Hermann Gauch

Hermann Gauch was a Nazi race theorist noted for his dedication to Nordic theory. Gauch was a physician who had joined the National Socialists in the 1920s, wrote six books of "race research" as a member of the SS, and to his dying day remained an unrepentant believer in Nazi ideology. [ [http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0810118904 "Traces of My Father" by Sigfrid Gauch, William Radice (Translator)] ] His life and ideas were recorded by his unsympathetic son Sigfrid Gauch in a memoir which provided a model for post-war commentaries on pro-Nazi parents by their offspring.

Gauch was devoted to antisemitic and Nordicist ideas, emphasising them to an extent that was extreme even in Nazi Germany. He insisted in 1933 that the fact that "birds can be taught to talk better than other animals is explained by the fact that their mouths are Nordic in structure." He further claimed that in humans, "the shape of the Nordic gum allows a superior movement of the tongue, which is the reason why Nordic talking and singing are richer." [cite book |last=Gauch|first=Hans |title=New Foundations of Racial Science |year=1934|publisher=Encyclopedia of the Third Reich|location=USA|pages=p.281|isbn=1569249172]

According to his son, he continued to believe in these theories after the war, convincing himself that neo-Nazis would eventually take power in Germany, and "proving" to himself that statistics of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust were exaggerated. [Figge, Susan, "Father books: Memoirs of the Children of Fascist Fathers", 'Revealing Lives, Yallom and Bell, eds, pp 196-200]

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