'''Untermensch''' (parola tedesca per '''sub-umano''', plurale: ''Untermenschen'') è un termine dell'razzista nazista utilizzato per descrivere i "popoli inferiori", specialmente "i popoli dell'Est", cioè gli bolscevichi sovietici e ogni altra persona che non fosse di "razza ariana", secondo la terminologia nazista contemporanea.

== Le origini del termine "Untermensch" ==
Anche se di solito si crede che il termine sia stato coniato dai nazisti stessi, il termine "sub-umano", nel senso sopra menzionato, fu già utilizzato dall'autore americano est-europei a Stoddard è comunisti russi, scrisse nel suo ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts'' (1930) che "questo è il tipo di essere umano che Lothrop Stoddard ha definito 'sub-umano.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."]<ref>Alfred Rosenberg, ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit'', München: Hoheneichen, 1930, p.214.</ref> Citando Stoddard: ''"Il sub-umano &mdash; l'uomo che sta sotto gli standard di capacità e adattabilità imposti dall'ordine sociale nel quale vive''.

È comunque possibile che Stoddard abbia costruito il suo "sub-umano" come antipode al concetto di prefissi e radici in modo da creare nuove parole, questo sviluppo sembra abbastanza logico. Ad esempio, l'autore tedesco Theodor Fontane contrasta le parole Übermensch/Untermensch nel romanzo ''Der Pharrt'' (1898, capitolo 33). In effetti, anche Nietzsche stesso utilizzò il termine "Untermensch" in opposizione a quello di "Übermensch" (''Die fröhliche Wissenschaft'' 1882, 3° volume, capitolo 143) ma questo non si riferisce all'interpretazione del significato di Untermensch in epoca nazista. 

L'opera di Stoddard trattava la presa del potere da parte dei bolscevichi in idee liberali ed adottare drastici cambiamenti di politica, introducendo ad esempio il programma di eugenetica.<ref>Lothrop Stoddard, ''The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man'', New York: C. Sribner's Sons, 1922.</ref>

== Untermensch nella propaganda e nella politica nazista ==
I nazisti credevano che gli africani e gli ''elementi asociali'', come anche quelli disabili mentalmente o fisicamente, gli omosessuali, i criminali, le prostitute, i mendicanti, i giramondo, i liberali, e i cosiddetti ''generarati moralmente'' fossero sub-umani.

Il termine "Untermensch" era utilizzato negli scritti e nei discorsi diretti contro gli ebrei, e l'esempio più noto è una pubblicazione del antisemitica estratta da un discorso tenuto da Heinrich Himmler. Nel testo ''Le SS come Organizzazione Anti-Bolscevica'', Himmler scrisse nel 1936: ''Dobbiamo preoccuparci che mai più in Germania, il cuore dell'Europa, possano scoppiare rivoluzioni di sub-umani ebrei o bolscevichi sia dall'interno che dall'esterno tramite emissari.''[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/ssnur1.htm]

'''Untermensch''' (German for ''under man'', ''sub-man'', ''sub-human''; plural: Untermenschen) is a term from Nazi racial Gypsies, Aryan" according to the contemporary Nazi race terminology. The German word ''Mensch'' literally means ''person''.

== The origins of the term "Untermensch" ==

Although usually considered to have been coined by the Nazis themselves, the term "under man" in the above mentioned sense was actually first used by American author Lothrop Stoddard in the title of his 1922 pamphlet ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man''. It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version ''Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen'' (1925).<ref>Domenico Losurdo, “Toward a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism”, ''Historical Materialism'' 12.2 (April 2004), p.25-55, here p.50.</ref> 
The German word "Untermensch" itself had been used earlier (not in a racial sense), e.g. in a 1899 novel by East-European "under man" to Stoddard is Alfred Rosenberg who, referring to Russian communists, wrote in his ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts'' (1930) that "this is the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called the 'under man.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."]<ref>Alfred Rosenberg, ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit'', München: Hoheneichen, 1930, here p.214.</ref> Quoting Stoddard: ''"The Under-Man -- the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives''.

However, it is possible that Stoddard constructed his "under man" as an antipode to prefixes and roots almost at will in order to create new words, this development was even somewhat logical. For instance, German author Theodor Fontane contrasts the Übermensch/Untermensch word pair in his novel ''Der Pharrt'' (1898, see Chapter 33). As a matter of fact, even Nietzsche himself used "Untermensch" at least once in contrast to "Übermensch" (''Die fröhliche Wissenschaft'' [1882], 3rd book, Chapter 143) but this bears no resemblance to the Untermensch in later thought. Earlier examples of "Untermensch" include Romanticist Jean Paul using the term in his novel ''Hesperus '' (1795) in reference to an Orangutan (Chapter "8. Hundposttag").

Stoddard's book-long diatribe dealt with the recent takeover of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia, arguing that that country was now ruled by the most degenerate people on the Earth. He thought that the combination of the alleged inherent racial inferiority of Russian Slavs, the idiocy of a political creed that appealed to the vilest human instincts (e.g. jealousy towards the more gifted and the more affluent) and the supposed fact that the Communist Party's rank and file consisted of "born criminals" in the most conventional sense of the word necessitated a completely new term to describe this phenomenon: "the under man." In this sense, for Stoddard, the October Revolution was the battle cry for an upcoming, unavoidable clash of the civilized nations with the "masses of the east." If the white race was intent upon winning that confrontation with the "under man," so the message went, it had to turn away from ill-conceived liberal ideas and adopt drastic changes of policy instead, e.g. by introducing far-ranging eugenics programmes.<ref>Lothrop Stoddard, ''The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man'', New York: C. Sribner's Sons, 1922.</ref>

The available literature on Nazi Germany would not support the claim that Stoddard's writings were more to the Nazis than a neat summary of racial, social, and political theories that already were or would soon become part and parcel of the Nazis' ideology.

== The "Untermensch" in Nazi propaganda and policy ==
right|thumb|250px|A member of ''[[Einsatzgruppe D'' murders a Jew who is kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, in 1942. The back of the photo is inscribed "The last Jew in Vinnytsia".]]

The term "Untermensch" was utilized repeatedly in writings and speeches directed against the Jews, the most notorious example being a 1935 SS publication with the title "Der Untermensch" which contains an antisemitic tirade sometimes considered to be an extract from a speech held by Heinrich Himmler. In the pamphlet ''The SS as an Anti-bolshevist Fighting Organization'', Himmler wrote in 1936: ''We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of '''subhumans''' be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.''http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/ssnur1.htm

Another  example for using the term "Untermensch," this time in connection with anti-Soviet propaganda, is another brochure, again titled "Der Untermensch" and edited by Himmler. Published in 1942 after the start of Operation Barbarossa, it is around fifty pages long and consists for the most part of photos casting an extremely negative light on the enemy (see link below for the title page). Historian Robert Jan van Pelt writes that for the Nazis, "it was only a small step to a rhetoric pitting the European Mensch against the Soviet Untermensch, which had come to mean a Russian in the clutches of Judeo-Bolshevism."<ref>Robert Jan van Pelt, "From Architect's Promise to Inmate's Perdition," ''Modernism/Modernity'' 1.1 (1994), p. 80-120, here p.97.</ref>

The Race and Settlement Head Office in 1942 distributed a pamphlet "The Sub-Human" to those responsible for that selection of which 3,860,995 copies were printed in German language. It was also translated into Greek, French, Dutch, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Czech and seven other languages. The pamphlet states the following: