JERRY BERGMAN

The concept that "all men are created equal" and the egalitarian ideal which has dominated American ideology for the past thirty years, and to a lesser degree since the founding of our country, has not been universal among nations and cultures (Tobach et al. 1974). The Germans' belief that they were a superior race had many sources, a major one being the social Darwinian eugenics movement, especially its crude survival of the fittest world view (Stein 1988, Clark 1953). As Lappe noted:

According to evolution theory, some people (even if it is only one person) will inherit a mutation which will be passed on and which will enable them to survive at a higher rate than those without that trait. These differences will always gradually produce new races, some of which have an advantage in terms of survival. These are the superior, i.e., the more evolved, races. When that trait eventually spreads throughout the entire race, because of the survival advantage it confers on those endowed with it, a new and "higher level" of animal will exist. Hitler and the Nazi party claimed that they were trying to apply this accepted science to society. And "the core idea of Darwinism is not evolution, but selection. Evolution ... describes the results of selection" (Stein 1988, 53). Hitler stressed that "we [the Nazis] must understand, and cooperate with science":

Darwin's evolutionary ideas were exported into Germany almost immediately. The first language into which his writings were translated – only a year after The Origin of Species was published – was German. Darwinian evolution was not only championed in Germany more than most other countries, but it was more influential on German state policy. Gasman (1971, xiii) concluded that:

The lesser races were both inferior and worthless: "woolly-haired" peoples, he concluded, are "incapable of a true inner culture or of a higher mental development ... no woolly-haired nation has ever had an important history" (1876, 10). Haeckel even argued that, since "the lower races – such as the Veddahs or Australian Negroes – are psychologically nearer to the mammals – apes and dogs – than to the civilized European, we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives" (1905, 390). And Stein notes that this was not a minority or an extreme view: "Haeckel was the respected scientist; the views of his followers were often more extreme" (Stein 1988, 56).

As a race above all others, the Aryans believed that their evolutionary superiority gave them not only the right, but the duty, to subjugate all others. And race was no minor plank of the Nazi philosophy: Tenenbaum (1956, 211-212) concluded that they

And Hickman (1983, 51-52) adds that:

And the belief that evolution cant be directed by scientists to produce a "superior race," as Tenenbaum (1956, vii) noted, was the central leitmotif of Nazism:

The Nazi view on race and Darwinian evolution was a major part of the fatal combination which produced the holocaust and World War II:

Rauschning (1939) quoted Hitler as stating that the Nazis "are barbarians! We want to be barbarians. It is an honorable title, [for by it] we shall rejuvenate the world..." By this means, as Keith (1946, 230) concluded, Hitler "consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution." As Humber (1987, ii) notes, Hitler believed that Negroes were

Many of Hitler's top aides held similar beliefs. Hoess was "particularly interested in books on ‘racial' theories, heredity and ethnological works." His race beliefs guided his management policy in the various concentration camps that he was head of, including Auschwitz. He restructured this former forced labor camp into an evolution laboratory. The inmates in Auschwitz were "no longer persons ... [but] simply goods to be processed in the gigantic death-factory he had organized" (Rudorff 1969,240).

Consequently, in plant and animal breeding a trade-off occurs: some traits are gained, but others are lost. Thus cows are bred either for dairy use or else for meat. The theory that the German eugenists had developed was thus poorly conceived, and inadequately considered enormous amounts of data and the implications of the tremendous amounts of biological diversity which we now know exist.

Some members of the scientific community do not want to share the blame for what happened and try to justify what Nazi Germany did. The most common claim is that the German academics were coerced into accepting racist ideas. Several recent studies, including Weindling (1989) and Proctor (1988), persuasively argue that this was not the case. The limited coercion that occurred was often from the scientific community, rather than the German political force "imposing its will on an apolitical scientific community" (Proctor 1988, 5; see also Wertham 1966). The Nazis forced the dismissal of many German academics from their posts, but many were Jews, and most were dismissed for reasons not related to their opposition to eugenics. Proctor's important study eloquently argued that Nazis are

Although racists also relied on phrenologists for support, both phrenology and social Darwinism obtained their rational, if not their primary, basis from evolution (Davies 1955). Also used for support were comparisons of various cultures which were assumed to be a product of racial superiority (not the reverse). They concluded that inferior races produced inferior cultures, and only superior races produced superior cultures (Hooton 1941). Hence, Schleunes; (1970) notes that racism came into scientific repute through its solid link with the "third great synthesis of the Nineteenth Century," the Darwinian theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest world view.

These "scientific" views about race that then existed in the western world, especially Nazi Germany, were clearly evident even in America, as is apparent from surveys of textbooks published from 1880 to 1940. Princeton Professor Edwin Conklin (1921, 34) said in one of his texts that

Soon after the American Supreme Court ruled that sterilization of minorities was legal, Adolf Hitler's cabinet, using the American work as an example, passed a eugenic sterilization law in 1933. The German law was compulsory to all people,

Ironically, the German laws were used to inspire even harsher laws back in the States – in Virginia, Dr. Joseph DeJarnette argued that Americans who were progressive and scientific minded should be shamed by the "enlightened" progressive German legislation, and that we should be taking the lead in this area instead of Germany.

The German eugenic leadership was originally less anti-semitic than the British. Most German eugenists had originally believed that German Jews were Aryan, and consequently the movement was supported by many Jewish professors and doctors. The Jews were only slowly incorporated into the German eugenic laws which, up to this time, were supported by a large number of persons, both in Germany and abroad.

In spite of the scientific prominence of these racial views, until World War II they had a limited effect upon most Jews. German Jews considered themselves Germans first – and were proud of being such – and Jews second. Many modified the German intelligentsia's racial views by including themselves in it. Their assimilation into German life was to the extent that most were convinced that Germany was now a safe harbor for them (Schleunes 1970, 33). Most felt its anti-Semitic actions did not represent a serious threat to their security. Many still firmly held to the Genesis creation model and rejected the views upon which racism was based, including macro-evolution, and thus, did not see these ideas as a real threat. What happened in Germany later was obviously not well received by Jewish geneticists, even Jewish eugenists, and certain other groups:

Darwinism not only offered the German nation a meaningful interpretation of their recent past, but also a justification for future aggression:

Hitler not only unabashedly intended to produce a superior race, but he openly relied heavily upon Darwinian thought in both his extermination and war policies (Jackel 1972). Nazi Germany thus openly glorified war for the reason that it was an important means of eliminating the less fit of the highest race, a step necessary to "upgrade the race." Clark (1953, 115-116) concludes, quoting extensively from Mein Kampf, that

War therefore was a positive force, not only because it eliminated the weaker races, but also because it weeded out the weaker members of the superior races. German greatness, Hitler stressed, came about primarily because they were jingoists, and thereby had been eliminating their weaker members for centuries (Rich 1973). Although Germans were no strangers to war, this new justification was powerful. The view that the process of eradication of the weaker races was a major source of evolution was well expressed by Wiggam 1922, 102):

The commonly believed assumption that European civilization evolved far more than others primarily because of its constant warmongering is not true. Historically, many tribes in Africa were continually involved in wars, as were most countries in Asia and America. War is actually typical of virtually all peoples except certain small island groups who have abundant food, or peoples in very cold areas (Posner and Ware 1986).

Nazi policies, therefore, resulted less from a "hatred" toward Jewish or other peoples, than the idealistic goal of preventing "pollution of the race." Hitler (1953, 115-116) elaborated as follows:

We thus must understand and apply the "laws of Nature," such as the survival of the fittest law, which originally produced the human races and is the source of their improvement. We as a race, therefore, must aid in the elimination, or at least the quarantine, of the less fit. In Hitler's words, (1953, 116):

Individuals are not only far less important than the race, but the Nazis concluded that certain races, as Whitehead (1983, 115) notes, were not humans, but animals:

Hitler was especially determined to prevent Aryans from breeding with any and all non-Aryans, a concern eventually resulting in the "final solution." Once the inferior races were exterminated, Hitler believed that future generations would thank him profusely for the improvement that his work brought to the world:

Schleunes (1970, 30-32), in his discussion of the Nazi policy towards the Jews, noted rather poignantly that the reason the publication of Darwin's 1859 work had an immediate impact in Germany was because

The Darwinian revolution gave the racists what they thought was powerful verification that their race suspicions were "correct." The works of its chief German spokesman and most eminent scientist Haeckel especially provided support (Poliakov, 1974). The support of the science establishment was such that Schleunes (1970, 30-52) notes:

And what greater authority than science could the racists have for their views? Konrad Lorenz, one of the most eminent animal behavior scientists, often credited with being the founder of the field, stated:

In no country was this intervention as successful as in Germany. Discouraged by the lack of effectiveness of their science, and fully convinced that it had adequately been empirically supported with the brilliant work of Charles Darwin, Karl Pearson, Francis Galton and many others, Western scientists felt envy that only Germany was able to implement the programs which many scientists of America and Europe were then strongly advocating (Chase 1980)

Nazi Germany was certainly not alone in applying science to government. As Kevles (1985, 101) states, "In the United States during the opening decades of the century, it came to be a hallmark of good reform to shape government with the aid of scientific experts ... eugenics experts aplenty were to be found in the biology, psychology, and sociology departments of universities or colleges..." And the German eugenics programs elicited in little opposition from the United States. The implications of its eugenic immigration acts, especially the American Johannson act quotas of 1924, a law not repealed in 1941, had enormous consequences for human lives

The evolutionary views not only influenced the Nazi attitude toward Jews, but other cultural and ethnic groups as well. Even mental patients were massacred, in part because it was believed at the time that heredity had a major influence on mental illness. Mental patients were not the products of a sick environment, but a sick gene line (or perhaps they had some Jewishor other non-Aryan blood in them). Consequently, they had to be destroyed. Poliakov (1974, 282) notes that many intellectuals in the early 1900s accepted telegony, the idea that bad blood would contaminate a race line forever, or that "bad blood drives out good, just as bad money displaces good money." Only extermination would permanently eliminate "weak" and inferior genetic lines and, thereby, further evolution.

And Posner and Ware (1986, 23) add:

Current writers often gloss over, totally ignore, or even distort the close connection between Darwinian evolution and the Nazi race theory and the policies that it produced, but, as Stein (1988, 50) admonishes,

Much of the opposition to the eugenic movement came from the German Christians. Although Hitler was once an altar boy and then "considered himself a good Roman Catholic," (Zindler 1985, 29), as an adult, he clearly had strong anti-religious feelings, as did many of the Nazi party leaders. As would any good politician, though, he openly tried to exploit the church's influence (Phillips 1981, 164). His feelings on religion were once bluntly stated:

His beliefs are abundantly clear: the younger people who were the hope of Germany were "absolutely indifferent in the matters of religion." As Keith (1946, 72) noted, the Nazi party viewed evolution and Christianity as polar opposites because

The opposition to religion was a prominent feature of German science, and thus later German political theory, from its very beginning. As Stein (1988, 54) summarized:

Borman was equally blunt, stressing that the church's opposition to the forces of evolution must be condemned. In his words:

Borman also concluded that:

From our modern perspective, WW II and its results ensued from the ideology of an evil madman and his administration. Hitler, though, did not see himself as evil, but as mankind's benefactor. He felt that many years hence the world would be extremely grateful to him and his programs, which lifted the human race to genetically higher levels of evolution by preventing mixed marriages with inferior races. His efforts to put members of these inferior races in concentration camps was not so much an effort to punish but, as his apologists repeatedly stated, was a protective safeguard similar to quarantining sick people to prevent contamination of the community. Or, as Hoess (1960, 110) adds, "such a struggle, legitimized by the latest scientific views, justifies the racists' conceptions of superior and inferior people and nations and validated the conflict between them."
 

Although many factors produced the fatal blend which produced the Nazi movement, Darwin's notion of struggle for survival was appropriated to justify the movement's views, not only on race, but also war. One contributing reason, if not a major reason, that matters reached the extent of the holocaust was the acceptance of Social Darwinism by the scientific and academic community (Aycoberry 1981, Beyerchen 1977, Stein 1988).