith is arising today:
the myth of the blood, the faith to defend with the blood the divine
essence of man. The faith, embodied in clearest knowledge, that the
Nordic blood represents that _mysterium_ which has replaced and
overcome the old sacraments."[37]

Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the _Volk_, which he
relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no
longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the
state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of
the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass
away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the
first and _last_, that to which everything else has to be
subordinated."[38] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the
state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important
than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or
the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than
high treason against the state."[39]

The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of
the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but
members of the nation [_Volk_] may be citizens of the State. None but
those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the
nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."[40] After
the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German
citizenship law of September 15, 1935.

Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, _Nature,
Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP_, Rosenberg wrote:

An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in
the German _Volk_ consciousness: The right of nationality
should not represent something which is received in the
cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which
must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the
state, the rights of nationality should only b