We've all been guilty of projecting some kind of utopian fantasy on them. The Nordic countries are, for example, depicted as paragons of political correctness, yet you still see racial stereotypes in the media here — the kind of thing which would be unthinkable in the U.S. Meanwhile, though it is true that these are the most gender-equal societies in the world, they also record the highest rates of violence towards women — only part of which can be explained by high levels of reporting of crime.
Mengele was known as a manic collector of things human, including dwarf corpses, gallstones, and eyes. His fascination with eyes led to the infamous experiments in which he injected various substances into the eyes of brown-eyed Jewish children in an attempt to make them Nordic (blue).
Bettina Beech, as quoted in Race & Research : Perspectives on Minority Participation in Health Studies (2004) by Bettina M. Beech and Maurine Goodman, p. 41
In his Table Talks, Hitler spoke of the eventual ‘elimination’ of those Germans who did not meet ‘Nordic’ criteria of racial purity. The fact was that according to Hans Guenther, Nazi Germany’s ‘racial scientist', ninety-five percent of Germans did not meet those criteria. It was no longer clear who would suffer in the serious implementation of National Socialist policy.
A. James Gregor, The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999)
In "Il Trentino", Mussolini emphasized that Chamberlain did not even allow Italians the honour of fathering the Renaissance masters. Rather, Chamberlain attributed such Italian achievements as the Renaissance to Germanic families living in Italy: " The Italian or Latin Renaissance in general is the work of German elements. Raffael was blonde, Michelangelo did not want to learn the classical languages (the languages of chaos), Giotto was German." Thus, we should not be surprised to learn that Chamberlain claimed that : "Naturally all the epochs that signal a 'turning point' of history are due to the Germanic element," and "today great Europe is Germanic. Here there is equiblibrium. In Mediterranean Europe there is disequilibrium and dissolution. The united future Europe will have the Germanic stamp." Folllowing Chamberlain Ludwig Woltmann in 1905 argued in 'Die Deutschen und die Italienische Renaissance' that all other racial groups in Italy outside of the Nordics were inferior, and had contributed nothing to Italian civilization. Woltmann asserted that virtually all the notable achievements of Italy were produced by German descendants.
Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy p.16
Mussolini related an encapsulated Nordic racist view of Italian history, replete with degenerating miscegenation and Germanic cultural superiority: "The black psychology belongs to the Mediterranean people... Then, thick darkness until the Reformation, which was the work of the Germanism, who have not since stopped in their march toward superior forms of life though will not so continue, if they do not remember to keep immune from the Alpine brachycephalic contagion. The Alpine brachycephalics would be assigned to the most heavy and unhealthy work, true beasts of burden, without rights and without a future. Such is the picture of Germanic society...
Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy p.16
Perhaps Mussolini's first negative encounter with the realities of "scientific" Nordicism occurred in 1903, while a vagabond in Berne. Years later Emil Ludwig questioned Mussolini about this episode:
"I have been told that at the age of twenty you were arrested by the police in Zurich and subjected to anthropometrical examination."
"In Berne."
"Is it true that you were so angry thay you exclaimed in fury: 'The day of vengeance will come!'"
"'Yes, it is true,' he replied, 'this contumelious treatment struck sledge-hammer blows which were more useful to me than my adversaries supposed!'"
Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy (2001), p. 33
