Nazi eugenics (German: Nationalsozialistische
Rassenhygiene, "National Socialist racial
hygiene") were Nazi Germany's racially based
social policies that placed the biological
improvement of the Aryan race or Germanic
"Übermenschen" master race through eugenics
at the center of Nazi ideology. In Germany,
eugenics were mostly known under the synonymous
term racial hygiene. Following the Second
World War, both terms effectively vanished
and were replaced by Humangenetik (human genetics).
Eugenics research in Germany before and during
the Nazi period was similar to that in the
United States (particularly California), by
which it had been partly inspired. However,
its prominence rose sharply under Adolf Hitler's
leadership when wealthy Nazi supporters started
heavily investing in it. The programs were
subsequently shaped to complement Nazi racial
policies.Those humans targeted for destruction
under Nazi eugenics policies were largely
living in private and state-operated institutions,
identified as "life unworthy of life" (German:
Lebensunwertes Leben), including prisoners,
"degenerates", dissidents, people with congenital
cognitive and physical disabilities (including
people who were "feebleminded", epileptic,
schizophrenic, manic-depressive, cerebral
palsy, muscular dystrophy, deaf, blind) (German:
erbkranken), homosexual, idle, insane, and
the weak, for elimination from the chain of
heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized
against their will, while more than 70,000
were killed under Action T4, a euthanasia
program. In June 1935, Hitler and his cabinet
made a list of seven new decrees, number 5
was to speed up the investigations of sterilization.
== Origins in the U.S. eugenics movement ==
The early German eugenics movement was led
by Wilhelm Schallmayer and Alfred Ploetz.
Henry Friedlander wrote that although the
German and American eugenics movements were
similar, the German movement was more centralized
and did not contain as many diverse ideas
as the American movement. Unlike the American
movement, one publication and one society,
the German Society for Racial Hygiene, represented
all eugenicists.Edwin Black wrote that after
the eugenics movement was well established
in the United States, it was spread to Germany.
California eugenicists began producing literature
promoting eugenics and sterilization and sending
it overseas to German scientists and medical
professionals. By 1933, California had subjected
more people to forceful sterilization than
all other U.S. states combined. The forced
sterilization program engineered by the Nazis
was partly inspired by California's.In 1927,
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology
(KWIA), an organization which concentrated
on physical and social anthropology as well
as human genetics, was founded in Berlin with
significant financial support from the American
philanthropic group, the Rockefeller Foundation.
German professor of medicine, anthropology
and eugenics Eugen Fischer was the director
of this organization, a man whose work helped
provide the scientific basis for the Nazis'
eugenics policies. The Rockefeller Foundation
even funded some of the research conducted
by Josef Mengele before he went to Auschwitz.Upon
returning from Germany in 1934, where more
than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly
sterilized, the California eugenics leader
C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work
has played a powerful part in shaping the
opinions of the group of intellectuals who
are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program.
Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have
been tremendously stimulated by American thought...
I want you, my dear friend, to carry this
thought with you for the rest of your life,
that you have really jolted into action a
great government of 60 million people.
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often
bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization
laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg
racial hygiene laws. In 1936, Laughlin was
invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg
University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary
of Hitler's 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg
faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate
for his work on the "science of racial cleansing".
Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was
unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick
it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterwards,
he proudly shared the award with his colleagues,
remarking that he felt that it symbolized
the "common understanding of German and American
scientists of the nature of eugenics."
== Hitler's views on eugenics ==
Adolf Hitler read about racial hygiene during
his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison.Hitler
believed the nation had become weak, corrupted
by dysgenics, the infusion of degenerate elements
into its bloodstream.The racialism and idea
of competition, termed social Darwinism in
1944, were discussed by European scientists
and also in the Vienna press during the 1920s.
Where Hitler picked up the ideas is uncertain.
The theory of evolution had been generally
accepted in Germany at the time, but this
sort of extremism was rare.In his Second Book,
which was unpublished during the Nazi era,
Hitler praised Sparta, (using ideas perhaps
borrowed from Ernst Haeckel), adding that
he considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch
State". He endorsed what he perceived to be
an early eugenics treatment of deformed children:
Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch
State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed
children, in short, their destruction, was
more decent and in truth a thousand times
more humane than the wretched insanity of
our day which preserves the most pathological
subject, and indeed at any price, and yet
takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy
children in consequence of birth control or
through abortions, in order subsequently to
breed a race of degenerates burdened with
illnesses.
== Nazi eugenics program ==
In organizing their eugenics program the Nazis
were inspired by the United States' programs
of forced sterilization, especially on the
eugenics laws that had been enacted in California.The
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased
Offspring, enacted on July 14, 1933, allowed
the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen
who according to the opinion of a "Genetic
Health Court" suffered from a list of alleged
genetic disorders and required physicians
to register every case of hereditary illness
known to them, except in women over 45 years
of age. Physicians could be fined for failing
to comply.
In 1934, the first year of the Law's operation,
nearly 4,000 persons appealed against the
decisions of sterilization authorities. A
total of 3,559 of the appeals failed. By the
end of the Nazi regime, over 200 Hereditary
Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte) were
created, and under their rulings over 400,000
persons were sterilized against their will.
=== Nazi eugenics institutions ===
The Hadamar Clinic was a mental hospital in
the German town of Hadamar used by the Nazi-controlled
German government as the site of Action T4.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology,
Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in
1927. Hartheim Euthanasia Centre was also
part of the euthanasia programme where the
Nazis killed individuals they deemed disabled.
The first method used involved transporting
patients by buses in which the engine exhaust
gases were passed into the interior of the
buses, and so killed the passengers. Gas chambers
were developed later and used pure carbon
monoxide gas to kill the patients.
In its early years, and during the Nazi era,
the Clinic was strongly associated with theories
of eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by
its leading theorists Fritz Lenz and Eugen
Fischer, and by its director Otmar von Verschuer.
Under Fischer, the sterilization of so-called
Rhineland Bastards was undertaken. Grafeneck
Castle was one of Nazi Germany's killing centers,
and today it is a memorial place dedicated
to the victims of the Action T4.
=== Identification ===
The Law for Simplification of the Health System
of July 1934 created Information Centers for
Genetic and Racial Hygiene, as well as Health
Offices. The law also described procedures
for 'denunciation' and 'evaluation' of persons,
who were then sent to a Genetic Health Court
where sterilization was decided.Information
to determine who was considered 'genetically
sick' was gathered from routine information
supplied by people to doctor's offices and
welfare departments. Standardized questionnaires
had been designed by Nazi officials with the
help of Dehomag (a subsidiary of IBM in the
1930s), so that the information could be encoded
easily onto Hollerith punch cards for fast
sorting and counting.In Hamburg, doctors gave
information into a Central Health Passport
Archive (circa 1934), under something called
the 'Health-Related Total Observation of Life'.
This file was to contain reports from doctors,
but also courts, insurance companies, sports
clubs, the Hitler Youth, the military, the
labor service, colleges, etc. Any institution
that gave information would get information
back in return. In 1940, the Reich Interior
Ministry tried to impose a Hamburg-style system
on the whole Reich.
=== Nazi eugenics policies regarding marriage
===
After the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws
in 1935, it became compulsory for both marriage
partners to be tested for hereditary diseases
in order to preserve the perceived racial
purity of the Aryan race. Everyone was encouraged
to carefully evaluate his or her prospective
marriage partner eugenically during courtship.
Members of the SS were cautioned to carefully
interview prospective marriage partners to
make sure they had no family history of hereditary
disease or insanity, but to do this carefully
so as not to hurt the feelings of the prospective
fiancee and, if it became necessary to reject
her for eugenic reasons, to do it tactfully
and not cause her any offense.
== See also ==
Death panels
Doctors' trial
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
German Blood Certificate
German Society for Racial Hygiene
Lebensborn
Nazi human experimentation
Nazism and race
Nordic theory
Nur für Deutsche
Racial policy of Nazi Germany
Racial purity
Rassenschande
Reich Citizenship Law
Reinrassig
Sterilization of deaf people in Nazi Germany
Unethical human experimentation in the United
States
Volksdeutsche
Volksliste
