Early German race-thinking was so entangled with nationalism that the two become nearly indistinguishable.

Evidence

Since German race-thinking accompanied the long frustrated attempts to unite the numerous German states, it remained so closely connected, in its early stages, with more general national feelings that it is rather difficult to distinguish between mere nationalism and clear-cut racism. Harmless national sentiments expressed themselves in what we know today to be racial terms, so that even historians who identify the twentieth-century German brand of racism with the peculiar language of German nationalism have strangely been led into mistaking Nazism for German nationalism, thereby helping to underestimate the tremendous international appeal of Hitler’s propaganda. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later distinction Arendt draws between racism and nationalism — anticipates the reader’s Islamophobia work on how nationalism slides into race-thinking. — connects to: Germany’s ethnocultural homogeneity obsession made its empire exceptional. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 66