arized and, by the middle of the nineteenth century, took on
political overtones and tried to assume a scientific foundation.

Aggressive nationalism began to bloom at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and went on to spread across Europe. The political unification
of Germany, instead of being the glorious culmination of this
nationalistic drama, only signaled the end of one act and the beginning
of another. Even the German defeat in the First World War did not
persuade ardent nationalists to be content with the victories they had
already achieved. Instead, they probed the heart of the nation to find an
explanation for their defeat. These nationalists contended that the
defeat had been due to pollution of racial purity by the presence of a
large, alien element--the Jews. If it had not been for this impurity, it
was argued, Germany would certainly have been victorious, and it would
have demonstrated its global superiority. Aggressive nationalism became
virulent racism.

Adolf Hitler exploited this need for a political scapegoat and turned it
into a national, anti-Semitic campaign. The racial stereotypes and
accompanying feelings were already widespread. Nineteenth century
popular German literature was full of such trite symbols. The Jew was
always portrayed as a villainous merchant, shifty-eyed, large-nosed,
unscrupulous, and wealthy. In contrast, the German was invariably
portrayed as a solid, blond-haired peasant, hard-working, loyal, and
exploited.

The drama in such literature sprang from the tension between the wealthy
Jewish merchants and the hard-working but poor German peasants. Here
could be found the same kind of exploitation which Hitler used to explain
the German defeat in the war. These popular stereotypes were then joined
to the teachings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain which had built on
elements from biology, anthropology, sociology, and phrenology. In his
book Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain had developed
them into a philosophy of world history which centered on the concepts of
racial conflict. Human progress and racial purity were equated. He
predicted an eventual struggle to the death between the Jewish and the
Teutonic races. The Germans, he believed, would emerge victorious.
Through the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the weak,
mankind would reach a higher stage of evolution. Although Nazi racist
thought was concerned almost exclusively with the conflict b