Honorary Aryan

Japanese women doing a revue during a visit by the Hitler Youth and Nazi officials

Wang Jingwei of the Japanese-puppet government in Nanking of China with German diplomats in 1941

Honorary Aryan (‹See Tfd›German: Ehrenarier^[1]) was a semi-official category and expression used in Nazi Germany to justify the exceptional awarding of Aryan certificates to some regime-favoured Mischlinge who according to Nuremberg Laws standards would not have been recognized as belonging to the Aryan race, but whom German officials nevertheless chose to spare persecution.^[2]

The bestowal of the status of "honorary Aryan" upon certain "non-Aryan" people or peoples was typically not well-documented, due to the semi-official nature of the category. Rationales included the services of those individuals or peoples who were deemed valuable to the German economy or war effort, political considerations, and propaganda value.^[3]

In the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi client state, this term was used by Ante Pavelić to protect some Jews from persecution who had been useful to the state.^[4]

• Helmuth Wilberg, a Luftwaffe general and 1st-degree Mischling,^[a] was declared to be Aryan in 1935 by Hitler at the instigation of Hermann Göring.^[5]
• Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian and the Mufti of the British Mandate of Palestine, "was granted the status of honorary Aryan" by the Nazis. Hitler said about Amin Al-Husseini: with his blonde hair and blue eyes, he gives the impression, despite his thin face, of a man whose ancestors were more likely to have been Aryans, and who perhaps is descended from the best Roman blood...In sheer intelligence he almost comes close to the Japanese.
• Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a Jewish-Austrian princess by marriage and a spy for Nazi Germany, was declared an honorary Aryan by Heinrich Himmler.^[6]
• Emil Maurice, Hitler's first personal chauffeur and a very early member of the Nazi-Party, was a member of the SS, but ran afoul of Heinrich Himmler's rules, which required SS men to have deep Aryan ancestry. Maurice's great-grandfather was Jewish, and Himmler considered him a security-risk. He tried to have him thrown out of the SS, but Hitler stood by his old friend and, in a secret letter dated 31 August 1935, required Himmler to allow Maurice and his brothers to remain in the organization. They were to be considered "Honorary Aryans".^[7]
• Sophie Lehár (née Paschal), the wife of the composer Franz Lehár, had been Jewish before her conversion to Catholicism upon her marriage. Hitler enjoyed Lehár's music and the Nazis made some propaganda use of it. After Joseph Goebbels intervened on Lehár's behalf,^[8] Mrs. Lehár was given in 1938 the status of "honorary Aryan" by marriage.^[9] At least one attempt was made to have her deported, thwarted by her special status.
• Helene Mayer, a German-born fencer who had been forced to leave Germany in 1935 and resettle in the United States because she was Jewish, took part as an "honorary Aryan" at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where she won the silver medal for Germany.
• Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, an aeronautical engineer and test-pilot whose father had been born Jewish, was given honorary Aryan status.

• Hitler eventually declared the Japanese people honorary Aryans.^{[10][11][12][13][14]} There had been extensive cooperation between China and Germany from 1926, but this became untenable when the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out and Japan insisted on a cessation. Germany signed the Tripartite Pact, along with Japan and Italy, at the end of 1940. In July 1941, Hitler officially recognized Wang Jingwei's puppet government in Nanking. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, China formally joined the Allies and declared war on Nazi Germany on December 9, 1941. In retaliation, the Nazis persecuted ethnic Chinese in Nazi Germany.^[15][16]
• The Nazis believed Turks to be a pure European Volk related to Hungarians and Finns,^[17][18] referring to them as "kindred" people.^[19] Nazis also conferred on Turks the title 'carriers of culture' (Kulturträger), which was "almost synonymous with Aryan".^[20]

• Anti-Comintern Pact
• Eduard Bloch, who Hitler referred to as a noble Jew (‹See Tfd›German: Edeljude)
• Germany–Japan industrial co-operation before World War II
• German–Japanese relations
• Honorary whites
• Presidential exemption (Slovak State)
• Racial policy of Nazi Germany
• Tripartite Pact
• Gunther Burstyn

Books

• Ihrig, Stefan (20 November 2014). Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 129. ISBN 9780674368378.

Informational notes

Citations