The word “Aryan” has become inseparably associated with the racialist world-view of the Nazis, despite the fact that – far from specifying a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “master race” – it was originally a perfectly innocent self-designator for a tribe of ancient nomadic Indo-Iranians who lived in the region of modern Iran, Afghanistan and India from around 2700 to 350 BC (more about “Aryan’s” passage from a simple piece of linguistic terminology to a racialist rationale for megalomaniacal world domination here).
Saturated as they are in misconception, mirth, myth, and wild fantasy, the “Aryans” have become something of a lightning-rod for weird theories over the years.
Many of them stem from the Nazis themselves, experts as they were at tailoring science to suit their evil ends. All from neo-Nazi fanatics to fascist apologists, sensationalist scholars and a varied assortment of loons have all thrown their ideas into the mix too.
Here we round up ten of the craziest theories about who the “Aryans” were, where they came from, what they were capable of and how – believe some – their quest for global supremacy is far from over.
Are they extraterrestrials? Or Atlanteans? Do they have superhuman powers, and the capacity to unite mankind in perfect harmony? Or are they really reptilian humanoids, hell-bent on secretly controlling mankind? Or, um, cowboy cattle rustlers. Read on and make up your own mind.
1. They Came From Outer Space
This one is so bonkers it had to come first. There’s a strong current of thought among ufologists, Gnostic religious cults, conspiracy theorists and general quacks that a bunch of humanoid extraterrestrials closely resembling “Aryans” have visited the earth on several occasions. Some speculate that it’s from these Nordic aliens that the entire “Aryan race” is descended.
American ufologist Michael Salla claims they come in peace, and actually met US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 to try and convince him to scale back America’s nuclear arsenal. An Austrian cult called the Tempelhofgesellschaft are convinced these “Aryan” invaders have more devious aims, however, and are currently on their way to Earth from the star Aldebaran with a giant space fleet, which, when it arrives, will join forces with Nazi flying saucers from Antarctica and conquer the world.
2. They’re Masters of Psychic Energy
In his 1871 proto-science fiction novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, English author and occultist Edward Bulwer-Lytton dreamed up a subterranean master race who have harnessed an all-powerful psychic energy called “vril”, which has enabled them to reach an unsurpassed level of civilization, free from war, poverty and inequality (think “The Force” in Star Wars).
Bulwer-Lytton at one stage describes these people as being “descended from the same ancestors as the great Aryan family.” It was a throwaway line in a work of fiction, and no definitive indication that he strictly believed the concept of “Aryanism”, even if it was becoming increasingly fashionable at the time. However, some readers took his ideas quite seriously and “vril” believers developed into a kind of cult – rather like modern day Scientology, albeit on a much smaller scale (we don’t know of any celebrity members at least) – in prewar Germany, where a secret Vril Society was founded in Berlin.
3. They Came From Atlantis
Nazi party chairman Alfred Rosenberg is responsible for dreaming up the notion that the “Aryans” originated from the legendary city of Atlantis – a fantastical bit of fibbing even by Nazi standards.
Rosenberg was tasked by Hitler with synthesizing Nazi racial code into a single text, the result was the pseudoscientific treatise The Myth of the Twentieth Century (the second most influential book in Nazism after Mein Kampf).
One memorable passage read: “From a northern centre of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call Atlantis, swarms of warriors once fanned out, in obedience to the ever-renewed and incarnate Nordic longing for distance to conquer and space to shape.” Check out some other insane theories about Atlantis here.
4. They Had Superhuman Powers
Through selective breeding, the Nazis believed that they could raise generations of pure-blooded “Aryans” that were fitter, stronger, smarter and braver than normal humans. They had an entire secret programme dedicated to that end, Lebensborn, which produced tens of thousands of babies. Elite troops from the Schutzstaffel or SS – an organisation of fanatical German forces, responsible for perpetrating most Nazi war crimes – were the fathers of these “super soldiers”.
None of them had actual super-powers, of course – much to Nazi scientists disappointment. But in the 1990s DC Comics created a fictional band of “Aryan” über-villains that did, in the shape of the Aryan Brigade. A white supremacist terrorist organisation, their mission was to purify the human race. They had names such as Iron Cross and Golden Eagle II, and were equipped with super-strength and all kinds of terrible and fantastical enhancements such as artificial wings and thermal energy-shooting robotic arms.
5. There’s a Whole Town Full of Aryan Twins in Brazil
The town of Cândido Godói in north western Brazil is famous for the unusually high proportion of twins born there – 10%, significantly higher than the overall rate of 1.8% for the region of Rio Grande do Sul, and double the highest-observed national twinning rate (5% in Nigeria). Many of these twins have blonde hair and blue eyes – though that’s not as strange as it sounds, considering the population is of largely German and Polish ancestry.
Argentinean historian Jorge Camarasa has proposed a theory for this remarkable phenomenon – that it’s the legacy of the Nazis’ ‘Angel of Death’, Dr Josef Mengele, who fled Germany as the Allies closed in on Berlin in 1945, and lived incognito in South America until his death in 1979. Experiments with twins were a specialty of Mengele’s, and he is known to have resided in Cândido Godói and provided medical treatment to pregnant women.
Genetic factors within the community are a much more likely explanation, especially since the high twinning rate predates Mengele’s arrival. But Camarasa is adamant that Cândido Godói was Mengele’s “laboratory,” where he finally managed to “fulfill his dreams of creating a master race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryans.”
6. They’re Reptilian Humanoids
Remember the Nordic aliens? They’re back again, this time intertwined with the madcap theories of David Icke – a British author and former media personality who quite famously lost the plot in the early 90s when he started publicly babbling about conspiracy theories and being the son of God.
Icke believes that humankind was created, and is controlled, by a bunch of extraterrestrial alien humanoids called the Anunnaki, the same race of gods described in Babylonian creation myth. In his 2001 book Children of the Matrix, he described how the Anunnaki also bred with another extraterrestrial race called the “Nordics,” on account of their blonde-hair and blue-eyes. Together, they produced a race of human slave masters called “the Aryans.”
These “Aryans” apparently retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes and an obsession with ritual, inclining them towards such tendencies as fascistic militarism, rationalism and racism. 43 American presidents, claims Icke, were “Aryans,” as was the late Queen Mother, whom he described as “seriously reptilian.”
7. They’re Guardian Angels
This is another variation on the Nordic aliens idea, discussed by ufologists. Some believe that “Aryans” aren’t a bunch of extraterrestrials at all, but rather divine messengers, sent from the heavens to watch over us all, and – where necessary – intervene. Guardian angels, then.
It stems in part from the fact that abductions by Nordic aliens are said to be – so far as alien abductions go – quite civil affairs, that don’t involve such unpleasant things as medical examination and experiments. Quite where these guardian angels were when WWII was going on we’re not quite sure.
8. They Conquered the Indian Subcontinent
Of all the erroneous theories about the ancient “Aryans” in this list, this is the one that has impacted by far the most on modern academia. Its veracity is still debated today, although it’s been largely discredited.
The theory goes that the “Aryans,” spilling out of the steppes of Eurasia on horseback and chariot, invaded the Indian subcontinent sometime around 1700 BC, conquering the ancient Indus civilization – a highly advanced and urbanised Bronze age people of the native Indian Dravidian language group – precipitating their downfall. The “Aryans” then became the dominant regional power, and their descendents later produced the Vedas – an important ancient Sanskrit document, our main source from the period.
Trouble is, there are no references to an invasion in the Vedas. And there is no archaeological evidence of a violent conquest – more likely the Indus Valley civilization was cleared out by natural disasters, and “Aryans” migrated into the region gradually. It was a bad translation and interpretation of the Vedas by French missionary Abbé Dubois in the early 19th century – later translated into English by the British East India Company in 1897 with a preface by German philoligist and Orientalist Max Müller – that formed the basis of this theory, later taken as proof of an ideology of conquest among the “Aryan race.”
9. The Nazis Went to Tibet in Search of Pure Aryans
It’s a popular misconception about German zoologist and SS officer Ernst Schäfer’s 1938-39 expedition to Tibet that he went on a state-sponsored search for pure-blooded “Aryans” – i.e. living proof that Tibet was the cradle of the “Aryan race”.
However much the Nazis might have had a very real interest in searching for proof of “Aryan” supremacy (SS chief Heinrich Himmler commanded an entire unit dedicated to that end, the Ahnenerbe), this was a genuine scientific and political mission, funded largely by Schäfer himself and various German businesses.
One member of the team, anthropologist Bruno Beger, did take cranial measurements and facial casts of local people while there, and one ancient document alleging to show evidence of the “Aryan race” was retrieved, but otherwise this was a trip to study the landforms, climate, geography, and culture of the region, and to make contact with Tibet’s political leaders.
Still, we shouldn’t complain, since its stories like this – of Nazis roaming the world in search of ancient treasures and cultures to advance their sinister cause – that gave us Indiana Jones. The Nazis were also fascinated by Egyptology – read more on that here.
10. They Were… Cowboys?
In her 2009 book The Hindus: An Alternative History Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Wendy Doniger makes a strange assertion about the original “Aryans” living in the Indus Valley, whom she describes as “the Vedic people.”
“[They] were cattle herders and cattle rustlers who went about stealing other people’s cows and pretending to be taking them back…,” she writes, “in this habit (as well as their fondness for gambling), the Vedic people resembled the cowboys of the nineteenth century American West, riding over other people’s land and stealing their cattle.” She goes on to describe the “scornful attitude of these Ancient Indian cowboys… towards the ‘barbarians’ (Dasyus or Dasis) whose lands they rode over,” and to liken the “Vedic peoples’” treatment of the Dasyus to American cowboys’ treatment of Navajo Indians.
It’s a weird theory, not least because the evidence she bases it upon derives from a story in the Vedas that scholars generally agree is meant to be symbolic and not literal, as most stories in the Vedic manuscripts are. Too many John Wayne films for Dr Doniger, we reckon.