Aryan race
These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a superior race, which was narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by other sub-races of the Aryan race and excluding Slavs as non-Aryan. They worked to maintain the purity of this race through eugenics programs (including anti-miscegenation legislation, compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program).