Volk Theory: Prejudice, Racism, and German Foreign Policy Before and Under Hitler

Abstract

Drawing on John Duckitt’s dual-process model of prejudice, we hypothesize that there are two primary types of racial prejudice, biological and symbolic-cultural, and that these are associated with particular ideological outlooks—dangerous and competitive world beliefs, respectively—that might substantially affect foreign policy. Biological racism is associated with a materialistic understanding of the world as a zero-sum struggle for scarce resources, symbolic-cultural racism with a conception of the world as filled with threats that must be dealt with through the creation of national cohesion and conformity. The dual-process framework makes sense of the differences between Wilhelmine and Nazi foreign policy and puts race at the heart of the contrast, most clearly seen in the treatment of the same conquered Eastern European territory during World War I and World War II. Our approach puts individual-level variation in the degree and type of prejudice front and center, something generally overlooked in critical approaches.