Untermensch in the context of "Infrahumanisation"

German nationalism (German: Deutscher Nationalismus) is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and of the Germanosphere into one unified nation-state. It emphasises and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nation and one people. German nationalism, and the concept of nationalism itself, began during the late 18th century, which later gave rise to Pan-Germanism. Advocacy of a German nation-state became an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon Bonaparte. In the 19th century, Germans debated the German question over whether the German nation-state should comprise a "Lesser Germany" that excluded the Austrian Empire or a "Greater Germany" that included the Austrian Empire or its German speaking part. The faction led by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck succeeded in forging a Lesser Germany.

Aggressive German nationalism and territorial expansion were key factors leading to both World Wars. Before World War I, Germany had established a colonial empire, which became the third-largest, after Britain and France. In the 1930s, the Nazis came to power and sought to unify all ethnic Germans under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, eventually leading to the extermination of Jews, Poles, Romani, and other people deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) in the Holocaust during World War II. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the country was divided into East and West Germany in the opening acts of the Cold War, and each state retained a sense of German identity and held reunification as a goal, albeit in different contexts. The creation of the European Union was in part an effort to harness German identity to a European identity. West Germany underwent its economic miracle following the war which led to the creation of a guest worker program; many of these workers settled in Germany which led to tensions around questions of national and cultural identity, especially with regard to Turks who settled in Germany.

The German Nazi Party adopted and developed several racial hierarchical categorizations as an important part of its racist ideology (Nazism) in order to justify enslavement, extermination, ethnic persecution and other atrocities against ethnicities which it deemed genetically or culturally inferior. The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping and it was accepted by Nazi thinkers. The Nazis considered the putative "Aryan race" a superior "master race" with Germanic peoples as representative of the Nordic race being the best branch, and they considered Jews, mixed-race people, Slavs, Romani, black people, and certain other ethnicities racially inferior subhumans, whose members were only suitable for slave labor and extermination. In these ethnicities, Jews were considered the most inferior. However, the Nazis considered Germanic peoples such as Germans to be significantly mixed between different races, with the East Baltic race being considered inferior by the Nazis, and that their citizens needed to be completely Nordicized after the war. The Nazis also considered some non-Germanic groups such as Sorbs, Northern Italians, and Greeks to be of Germanic and Nordic origin. Some non-Aryan ethnic groups such as the Japanese were considered to be partly superior, while some Indo-Europeans such as Slavs, Romani, and Indo-Aryans were considered inferior.

These beliefs stemmed from a mixture of historical race concepts, 19th-century and early 20th century anthropology, 19th-century and early 20th-century biology, racial biology, white supremacism, notions of Aryan racial superiority, Nordicism, social Darwinism, German nationalism, and antisemitism with the selection of the most extreme parts. They also originated from German military alliance needs. The term Aryan generally originated during the discourses about the use of the term Volk (the people constitute a lineage group whose members share a territory, a language, and a culture). Unlike the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) only used for military conflicts, the Schutzstaffel (SS) was a paramilitary organization directly controlled by the Nazis with absolute compliance with Nazi racial ideology and policies.

Anti-Slavic sentiment, also called anti-Slavic racism or Slavophobia, refers to different types of negative attitudes, prejudices, collective hatred or animosity, stereotypes, discrimination, and violence (economic, physical, political, psychological, verbal, etc.) directed at one or more ethnic groups of Slavic peoples. Accompanying racism and xenophobia, the most common manifestation of anti-Slavic sentiment throughout history has been the assertion that some Slavs are inferior to other peoples.

Anti-Slavic sentiment reached its highest point during World War II, when Nazi Germany and its collaborators classified most of the Slavs, especially the Belarusians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, as "subhumans" (Untermenschen) and perpetrated a systematic genocide against them, murdering millions of Slavs through the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan.

During the Holocaust in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the military administration of Nazi Germany established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia, Jewish and Romani people were subjected to genocidal acts. The crimes were primarily committed by the German occupation authorities who implemented Nazi racial policies, assisted by the collaborationist forces of the successive puppet governments established by the Germans in the occupied territory.

Immediately after the occupation, the occupation authorities introduced racial laws, labeling Jews and Romani as Untermensch ("sub-humans"). They also appointed two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision.