Both Nazi and Confederate ideology laid on the same idea of a racial hierarchy, that the natural state of man is inborn according to their race. This idea was the founding principle of the Confederacy, being the basis for their defense of a society built on slavery. They believed that the natural state of Africans was to be subservient to Europeans, based on an inborn racial hierarchy. Such a hierarchy was the cornerstone of Nazi ideology, which pulled from a multitude of 'theories' on the quality and purity of different races. Claiming that they were purifying German society and restoring the natural order, German citizens were forced into a brutal racial hierarchy that put Aryans on the top, other Europeans, Asians, and Africans down the middle, and Jews down in the chambers. Whether or not their government was centralized, both the Nazis and Confederates sought to create a repressive society where all people were bound and subjugated based on their race, while a small group of elites (head Nazi officials and large plantation owners respectively) tightly controlled society and maintained this strict racial hierarchy.