Did Hitler consider Indians and Persians Aryans?

by [deleted]

[deleted]

AwesomeAhmad1213

He certainly co-opted Vedic symbols and motifs into Nazi paraphernalia, and referenced the perceived 'Aryan invasion' as one of the first of many natural progressions wherein a 'superior' people would martially and culturally dominate an 'inferior' people (Hitler was particularly impressed with the near-extermination of aboriginal Americans and the rule of the British Raj as examples of this nearer to his own time), but his intended 'alliances' with non-European peoples was often just born of geo-political convenience.

The Arab peoples of the former Ottoman Empire, Iranians and Indians were all seen as anti-colonial elements that would chafe against British, Russian or French dominion, and this is even seen in the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union: some Tehranians were observed as celebrating the humiliation of the 'Russian Empire' (which had absorbed much of Qajar Iran's trans-Caucasian territories in the 19th century), and German propaganda was broadcast throughout Iran. Similarly, recruitment was attempted with Arabs, northwest Indians (mostly modern Pakistanis and Punjabis) and Muslims in general, although this did not generally turn out in favor for the Reich, considering the massive numbers of Indian and African Muslims involved in the Allied effort during WW2, as well as the resistance of Albanian and Bosnian Muslims to occupation.

And the events of the Holocaust may shed more light on the genuineness of these 'racial alliances'; the Roma people (better known as 'Gypsies'), are a migratory Indo-Iranian people from what is now southern Pakistan and western India, with an Indo-Iranian language. They were widely targeted in the genocidal persecution of the Holocaust, with as many as ~200,000 to ~500,000 being slaughtered during the course of that war, some estimates even putting that figure closer to ~1-1.5 million.

Also, I'm not sure what's meant by 'non-Arabized Persian'; the Persian ethnicity (one of many Iranian ethnicities in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia) does not use the Arabic language, nor are there any Iranian ethnicities that speak an Arabic-derived language, if I recall correctly.

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Sources:

https://www.dw.com/en/how-nazis-courted-the-islamic-world-during-wwii/a-41358387

https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Iran-During-World-War-II.pdf

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/sinti-and-roma-victims-of-the-nazi-era/who-were-the-gypsies

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