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60-806: The belief that Nordic ancestry is superior to all others was originally embraced as " Anglo-Saxonism " in England and the United States , "Teutonicism" in Germany, and "Frankisism" in Northern France and Italy . The notion of the superiority of the "Nordic race" and the superiority of the Northwestern European nations that were associated with this supposed race influenced the United States' Immigration Act of 1924 (which effectively banned or severely limited

120-715: A eugenics program that aimed for racial hygiene through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination of Untermenschen ("subhumans"): Jews, Slavs, and Romani, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust . According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis . Arthur de Gobineau ,

180-875: 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 , 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

240-415: A better means to model racial ancestry. Also, Franz Boas studied the children of immigrants to the United States in 1910 to 1912, noting that the children's cephalic index differed significantly from their parents', implying that local environmental conditions had a significant effect on the development of head shape. Boas argued that if craniofacial features were so malleable in a single generation, then

300-582: 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, a more mainstream Nordic theory became institutionalized. Hans F. K. Günther , who joined

360-583: A character in part of The Great Gatsby , and Hilaire Belloc jokingly rhapsodized the "Nordic man" in a poem and essay in which he satirised the stereotypes of Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans. 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 , Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz , appeared in their 1921 work Human Heredity , which insisted on

420-549: 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." His racist ideology, through rooted in social and political concerns and though claiming to explain the nature of society itself, could not on his own terms effect any transformation. But Gobineau unfortunately failed to realize

480-475: A later publication, Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard reviewed Sparks's and Jantz's analysis. They argue that Sparks and Jantz misrepresented Boas's claims, and that Sparks's and Jantz's data support Boas. For example, they point out that Sparks and Jantz look at changes in cranial size in relation to how long an individual has been in the United States in order to test the influence of the environment. Boas, however, looked at changes in cranial size in relation to how long

540-464: 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 , Raphael , Titian , Michelangelo , and Leonardo da Vinci as examples of Nordics). Admixture

600-444: 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

660-422: A set of physical characteristics: the concurrence of somewhat wavy hair, light eyes, reddish skin, tall stature and a dolichocephalic skull. In the mid-19th century, scientific racism developed the theory of Aryanism , 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

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720-589: A true sentiment which is based upon knowledge and the lessons of history rather than upon the sentimentalism which is fostered by ignorance. If I were asked: What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic to-day? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character. — Henry Fairfield Osborn , July 13, 1916 In

780-403: Is a number obtained by taking the maximum width ( biparietal diameter or BPD, side to side) of the head of an organism , multiplying it by 100 and then dividing it by their maximum length ( occipitofrontal diameter or OFD, front to back). The index was once used to categorize human beings in the first half of the 20th century, but today it is used to categorize dogs and cats. The cephalic index

840-449: 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

900-408: Is regarded in some countries as "qualzucht", which literally translates to "torture breeding" as it often leads to brachycephalic airway obstructive syndrome . A mesaticephalic skull is of intermediate length and width. Mesaticephalic skulls are not markedly brachycephalic or dolichocephalic. When dealing with animals, especially dogs, the more appropriate and commonly used term

960-488: Is used while looking at the fetal head shape, and can change in certain situations (ex. breech presentation , ruptured membranes , twin pregnancy ). The cephalic index is used in the categorisation of animals, especially breeds of dogs and cats. A brachycephalic skull is relatively broad and short (typically with the breadth at least 80% of the length). Dog breeds such as the pug are sometimes classified as "extreme brachycephalic". Because of health issues brachycephaly

1020-402: 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." [C]onservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter of either racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country, of

1080-562: The Brahmins , the Incas , and the rulers of the South Sea Islands . All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by

1140-585: The Roman Empire 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 proposed that the Aryans originated in the vast Rokitno, or Pinsk Marshes , then in the Russian Empire , now covering much of the southern part of Belarus and the north-west of Ukraine , but it

1200-523: 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 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

1260-459: The "dolichocephalic-blond" people were natural leaders, destined to rule over more brachycephalic (short-skulled) people. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche 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 (1887), he wrote, "In Latin malus ... could indicate the vulgar man as

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1320-601: The Aryan cultures of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism . Like Grant and others, Rosenberg argued that the entrepreneurial energy of the Nordics had "degenerated" when they mixed with "inferior" peoples. With Adolf Hitler's rise to power , the Nordic theory became the norm within German culture . In some cases, the "Nordic" concept became an almost abstract ideal rather than a mere racial categorization. In 1933 for example, Hermann Gauch wrote (in

1380-815: 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 ). The Immigration Act of 1924 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 , Ireland , Germany and Scandinavia , while also permitting immigration from Latin America . The spread of these ideas also affected popular culture. F. Scott Fitzgerald invokes Grant's ideas through

1440-563: 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 psychologist 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

1500-641: The Indo-European languages constituted a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race . Its principal proponent was Arthur de Gobineau 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 and other Roman writers, he argued that "pure" Northerners regenerated Europe after

1560-463: 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 , Sulla and Cato were blond or red-haired. Some Nordicists admitted that the Mediterranean race was superior to the Nordic in terms of artistic ability. However, the Nordic race was still considered superior on

1620-631: The Melanochroi, whom 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 (long skull). The argument was given extra impetus by the French anthropologist Vacher de Lapouge in his book L’Aryen , in which he argued that

1680-532: 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, discussed racial purity and the Nordic race in 1935: Who of us

1740-576: The Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later additionally forbidding Blacks and Romani. The Nazis used the Mendelian inheritance 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 ideals were combined with

1800-467: The Nordic theory that regarded Nordics as the " master race ," a race which was superior to all other races, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans), he used the racial term Untermensch from the title of Klansman Lothrop Stoddard '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

1860-581: The Twentieth Century (1930). Nazi racial theories saw the Atlanteans as 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 the mythical Atlantis ), migrated through northern Europe and expanded further south to Iran and India where it founded

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1920-600: The United States, the primary spokesman for Nordicism was the eugenicist Madison Grant . 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

1980-619: The alleged dangers posed by " colored " 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 , previously found in Hitler's Mein Kampf ,

2040-489: The aristocracy and led the world in technology, and Mediterraneans were regarded as more imaginative. Opponents of Nordicism rejected these arguments. The anti-Nordicist writer Giuseppe Sergi 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

2100-442: The authors, the Nordic race arose in the ice age , from: quite a small group which, under stress of rapidly changing conditions (climate, beasts of the chase) was exposed to exceptionally rigorous selection and was persistently inbred, thus acquiring the peculiar characteristics which persist today as the exclusive heritage of the Nordic race ... Philological, archaeological and anthropological researches combine to indicate that

2160-399: The basis that, although Mediterranean peoples were culturally sophisticated, it was the Nordics who were alleged to be the innovators and the conquerors, having an adventurous spirit that the spirit of no other race could match. The Alpine race was usually regarded as inferior to both the Nordic and Mediterranean races, making up the traditional peasant class of Europe while Nordics occupied

2220-490: The cephalic index was of little use for defining race and mapping ancestral populations. Scholars such as Earnest Hooton continued to argue that both environment and heredity were involved. Boas did not himself claim it was totally plastic. In 2002, a paper by Sparks and Jantz re-evaluated some of Boas's original data using new statistical techniques and concluded that there was a "relatively high genetic component" of head shape. Ralph Holloway of Columbia University argues that

2280-534: The climate. The eugenicist Madison Grant argued in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race , 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 . This argument derived from earlier eugenicist and Social Darwinist ideas. According to

2340-528: 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,

2400-500: The degree to which such a theory—whatever his own view of its impotence—might be capable of use and adaptation by others to affect society and history. His work would in time be plundered by racists with an interest in preaching explicitly reformatory doctrines. As Alfred Rosenberg , the Nazi Party 's chief racial theorist, oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies , by promoting

2460-562: The development of racial anthropology in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when historians attempted to use ancient remains to model population movements in terms of racial categories. American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon also used the index in the 1960s, by which time it had been largely discredited. In the cephalic index model, human beings were characterized by having either a dolichocephalic (long-headed), mesaticephalic (moderate-headed), or brachycephalic (short-headed) cephalic index or cranial index. Cephalic indices are grouped as in

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2520-461: The early 19th century, Nordicism was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer attributed cultural primacy to the white race: The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians , are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example,

2580-463: 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 " that was superior to other races, particularly the Jews , who were described as the "Semitic race", Slavs , and Gypsies , who they associated with "cultural sterility" . To preserve the Aryan race or Nordic race,

2640-428: The effects Boas observed were likely the result of population-specific environmental effects such as changes in cultural practices for cradling infants, rather than the effects of a general "American environment" which caused populations in America to converge to a common cranial type, as Boas had suggested. The vertical cephalic index, also known as the length-height index, was a less-commonly measured head ratio. In

2700-461: The following table: Technically, the measured factors are defined as the maximum width of the bones that surround the head above the supramastoid crest (behind the cheekbones), and the maximum length from the most easily noticed part of the glabella (between the eyebrows) to the most easily noticed point on the back part of the head. The usefulness of the cephalic index was questioned by Giuseppe Sergi , who argued that cranial morphology provided

2760-573: The immigration of Jews , and other Southern and Eastern Europeans ) and the later Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 , and it was also present in other countries outside Northwestern Europe and the United States, such as Australia , Canada , and South Africa . By the 1930s, the Nazis claimed that the Nordic race was the most superior branch of the " Aryan race " and constituted a master race ( Herrenvolk ). The full application of this belief system —the invasion of Poland and further conquest in

2820-420: The innate superiority of the Nordic race. Adapting the arguments of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and others to Darwinian theory, they argued that the "Nordic" qualities of initiative and will-power identified by earlier writers had arisen from natural selection , because of the tough landscape in which Nordic peoples evolved. This had ensured that weaker individuals had not survived. By

2880-580: 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 ( Race-Lore of the German Volk ), published 1922, Günther identified five principal European races instead of three, adding the East Baltic race and Dinaric race to Ripley's categories. He used the term "Ostic" instead of "Alpine". He focused on

2940-413: The mother had been in the United States. They argue that Boas's method is more useful, because the prenatal environment is a crucial developmental factor. Jantz and Sparks responded to Gravlee et al., reiterating that Boas' findings lacked biological meaning, and that the interpretation of Boas' results common in the literature was biologically inaccurate. In a later study, the same authors concluded that

3000-600: The new research raises questions about whether the variations in skull shape have "adaptive meaning and whether, in fact, normalizing selection might be at work on the trait, where both extremes, hyperdolichocephaly and hyperbrachycephaly, are at a slight selective disadvantage." In 2003, anthropologists Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard reanalyzed Boas's data and concluded that most of Boas's original findings were correct. Moreover, they applied new statistical, computer-assisted methods to Boas's data and discovered more evidence for cranial plasticity. In

3060-751: 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." Anglo-Saxonism Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.150 via cp1114 cp1114, Varnish XID 461817026 Upstream caches: cp1114 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:35:39 GMT Cephalic index The cephalic index or cranial index

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3120-524: The primal home of the Indo-Germanic [i.e. Aryan] languages must have been in Northern Europe. 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

3180-438: The pursuit of Lebensraum , 'living space'—was the immediate catalyst for World War II 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 Russian-born French anthropologist Joseph Deniker initially proposed "nordique" (simply meaning "northern") as an " ethnic group " (a term that he coined). He defined nordique by referring to

3240-594: 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 Germany promulgated Nordicism based on the idea of a superior Germanic people or Aryan race in Germany during

3300-459: The vertical cephalic index model, humans beings were characterized by having either a chamaecranic (low-skulled), orthocranic (medium high-skulled), or hypsicranic (high-skulled) cephalic index or cranial index. The cephalic index is also used in medicine, especially in the planning and effectiveness analysis of cranial deformity corrections. The index is a useful tool in assessing the morphology of cranial deformities in clinical settings. The index

3360-437: 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 to Rome . 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

3420-474: Was Karl Penka who popularised the idea that the Aryans had emerged in Scandinavia and could be identified by the distinctive Nordic characteristics of light hair and blue eyes. The biologist Thomas Henry Huxley 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

3480-464: Was "race suicide" and unless eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by inferior races. Future president Calvin Coolidge 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

3540-644: 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. Adolf Hitler read Human Heredity shortly before he wrote Mein Kampf (published 1925–1926); he regarded it as scientific proof of the racial basis of civilisation. The Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg also repeated Human Heredity' s arguments in his book The Myth of

3600-455: Was used by anthropologists in the early 20th century as a tool to categorize human populations. It was used to describe an individual's appearance and for estimating the age of fetuses for legal and obstetrical reasons. The cephalic index was defined by Swedish professor of anatomy Anders Retzius (1796–1860) and first used in physical anthropology to classify ancient human remains found in Europe. The theory became closely associated with

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