Track 3: Confronting an ‘‘Alien Race”

Abstract On December 8, 1938, Himmler issued a decree entitled Combating the Gypsy Plague that spoke of a need to tackle the Gypsy problem in terms of the “inner characteristics of that race.” This was the first decree directed against Gypsies that made explicit reference to race, but, of course, Himmler’s introducing racial terms into the debate over what to do about the “Gypsy nuisance” was hardly surprising. Many Gypsies had a dark complexion, which had long given rise to charges that they represented a foreign element. Hence, it was only a question of time before the Nazis’ policy of cleansing Germany of non-Aryan elements would come to include the Gypsies. Although they were originally from India and therefore presumably of Aryan origin, Gypsies certainly did not resemble the typical “Germanic” (Nordic) type. As I have noted, for the first few years of the Nazi regime, anti-Gypsy measures had been justified primarily on social grounds. Gypsies and Gypsy like itinerants, it had been asserted, were given to crime and generally represented an asocial element. Now the notion that Gypsies constituted an alien and inferior race was added, introducing a powerful new catalyst for anti-Gypsy agitation.