According to

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

theorists, denordification ( in German) is the racial counterpart of the political decadence experienced by peoples throughout their history. The concept was coined by Nazi theorist

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 ...

, based on his analysis of the decadence of

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

and

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

Concept

The term denordification refers to the dilution of

Aryan ''Aryan'' (), or ''Arya'' (borrowed from Sanskrit ''ārya''), Oxford English Dictionary Online 2024, s.v. ''Aryan'' (adj. & n.); ''Arya'' (n.)''.'' is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. It stood ...

, Indo-Germanic Nordic blood by the addition of non-Nordic populations to the Nordic race. Thus, according to

Richard Walther Darré Richard Walther Darré (born Ricardo Walther Óscar Darré; 14 July 1895 – 5 September 1953) was one of the leading Nazism, Nazi "Blood and Soil, blood and soil" () ideologists and served as Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Reich ...

, it was the success of Semitic populations over the Aryan race that marked the beginning of the denordification process. In his view, it was also through the loss of a sense of the dual expansionist dimension, both warlike and agrarian, that Germanic populations lost their specificity in relation to the semitic nomads. According to Nazi historian Ferdinand Fried, it was after the destruction of the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Accord ...

that the

Jewish people Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

resorted to devious means to combat the Indo-Germanic construction of the Roman Empire. In fact, it was through contact with a parasitic Jewish race that the Indo-Germanic empire-builders would meet this unenviable fate: an SS propaganda booklet lists the means deployed by the Jews to undermine the foundations of the Germanic empires they hated but wished to dominate: racial infiltration, court intrigue and financial infiltration. What's more, according to Hans F. K. Günther, the revolution of 1917 changed the picture: the main responsible in the denordification of the German people was no longer the Alpine race, but the Ostic race: as promoters of Lamarck's theories. The Bolsheviks were the main adversaries of the Nordic race, the latest avatars of the Asian invaders that had swept across Europe since Roman times, and thus a mortal threat to the Nordic race. Thus, from the moment the NSDAP took power, it developed the idea that the main enemy of the Nordic race would be

Tatar Tatar may refer to: Peoples * Tatars, an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar" * Volga Tatars, a people from the Volga-Ural region of western Russia * Crimean Tatars, a people from the Crimea peninsula by the B ...

communism.

Denordification throughout history

According to

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...

propaganda booklets and Nazi historians, the great territorial constructions, all Nordic-inspired, whether the empire of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

or the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, underwent a process of decadence linked to the loss, within the populations that built these empires, of the Nordic racial element that enabled conquest.

The Hellenistic period

The Hellenistic period, but also Roman history, is studied in depth, enabling intellectuals close to the NSDAP to propose a coherent approach based on history and its study. Indeed,

was a key issue in the debates between Nazi theorists of the Nordic Indo-Germanic race. While Fritz Schachermeyr and

shared the idea that Alexander belonged to the Nordic race, they and others disagreed on the real goals pursued by Alexander, i.e. the extent of the denordification that the Macedonians and

Greeks Greeks or Hellenes (; , ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, southern Albania, Greeks in Turkey#History, Anatolia, parts of Greeks in Italy, Italy and Egyptian Greeks, Egypt, and to a l ...

underwent during Alexander's reign: Schachermeyr condemned the wedding in Susa, while Rosenberg saw it as a merger between branches of the Nordic race. The Hellenistic period, on the other hand, is perceived as a period of racial decadence: the northern Greeks came into contact with

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

ns and

Semites Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial groupFritz Taeger's eyes, an unprecedented racial defeat, preluding a process of Greek denordification.

The Roman period

According to Rosenberg and some other Nazi intellectuals, the

was also undergoing the same process: reduced for the occasion to its rulers, from the reign of the Severans onwards it would have undergone a process of accelerated racial decadence. Indeed, according to Walter Brewitz, a Nazi historian of Roman antiquity,

Caracalla Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (born Lucius Septimius Bassianus, 4 April 188 – 8 April 217), better known by his nickname Caracalla (; ), was Roman emperor from 198 to 217 AD, first serving as nominal co-emperor under his father and then r ...

's reign in 212 ended a process that had begun in 443 BC, when marriages between

patricians The patricians (from ) were originally a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome. The distinction was highly significant in the Roman Kingdom and the early Republic, but its relevance waned after the Conflict of the Orders (494 BC to 287 B ...

and

plebeians In ancient Rome, the plebeians or plebs were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not Patrician (ancient Rome), patricians, as determined by the Capite censi, census, or in other words "commoners". Both classes were hereditary. Et ...

were allowed in Rome. In his 1936 article The Denordification of the Romans, Brewitz focuses on the emperors of successive dynasties and their representations: According to him,

Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

and

Livia Livia Drusilla (30 January 59 BC AD 29) was List of Roman and Byzantine empresses, Roman empress from 27 BC to AD 14 as the wife of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. She was known as Julia Augusta after her formal Adoption ...

were of unquestionably Nordic descent, the

Flavians The Flavian dynasty, lasting from 69 to 96 CE, was the second dynastic line of emperors to rule the Roman Empire following the Julio-Claudians, encompassing the reigns of Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian. The Flavians rose to power ...

were the last Nordic dynasty of the Roman Empire,

Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...

had traits derived from non-Nordic mixtures, which Brewitz found tolerable when compared with the members of the

Severan dynasty The Severan dynasty, sometimes called the Septimian dynasty, ruled the Roman Empire between 193 and 235. It was founded by the emperor Septimius Severus () and Julia Domna, his wife, when Septimius emerged victorious from civil war of 193 - 197, ...

, or the military emperors, with the exception of the

Goth Goth or Goths may refer to: * Goths, a Germanic people Arts and entertainment * Gothic rock or goth, a style of rock music * Goth subculture, developed by fans of gothic rock * ''Goth'' (2003 film), an American horror film * ''Goth'' (2008 f ...

Maximinus Thrax Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus "Thrax" () was a Roman emperor from 235 to 238. Born of Thracian origin – given the nickname ''Thrax'' ("the Thracian") – he rose up through the military ranks, ultimately holding high command in the army of th ...

. For Rosenberg and Brewitz, this visible, tangible decadence has in fact been underground since the law of 443 BC, which authorized marriage between patricians and plebeians. For Rosenberg, the fall of Nordic Rome came in 212, when Caracalla, "a repulsive bastard who strutted around on the throne of the Caesars", granted

Roman citizenship Citizenship in ancient Rome () was a privileged political and legal status afforded to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance. Citizenship in ancient Rome was complex and based upon many different laws, traditions, and cu ...

to all free inhabitants of the Empire.

Causes of denordification

Christianity, a factor in denordification

For Ludwig Ferdinand Clauẞ, a race psychology theorist with close ties to the German faith movement, the loss of the "Nordic soul" is also part of the denordification process: the loss of Nordic sensibility is, in his view, also the disappearance of a specifically Nordic way of life. Richard Darré draws a parallel between the Christianization of Germania and the imposition of an Eastern culture on the Germans. Others, around the German faith movement, developed the idea of forcibly imposing Christianity on the Germanic populations: Christianity was indeed an example of Jewish cruelty, since the Christian faith would lead to the subjugation of the Germanic populations. Until 1944, Himmler had an inventory of

witch-hunt A witch hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or Incantation, incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the ...

s drawn up in all the Reich's documentary holdings: witches were the obvious victims of Jewish rapacity and their plan to destroy the Nordic populations.

Social factors

Some Nazi ''raciologues'' (race scientists), notably Hans F. K. Günther, look for the causes of denordification in the economic and social changes of the 19th century. For example, Günther looks for the causes of racial mixing, which weakens the

Nordic race The Nordic race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. It was once considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists di ...

, in urbanization, the emigration of Nordic populations to other parts of the world and, finally, the falling birth rate, which, according to Günther, affects Nordic populations the most.

Denordification, a Nazi propaganda tool

Numerous publications

Over the course of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

, a large number of writings developed this concept and the means for dealing with it.

Nazi propaganda Propaganda was a tool of the Nazi Party in Germany from its earliest days to the end of the regime in May 1945 at the end of World War II. As the party gained power, the scope and efficacy of its propaganda grew and permeated an increasing amou ...

denounced the Jewish people as an implacable enemy, in open and then underground conflict with the Nordic peoples, and advocated their destruction through a preventive race war. But the Jewish people were not the only adversary of the Nordic people and Germany: for the promoters of the denordification concept, the

dolichocephalic Dolichocephaly (derived from the Ancient Greek δολιχός 'long' and κεφαλή 'head') is a term used to describe a head that is longer than average relative to its width. In humans, scaphocephaly is a form of dolichocephaly. Dolichoceph ...

Nordic race was beset in the south, east and west by various ramifications of the

brachycephalic Brachycephaly (derived from the Ancient Greek '' βραχύς'', 'short' and '' κεφαλή'', 'head') is the shape of a skull shorter than average in its species. It is perceived as a cosmetically desirable trait in some domesticated dog and ...

Asian race. To confront this enemy, Günther and his followers, including

Walther Darré Walther () is a masculine given name and a surname. It is a German form of Walter, which is derived from the Old High German '' Walthari'', containing the elements ''wald'' -"power", "brightness" or "forest" and ''hari'' -"warrior". The name wa ...

, felt it necessary to pursue a policy that was both agrarian and

natalist Natalism (also called pronatalism or the pro-birth position) is a policy paradigm or personal value that promotes the reproduction of human life as an important objective of humanity and therefore advocates a high birthrate. Cf.: According to ...

Denordification and Nazi racial policy

In response to this racial decline, Nazi '' raciologues'' advocated a strict policy of

renordification Renordification (''Aufnordung'' in German) was implemented in Nazi racial theories to counter the effects of what was termed the " denordification" of the mythical Nordic Indo-Germanic ancestors of modern Germans. Concept According to Nazi raci ...

. Thus, in line with his book ''Raciologie du peuple allemand'' (Raciology of the German people), Hans Günther, one of the theoreticians of the Nordic race, proposed a racial policy -

- to combat this process, a policy defined by a reversal of the racial balance of power within the German people. Based on the belief that interbreeding does not create a new race, but rather allows the development of hybrid characters in individuals, derived from the races from which their ancestors came, Hans Günther proposed to determine the proportion of Nordic blood in the German people; to this end, he called on the racial statisticians Karl Keller and Josef Götz, the former wishing to give racial statistics a role in defining Nazi policy, the latter aspiring to use these statistics for scientific and administrative purposes. Günther proposed that, once the proportion of Nordic blood had been determined, a policy of systematically researching and valorizing Nordic characteristics in the German population should be implemented as a first step. When developing colonial and racial projects, Nazi racial planners insisted on the need to create familiar landscapes, within microclimates created for the occasion, suitable for the blossoming of Germanic blood in the conquered lands of Poland and the Soviet Union.