Nazi eugenics

SIGNIFICANCE: Fueled by economic hardship and racial prejudice, the largest-scale application of eugenics occurred in Nazi Germany, where numerous atrocities, including genocide, were committed in the name of genetic improvement of the human species. The German example raised worldwide awareness of the dangers of eugenics and did much to discredit eugenic theory.

Origins of Nazi Eugenic Thought

Nazi eugenic theory and practice grew out of two traditions: the eugenics movement, founded by British scientist Francis Galton, and racial theories of human nature. Most historians trace the origin of modern racial theories to French diplomat and writer Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, who maintained that all great civilizations had been products of the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic, race. Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, German thinkers applied Galton’s ideas to the problem of German national progress. The progress of the nation, argued scientists and social thinkers, could be best promoted by improving the German people through government-directed control of human reproduction. This type of eugenic thinking became known as “racial hygiene”; in 1904, eugenicists and biologists formed the Racial Hygiene Society in Berlin.

The Aryan mythology of Gobineau also grew in popularity. In 1899, an English admirer of Germany, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, published a widely read book titled The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Chamberlain, heavily influenced by Gobineau, maintained that Europe’s accomplishments had been the work of ethnic Germans, members of a healthy and imaginative race. Opposed to the Germans were the Jews, who were, according to Chamberlain, impure products of crossbreeding among the peoples of the Middle East.

Basics of Nazi Eugenics

The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, requiring sterilization of people with hereditary diseases and disabilities, was drafted and decreed in Germany in 1933. Before the Nazis came to power, many segments of German society had supported sterilization as a way to improve future generations, and Adolf Hitler’s emergence as a national leader provided the pressure to ensure the passage of the law. Between 1934 and 1945, an estimated 360,000 people (about 1 percent of the German population) who were believed to have hereditary ailments were sterilized. Despite this law, the Nazis did not see eugenics primarily as a matter of discouraging the reproduction of unhealthy individuals and encouraging the reproduction of healthy individuals. Following the theories of Chamberlain, Hitler and his followers saw race, not individual health or abilities, as the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) organization was a key part of Nazi eugenic activities. In January 1929, Heinrich Himmler was put in charge of the SS, a police force aimed at establishing order among the street fighters who formed a large part of the early Nazi Party. In addition to disciplining rowdy Nazis, the SS quickly emerged as a racial elite, the spearhead of an intended German eugenic movement. Himmler recruited physicians and biologists to help ensure that only those of the purest Nordic heritage could serve in his organization. In 1931, the agriculturalist R. Walther Darré helped Himmler draw up a marriage code for SS men, and Himmler appointed Darré head of an SS Racial Office. Himmler hoped to create the seeds of a German super race by directing the marriages and reproduction of the “racially pure” members of the SS.

Since the Nazis saw Germans as a “master race,” a race of inherently superior people, they attempted to improve the human stock by encouraging the birth of as many Germans as possible and by encouraging those seen as racially pure to reproduce. The Nazis declared that women should devote themselves to bearing and caring for children. Hitler’s mother’s birthday was declared the Day of the German Mother. On this day, public ceremonies awarded medals to women with large numbers of children. The SS set up and maintained an organization of maternity homes for unmarried mothers of acceptable racial background and orphanages for their children; these institutions were known as the Lebensborn (“fountain of life”). There is some evidence that young women with desired racial characteristics who were not pregnant were taken to the Lebensborn to have children by the SS men to create “superior” Nordic children.

Impact

In addition to encouraging the reproduction of those seen as racially pure, the Nazis sought to eliminate the unhealthy and the racially undesirable. In August 1939, a committee of physicians and government officials, operating under Hitler’s authority, issued a secret decree under which all doctors and midwives would have to register births of children with deformities and disabilities. By October of that year, Hitler had issued orders for the “mercy killing” of these children and all those with incurable diseases. This euthanasia movement expanded from children who were sick and had disabilities to those believed to belong to “sick” races. The T4 euthanasia organization, designed for efficient and secret killing, experimented with lethal injections and killing by gas chamber and became a pilot program for the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

German racial hygienists had long advocated controlling marriages of non-Jewish Germans with Jews to avoid “contaminating” the German race. In July 1941, Nazi leader Hermann Göring appointed SS officer Reinhard Heydrich to carry out the “final solution” of the perceived Jewish problem. At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Hitler and his close associates agreed on a program of extermination. According to conservative estimates, between four million and five million European Jews died in Nazi extermination camps. When the murderous activities of the Nazis were revealed to the world after the war, eugenics theory and practice fell into disrepute.

In later studies of the period and the legacy of eugenics, some scholars particularly noted the role that medical professionals had played in scientific legitimization of these policies. In this regard, researchers used Nazi eugenics to illustrate the importance of adhering to ethical codes in a profession entrusted with the protection of public health and human life.

Key terms

• Aryana “race” believed by Nazis to have established the civilizations of Europe and India
• euthanasiathe killing of suffering people, sometimes referred to as “mercy” killing
• Nordicthe northernmost of the Aryan groups of Europe, believed by the Nazis to be the highest and purest racial group

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