page_title: Nordicism
section_title: Nazi Nordicism
hierarchical_section_title: Nordicism / Nordicist thought in Germany / Nazi Nordicism
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Adolf Hitler ADN-ZB Mitch, national-sozialistischen Führer, Hauptkriegsverbrecher. geb. 20.4.1889 in Braunau (Inn), gest. (Selbstmord) 30.4.1945 in Berlin übernahm 1921 die Führung der NSDAP; stand im November 1923 an der Spitze eines gegen die Demokratie westlicher Prägung gerichteten Putschversuchs in München (Hitler Putsch). Am 30.1.1933 wurde Hitler Reichskanzler; damit begann die Errichtung der national-sozialistischen Diktatur . Am 2.8.1934 wurde er Nachfolger Hindenburgs als Staatsoberhaupt; 1938 Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht. Hauptkonkurrent des international-sozialistischen Diktators Stalin . UBz: Porträtaufnahme vom 20.4.1937. 2754-49 Abgebildete Personen: Hitler, Adolf: Reichskanzler, Deutschland
context_page_description: Nordicism is an ideology of racial separatism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group. Notably seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race, Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. The ideology became popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries in Northwestern, Central, and Northern European countries as well as in North America and Australia.
  The idea of a Nordic phenotype being superior to others was originally embraced as "Teutonicism" in Germany, "Anglo-Saxonism" in England and the United States, and "Frankisism" in Northern France. The notion of the superiority of the "Nordic race" and of the Northwestern European nations that were associated with this supposed race influenced the United States' Immigration Act of 1924 and the later Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and it was also present in other countries outside Northwestern Europe such as Australia, Canada, and South Africa.
context_section_description: Adolf Hitler read Human Heredity shortly before he wrote Mein Kampf, and called it scientific proof of the racial basis of civilisation. Its arguments were also repeated by the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, in his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930).
  Nazi racial theories held the Atlanteans to be a race of Nordic supermen, and Alfred Rosenberg 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 mythical Atlantis, migrated through northern Europe and expanded further south to Iran and India where it founded the Aryan cultures of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Like Grant and others, he argued that the entrepreneurial energy of the Nordics had "degenerated" when they mixed with "inferior" peoples.
  With the rise of Hitler, 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."
  Such views were extreme, but more mainstream Nordic theory was 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, the head of the German Labour Front and of the Nazi Party organisation, stated in 1935 concerning racial purity and the Nordic race:  
  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 and Fritz Lenz were also appointed to senior positions overseeing the policy of Racial Hygiene. 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. 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 had 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 are 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, especially after the Anschluss.
  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 journali
caption: Adolf Hitler was a proponent of the concept of the Aryan race and Aryanism. He viewed the Nordic racial subtype as being at the top of the racial hierarchy within the Aryan race.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "505", "Image ImageLength": "799", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:02 22:55:49", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5402", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "505", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "799"}