Source on Whoopi's comments here.
I think it seems fairly obvious that the Nazis viewed Jews as a separate race, and that this racism formed a backbone for their discrimination. I am curious, however, how Nazis decided what made up a "race", and if there was even a definition they consistently used. I wouldn't be surprised if the Nazis were inconsistent, but clearly race was not merely "skin color" to them, and it seems they didn't categorize Jews as "white" the way she insists, right? How did they come up with racial classifications, and what pseudoscience did they use to justify their racism and genocide?
This is a tricky question, because "Jewish" has been used in three different ways for a long time, but a lot of people combine the three uses, or use them more or less interchangeably.
"Jewish" can mean either ethnic Jew, or religious Jew, or communal Jew.
Religious Jew is pretty easy, somebody who follows the Jewish faith. (I am ignoring all the complexities in the faith about it, and just taking anybody who follows the religion regardless of if their mother was Jewish or if they had a bar-mitzvah, or gender, age etc).
Ethnic Jew is also fairly simple, its somebody who can trace their ancestry back to Jerusalem. This one gets fairly complex as well, since Jerusalem has been fought over so many times at this point, and held by so many religious groups that simple geography doesn't cover it.
The other way I've seen this traced is by temple records, but that gets fairly messy fairly quickly as well.
It can probably best be described as people who descended from the right general part of the globe who also had Jewish ancestors.
Then you have communal Jewish, which is some combination of ethnic Jew, and/or belonging to the Jewish community, but also seems to expand to cover anybody who would be considered ethnic Jew whenever its convenient (for Jews, or against Jews).
Any of the three are liable to be considered "Jewish" depending on who is doing the considering and why.
To answer your specific question, to the Nazis, the holocaust was legally about race, as they considered Jews to be a separate race.
The Nuremberg Race Laws set out the conditions for being considered Jewish (as well as explicitly defining them as being a separate race).
The condition for being Jewish was to have 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents, wish Jewish being any of the 3: Married to a Jew, enrolled as a member of a Jewish congregation, child of a Jew.
Another separate race under the Nuremburg race laws was "mischlinge," or mixed race person. By law, mischlinge where neither Jewish nor German, these where people with 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents (same rules as above).
For a short breakdown, the holocaust museum has a good piece.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws
So you have this situation where there was a legally declared new race "Jewish," but the laws about being declared Jewish always circle around to the religion (since eventually it was based on somebody in your ancestry being enrolled with a Jewish congregation).
If we look at "The Myth of the Jewish Race" by Alain F Corcos (about 60 years after Hitlers death), Corcos attempts to demonstrate how the "Jewish race" isnt a thing. From a scientific point of view, he was correct. However, even he fell into the trap of "Jewish Blood" and "Jewish Genes." Both ideas would propagate the idea of the Jewish race rather than the Jewish religion.
Looking before the holocaust, we can see that germans considered themselves a seperate race from Jews.
Arthur De Gobineau wrote a four-volume work called "An essay on the inequality of the human races" in his work he separates out the "aryan" race. His work was fairly influential in setting Nazi ideas.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain's work "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1900)" was a quasi historical record that described the history of Germany (and surrounding areas) as a life or death struggle between the Germanic race and the Jewish race.
The two-volume book "Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene (1920–21)" by Eugen Fischer, Erwin Baur, and Fritz Lenz, was a pseudoscientific work that concluded that Jews where dumber, slower, weaker etc when compared to Germans.
Madison Grant wrote "The Passing of the Great Race (1916)." He advocated for a eugenics program to preserve the "Nordic race," excluding the jews. Hitler was known to be particularly fond of that one, and was known to have called it his bible. (As per Stefan, below)For a good look, check out
Kühl, Stefan (2002). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press.
The short answer is that to the Germans, the holocaust was absolutely about race.
In modern times, a lot of headway has been made in separating the Jewish faith from the Jewish "race," but that effort is hampered, often by Jews, often by anti-Semites.
Hi you might be interested in this comment by u/Rosa_Kompleks. It seems to touch a little bit on how the Nazis (and Hitler) defined race.