You come across Nazis and their propaganda centered around the Aryan race. But where did this obsession stem from. Is there any relation of the nazi Aryans to the Indian Aryan race. Is that where the idea probably came from?
There was a big fascination with the occult, racial sciences, and that combined with the creation of a pro-German tradition in the 19th century. So people all over Europe and America were into some eccentric ideas- spiritualism, theosophy, and a search for hidden knowledge. This dovetails with the early 19th century work of Darwin and other legitimate scientific study in natural history to create some ideas so zany they sound like I made them up in a fever dream.
Typing animals into species and fitting them within the new nomenclature was all the rage and people extended that to humans. It seemed to many “scientists” that it stood to reason if there were many types and species of animals, identified through physical characteristics that must be true of humans as well. Various “scientists” categorized humans into as many as 15 different species, including three kinds of White Europeans-Aryan (Scandinavia), Alpine(Central Europe ) and Mediterranean. Semites were people from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria.
Back to the obsession with hidden knowledge and making a German identity post unification. (Germany unified in 1871 from what had been 30+states and needed binding folklore and roots) The Brothers Grimm and other people had been analyzing languages as well as recording folk tales and people label German as an Indo-European language that shares commonalities with languages as far as India-and someone decides that because the invading Aryans in Northern India/Pakistan were said to be tall and elegant compared to the native Dravidian people, and brought the “light of civilization” to them in about 1500bc, and spoke something Indo-European, maybe that corresponds to the...DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS AND THAT FURTHER, THE ATLANTEANS SPLIT, half went to invade India as the Aryans of the Vedic writings, and HALF WENT TO SCANDINAVIA AMD BECAME THE BLOND, BLUE EYED SWEDES AND DANES. IN THE POST WWI PERIOD THERE WAS A GROUP KNOWN AS THE THULE SOCIETY THAT ACTIVELY SPREAD THIS BELIEF.
I know this was a long explanation, but ‘whew’ it’s complicated. There are some groovy documentaries from National Geographic about the occult history of the Nazis if you’re interested.