Nordic supremacy theory (or Nordicism) was a theory of race prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It drew on the dominant anthropological model of the day which divided European peoples into three sub-categories of the Caucasian race: the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean races. The Nordic race was thought to be prevelant in northern Europe, especially among speakers of the Germanic languages, and was characterized by tall stature, long head- and facial form, blond hair and blue eyes. The Alpine race was thought to predominate in central Europe, and was characterized by short stature and comparatively round head. The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevelant in southern Europe and, sometimes, parts of North Africa, and was characterised by dark hair and swarthy complexion (according to some theorists of this period this was due to racial mixing with African peoples). This article is about race as an intraspecies classification. ... This article is about the continent. ... The term Caucasian race is used almost exclusively in North America to mean white, especially in government and census forms (see Caucasian type). ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. ... One of the worlds most famous blondes Marilyn Monroe, who was in fact a natural brunette Blond (feminine, blonde) is a hair colour found in certain mammals characterised by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin and higher levels of the pale pigment phæomelanin, in common with red or...

Among many white supremacists in Europe and the USA, the Nordic race came to be thought of as the most advanced of human population groups, hence its equation in Nazi ideology with the so-called Aryan master race. In the USA, the primary spokesman for "Nordicism" was the eugenicist Madison Grant, who used it as a justification for anti-immigration policies of the 1920s, arguing that the immigrants from Southern and Eastern European represented an "inferior" type of of European and should hence be restricted. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or a Racial Basis of European History about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinking, government policymaking, and even on popular culture (F. Scott Fitzgerald invokes Grant's ideas through a character in part of The Great Gatsby). Grant argued that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that "admixture" was "race suicide", and that unless various eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by the "inferior" races. Nordicism was a particular type of white supremacism, one which did not recognize all degrees of "white" as being equal. Italians, Slavs, the Irish, and Jews were among those considered significantly inferior to the Nordics. White supremacy is the variety of white nationalism that believes the white race should rule over other races. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... The master race (German: Herrenrasse, Herrenvolk) is a concept in Nazi ideology, which holds that the Germanic and Nordic people represent an ideal and pure race. It derives from nineteenth century racial theory, which posited a hierarchy of races placing African Bushmen and Australian Aborigines at the bottom of the... The word eugenics (from the Greek εὐγενής, for well-born) was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to refer to the study and use of selective breeding (of animals or humans) to improve a species over generations, specifically in regards to hereditary features. ... Madison Grant Madison Grant (1865-1937) was an American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist. ... F.Scott Fitzgerald, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896-December 21, 1940), was a Jazz Age novelist. ... The cover of the Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995. ... The word Italian can have these meanings: From or related to Italy The Italian people, or emigrants such as Italian Americans The Italian language Outside Italy, it is also used as an abbreviation for Italian dressing (a vinaigrette with herbs), and Italian sandwich (more commonly called a submarine sandwich). ... Slav, Slavic or Slavonic can refer to: Slavic peoples Slavic languages Slavic mythology Church Slavonic language Old Church Slavonic language Slavonian can also refer to Slavonia, a region in eastern Croatia. ... Irish can refer to multiple things: The island of Ireland or its culture, see also List of Ireland-related topics. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ...

The fact that Mediterranean peoples were responsible for the most important of ancient civilisations was a problem for those who promoted the merits of the Nordic race. Giuseppè Sergi's influential book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that this race's mixed character gave it its creative edge. Grant's speculative approach to this problem was to claim that many of the achievements of Mediterranean culture were really the result of Nordic genes which had entered into the Mediterranean gene pool after ancient invasions by northern peoples. Greg Flesch is a guitarist and musician, best known for his work with the rock bands Daniel Amos and The Swirling Eddies (credited as Gene Pool). Flesch also works in the Atmospheric Laser Spectroscopy Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, writing software for the groups tunable...

In the USA, though, this concept of "race" lost favor in the polarizing political climate after the first World War, including the Great Migration and the Depression. The influx of African-Americans into the Northern states in this time resulted in a "flattening" of racial categories into what racial theorist and eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard named as "bi-racialism"—the hard black/white distinction which abandoned Grant's gradations of "white"—which was embraced both by white supremacists and black nationalists alike. Among the latter were Marcus Garvey, and, in part, W.E.B. Du Bois, at least in his later thought. Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... Great Migration is a term often used to describe the early medieval migrations of peoples in Europe. ... The word depression can mean: A decrease of functional activity in behavior patterns. ... African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans or Black Americans, are an ethnic group in the United States of America whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Sub-Saharan Africa. ... Lothrop Theodore Stoddard (1883-May 1, 1950) was an American eugenicist and racist who published many books on what he saw as the peril of immigration, his most (in)famous being The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1922. ... Marcus Garvey (far right) in parade Marcus Mosiah Garvey (August 17, 1887 - June 10, 1940) was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, crusader for black nationalism and founder of the UNIA-ACL. Garvey, is best remembered as a champion of the so-called back-to-Africa movement, which was interpreted as encouraging... William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an African-American civil rights leader and scholar. ...

But at the same time as the theory was losing favor the USA, it was vastly influential in Germany, with the ascent of Adolf Hitler, who sometimes tended to merge the terms "Nordic" and "Aryan". 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 program of Racial Hygiene and 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 WWI, he had re-classified the now enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism 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. By 1939 Hitler abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favour of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct 'spiritual' qualities. The Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is one of the worlds leading industrialised countries, located in the heart of Europe. ... Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945), a German politician who was the founder of the Third Reich (1933-1945), is widely regarded as one of the most significant and reviled leaders in world history. ... Aryan is an English word derived from the Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan term arya, meaning noble or lord. In the 19th century, the term was often used to refer to what we now call the Proto-Indo-Europeans. ... Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of scientific racism) is the selection, by a government, of the most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation (selective breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics. ... This article deals with the Nazi Holocaust. ... The general German term Anschluss is part of the specific political incident Anschluss Österreichs referring to the inclusion of Austria in a Greater Germany in 1938. ...

After the second World War, the categorization of peoples into "superior" and "inferior" groups fell even further out of political and scientific favor. The tripartite subdivision of "Caucasians" into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean groups persisted into the 1960s, notably in Carleton Coon's book The Origins of Race (1962), but eventually became obsolete. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... Carleton Stevens Coon, (23 June 1904 — 6 June 1981) was an eminent American anthropologist. ...

See also

• Nordish race

References

• Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (http://www.africa2000.com/XNDX/madgrant_intro.html) (1916)
• Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).