Ideology

Upon admission to the prisoner infirmary at Dachau concentration camp, the skulls of new patients were measured using a craniometer. This instrument was discovered by American soldiers at the site of the camp after its liberation. Commonly used in anthropology since the 19th century, craniometers were employed during the Nazi period for the pseudoscientific determination of individuals' alleged “racial affiliation”.

The Nazi regime's pseudoscientific racial ideology formed the basis of its occupation policies. The regime derived a supposed right to violent expansion from the idea of biologically defined “races". Anti-Semitism, anti-Gypsyism, anti-Slavism, and the eugenic valuation of human life were all based on distorted and scientifically untenable concepts. Elites from the fields of medicine, law and science played a significant role in their dissemination.