Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the Volk, which he relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the first and last, that to which everything else has to be subordinated."[[38]] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than high treason against the state."[[39]]
The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but members of the nation [Volk] may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."[[40]] After the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German citizenship law of September 15, 1935.
Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, Nature, Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP, Rosenberg wrote:
An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in the German Volk consciousness: The right of nationality should not represent something which is received in the cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the state, the rights of nationality should only be received when at the age of twenty or twenty-two he has completed his education or his military service or has finished the labor service which he owes to the state and after having given evidence of honorable conduct. The right to nationality, which must be earned, must become an opportunity for every German to strive for complete humanity and achievement in the service of the Volk. This consciousness, which must always be kept alive, will cause him to regard this earned good quite differently from the way it was regarded in the past and today more than ever.
The prevailing concept of state nationality completely ignores the idea of race. According to it whoever has a German passport is a German, whoever has Czech documents is a Czech, although he may have not a single drop of Czech blood in his veins ...
National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite character in the Volk. If one permits a wholly foreign race—subject to other impulses—to participate therein, the purity of the organic expression is falsified and the existence of the Volk is crippled....
This whole concept of the state [parliamentary democracy] is replaced by National Socialism with a basically different concept. National Socialism recognizes that, although the individual racial strains in German-speaking territory differ, they nevertheless belong to closely related races, and that many mixtures among the members of these different branches have produced new and vital strains, among them the complex but still German man, but that a mixture with the Jewish enemy race, which in its whole spiritual and physical structure is basically different and antagonistic and has strong resemblances to the peoples of the Near East, can only result in bastardization.[[41]]
True to the tradition of German imperialism, Rosenberg does not confine his ideas of racial supremacy to the Germans in the Reich alone. He even extends them to the United States, where he envisages the day when the awakening German element will realize its destiny in this country. In Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, for example, he writes, "After throwing off the worn-out idea upon which it was founded ... i.e., after the destruction of the idea represented by New York, the United States of North America has the great task ... of setting out with youthful energy to put into force the new racial-state idea which a few awakened Americans have already foreseen."[[42]]
This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin Ross. In his book Unser Amerika (Our America) (document 4, post p. 178), published in 1936, Ross develops the thesis that the German element in the United States has contributed all that is best in American life and civilization and urges it to become conscious of its racial heritage and to prepare for the day when it may take over complete control of the country.
Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's Education in the Third Reich. On the subject of racial supremacy Beck points out that certain new branches of learning have been introduced into the National Socialist schools and certain old ones have been given a new emphasis. The most important of these are the science of race and the cultivation of race (Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege), which teach the pupil to recognize and develop those racial powers which alone make possible the fullest self-realization in the national community. An awakening of a true racial consciousness in the people should lead to a "qualitative and quantitative" racial refinement of the German people by inducing a procreative process of selection which would reduce the strains of foreign blood in the national body. "German racial consciousness must have pride in the Nordic race as its first condition. It must be a feeling of the highest personal pride to belong to the Nordic race and to have the possibility and the obligation to work within the German community for the advancement of the Nordic race."[[43]] Beck points out that pupils must be made to realize "that the downfall of the Nordic race would mean the collapse of the national tradition, the disintegration of the living community and the destruction of the individual."[[44]]