Blood Types and Races

 

Source: SS-Leitheft No. 3, 1939

 

In the light of the discovery of blood groups, which we briefly discussed in the last issue, their importance for racial science has been greatly overestimated. Thus, it is commonly believed that blood directly determines an individual’s racial affiliation. But, as is well known, there are many more than four to six races on Earth. It is therefore quite obvious that the four to six blood types are not sufficient to associate one of the many races with a particular blood type. In fact the four classic groups A, B, AB, O occur in all peoples and races. Blood types are therefore not able to determine whether an individual belongs to a race! Classifying people according to a particularity – in this case the blood group – leads nowhere. If, for example, one wanted to judge peoples and races solely on the basis of the cephalic index, Nordics and Negroes would be related, because both races are dolichocephalic! It is understandable that the importance of the blood characteristic in racial research has been overestimated, as this characteristic at least deserves special consideration. However, in the determination of blood groups, racial studies is no less – but not more – present than the first biological procedure, which is qualified to richly complement those which, up to now, are almost solely descriptive and used to measure bodies. Moreover, the blood group of an individual remains constant throughout his or her life and, unlike other bodily characteristics, is completely independent of any action of the outside world.

 

Although no precise race can be assigned to the four to six blood groups, the discovery of these groups nevertheless provides valuable information for establishing the history of races and the discovery of peoples. It could be proved that the four groups A, B, AB, O are found everywhere on Earth, but that the frequency of their appearance is different according to the people and the races. A familiar example will shed light on the problem: If we compare the percentage distribution of blood groups in the German people, taking into account every survey published to date, with that of the 1000 Jews examined, we obtain the following table (rounded figures):

 

Blood types	O	A	B	AB
Germans	36	50	10	4
Jews		33	37	21	9

 

We find that the values for B and AB are twice as high among Jews as among Germans. The distribution of O’s is roughly equal, whereas A is significantly more common among Germans than among Jews.

 

It is clear that such percentages give a more accurate picture the larger the number of individuals examined. If one were to examine only one hundred men of the SS, one would surely obtain a different picture of the distribution of groups than the one given above for the Germans. An examination of the entire SS would, however, give approximate figures. Data on the distribution of groups within specific countries is therefore very uncertain, because very few nationals of these countries are examined and the choice of those examined influences the results. In any case, a picture of the distribution of blood groups among different peoples and national entities can already be drawn today, taking into account the results of previous findings:

 

An overview shows a significant preponderance of A-blood in northwestern Europe and B-blood in central and eastern Asia. However, A-blood and the Nordic breed should not be confused, despite the geographical data known to date, as the examination of a group of East German populations with a majority of A-blood has revealed. In the Europe-Asia area, group A decreases steadily from west to east. It is striking that in European Russia there are fewer A’s than in the Near East among the formerly northern Iranians and Persians. This is a clear indication of the push of the Indo-Germanic Nordic peoples towards Asia. As far as B is concerned, there is a preponderance of distribution in north-eastern Europe compared to the regions of south-eastern Europe and the Near East. Prehistory and history show that racial elements migrated from Asia to Europe. Regarding the distribution of A in other parts of the world, we find: the preponderance of A outside Europe is found in Australia, Polynesia, the Pacific and Japan as well as among the peoples of North Africa. The Australians and Polynesians show some analogy in their physical characteristics with the European parent stock, so that the high preponderance of A in these peoples is not so surprising. Among the Japanese, the preponderance of A blood stops after the Ainu, that ancient population of the Japanese islands which also shows a predominance of A, and is related to the European peoples by other physical characteristics. Among the peoples of North Africa, the predominance of A blood is consistent with the fact that this region belongs to the Mediterranean and therefore European racial sphere, a membership that may also be partly due to the Empire of the Germanic Vandals, who stayed in North Africa for over a hundred years. As far as B is concerned, outside the Europe-Asia continent, its presence is rather limited in the Pacific and its total absence in Australia. The O blood group is so preponderant (90%) among the Eskimos and the North American Indians who are related to them, that the non-O individuals could only have received their blood group from a foreign influence. There is, so to speak, no AB among them. A and B are so rare that their penetration into the primitive

 

North American population could be explained by the mixture of races following colonisation. Initially, the Eskimos and the North American Indians seemed to have possessed only O blood. They would thus be the only “pure race” in terms of blood type that we know of so far on Earth.

 

Since the Indians have such a clearly differentiated blood group, it can be clearly shown here how mixing with other peoples and races changes the original blood structure of a people. This can be seen in the following table:

 

Blood types	O	A	B	AB (%)
Purebred Indians	91,3	37,7	1,0	0,0
Metis Indians	64,8	25,6	7,1	2,4
American White	45,0	41,0	10,1	4.0

 

As was to be expected after the mixing of their race, the Indian half- bloods in percentage terms have an intermediate position between the pure Indians and the whites. Where mixing has occurred, intermediate figures are found in the averages. The figures for Eastern Russia suggest a wide mixture between Russians and Finno-Ugric and Mongolian peoples.

 

Conversely, with the help of blood types, it can be demonstrated whether a people maintains the purity of its blood or not As it has been proven so far that the gender distribution remains stable over three generations, it must also be assumed that the blood group distribution of a people remains the same century after century, as long as there is no mixing of blood with people of different groups. In fact, it could now be argued that, for example, the “Transylvanian Saxons” who left Germany seven hundred years ago still have the same group distribution as the Germans in Germany, different from that of their Romanian or Hungarian neighbours! The Negroes in America have a group distribution comparable to that of their African brothers. The Dutch, too, in South Africa and the East Indies, have retained the same typology as their brothers in the mother country; the same is true of the English in Canada and Australia. Correspondingly, the distribution is also very striking among the Gypsies—the real Gypsies—who should not be confused with the vagabonds who have blended in here and there with these nomads. The distribution of groups among the Gypsies has nothing to do with that of the European peoples but rather with that of the Hindus. However, the Gypsy language is made up of bits and pieces of all the languages of the countries they pass through, and some words indicate that the Gypsies originated in India. Blood research has proven the validity of this view as the following comparisons show:

 

Blood types	O	A	B	AB (%)
Gypsies	27-36	21-29	29-39	6-9
Hindus	30-32	20-25	37-42	6-9

 

This astonishing example shows us how little the blood typology of the Gypsy people has changed, although there is evidence that they have dispersed since the XIII century into countless hordes across Europe, where they have lived their lives as parasites.

 

Like other hereditary characteristics, individuals within a people can naturally be differentiated by blood group. Thus, West and South Germans differ from East and Central Germans. However, the differences are not as great as between Russians and Germans or between Poles and Dutch. Nevertheless, within certain borders, one can speak of certain permanent figures that are characteristic of the Germans as a whole. Apart from a few local deviations, all people, as far as the distribution of blood groups is concerned, are homogeneous within certain regions and this homogeneity is also surprisingly constant

 

We see, therefore, that it is quite possible to explain certain racial and national processes with the help of the blood group test.

 

The study of the properties of the recently discovered similar blood groups M, N, P, S, G, which have not yet been tested in racial experiments, may in the future provide us with a new method of explaining the interdependence between blood group and race.