![Title Page of the The Passing of the Great Race](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Title_Page_of_the_The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race.jpg)
Nordicism is an
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
of
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
which views the
historical race concept of the "
Nordic race
The Nordic race was a racial concept which originated in 19th century anthropology. It was considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming th ...
" as an
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...
and
superior racial group
A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of variou ...
. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include
Madison Grant
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...
's book ''
The Passing of the Great Race
''The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History'' is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theo ...
'' (1916);
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
's ''
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
''Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines'' (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853–1855) is a racist and pseudoscientific work of French writer Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, which argues that there are intellectual differen ...
'' (1853); the various writings of
Lothrop Stoddard
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (June 29, 1883 – May 1, 1950) was an American historian, journalist, political scientist, conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Stoddard wrote several books which advocated eugenics and sci ...
;
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific ...
's ''
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'' (''Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,'' 1899) is a book by British-born German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In the book, Chamberlain advances various racialist and especially ''v ...
'' (1899); and, to a lesser extent,
William Z. Ripley
William Zebina Ripley (October 13, 1867 – August 16, 1941) was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economy at Harvard University, and racial anthropologist. Ripley was fa ...
’s ''
The Races of Europe'' (1899). The ideology became popular in the late-19th and 20th centuries among
Germanic-speaking people of
Northwestern,
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and
Northern Europe
The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe Northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54th parallel north, 54°N, or may be based on other g ...
, as well as in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.
The belief that the Nordic
phenotype
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...
is superior to all others was originally embraced as "
Anglo-Saxonism
19th-century Anglo-Saxonism, or racial Anglo-Saxonism, was a racial belief system developed by British and American intellectuals, politicians and academics in the 19th century. Racialized Anglo-Saxonism contained both competing and intersecting do ...
" in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, "Teutonicism" in Germany, and "Frankisism" in Northern
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
.
The notion of the superiority of the "Nordic race" and the superiority of the
Northwestern Europe
Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern and Western Europe. The region can be defined both geographically and ethnographically.
Geographic definitions
Geographically, North ...
an nations that were associated with this supposed race influenced the United States'
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
(which effectively banned or severely limited the immigration of
Italians
, flag =
, flag_caption = The national flag of Italy
, population =
, regions = Italy 55,551,000
, region1 = Brazil
, pop1 = 25–33 million
, ref1 =
, region2 ...
,
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, and other
Southern and
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
ans) and the later
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952,
and it was also present in other countries outside
Northwestern Europe
Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern and Western Europe. The region can be defined both geographically and ethnographically.
Geographic definitions
Geographically, North ...
and the United States, such as
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, and
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
.
By the 1930s, the
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
claimed that the Nordic race was the most superior branch of the "
Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
" and constituted a
master race
The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative " Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "''Herrenmenschen''" ("master humans").
T ...
(''Herrenvolk''). The full application of
this belief system—the
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
and
further conquest in the pursuit of ''
Lebensraum
(, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imper ...
'', 'living space'—was the immediate catalyst for
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and led directly to the
industrial mass murder of
six million Jews and eleven million other victims in what is now known as
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
Background
![Karl von Müller](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Karl_von_M%C3%BCller.jpg)
The Russian-born French anthropologist
Joseph Deniker
Joseph Deniker (russian: Иосиф Егорович Деникер, ''Yosif Yegorovich Deniker''; 6 March 1852, in Astrakhan – 18 March 1918, in Paris) was a Russian and French naturalist and anthropologist, known primarily for his attempts t ...
initially proposed "nordique" (meaning simply "northern") as an "ethnic group" (a term that he coined).
He defined ''nordique'' by a set of physical characteristics: the concurrence of somewhat wavy hair, light eyes, reddish skin, tall stature and a
dolichocephalic
Dolichocephaly (derived from the Ancient Greek δολιχός 'long' and κεφαλή 'head') is a condition where the head is longer than would be expected, relative to its width. In humans, scaphocephaly is a form of dolichocephaly.
Dolichoce ...
skull.
In the mid-19th century,
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
developed the theory of
Aryanism
Aryanism is an ideology of racial supremacy which views the supposed Aryan race as a distinct and superior racial group which is entitled to rule the rest of humanity. Initially promoted by racist theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau and Ho ...
, holding that Europeans ("Aryans") were an innately superior branch of humanity , responsible for most of its greatest achievements. Aryanism was derived from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages constituted a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race.
Its principal proponent was
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
in his ''Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'' (1855). Though Gobineau did not equate Nordic people with Aryans, he argued that Germanic people were the best modern representatives of the Aryan race. Adapting the comments of
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his t ...
and other
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
writers, he argued that "pure" Northerners regenerated Europe after the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
declined due to racial "dilution" of its leadership.
By the 1880s a number of linguists and anthropologists argued that the Aryans themselves had originated somewhere in northern Europe.
Theodor Poesche
Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Poesche (23 March 1825 – 27 December 1899) was a German American anthropologist and author, specializing in historical anthropology.
Life
Born in 1825 in Zoeschen (now part of Leuna) in the Province of Saxony of th ...
proposed that the Aryans originated in the vast Rokitno, or
Pinsk Marshes
__NOTOC__
The Pinsk Marshes ( be, Пінскія балоты, ''Pinskiya baloty''), also known as the Pripet Marshes ( be, Прыпяцкія балоты, ''Prypiackija baloty''), the Polesie Marshes, and the Rokitno Marshes, are a vast natural ...
, then in the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, now covering much of the southern part of
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
and the north-west of the
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, but it was
Karl Penka
Karl Penka (26 October 1847, Mohelnice – 10 February 1912, Vienna) was an Austrian philologist and anthropologist. Known for his now-outdated theories locating the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Northern Europe, Penka has been described as "a tr ...
who popularised the idea that the Aryans had emerged in
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
and could be identified by the distinctive Nordic characteristics of light hair and blue eyes.
The biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stori ...
agreed with him, coining the term ''Xanthochroi'' to refer to fair-skinned Europeans, as opposed to darker Mediterranean people, whom Huxley called ''
Melanochroi''. It was Huxley who also concluded that the Melanochroi, who he described as "dark whites", are of a mixture of the Xanthochroi and
Australioids.
This distinction was repeated by
Charles Morris in his book ''The Aryan Race'' (1888), which argued that the original Aryans could be identified by their blond hair and other Nordic features, such as
dolichocephaly
Dolichocephaly (derived from the Ancient Greek δολιχός 'long' and κεφαλή 'head') is a condition where the head is longer than would be expected, relative to its width. In humans, scaphocephaly is a form of dolichocephaly.
Dolichoce ...
(long skull). The argument was given extra impetus by the French anthropologist
Vacher de Lapouge
Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge (; 12 December 1854 – 20 February 1936) was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and racialism. He is known as the founder of anthroposociology, the anthropological and sociological study of race ...
in his book ''L’Aryen'', in which he argued that the "dolichocephalic-blond" people were natural leaders, destined to rule over more brachycephalic (short-skulled) people.
The philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
also referred in his writings to "blond beasts": lion-like amoral adventurers who were supposed to be the progenitors of creative cultures. In ''
On the Genealogy of Morals
''On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic'' (german: Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift) is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated treatises ('Abhandlungen' in German) that ...
'' (1887), he wrote, "In Latin malus ... could indicate the vulgar man as the dark one, especially as the black-haired one, as the pre-Aryan dweller of the Italian soil which distinguished itself most clearly through his colour from the blonds who became their masters, namely the Aryan conquering race." However, Nietzsche thought of these "blond beasts" not as a racial type, but as the ideal aristocratic personality, which can appear in any society: "the Roman, Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are all alike in this need."
By the early 20th century the concept of a "masterly" Nordic race had become familiar enough that the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
William McDougall, writing in 1920, stated:
Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly—namely, that we can distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterised physically by fair colour of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head), and mentally by great independence of character, individual initiative and tenacity of will. Many names have been used to denote this type, ... . It is also called the Nordic type.
Nordicists claimed that Nordics had formed upper tiers of ancient civilisations, even in the Mediterranean civilisations of antiquity, which had declined once this dominant race had been assimilated. Thus they argued that ancient evidence suggested that leading Romans like
Nero
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 un ...
,
Sulla
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (; 138–78 BC), commonly known as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman. He won the first large-scale civil war in Roman history and became the first man of the Republic to seize power through force.
Sulla had ...
and
Cato were blond or red-haired.
Some Nordicists admitted the Mediterranean race was superior to the Nordic in terms of artistic ability. However, the Nordic race was regarded as superior on the basis that, although Mediterranean peoples were culturally sophisticated, it was the Nordics who were alleged to be the innovators and conquerors, having an adventurous spirit that no other race could match.
The
Alpine race
The Alpine race is a historical race concept defined by some late 19th-century and early 20th-century anthropologists as one of the sub-races of the Caucasian race. The origin of the Alpine race was variously identified. Ripley argued that it m ...
was usually regarded as inferior to both the Nordic and Mediterranean races, making up the traditional peasant class of Europe while Nordics occupied the aristocracy and led the world in technology, and Mediterraneans were regarded as more imaginative.
[According to Madision Grant, "The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organisers and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines ... The mental characteristics of the Mediterranean race are well known, and this race, while inferior in bodily stamina to both the Nordic and the Alpine, is probably the superior of both, certainly of the Alpines, in intellectual attainments." Grant accepts that Mediterraneans created Semitic and Egyptian cultures, but insisted that Greece was "invigorated" by Nordics, and that "Roman ideals of family life, loyalty and truth, point clearly to a Nordic rather than to a Mediterranean origin"]
Opponents of Nordicism rejected these arguments. The anti-Nordicist writer
Giuseppe Sergi
Giuseppe Sergi (March 20, 1841 – October 17, 1936) was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of Mediterranean peoples. He rejected existing racia ...
argued in his influential book ''The Mediterranean Race'' (1901) that there was no evidence that the upper tiers of ancient societies were Nordic, insisting that historical and anthropological evidence contradicted such claims. Sergi argued that Mediterraneans constituted "the greatest race in the world", with a creative edge absent in the Nordic race. According to him, Mediterraneans were the creators of all the major ancient civilisations, from
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
to
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
.
This argument was later repeated by C. G. Seligman, who wrote that "it must, I think, be recognised that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other". Even Carleton Coon insisted that among Greeks "the Nordic element is weak, as it probably has been since the days of Homer ... It is my personal reaction to the living Greeks that their continuity with their ancestors of the ancient world is remarkable, rather than the opposite."
United States
In the United States, the primary spokesman for Nordicism was the
eugenicist
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
Madison Grant
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...
. His 1916 book, ''
The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History'' about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinking and government policy making.
Grant used the theory as justification for immigration policies of the 1920s, arguing that the immigrants from certain areas of Europe, such as Italians and other Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, represented a lesser type of European and their numbers in the United States should not be increased. Grant and others urged this as well as the complete restriction of non-Europeans, such as the Chinese and Japanese.
Grant argued the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements (he lists
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
,
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
,
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
,
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...
, and
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
as examples of Nordics). Admixture was "race suicide" and unless eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by inferior races. Future president
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer ...
agreed, stating "Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides." Grant argues that Nordics founded the United States and the English "language", and formed the ruling classes of ancient Greece and Rome. An analysis performed by Grant alleges that Northwestern Europeans are less criminal than Southern and Eastern Europeans (see also
Race and crime
Race is one of the correlates of crime receiving attention in academic studies, government surveys, media coverage, and public concern. Research has found that social status, poverty, and childhood exposure to violent behavior are causes of the r ...
).
The
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
was signed into law by President Coolidge. This was designed to reduce the number of immigrants from Southern Europe, Southeast Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, exclude Asian immigrants altogether, and favour immigration from
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
and
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
, while also permitting immigration from
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
.
The spread of these ideas also affected popular culture.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
invokes Grant's ideas through a character in part of ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...
'', and
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
jokingly rhapsodized the "Nordic man" in a poem and essay in which he satirised the stereotypes of Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans.
Germany
![Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0912-500, Prof](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1989-0912-500%2C_Prof._Hans_G%C3%BCnther.jpg)
In Germany the influence of Nordicism remained powerful - it became known there as "Nordischer Gedanke" (''Nordic thought'').
This phrase, coined by the German eugenicists
Erwin Baur Erwin Baur (16 April 1875, in Neuried, Ichenheim, Grand Duchy of Baden – 2 December 1933) was a German geneticist and botanist. Baur worked primarily on plant genetics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research (since 1 ...
,
Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, ...
and
Fritz Lenz Fritz Gottlieb Karl Lenz (9 March 1887 in Pflugrade, Pomerania – 6 July 1976 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony) was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi Party,[Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...]
(1788-1860) and others to
Darwinian
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that ...
theory, they argued that the "Nordic" qualities of initiative and will-power identified by earlier writers had arisen from
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
, because of the tough landscape in which Nordic peoples evolved. This had ensured that weaker individuals had not survived.
By the early 19th century, Nordicism was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
attributed cultural primacy to the white race:The
eugenicist
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
Madison Grant
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...
argued in his 1916 book, ''
The Passing of the Great Race
''The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History'' is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theo ...
'', that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and that
admixture was "race suicide". In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be a Nordic admixture and suitable for
Aryanization
Aryanization (german: Arisierung) was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. I ...
.
[ Grant, Madison (1916). ''The Passing of the Great Race''. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.]
This argument derived from earlier eugenicist and
Social Darwinist
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in W ...
ideas. According to the authors, the Nordic race arose in the
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...
, from:
They went on to argue that "the original Indo-Germanic civilisation" was carried by Nordic migrants to India, and that the physiognomies of
upper-caste Indians "disclose a Nordic origin".
By this time, Germany was well-accustomed to theories of race and racial superiority due to the long-standing influence of the
Völkisch movement, with its philosophy that Germans constituted a unique people, or ''Volk'', linked by common blood. While Volkism was popular mainly among Germany's lower classes and offered a romanticised version of ethnic nationalism, Nordicism attracted German
anthropologists
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
and eugenicists.
Hans F. K. Günther, one of Fischer's students, first defined "Nordic thought" in his programmatic book ''Der Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen'' (1927). He became the most influential German in this field, his ''Short Ethnology of the German People'' (1929) was very widely circulated.
In his ''
Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes
''Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes'' (English: ''Racial Science of the German People''), is a book written by German race researcher and Nazi Party member Hans Günther and published in 1922.Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenic ...
'' (''Race-Lore of the German Volk''), published 1922, Günther identified five principal European races instead of three, adding the
East Baltic race The East Baltic race is one of the subcategories of the Europid race, into which it was divided by biological anthropologists and scientific racists in the early 20th century. Such racial typologies have been rejected by modern anthropology for se ...
and
Dinaric race
The Dinaric race, also known as the Adriatic race, were terms used by certain physical anthropology, physical anthropologists in the early to mid-20th century to describe the perceived predominant phenotype of the contemporary ethnic groups of s ...
to Ripley's categories.
He used the term "Ostic"instead of "Alpine".
[ He focused on the races' supposedly distinct mental attributes.
Günther criticised the Völkish idea, stating that the Germans were not racially unified, but were actually one of the most racially diverse peoples in Europe. Despite this, many Völkists who merged Völkism and Nordicism, most notably the Nazis, embraced Günther's ideas.
]
Nazi Nordicism
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
promulgated Nordicism based on the idea of a superior Germanic people
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...
or Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
in Germany during the early 20th century. These notions of Aryan racial superiority ("Aryanism") were developed in the 19th century, maintaining the belief that white people were members of an Aryan "master race
The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative " Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "''Herrenmenschen''" ("master humans").
T ...
" that was superior to other races, particularly the Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, who were described as the "Semitic race", Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
, and Gypsies
The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sign ...
, who they associated with "cultural sterility".
To preserve the Aryan race or Nordic race, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of ...
in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later additionally forbidding Slavs and Romani. The Nazis used the Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularize ...
theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behavior. Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
ideals were combined with a eugenics program that aimed for racial hygiene
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...
through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination of ''Untermensch
''Untermensch'' (, ; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a Nazi term for non-Aryan "inferior people" who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians). The ...
en'' ("subhumans"): Jews, Slavs, and Romani, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (german: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungss ...
, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis
Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack ...
.
Influence from France
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ''ancien régime'' in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the "purity" of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany and later attracted a strong following in the ''Reich
''Reich'' (; ) is a German language, German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emp ...
'', emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish culture.
The pessimism of Gobineau's message did not lend itself to political action because he did not believe that humanity could be saved from racial degeneration. However, writing in April 1939, Rowbotham declared: "So after nearly a hundred years, the fantastic pessimistic philosophy of the brilliant French diplomat is seized upon and twisted to the use of a mystic demagogue who finds in the idea of the pure Aryan an excuse for thrusting civilization dangerously near back to the Dark Ages."
Influence from the United States
As Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
, the Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
's chief racial theorist, oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies, promoting the Nordic theory
Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book '' The Passing of the Great Race'' ...
that regarded Nordics as the "master race" superior to all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans), he used the racial term ''Untermensch'' from the title of Klansman
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Hispanic and Latino Americans, L ...
Lothrop Stoddard
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (June 29, 1883 – May 1, 1950) was an American historian, journalist, political scientist, conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Stoddard wrote several books which advocated eugenics and sci ...
's ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man'' (1922). An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by "colored
''Colored'' (or ''coloured'') is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow, Jim Crow Era to refer to an African Americans, African American. In many places, it may be considered a Pejorative, slur, though it ...
" peoples to white civilization, and wrote '' The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy'' in 1920.
In establishing a restrictive entry system for Germany in 1925, Hitler wrote of his admiration for America's immigration laws: "The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races." German praise for America's institutional racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health ...
, previously found in Hitler's ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'', was continuous throughout the early 1930s. Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models; race-based U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nazis' two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law.
Later influences
Adolf Hitler read ''Human Heredity'' shortly before he wrote ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' (published 1925–1926); he regarded it as scientific proof of the racial basis of civilisation. The Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
also repeated ''Human Hereditys arguments in his book ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century
''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (german: Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts) is a 1930 book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi paper '' Völkischer Beobachter''. The titular ...
'' (1930).
Nazi racial theories saw the Atlanteans
As an adjective, Atlantean (or Atlantian) means "of or pertaining to Atlas or Atlantis".
Atlantean may also refer to:
* Atlantean figures, a type of ancient artifacts
* ''Atlantean'' (documentary series), a trilogy of TV films discussing the or ...
as a race of Nordic supermen, and Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
wrote of a "Nordic-Atlantean" master race whose civilisation was “lost through inward corruption and betrayal”. According to Rosenberg, the Nordic race had evolved in a now-lost landmass off the coast of Europe (perhaps the mythical Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'' ...
), migrated through northern Europe and expanded further south to Iran and India where it founded the Aryan cultures of Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion and one of the world's History of religion, oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian peoples, Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a Dualism in cosmology, du ...
and Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
. Like Grant and others, Rosenberg argued that the entrepreneurial energy of the Nordics had "degenerated" when they mixed with "inferior" peoples.
Timeline
With Hitler's rise to power
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...
, Nordic theory became the norm within German culture. In some cases the "Nordic" concept became an almost abstract ideal rather than a mere racial category. For example, Hermann Gauch wrote in 1933 (in a book which was banned in the Third Reich) that the fact that "birds can be taught to talk better than other animals is explained by the fact that their mouths are Nordic in structure". He further claimed that in humans, "the shape of the Nordic gum allows a superior movement of the tongue, which is the reason why Nordic talking and singing are richer".
Alongside such extreme views, more mainstream Nordic theory became institutionalised. Hans F. K. Günther, who joined the Nazi Party in 1932, was praised as a pioneer in racial thinking, a shining light of Nordic theory. Most official Nazi comments on the Nordic race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with a medal for his work in anthropology.
Robert Ley
Robert Ley (; 15 February 1890 – 25 October 1945) was a German politician and Labour Union, labour union leader during the Nazi era; Ley headed the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He also held many other high positions in the Party, inc ...
, the head of the German Labour Front
The German Labour Front (german: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, ; DAF) was the labour organisation under the Nazi Party which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
History
As early as March 1933, ...
and of the Nazi Party organisation, discussed racial purity and the Nordic race in 1935:
Who of us is racially pure? Even if somebody's appearance is Nordic he might be a bastard inside. That somebody is blond and blue-eyed does not mean that he is racially pure. He might even be a degenerate coward. Bastardization shows in different aspects. We have to be on our guard against racial arrogance. Racial arrogance would be as devastating as hatred among classes.
Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, ...
and Fritz Lenz Fritz Gottlieb Karl Lenz (9 March 1887 in Pflugrade, Pomerania – 6 July 1976 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony) was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi Party,[Racial Hygiene
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...]
. Madison Grant's book was the first non-German book to be translated and published by the Nazi Reich press, and Grant proudly displayed to his friends a letter from Hitler claiming that the book was "his Bible."
The Nazi state used such ideas about the differences between European races as part of their various discriminatory and coercive policies which culminated in the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. Ironically, in Grant's first edition of his popular book, he classified the Germans as being primarily Nordic, but in his second edition (published after the USA had entered World War I), he re-classified the now enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines.
Günther's work agreed with Grant's, and the German anthropologist frequently stated that the Germans were not a fully Nordic people.. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism in public for this very reason.. The standard tripartite model placed most of the population of Hitler's Germany in the Alpine category.
J. Kaup led a movement opposed to Günther. Kaup took the view that a German nation, all of whose citizens belonged to a "German race" in a populationist sense, offered a more convenient sociotechnical tool than Günther's concept of an ideal Nordic type to which only a very few Germans could belong.
Nazi legislation identifying the ethnic and "racial" affinities of the Jews reflects the populationist concept of race. Discrimination was not restricted to Jews who belonged to the "Oriental-Armenoid" race, but was directed against all members of the Jewish ethnic population.
The German Jewish journalist Kurt Caro (1905–1979) who emigrated to Paris in 1933 and served in the British Army from 1943, published a book (under the pseudonym "Manuel Humbert") claiming to unmask Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in which he stated the following racial composition of the Jewish population of Central Europe: 23,8% Lapponid race, 21,5% Nordic race,
20,3% Armenoid race, 18,4% Mediterranean race, 16,0% Oriental race.
By 1939 Hitler had abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favour of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct "spiritual" qualities. Nevertheless, Nazi eugenic policies continued to favour Nordics over Alpines and other racial groups, particularly during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, when decisions were being made about the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Reich.
In 1942 Hitler stated in private: I shall have no peace of mind until I have planted a seed of Nordic blood wherever the population stand in need of regeneration. If at the time of the migrations, while the great racial currents were exercising their influence, our people received so varied a share of attributes, these latter blossomed to their full value only because of the presence of the Nordic racial nucleus.
In his "table talk", Hitler described how the presence of German and English soldiers in the combat areas he had served in during World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
had, in his view, improved the quality of the young people he saw there in 1940, in a "Nordicizing process, the results of which are today ccording to Hitlerincontestable". He also said he observed the same process at work in the area of his mountain home near Berchtesgaden
Berchtesgaden () is a municipality in the district Berchtesgadener Land, Bavaria, in southeastern Germany, near the border with Austria, south of Salzburg and southeast of Munich. It lies in the Berchtesgaden Alps, south of Berchtesgaden; the ...
, which he described as having, when he first came there, a mongrel population, the quality of which was much improved by the presence of his SS Bodyguard Regiment, which was responsible for "the numbers of strong and healthy children running around the area". Hitler went on to say that "his
His or HIS may refer to:
Computing
* Hightech Information System, a Hong Kong graphics card company
* Honeywell Information Systems
* Hybrid intelligent system
* Microsoft Host Integration Server
Education
* Hangzhou International School, in ...
shows that elite troops should really be sent wherever the composition of the people is poor, in order to improve it." Indeed, Hitler and Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
planned to use the SS – a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities – as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism.
Addressing officers of the SS-Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler" Himmler stated:
The ultimate aim for those 11 years during which I have been the Reichsfuehrer SS has been invariably the same: to create an order of good blood which is able to serve Germany; which unfailingly and without sparing itself can be made use of because the greatest losses can do no harm to the vitality of this order, the vitality of these men, because they will always be replaced; to create an order which will spread the idea of Nordic blood so far that we will attract all Nordic blood in the world, take away the blood from our adversaries, absorb it so that never again, looking at it from the viewpoint of grand policy, Nordic blood, in great quantities and to an extent worth mentioning, will fight against us.
Italy
In Italy, the influence of Nordicism had a divisive effect in which the influence resulted in Northern Italian
Northern Italy ( it, Italia settentrionale, it, Nord Italia, label=none, it, Alta Italia, label=none or just it, Nord, label=none) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. It consists of eight administrative regions ...
s who regarded themselves to have Nordic racial heritage considered themselves a civilised people while negatively regarding Southern Italians as non-Nordic and therefore biologically inferior. Nordicism was controversial in Italy because of common Nordicist perceptions of Mediterranean people, and especially Southern Italians, being racially degenerate. The distinction between a superior Northern Italy and a degenerate and an inferior Southern Italy was promoted by the Neapolitan Carlo Formichi, the vice-president of the Italian Academy, who in 1921 said that Italy needed "a great revolution ..., a return to the genius of the noble Aryan race, which is after all our race, but that has been overcome by the Semitic civilisation and mentality". At least some of the stereotypes about Southern Italians were created by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian Jewish criminologist and anthropologist of Sephardic descent. For his controversial theories, Lombroso was expelled from the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology in 1882. The Lombrosian doctrine is currently considered pseudoscientific.
Fascist Nordicism
Italian Fascism's stance towards Nordicism changed from initially being hostile to later being favorable.
Italian Fascism strongly rejected the common Nordicist conception of the Aryan race that idealized "pure" Aryans as having certain physical traits that were considered Nordic, such as fair skin, blond hair and light eyes, traits which many Italians do not have.[Aaron Gillette. ''Racial Theories in Fascist Italy''. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2001. Pp. 188.] The antipathy by Mussolini and other Italian Fascists to Nordicism was over the existence of what they viewed as the Mediterranean inferiority complex that they claimed had been instilled into Mediterraneans by the propagation of such theories by German and British Nordicists who viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate and thus in their view inferior. However traditional Nordicist claims of Mediterraneans being degenerate due to having a darker colour of skin than Nordics had long been rebuked in anthropology through the depigmentation theory that claimed that lighter skinned peoples had been dipigmented from a darker skin. This theory has since become a widely accepted view in anthropology. Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon in his work ''The races of Europe'' (1939) subscribed to depigmentation theory that claimed that Nordic race's light-coloured skin was the result of depigmentation from their ancestors of the Mediterranean race.[Melville Jacobs, Bernhard Joseph Stern. General anthropology. Barnes & Noble, 1963. P. 57.] Mussolini refused to allow Italy to return again to this inferiority complex, initially rejecting Nordicism.
In the early 1930s, in response to the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany, strong tensions which were caused by racial issues arose between the Fascists and the Nazis because the Fascists did not agree with Hitler's emphasis on a Nordicist conception of the Aryan race. In 1934, after Austrian Nazis killed the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss
Engelbert Dollfuß (alternatively: ''Dolfuss'', ; 4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian clerical fascist politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he a ...
, an ally of Italy, Mussolini became enraged and angrily denounced Nazism. Mussolini rebuked Nazism's Nordicism, claiming that the Nazis' belief in the existence of a common Nordic "Germanic race" was absurd, saying that "a Germanic race does not exist. ... We repeat. Does not exist. Scientists say so. Hitler says so." That Germans were not purely Nordic was indeed acknowledged by Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther in his book ''Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes
''Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes'' (English: ''Racial Science of the German People''), is a book written by German race researcher and Nazi Party member Hans Günther and published in 1922.Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenic ...
'' (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), where Günther recognized the Germans as being composed of five Aryan racial subtypes: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine
Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to:
Places Europe
* Alps, a European mountain range
** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range
Australia
* Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village
* Alpine National Pa ...
and East Baltic while asserting that the Nordics were the highest in a racial hierarchy of the five subtypes.[Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Eastbourne, England: UK; Portland, Oregon, USA: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2008, 2010. P. 150.]
By 1936, the tensions which existed between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany lessened and relations between the two nations became more amicable. In 1936, Mussolini decided to launch a racial programme in Italy, and he was interested in the racial studies which were being conducted by Giulio Cogni.[Aaron Gillette. ''Racial Theories in Fascist Italy''. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002. P. 60.] Cogni was a Nordicist but he did not equate Nordic identity with Germanic identity as was commonly done by German Nordicists.[Aaron Gillette. ''Racial Theories in Fascist Italy''. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2002. P. 61.] Cogni traveled to Germany, was impressed by Nazi racial theories
The Nazi Party adopted and developed several pseudoscientific racial classifications as part of its ideology (Nazism) in order to justify the genocide of groups of people which it deemed racially inferior. The Nazis considered the putative " ...
, and sought to implement his own version of these racial theories in Italy. On 11 September 1936, Cogni sent Mussolini a copy of his newly published book ''Il Razzismo'' (1936). Cogni claimed that a racial affinity existed between the Mediterranean and Nordic racial subtypes of the Aryan race and he also claimed that the intermixing of Nordic Aryans and Mediterranean Aryans in Italy produced a superior synthesis of Aryan Italians. Cogni addressed the issue of the racial differences which existed between northern and southern Italians, declaring that southern Italians were mixed between Aryan and non-Aryan races, he claimed that this mixture was most likely caused by infiltrations by Asiatic peoples in Roman times and later Arab invasions. As such, Cogni viewed Southern Italian Mediterraneans as being polluted with orientalizing tendencies. He would later change his view and claim that Nordics and Southern Italians were closely related to each other, both racially and spiritually, the two ethnic groups were closely related to each other. He believed that Nordics and Italians were generally responsible for inventing what are considered the best features of European civilization. Initially Mussolini was not impressed with Cogni's work, however Cogni's ideas entered into the official Fascist racial policy several years later.
In 1938, Mussolini started to fear that the Mediterranean inferiority complex would return to Italian society if Italian Fascism did not recognize the Nordic heritage of Italians. Therefore, in the summer of 1938, the Fascist government officially recognized Italians as having a Nordic heritage and it also recognized Italians as being of Nordic-Mediterranean descent. At a meeting of PNF members in June 1938, Mussolini stated that he was Nordic and he declared that the previous policy which focused on Mediterraneanism
Mediterraneanism is an ideology that claims that there are distinctive characteristics that Mediterranean cultures have in common.
Giuseppe Sergi asserted that the Mediterranean race was "the greatest race...derived neither from the black nor w ...
would be replaced with a focus on Aryanism. In July 1938, Mussolini declared that Italians had a strong Nordic heritage, particularly through the heritage of the Germanic Lombards
The Lombards () or Langobards ( la, Langobardi) were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written between 787 and ...
who settled in the area of Italy after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and he also claimed that the intermixing of Mediterranean Romans with the Nordic Lombards was the last significant act of racial mixing that occurred in Italy because no racial mixing had occurred since then.
Post-Nazi re-evaluation and decline of Nordicism
Even before the rise of Nazism, Grant's concept of "race" lost some favour in the US in the polarising political climate after World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, including the Great Migration and the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. By the 1930s, criticism of the Nordicist model was growing in Britain and America. The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Colleg ...
in ''A Study of History'' (1934) argued that the most dynamic civilisations have arisen from racially mixed cultures. This required the abandonment of Grant's gradations of "white" in favour of the "One-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
"—which was embraced by white supremacists and black leaders alike. Among the latter were Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...
, and, in part, W. E. B. Du Bois, at least in his later thought.
With the rise of Nazism many critics pointed to the flaws in the theory, repeating the arguments made by Sergi and others that the evidence of ancient Nordic achievement is thin when set against the civilizations of the Mediterranean and elsewhere. The equation of Nordic and Aryan identity was also widely criticized.
In 1936 M. W. Fodor, writing in ''The Nation'', argued that racialized
In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is a political process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such. Racialization or ethnicization often arises out of th ...
Germanic nationalism arose from an inferiority complex:
No race has suffered so much from an inferiority complex as has the German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
. National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
was a kind of Coué method of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority.
Some Lombard nationalists took it up in Italy, but even after the establishment of Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
's fascist government racial theories were not prominent. Mussolini stated, "Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist."
After World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the categorisation of peoples into "superior" and "inferior" groups fell even further out of political and scientific favour, eventually leading to the characterisation of such theories as scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
. The tripartite subdivision of "Caucasians" into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean groups persisted among some scientists into the 1960s, notably in Carleton Coon's book ''The Origin of Races'' (1962).
Already race academics such as A. James Gregor were heavily criticising Nordicism. In 1961 Gregor called it a "philosophy of despair", on the grounds that its obsession with purity doomed it to ultimate pessimism
Pessimism is a negative mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is " Is the glass half emp ...
and isolationism.
As late as 1977 the Swedish author Bertil Lundman
Bertil J. Lundman (September 28, 1899, Malmö – November 5, 1993) was a Swedish anthropologist.
Early life
Lundman was born on September 28, 1899, in Malmö.
Career
Lundman was an anthropologist. In the 1930s, he wrote an article in '' Zeitsch ...
wrote a book ''The Races and Peoples of Europe'' mentioning a "Nordid Race". The development of the Kurgan theory of Indo-European origins challenged the Nordicist equation of Aryan and Nordic identity, since it placed the earliest Indo-European speakers around central Asia and/or far-eastern Europe (although according to the Kurgan hypothesis some Proto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric population of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction.
Knowledge of them comes chiefly from t ...
''did'' eventually migrate into Central and Northern Europe and become the ancestors of the Nordic peoples.)
The original German term used by Ripley, "''Theodiscus
' (in Medieval Latin, corresponding to Old English þēodisc, Old High German diutisc and other early Germanic reflexes of Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz, meaning "popular" or "of the people") was a term used in the early Middle Ages to refer to ...
''", which is translated into English as ''Teutonic'', has fallen out of favour amongst German-speaking scholars, and is restricted to a somewhat ironical usage similar to the archaic ''teutsch'', if used at all. While the term is still present in English, which has retained it in some contexts as a translation of the traditional Latin ''Teutonicus'' (most notably the aforementioned Teutonic Order
The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians on ...
), it should not be translated into German as "''Teutonisch''" except when referring to the historical Teutones
The Teutons ( la, Teutones, , grc, Τεύτονες) were an ancient northern European tribe mentioned by Roman authors. The Teutons are best known for their participation, together with the Cimbri and other groups, in the Cimbrian War with th ...
.
See also
* Aryan certificate
In Nazi Germany, the Aryan certificate/passport (german: Ariernachweis) was a document which certified that a person was a member of the presumed Aryan race. Beginning in April 1933, it was required from all employees and officials in the publ ...
* Borealism
Borealism is a form of exoticism in which stereotypes are imposed on the Earth's northern regions and cultures (particularly the Nordic and Arctic regions).
The term was inspired by the similar concept of Orientalism, first coined by Edward Said ...
* Martial races theory
Martial race was a designation which was created by army officials in British India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which they classified each caste as belonging to one of two categories, the 'martial' caste and the 'non-martial' caste. ...
* The Race Question
The Race Question is the first of four UNESCO statements about issues of race. It was issued on 18 July 1950 following World War II and Nazi racism to clarify what was scientifically known about race, and as a moral condemnation of racism.< ...
* Apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
* Know-Nothing movement
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...
* Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
* White nationalism
White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara. ''Hate Crimes''. Greenwo ...
* White supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
References
Further reading
*
**
* Hans Jürgen Lutzhöft (1971): ''Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–1940''. Stuttgart. Ernst Klett Verlag.
*
*
External links
''The Racial Basis of Civilization'' by Frank H. Hankins
critique of the Nordic doctrine (full text)
"Nordicism revisited, by A James Gregor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nordicism
Scientific racism