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Hitler's division of "mankind into three groups" was even more basic than race, just as race was more basic than nationality. The tripartite division alone provided a coherent underpinning for Hitler's entire world picture. It is of course clear that the Aryans constituted the first and the Jews the third group. But who belonged in the second? While Jeffrey Herf noted that Hitler "assigned" the role of culture preservers to the Japanese, this assertion is somewhat misleading. While Japan was clearly a culture-preserving state in Hitler's scheme, not all culture preservers were Japanese. In fact, from a logical point of view, every branch of humanity that was neither Aryan nor Jewish had to fall into the culture preserver category.

Nevertheless, what Hitler said about the Japanese more or less applied to the whole category. Culture preservers like the people of Japan were continually assimilating the heritage of the Aryans, but that heritage soon "rigidified" unless reinvigorated by another dose of Aryan influence. While the Aryans -- and the Jews -- were essentially dynamic, the culture preservers were thus basically static. Even if they adopted the forms of the Aryan, they could not adapt the Aryan dynamism which generated the constant creation of new forms. Progress belonged to the culture creators alone. The Japanese, Hitler notes, had adapted "European technology and culture" although they could not adapt the European ability to create new culture constantly. It is also important to note that Hitler did not regard all culture preservers as equal. On the contrary, they represented a series of peoples whose abilities varied, ranging from highly developed societies like the Japanese to simple societies like the Bushmen, with the Slavs somewhere in the middle. Yet, this broad range of peoples of unequal "race value" all fit into the broad category of culture preservers.

The Jews, in contrast, represented a destructive force which was...