Chamberlains philosophy would later be applied by the Nazis in their Final Solution, and while Chamberlain, who died in 1927 prior to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, was not directly responsible for the Holocaust, and did not advocate the destruction of the Jews, his ideas of Aryan supremacy nonetheless were used by the Nazis as justification for those atrocities.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born on September 9 1855, in Southsea, England. His mother, Eliza Jane, daughter of Captain Basil Hall, R.N., died before he was a year old, and he was raised by his grandmother in France.

Chamberlain's education was almost entirely foreign. It began in a Lycée at Versailles, but his father, Rear Admiral William Charles Chamberlain, had planned a military career for his son and at 11 he was sent to Cheltenham College, a public school which produced many future army and navy officers. However, the young Chamberlain was “a compulsive dreamer” more interested in the arts than military discipline, and it was in these formative years that he developed a fondness for nature and a near-mystical sense of self. The prospect of serving as an officer in India or elsewhere in the British Empire held no attraction for him. In addition he was a delicate child, and early health concerns put an end to Chamberlain's military prospects.

At age 14 he suffered from seriously poor health and had to be withdrawn from school. He then traveled to various spas around Europe, accompanied by a Prussian tutor, Herr Otto Kuntze, who taught him German and interested him in German culture and history.

Chamberlain then went to Geneva, where under Carl Vogt he studied systematic botany, geology, astronomy, and later the anatomy and physiology of the human body.