>> Kimberly Bugg:
Good afternoon.
Thank you for being here.
Welcome to the Library
of Congress.
I hope this is no
one's first time.
If it is, feel free to look
around a little bit
before you leave.
My name is Dr. Kimberly Bugg.
I'm the Chief of the Researcher
and Reference Services Division.
And our division
really prides itself
on providing excellent
programing
which highlights the
use of our collection.
Today, we are excited to
announce Dr. Richard Wetzell
to present his research, and
it's most exciting for us
because he did some of that
research here at the library.
It may surprise you to know
that the Library of Congress has
over 8 million German
language items.
The scope is vast and wide.
We also have at least five
subject matter experts that deal
with the German collections
in some way.
So, we invite you to come back
again in the future, and check
and poke around and
check some of it out.
And before you leave,
please take a moment to stop
at the table in the back and
look at some of the items
from the collection
that we pulled
in reference to this talk.
So, and now I'm going
to tell you a little bit
about Dr. Wetzell.
He is a research fellow at the
German Historical Institute
in Washington D.C. His research
is situated at the intersection
of legal history,
political history,
and the history of science.
His publications include,
"Beyond the Racist State:
Rethinking Nazi Germany,"
"Criminal and Criminal Justice
in Modern Germany," "Engineering
Society: The Role of the Human
and Social Sciences in
Modern Societies, 1880-1980,"
and "Investing the
Criminal History:
A History of German
Criminology, 1880-1945."
He is currently working
on two research projects.
A study of racial science,
eugenics, and racial policy
in Nazi Germany, and a history
of penal reform in
modern Germany.
So, without further
ado, please join me
in welcoming Dr.
Richard Wetzell.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell:
Thank you very much
for that kind introduction.
Thank you all for coming.
I know there are other things
to do on a beautiful sunny day
in Washington at noon time.
So, I'm very pleased
that you're here.
Very pleased to be at
the Library of Congress,
because as we were just
told, I certainly have
on many occasions used books
from this wonderful collection,
and a lot of this
research in fact,
would have been extremely
difficult if it weren't
for the collections of
the Library of Congress.
So, I'm very, very grateful to
this institution and the fact
that it makes its books
available, not just to members
of Congress and their staffs,
but also to the rest of us.
One of the occasions for
this talk is the publication
of an edited volume
that I co-edited called,
"Beyond the Racial State:
Rethinking Nazi Germany,"
which is an attempt to
advance the historical writing
on Nazi Germany, and there's
a copy of that book also
on that back table, if you want
to take a look at
it when you leave.
And there's also a
flier, a discount flyer
from Cambridge University
Press, should you be interested
in acquiring a copy of that.
And in that book, I myself have
a chapter on racial science
and eugenics in Nazi Germany,
and what I want to talk
about today is based on that.
I'm going to try to talk no
longer than 35 to 40 minutes
so that hopefully we also
have some time to talk.
I'm eager to hear your
questions and your comments.
So, without further ado, I'll
get right into the topic.
So, thank you again for coming.
I'm going to be talking about
racial science in Nazi Germany.
I'm going to start the
talk with a few remarks
on how historical research
on eugenics, medicine,
and racial science,
under national socialism
has developed,
and how this research
has contributed
to the interpretation of Nazi
Germany as a racial state.
And I'm going to start with
this histo-graphical background
because I will be
advancing a critique
of this racial state
interpretation.
Then in the central
part of my talk,
I'm going to present two
controversies in the field
of racial science,
during the Nazi era,
in order to show
how heterogeneous
and contested racial science
actually was in Nazi Germany.
And then finally, in
the concluding section,
I'm going to address
the question,
"How such controversies
might help us arrive
at a better understanding
of the role of medicine
and racial science in Nazi,
eugenic, and racial policy.
For several decades, after
the end of the Nazi regime,
the role of the medical
profession in the Third Reich,
was mostly cloaked in silence.
In the early post-war decade,
German public awareness
of Nazi crimes, such as it was,
focused on the murder
of the European Jews.
Other victim groups of the
Nazis such as Sinti and Roma,
the so-called gypsies,
homosexuals,
and people who were labeled as
physically or mentally disabled,
and forcibly sterilized
or killed
in the euthanasia program,
were largely ignored.
Since medical doctors had played
a key role in the persecution
of these forgotten
victim groups,
their role too could be ignored
in the early post-war period.
To be sure, right after the way,
a number of medical
doctors involved
in the euthanasia killings,
and in medical experiments
in concentration camps,
were put on trial,
and in some cases, convicted.
And many of you will know
this, the most important
of these trials was the
so-called Nuremburg Doctors
Trial, conducted by the
Americans in 1946-47,
which tried 20 Nazi doctors
and 3 administrators,
and ended in several
death sentences
and lifetime prison terms.
But the effort to bring medical
professionals to justice,
petered out after the mid-1950.
After the war, German medical
doctors, human geneticists
and physical anthropologists
themselves,
mostly advanced the
self-serving apologetic thesis
that their science had
been abused by the Nazis.
Doctors and biomedical
scientists
who had undeniably cooperated
in Nazi crimes, were described
as "bad apples," or "marginal
figures who had engaged
on so-called pseudo-science,
rather than science."
At the same time, the emerging
academic historiography
on the question of race in the
Third Reich, focused mostly
on the intellectual
history of anti-Semitism,
and Nordic racism, as modes
of irrational thought.
That's divorcing the history of
Nazi racism, from the history
of science, and medicine.
It was not until the
1980s that the role
of the medical profession
and the human sciences
or biological sciences,
especially psychiatry,
human genetics, and
physical anthropology,
in the Third Reich was
seriously researched.
Not surprisingly,
much of this research
in the 1980s was initially
conducted from the margins
of the German historical
profession,
by a younger generation
of German psychiatrists,
for instance, who began
to research the history
of their own institutions,
under -- in the Third Reich,
by young leftist historians
working outside the German
universities, by
disability rights activists,
by pioneers of women's
history, and by historians
in modern Germany working
outside of Germany,
mainly the U.S. and
Great Britain.
These studies explicitly
challenge the notion
that doctors and
scientists complicit
in Nazi crimes had been
engaged in pseudo-science,
arguing instead that it had been
the mainstream of German science
that had collaborated
with the Nazis.
The way the research that began
in the 80s demonstrated
the pervasive complicity
of German Medical
Doctors, human geneticists,
and anthropologists, in what
we might call Nazi biopolitics.
And I'm using the term
biopolitics here just
as a convenient shorthand to
refer to the complex of ideas
and practices, concerned with
the regulation of bodies,
both at the individual level,
and at the collective level
of the National Population.
So, in the case of the Nazi's
biopolitics would include
everything from public health to
eugenic policy to racial policy,
including the Holocaust.
The historical evidence of the
complicity of German physicians
and biomedical scientists,
in Nazi, Eugenic,
and racial policy,
is overwhelming.
Let me enumerate just a few
key pieces of evidence for you.
Prominent academics
advised the Nazi government
on eugenic policy.
Most medical doctors were
willing to report patients
to the authorities for
compulsive re-sterilization
and hundreds of German
physicians,
as well as leading academics,
served as medical judges
on the so-called
hereditary health courts,
which ordered compulsory
sterilizations.
Leading anthropologists
including [foreign name]
and [foreign name], supplied
racial exert opinions
to the Nazi authorities.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
anthropology, human genetics,
and eugenics, trained
SS officers
in so-called racial science.
Furthermore, some academic
anthropologists participated
in implementing racial policy
in the eastern European
territories occupied
by Nazi Germany during the war.
Likewise, the racial
classification of gypsies,
conducted by the Gypsy
researcher, [foreign name],
was closely connected to the
deportation of Sinti and Roma
to concentration camps.
Psychiatrists working in
mental hospitals, participated
in the euthanasia
murders of handicapped
and mentally ill patients.
Finally, medical doctors
closely associated
with leading research
institutes,
performed medical experiments
on concentration camp inmates,
and a number of researchers
used so-called human material,
obtained from murdered
concentration camp inmates.
All this evidence of widespread
complicity has definitively
refuted the apologetic
accounts of science and medicine
under the Nazi regime,
that dominated the west German
public's fear, until the 1980s.
Today, no serious student
of the subject can deny
that a large number of
Germany's physicians,
as well as leading academics
in the related fields
of anthropology, eugenics, human
genetics, and racial science,
[foreign name] in German,
were complicit in the eugenic
and racial policies
of the Nazi regime,
that culminated in
the Holocaust.
The most influential
summary of this first wave
of critical research on
the history of medicine
and biomedical science under
the Nazis that took place
in the 80s, was Michael Burleigh
and Wolfgang Wippermann's
1991 book, "The Racial State."
This book proposed a general
interpretation of Nazi Germany
as a racial state, by
advancing forming arguments.
First Burleigh and Wippermann
argued that the Nazi persecution
and murder of the European
Jews, must be seen as part
of a larger biopolitical agenda,
targeting a wide spectrum
of biologically defined
victim groups, including Sinti
and Roma, the so-called
gypsies, persons with mental
or physical disabilities,
homosexuals,
and so-called a-socials.
In other words, Nazi
anti-Semitism must be seen
as part of a more wide
ranging biopolitics.
Second, the authors
argued that Nazi racial
and social policy must be seen
as two sides of the same coin,
in the same way that negative
eugenics was complemented
by positive eugenics.
Third, the book demonstrated
the pervasive complicity
of medical doctors and
biomedical scientists
in Nazi eugenic and
racial policy.
And I would say these
first three arguments
that the spectrum of victim
groups is larger, that racial
and social policies are
two sides of the same coin,
and that the scientists and
the doctors were complicit.
Those all made lasting
contributions
to the historiography.
I would agree with all of them.
But Burleigh and Wippermann
also advanced a fourth argument
that I think is problematic.
Moving beyond the claim of
complicity, they asserted
that medical doctors,
racial anthropologists,
other bio-scientists, quote,
"Created the conceptual
framework for the implementation
of Nazi racial policy,"
end of quote.
In other words, they argued
that Nazi racial policy was
essentially the realization
of a blueprint that had been
developed by racial scientists.
This claim was advanced in
even more radical formulation
by the German historian [foreign
name] who argued that the,
Holocaust resulted from
quote, "A fatal racist dynamic
in the human sciences."
And it is this last
claim that medicine
and racial science provided
the conceptual framework
for Nazi racial policy,
that I would like to probe
and challenge in my talk today.
Burleigh and Wippermann's claim,
rested on their understanding
of racial science under
the Nazis as a cohesive,
coherent, field of science.
In reality, I will argue that
field, the field that came
to be known as racial science,
was in fact characterized
by several different and
competing conceptual frameworks,
just as there were competing
visions of Nazi racial policy,
at least early in the regime.
In fact, competing
conceptions of race
and human heredity resulted in a
remarkable number of conflicts,
and controversies
in the Nazi era.
To demonstrate just how
contested the terrain
of eugenics and racial science
was, I will in the central part
of my talk now, examine
two such controversies.
And then in the concluding
section of my talk,
I'm going to address
the larger implications
of these case studies.
Because if the meaning
of race and the nature
of human heredity
is I will argue,
remained contested
during the Nazi era,
so that racial science could
not have provided one blueprint
for policy, then of course,
the question becomes,
"What exactly was the
relationship of racial science
and Nazi bio-politics?"
So, let me turn to the first
of the two controversies
that I want to talk
to you about today.
The field of German physical
anthropology, which became known
as [foreign name], racial
science, in the Nazi period,
had long been characterized
by diversity of approaches
to the concept of race.
At the outset of the Nazi
regime, these approaches ranged
from the Nordic racial
theories of Hans Gunther,
and we just saw we have
his most famous book
on the back table
there, to the dynamic --
and Hans Gunther really was
sort of the most important,
most widely read writer
on race in Nazi Germany,
from the Nordic racial
theories of Gunther,
to the dynamic conceptions
of race propounded
by [foreign name] who
argued that races were
in fact dynamic and malleable.
And I'll say a little bit more
about the two of
them in a minute.
Ironically, the first
anthropologist who got
into trouble with Nazi
authorities, was a scholar
who occupied a moderate position
in the middle of this spectrum
of racial theories between
the sort of classic theories
of Nordic -- superiority of
the Nordic race on one end,
and the other end the idea
that races are malleable
and dynamic and everchanging.
And the person who was in
the middle of the spectrum,
was Eugen Fischer, a
professor of anthropology
at the University of Berlin,
and the founding director
of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Anthropology,
Human Genetics, and
Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem.
And he was probably,
during the Nazi period,
the most prominent
physical anthropologist
and human geneticist in Germany.
Two days after Hitler's
seizure of power,
that is on February 1st, 1933,
Fischer delivered a previously
scheduled public lecture
on racial mixing and mental
aptitude, in which he argued
that the mixing of races
generally had a beneficial
effect on offspring.
High cultures were usually
the product of a mixing
of races, not of their purity.
The flowering of
culture in central Europe
from the Renaissance on, he
explained, too place in a quote,
"Mixing zone," in which
the Nordic race had mixed
with the Alpine and
Dinaric races.
Fischer also explicitly
addressed the question
of race mixing between
Nordic races and Jews,
making a biological distinction
between long-resident
German Jewish families,
and recently arrived [inaudible]
Jews from eastern Europe.
He argued that the
mixing of Nordic races
with German Jewish stock, was
unproblematic, while the mixing
with [inaudible] was not.
Since Fischer made this argument
in a public lecture attended
by journalists, two days after
Hitler had come to power,
we may assume that he
intended his comments
to have a political
effect namely,
to advise the Hitler government
to take a moderate line
in discriminating against Jews.
So, just to clear.
I mean, the lecture was
previously scheduled.
When it was scheduled,
he couldn't have known Hitler
was going to come to power,
but of course, he had time to
think about what he was going
to say, and this is not --
you know, this is very much a
public talk he knew was going
to be covered in the newspapers.
So, what you have is probably
the most important German
academic in the field
of racial theories.
I mean, Gunther was probably
the most widely read,
but he was a popularizer.
Fischer was a part of the
academic establishment.
He ran the most --
the best-funded,
most important research
institute on race,
and he was certainly in
many ways what we would call
a racist.
There's also little doubt
that he was an anti-Semite,
but the point is, when
it came to the question
of whether racial mixing is good
or not, he took the position,
it's generally a positive thing.
Now, you're already guessing
why this becomes a controversy,
right?
So, because the lecture was
widely reported in the press,
Fischer did not have to
wait long for reactions.
And he soon found out that he
had transgressed the limits
of acceptable discourse
on racial policy
under the Nazi regime.
In fact, he found himself the
target of a sustained campaign
of denunciation, that was
orchestrated by [foreign name]
who was the Chief of the SS
Office of Race and Settlement,
and also the [inaudible]
Minister of Agriculture,
and a major proponent
of Nordic racial theory.
Several of [foreign name]
associates mounted a series
of public attacks
in newspapers and so
on that posed a serious
threat to Fischer's career.
Fischer was vigorously defended
however, by [foreign name]
who was the person in charge
of the section of public health
at the Minister of the Interior.
He was installed
there by the Nazis.
He was a committed Nazi.
He's basically the
person who made the --
who directed sterilization
policy and was responsible
for the passage of
the sterilization law.
So [foreign name] is also
very much a committed Nazi,
and very much a believer in
eugenics and racial theory.
But, he in this situation,
became a defender of Fischer.
And [foreign name] argued in
a letter to [foreign name],
that Fischer's international
academic reputation
in racial anthropology, made him
indispensable for the regime.
And I quote, "A dispute
between Fischer
and official authorities would
easily create the impression
in Germany and abroad, that
Professor Fischer disapproves
of the path that the government
has taken in racial policy,
and that the government's
measures contradict the findings
of science."
End of quote.
And I like this quote because
it's rare that you find
so explicitly a passage
that basically says,
"We need this guy
for our legitimacy,
and that's why we
should not fire him."
No doubt, in response to
pressure from [foreign name],
Fischer decided to
adjust his views.
And this also is
interesting how he does that,
although Fischer refused
to label the Jewish race
as inferior, the German word
would be [foreign name],
he described the Jews
as an [foreign name],
a race different in kind.
So, he refuses to say it's
inferior, but it's different
in kind, and therefore
had to be excluded
from race mixing
with Nordic races.
So, on the substance of
race mixing, he backs down,
he refuses to put a
negative label on the Jews.
Just a different initial mix.
So, he caves.
On the central issue,
he does cave, right?
Although it took a while for
the campaign against Fischer
to subside, I mean this campaign
against him actually went
on for several years,
this concession together
with Fischer's willingness
to offer training courses
at his institute for SS
doctors, allowed Fischer
to retain control of
the Dahlem Institute,
which then remained the
most important institute
in racial science
in Nazi Germany.
And to become what one
historian has called,
"The undisputed academic
spokesman for racial science
under the Nazi regime."
Now, my argument would
be that the controversy
over this lecture shows
that it would be misleading
to characterize Fischer as a
racial scientist who was glad
that the Nazi regime
would finally allow him
to translate his ideas into
policy, because as we can see,
his ideas were a little
different from the ideas
of the regime, or those in
the regime that prevailed.
His initial clash with the
regime, essentially led
to a negotiation in which,
to use Mitchell Ash's terms,
a German American historian
of Science, "Science
and politics were
resources for one another."
I think that's very
useful to think about it.
And so, in this negotiation,
Fischer sought the support
of the regime in order to
finance his institute's research
and defend its own academic
position, while [foreign name]
at the Interior Ministry,
as we saw in that quote,
defended Fischer, so that
the internationally renowned
anthropologist would lend
Nazi racial policies,
scientific respectability.
Although, Fischer found out
that there were boundaries
to acceptable discourse on
race under the new regime,
there was some room for him to
negotiate a compromised position
on race mixing, precisely
because academic
and public discourse on
race during the early years
of the regime, remained
surprisingly diverse.
And the question of
official racial policy
remained unsettled.
To be sure, Fischer's case
demonstrates the powerful reach
of the Nazi regime, into the
realm of academic research,
as well as the willingness
of key scientists to cave
into the regime's demands.
It also shows however,
that in the case
of Germany's preeminent
racial scientist,
the claim that racial scientists
had created the conceptual
framework for Nazi
policy, does not stand
up to empirical scrutiny.
For Fischer's views on the
key issue of racial mixing,
clearly differed strongly
from those of the Nazis.
Let me now go on to
a second controversy.
A second no less revealing
controversy concerned the notion
of a German race.
So, whether there was a
[foreign name] or not,
which was put forward by the
anthropologist, [foreign name],
and the botanical
geneticist [foreign name].
And I mentioned them
earlier briefly.
According to [foreign
name] and [foreign name],
races could not be defined as
fixed types, nor did Dinaric,
[inaudible] so on, so that --
the stuff that's in
the Gunther book that's
on the back table there.
According to [foreign
name] and [foreign name],
races could not be defined
as fixed types, characterized
by specific physiological,
genetic,
or psychological traits, because
races were always malleable
and in constant transformation.
Races, they insisted, were
affected by both genetic
and environmental factors,
and therefore never something
absolute, but always states
of equilibrium reflecting
the influences
of heredity and environment.
Because races were
malleable, [foreign name]
and [foreign name] thought
it made sense to speak
of a [foreign name], of a
German race, that was always
in the process of being formed.
In making the case for their
notion of a German race,
they mounted sharp attacks
against Hans Gunther's
racial theories
which stressed the
superiority of the Nordic race,
among the six races of
which the German population,
according to Gunther,
was composed.
They also dismissed
Gunther's idea
that you could undo
racial mixtures,
and thereby recreate the
original Nordic race.
Let me say a word or
two about [foreign name]
and [foreign name]
background, and then I'll talk
about what the official
reactions were to their theory.
So, [foreign name]
is interesting
because after World War
I, he had actually served
in a free corps, you know,
right-wing, military units,
and then had joined
the Nazi party in 1920,
was an active member of
the SA until about 1923.
But in '25, he let
his membership
in party and SA lapse.
He became the head of
the Botanical Laboratory
of the Biological [foreign
name] Institute for Agriculture
and Forestry, sort of Germany's
premiere research institute
in botanics and agriculture
and forestry.
So, not an unimportant
position, in 1927.
And shortly after that,
he published in 1927,
a scathing critique of
Gunther's racial theories.
In 1928, he came into contact
with a young anthropologist,
[foreign name], who was a
lecturer at the University
of [foreign name], and at
the Anatomical Institute,
who had written his
1927 [foreign name],
a kind of second thesis,
on the topic of the origins
of the Nordic race, in which
he came to the same conclusion,
that Gunther's theory of
Nordic superiority was
[inaudible] bunk.
After Hitler comes
to power in 1933,
[foreign name] is
the first of this duo
that fields the new
regime's wrath.
In October 1933, he was fired
from his tenured
civil service position
at the Biological [foreign
name] Institute under Article 4
of the cynically titled
"Law for the Restoration
of the Civil Service,"
which most
of you will know is a
law used to remove Jews
from civil service, but
you could also be removed
for supposed political
and unreliability,
and that's how he was fired.
Since the institute was part
of the Ministry of Agriculture,
the minister in charge
was unfortunately
for [foreign name],
now none other
than the Nordicist racial
fanatic, [foreign name].
Nevertheless, far from becoming
more conscious, [foreign name]
and [foreign name] unfolded
prodigious publishing activities
in the first two years
of the Nazi regime.
Four books, between
the two of them,
in order to popularize
their dynamic conception
of a German race,
clearly making a bid
to influence Nazi racial policy.
The reception of [foreign name]
and [foreign name] concept
of a German race among Nazi
officials, was sharply divided.
And this is again, I think what
makes the story interesting,
is that not all the
Nazi policymakers are
on the same side.
While Nordicists like [foreign
name] were fiercely opposed
to the notion of a German
race, the concept met
with considerable
assent in other quarters
of the Nazi movement
and Nazi leadership.
For at the outset of the
regime, some party members were
in fact concerned
that proponents
of Nordic racial theory,
might advocate a racial policy
that would introduce
distinctions of racial value,
among the German population.
And that they might even call
for racial eugenic
measures of Nordification.
They feared in other
words, that if the notion
of Nordic superiority
became official policy,
then those parts of
the German population
that were not primarily Nordic,
you know, would feel threatened
and this would threaten
the cohesion
of the German national
community.
Not an unreasonable fear.
Among the major players
in racial policy,
the strongest supporters of
the notion of a German race,
were the anti-Semite [foreign
name], who was the expert
for racial research in
the Interior Ministry,
who was actually in charge
of purging of civil service.
Also, Fritz [foreign
name] who was the head
of the Nazi party's Office of
Public Health, and in addition
to the support from
these two key figures,
there also were various
Nazi newspapers and reviews
that published articles
supportive
of the notion of a German race.
The Nazi official who
quashed the debate
between the Nordicists and the
advocates of a German race,
was [foreign name], who was head
of the Nazi party's
[foreign name],
the Office of Racial Policy.
Under [foreign name]
energetic leadership,
the Office of Racial
Policy gradually managed
to assert control over all
racial propaganda and training,
and over relations
between the regime
and academic researchers
on race.
It also established its right
to approve all publications
on racial matters.
So, basically, within the
first two years of the regime,
there's a lot of wrangling
among different party and state
and SS agencies to
control racial policy,
and [inaudible] doesn't end
up controlling everything.
But he controls the
propaganda, the publications,
and the relations with
academic researchers.
So, he establishes himself in
a relatively powerful position.
So, in an October 1934 circular,
to the so-called [foreign name],
Officials in Charge
of Racial Matters
of Regional Party Offices,
[foreign name] launched a
major attack on [foreign name]
and [foreign name]
notion of a German race.
The concept of a
German race, he charged,
"derived from the Jewish and
Catholic intellectual milieu,
and was a camouflaged attempt
to remove the factor of race,
and call for harmony among
the German [inaudible].
And I quote, "Whoever speaks of
a German race, [foreign name],
is leaving the foundation
of the factual.
There is a German language,
a German [foreign name].
Racially, however, Germany
is a racial mixture."
End of quote.
[Foreign name] also
warned that the notion
of a German race might lead
to the inclusion of Jews
and gypsies in the German race.
His attack was flanked
by critical book reviews
in the press, and by an outright
ban on certain publications.
But, and this is interesting,
despite [foreign name] effort
to declare an official ban on
the notion of a German race,
a December 1934 meeting of party
and state officials in Munich,
revealed that key party
officials in the area
of racial policy, continued
to support the notion
of a German race.
And these included
[foreign name],
who was the so-called
[foreign name],
the Head of the Medical
profession if you will,
his deputy Fritz [foreign
name], was the Head
of the Nazi parties,
Office of Public Health,
and [foreign name] who was
at the Interior Ministry.
Alarmed that the notion
of a German race might be
gaining political support,
[foreign name] now decided
to take decisive action
against [foreign name], who was
still teaching, you know, --
[foreign name] had
already been fired.
Now, they're going
after [foreign name]
who was still teaching as a
lecturer in [foreign name].
In January 1935, at
[foreign name] behest,
the [inaudible] Minister
of Research and Education,
barred [foreign name] from
teaching, based on the charge
that he had quote, "Harmed the
reputation of the university."
The major Nazi newspaper,
the [foreign name],
carried an official denunciation
of [foreign name] research,
prepared by [foreign name].
[Foreign name] was driven
out of the university,
ended up practicing
homeopathic medicine
in a private sanitorium, until
he was drafted into the military
as a medic, not a doctor,
even though he was a trained
doctor, during the war.
[Foreign name] was briefly
interned in a concentration camp
for supposed oppositional
activity in 1937.
It would be wrong however to
conclude that the silencing
of the academic advocates of
the notion of a German race,
indicated the unambiguous
triumph
of Nordicist racial theory.
Although, it may have
seemed that way for a while,
[foreign name] and the
[foreign name] eventually turned
against Nordicism as well.
This development is reflected
in a later conflict involving
the founder of [foreign name],
Knowledge of the Racial
Soul, [foreign name],
who found himself the subject
of a secret trial in front
of the Supreme Nazi
Party Court, in 1941-42.
Although the case against
[foreign name] included the
charge that his primary academic
collaborator was Jewish,
it also included the accusation
pressed by [foreign name],
that [foreign name]
was scientifically
and politically suspect.
And once more, [foreign name]
prevailed and the trial ended
with [foreign name]
expulsion from the Nazi party,
and the loss of his
academic position.
So, this was a strike against
the other side on the spectrum
of racial theories, which shows
that even into the early 40s,
there is movement,
there is disagreement,
there is conflict in this field.
While [foreign name]
and [foreign name] controversies
took place in the early years
of the regime, this
trial of [foreign name]
and some other conflicts that
are discussed in my chapter,
but I don't have time to
discuss today on sterilization,
show that conflicts of eugenics
and racial science continued
in the regime's later years.
In fact, evidence of conflict
over racial policy can be found
in wartime occupation policy.
And the historian [foreign name]
demonstrated, Nazi racial policy
in occupied Poland,
also witnessed significant
disagreements
over who should count as a
German, and who should count
as a Pole, which reflected
competing conceptions
of race and [inaudible].
Let me turn to my conclusion,
and to the larger question,
"What are the implications then
of controversies such as the two
that I've examined here, for
understanding the relationship
between racial science and Nazi
racial and eugenic policy?"
To be sure, these controversies
demonstrate the power
that key Nazi officials could
exert over academic research.
Just as importantly
however, they demonstrate
that racial science
was characterized
by competing conceptions
of race,
and therefore could not
have supplied a coherent,
conceptual framework for policy.
This finding does not diminish
the incontrovertible complicity
of racial scientists
and Nazi racial policy,
but by [inaudible]
the misleading notion
that the regime simply
translated the precepts
of science into practice,
we can embark
on a more careful
analysis of relationship
between racial science and Nazi
biopolitics, and in particular
of the question of, "What
exactly the influence
of racial science on Nazi
eugenic and racial policy was?"
And in answering this
question, I would like to argue
that we have to make
careful distinctions
between different areas of
Nazi eugenic and racial policy.
And in my last section here,
I just want to briefly look
at four of these areas and make
the case that the influence
of science was quite
different in different areas.
So, first, let's briefly
look at eugenic policy,
which I didn't really
cover in this paper.
I talked about it more in
my chapter in the book.
At the beginning of the
Third Reich, the right-wing
of the German Eugenics
Movement, saw the Nazi regime
as offering a welcome
opportunity.
In psychiatric eugenicists
such as [foreign name]
played an active role
in shaping Nazi eugenic policy.
Because they saw eugenics
as not just addressing medical
pathologies, but also as a way
of solving social
problems, including crime,
vagrancy, a-social behavior.
Their participation in eugenic
policy making was also a way
of expanding the medical
professions influence
into the realm of social policy.
Key figures in the
German Eugenics Movement,
most importantly, [foreign
name], had a direct causal role
in shaping and radicalizing,
Nazi eugenic policy,
especially in the
regime's early years.
So, here's a field where
science clearly had an influence
[inaudible] participated in
drafting the sterilization law.
Second, racial scientists played
a key role in the persecution
and murder of the Roma and
Sinti, the so-called gypsies.
Because Roma and Sinti
were perceived as a-social
and criminal, they were targeted
by sterilization policy,
through diagnoses
of feeblemindedness.
There were also discussions
about specifically targeting
all gypsies for sterilization,
but these were overtaken
by the turn to mass murder.
Racial research on gypsies
conducted by [foreign name],
and others had a direct
influence on the course
of Nazi racial policy,
toward the Sinti and Roma,
which culminated in mass murder.
So, here's a second field
where I think science was
decisive and influential.
Third, by contrast however,
the role of racial scientists
and Nazi anti-Semitic
policy was more limited.
German racial scientists
were deeply complicit
in the implementation
of Nazi anti-Semitism,
and in the Holocaust, but
there's little evidence
that they played any
significant role in the shaping
and radicalization of
Nazi anti-Semitic policy.
Although many right-wing
eugenicists
and anthropologists were
anti-Semites, so [foreign name]
who I mentioned and [foreign
name] who I mentioned briefly,
I mean they were
clearly anti-Semites.
Their role in drawing
up specific anti-Semitic
measures seems
to have been extremely limited.
Neither the passage
of the Nuremburg laws,
for which racial
science failed of course,
to deliver any biological
criteria, nor the turn
to the mass murder of the
Jews, can be attributed
to the influence of scientists.
The initiative clearly came
from the Nazi leadership.
This does not diminish the
complicity of anthropologists,
eugenicists, [foreign name],
who lent scientific legitimacy
to anti-Semitism, provided
the racial expert opinions,
or performed medical experiments
in concentration camps.
But in the area of anti-Semitic
policy, their role was
that of supporting the
implementation of Nazi policy,
not that of shaping
or radicalizing it,
which I think also
tells you something
about while the targeting of
the European Jews was part
of the spectrum of targets
of this Nazi biopolitics,
the Jews are a very
special and different case,
and their targeting goes right
to the heart of Nazi ideology.
And that's, I would argue,
why the influence of science
in this area is not
as important.
Fourth and finally, the
role of racial scientists
in the racial screening
of the populations
of Nazi occupied eastern Europe,
and the resettlement policies
adopted there, were significant,
but not always a
radicalizing one.
[Foreign name] recent study
of Nazi Germanization policy
in Poland for instance, provides
an example of how Nazi officials
who favored a highly inclusive
policy, of Germanization,
so counting as many people in
the local Polish population
as Germans, or at least
potentially Germans,
so that even Nazi officials
who wanted an inclusive policy
of Germanization, could
also draw on racial science
to defend their position
against more restrictive
policy proposals.
So, for instance, [foreign
name] who was the [foreign name]
of [foreign name], one of
the newly created provinces
out of occupied Poland,
convinced the Nordicist
racial theorist, Hans Gunther,
to visit his [foreign name], his
area, for a ten-day field study
in order to obtain
his expert opinion
on the racial composition
of the local population.
And although Gunther noted
that the local population
represented a quote,
"inextricable mixture
of races," he argued
that the key question was,
"Whether their offspring would
represent a welcomed addition
to the German population?"
And Gunther answered this
question in the affirmative,
noting that the majority
of the local Polish
population was quote,
"racially not too far removed
from the German population
of eastern, central Germany."
And thus, [foreign name]
obtained the scientific
legitimization of his more
inclusive Germanization policy,
which stood in stark
contrast to the more radical,
that is restrictive
policy promoted
by [foreign name] in the SS.
So, disagreements continue,
and certain scientific views
are solicited to support one
or the other position.
Let me close with two
final observations.
And the first one has to do
with the question of complicity.
And I would argue that the
question of the complicity
of scientists in the regime,
needs to be conceptualized
differently
from the way it has been.
In the racial state
interpretation,
it appeared that medical doctors
and racial scientists held
scientific views that were
in general alignment with
Nazi racial ideology.
And in this view of
course, their complicity
in Nazi racial policy, simply
followed logically from the fact
that racial science, racial
ideology, and racial policies,
supposedly fit hand in glove.
Once we understand as I would
argue, that there was no
such fit, and that many aspects
of racial science during the
Nazi era contradicted Nazi
racial policy.
That there were at least
some positions on a spectrum
that were not in
alignment with Nazi policy.
Once we understand that,
the widespread complicity
of racial scientists, calls
for a different explanation.
In the case of [foreign
name], for instance,
it becomes quite clear, I would
argue, that his complicity
with the regime was not a
matter of substantive agreement
with the regime's
racial policies,
but of sheer opportunism.
That is, cooperating with the
regime in order to be able
to retain his position, and
to get financial support
for his institute's research.
[Foreign name] complicity
with the regime
that pursued racial policies,
which he knew lacked
scientific foundation,
clearly increases his
moral culpability.
In short, an approach that
stresses the heterogeneity
and diversity of racial
science under the Third Reich,
does not diminish the
moral responsibility
of most racial scientists.
My final remark addresses the
question of how we might arrive
at a better historical
understanding
of the relationship
between racial science
and the Nazi regime.
The course of Nazi
eugenic and racial policy,
cannot be explained by
reference to racial science,
because the trajectory, I've
argued here, of racial science,
does not mirror that
of Nazi racial policy.
In other words, the role of
science and the radicalization
of Nazi racial policy,
culminating in the
Holocaust, has been overstated.
Neither racial policy,
nor Nazi racial ideology,
nor Nazi racial policy,
were as coherent
as the racial [inaudible]
or paradigm has suggested.
Instead, all three remained
heterogeneous areas throughout
the Third Reich.
Mitchell Ash has
written that science
and politics are resources for
one another, but of course,
neither science nor
politics were monolithic.
In the case of Nazi Germany,
I would argue we need
to develop an intellectual map
of the different
research paradigms,
or schools of thought, within
the field of racial science.
So, on the one hand,
this intellectual map.
While on the other hand, I
think we need a political map
of the major parties state
in SS agencies, that competed
with another for
controlling racial policy.
And then I would argue once
we figured out these two maps
and are aware of how
heterogeneous both
of these areas were,
then we need
to relate them to one another.
And then we can begin to ask,
"Who sought alliances
with whom?"
Which scientists,
which policy makers,
for what purpose, at what time?
And such an approach should help
us understand the Third Reich
better, by elucidating
how both scientists
and Nazi officials deployed
competing conceptions of race,
for strategic purposes
at different points
in the development
of the Nazi regime.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
And I look forward to your
questions and comments.
I know some of you may have to
get back to your offices, so --
but those of you who still
have time, look forward
to questions and comments.
Yes, please?
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> Thanks.
And I found it very interesting
to see how these matters
of race were contested
throughout the Nazi period.
On that intellectual
map that you mentioned,
where would you find the sort
of division between Aryan
and Semitic, or did
that category of Aryan
and the category of
Semitic still play a role,
or did it peter out, and would
that have influenced policy?
>> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell:
It's an excellent question.
Thank you.
You'll notice that I think
probably the word Aryan did not
even appear in my talk, right?
So, what was so strange,
as I began this research,
was to find it in the area of
racial science, [inaudible]
and the Aryan race simply
plays absolutely no role.
And I'm not the first to say it,
but I think it has
not been said enough.
There's some research that
already indicated this.
So, it turns out that in
linguistics in the 20s and 30s,
people still worked with this
concept in terms of you know,
tracing language groups.
But among Germany's physical
anthropologists, and eugenicists
and all these people
I've grouped here
as racial scientists, it turns
out none of them use this term.
Now of course, you ask, "Well,
then how come we always hear
about Aryans in Nazi Germany?"
And I did to do some more
research on -- to find that out,
but what I can say
with certainty,
is that in the scientific
discussions,
it doesn't play any role.
Among the scientists,
it's really either you are
with Hans Gunther and you
think there are the Nordic
and the [inaudible] and the
[inaudible] and these six races.
And then the Jews also are
composed of different races,
or you are on the other
extreme with [foreign name]
and [foreign name] where races
are always in the making.
Or you're somewhere in the
middle with [foreign name]
where it's basically a
genetic conceptions of race --
based on genetic factors.
And of course, there
are other positions.
I would argue the main
reason as far as I can tell,
that the term Aryan
is so important
in the public discourse
in Nazi Germany,
is that it essentially becomes
a synonym for non-Jewish, right?
Because very early on,
already in April '33,
the Law on the Restoration of
the Civil Service is passed,
which I mentioned briefly
because that's how they
fire [foreign name],
but most of the time, of
course what they're doing,
is they're firing people who
are of Jewish descent, right?
So, a lot of you will know
this, basically everybody
who was a civil servant
in Germany,
which in Germany meant
a lot of people, right?
Everybody from your postal
carrier to your schoolteacher
and so on, had to provide a --
what was at least informally
often called [foreign name],
where you had to go back to
your four grandparents and show
who they were and what they
were looking for was evidence
that they were Jewish.
And of course, the evidence
that they were Jewish was just
that they were registered
in a Jewish community.
So, it all came down to
religion, because of course,
it turns out that you know,
there were no biological
or racial criteria.
And so, in those -- as
that became implemented,
the word Aryan, [foreign
name] in German,
was just simply a
synonym for not Jewish.
So, the [foreign name] really
was just that you're not Jewish.
And then in Nuremberg, I would
argue the same things happens.
As the Nuremberg laws make
illegal sexual intercourse
or marriage between Jewish
Germans and Gentile Germans,
then again this term Aryan
comes back into the discussion.
So, that's -- I would say,
because of these
legal provisions,
the term is very prominent
in public discussions
in Nazi Germany, and
in our historiography,
but it was actually
really surprising to me
that in the science, it
really doesn't play any role.
So, I thank you for
the question.
I'll just say one
more thing about that.
I think part of what we
still need in addition
to these maps I talk about, is
just a history of the language.
You know, when do people
talk about Aryan race?
When do they talk
about German race,
[inaudible] that
discussion is shut down?
When do they talk
about German blood?
And I would argue
that increasingly
as the regime goes on, people
talk about [foreign name],
which they mean metaphorically.
I mean, the Nazis are busy.
I mean they do research on
blood groups, trying to see
if they can find Jewish blood.
Well, you won't be
surprised to hear,
of course that doesn't
go anywhere, right?
So, the term blood is
then used metaphorically,
and I would argue
because by '30 --
by '35, [foreign name] has
basically banned the term
[foreign name].
You then either are just stuck
talking about [foreign name],
but then you're missing
the racial element,
and that's why I would say
then, when they occupy Poland
and so on, then you
get discussions
about [foreign name],
even though that's just
a metaphorical term
which gives you absolutely
no concrete criteria
for deciding who's
German or not.
But I think with -- a lot
more work could be done about,
"What are the terms that are
used and when are they used?"
[Foreign name] You know,
[foreign name] spends a lot
of time talking about
the [foreign name].
So, you know, the
ancient Germanic tribes.
So, again, he's not -- you
can't talk about [foreign name].
So, you know, the Nordic
race, the German race,
the [foreign name], the
Aryans, the [foreign name]
and I think there is some
more work to be done about why
at certain times they end
up using certain terms.
But it's -- your question
is very well taken.
Anyone else?
Yes?
>> [Inaudible] on point.
I'll try staying on point.
It's been hard for me sometimes.
But to try to draw bright lines
between terms like race science,
[foreign name] or the
people, a community,
or in other theoretical
framework,
the imagined communities,
and then finally the tribe,
do either of these
earn a bright line?
Is racial science anything
more than a construct
or are none of them constructs?
Constructs that are falling
out of favor, in some cases.
And [inaudible] the change
in [inaudible] speaking
peoples to [inaudible].
Now, the principle
political organization taking
another name.
>> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell: Also,
a question that's
very well taken.
Of course, a very
large question.
Let me try to take
it in this direction.
Of course, it is
all a construct.
And I think you're very right
to draw attention to you know,
that beyond the racial
science and race,
there are these other terms.
The [foreign name], we could
say the [foreign name],
the imagined community.
And I would say part of the
argument that this edited book,
"Beyond the Racial
State," makes,
which I didn't highlight here
because it's not a dissenter
of what I'm doing, but what I
do connect to it, is also to say
that this racial state
interpretation of Nazi Germany,
has you know -- of
course race was important
in Nazi Germany, right?
I mean no one would
argue against that.
Just so we're clear, that
I'm not arguing against that.
Race was very important.
Point 1 would be to say, but
don't take it at face value,
you can't use it as
an analytical category
and then think that
race explains everything
on Nazi Germany.
It needs to really be turned
around and one needs to ask,
"What do they mean when
they're talking about race?
What do they mean when they
talk about these things?"
But a point I wanted to make is
that one argument in the book is
to say race -- the case for
race has been overstated.
Not everything in Nazi
Germany was about race
and was about biology.
And both the construction of
the [foreign name], by the Nazis
and their construction of
the enemy image of the Jews,
also had cultural
patterns of argumentation.
So, to start with
the Jews, right?
I mean, a lot of
what the Nazis said
about the Jews is
there's a world --
world Jewish conspiracy, which
has those wonderful two parts
on Wall Street and
in the Kremlin,
which already shows you it's
kind of contradictory, right?
But there are also longstanding
cultural anti-Semitic tropes
that continue to play a
major role in Germany.
If we just stuck with the race,
the Jews are [foreign name],
that they are an inferior race,
then it would all come down to,
"Well, the Jews, you know,
[inaudible] so inferior."
But of course, that's not at all
-- what most of the rhetoric is
about how powerful the Jews are,
either because they're
capitalists
or because they're Bolshevik,
depending on the
argument you want to make.
So, they're really
anything but inferior.
So, several chapters in
this book make the argument
that as we try to
understand Nazi anti-Semitism,
we have to remain aware that in
addition to racial arguments,
which of course are there, there
are other cultural arguments.
And I think the same can be
said for the Nazi creation
of the [foreign name],
you know, the community
of the German people, which
sometimes is translated
in English as racial community,
because [foreign name]
is this term of course
which can mean nation,
can mean people, you know?
But I would say translating it
as racial community
is not accurate.
The argument would be that
also the [foreign name] is also
in sometimes created
by longstanding,
nationalistic cultural types of
argumentation, not all racial.
And the reason for that is
in part, this is only part
of the story of course, it's
not all about the history
of science, but part of is
as I've said that early on,
people already [inaudible].
I mean, they're basically caught
between a rock and a hard place,
because if you go with Gunther,
and you say the German nation
is composed of six races,
[foreign name], [foreign name],
[foreign name], and so on,
and the Nordic one is superior,
then you have basically said,
"Certain parts of the German
people are racially more
valuable than others.
And that certainly could
undermine the racial cohesions."
And you know, we have evidence
of discussions for instance
in Bavaria, how is this going to
come out, because this is a part
of the population with
supposedly less Nordic blood.
So, if they go with that,
the problem is you're creating
invidious distinctions among
the population.
And then on the other
hand, as I laid out for you
in this one controversy, if
you go with a dynamic notion
of a German race in the
making, malleable at all times,
then some people were
worried that, "Hell,
the Jews might get into it.
If we make it too malleable,
you know, then, you know,
we're not keeping out the
people we want to keep out."
That was [foreign name] fear.
Whether that was an accurate
fear, is another question.
But you can see that no
matter how they play it,
whether Germany is all one
race, or is six different races,
either way, it's
potentially highly problematic
for what they want to
do, and also in fairness,
I think of course
these controversies
and conflicts are
strongest in the early years.
Certain things become
off-limits, but as I've tried
to show, and this is not
the focus of my own work,
but if you look at
policy in occupied Poland,
you can see that these
conflicts reemerge.
But I also want to say
again, there are areas
where this doesn't matter.
The persecution of the Jews
as it escalates towards
mass murder, that is driven
by much deeper ideological
factors in the Nazi party,
and the racial scientists
are nice for legitimation,
but they don't drive
the process.
Any other questions or comments?
>> Could I just [inaudible]?
>> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: Yes, please.
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
About [foreign name]?
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
Yes. I'm not going
to talk at length
because it's probably some
time beyond the bounds
of what my own research
has focused on,
but many of you will know
the name [foreign name],
was probably the most
prominent German jurist
to align himself
with the Nazi regime.
I don't know enough about
his work on these issues
to say something specific.
What I can say is of
course, there were members
of the German legal
community that also tried
to make the argument that
this is all about race.
And there were extreme
positions that essentially said,
"We don't even need written
laws, because we know
that the purpose
of law is always
to protect the German
people, and therefore,
whatever harms the German
people is obviously a criminal
and needs to be punished and
what doesn't harm it, is good."
But you can see that that's of
course a very extreme position.
And while some recent
research has sort
of stressed these
radical positions,
I would say that they
don't really reflect
where the mainstream goes.
Yes, please?
>> Yes, you had earlier talked
about two different
kinds of blood.
>> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: Blood.
>> German blood, [foreign name]
blood, and then [foreign name].
>> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell: Yes.
>> I didn't understand the
second one that you said-- .
>> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: I'm sorry.
I should have translated
that, yes.
[Foreign name] means
blood similar in kind.
Closely related.
So, as they were trying to make
policy in the occupied parts
of Poland, and then
also of Russia, right?
What they're doing is
they're starting a process
of racial screening, where
they're trying to decide,
"Who can we bring into
the German people,
and who is definitely Slavic
and therefore inferior?"
and you know, essentially these
are people that they let starve
and if not actively exterminate.
For instance, case
of Soviet POWs.
But especially in
[inaudible], they're trying
to do this racial screening.
And there in those processes,
there are different positions
that people take,
which I hinted at,
some want to be highly
inclusive.
These are often the people who
actually run these territories.
And they basically want
to say, "Yes, you know,
if someone in the family
[inaudible] to speak,"
because of course,
you have to remember,
Poland is a very mixed
population, right?
>> Yes.
>> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: There are areas
that are clearly German
speaking and there are some
that are not, but
it's a mixture.
It's not ethnically homogeneous.
And there are some people that
look at the situation and say,
"Let's take everybody we can.
If they speak German, if
they've seem sympathetic
to the German cause, if they're
willing to come on board,
let's take them all in."
That's sort of the one
side of the spectrum.
And I gave you one example was
someone who wants to do that,
is clever enough to
actually call in Hans Gunther
of all people, and have him
write an expert opinion, saying,
"Yes, these people are
basically more or less
like the Germans are."
So, a strategic use of
scientific legitimation.
And on the other end of the
spectrum, you have the SS
who comes in and wants
to measure the skulls
and really have racial
criteria, for who should count
as German and who shouldn't.
And only a very small number of
people are subject to these kind
of racial examinations, and
then of course, the problem is
as you can all guess, I mean,
it's completely made up.
I mean, you know, you
can measure the skull,
but what's it really
going to tell you.
But in this spectrum
of approaches,
there are some regulations that
are passed to describe who's in
and who's out, who talk
about [foreign name]
and [foreign name], so,
those of German blood
and of kindred closely related
blood, meaning, "That's good.
We can take them in."
And again, it's always
clear that the Jews
of course, are not it, right?
But with other groups, it's
much harder to determine that,
not just in eastern Europe, but
if you think about the Japanese,
for instance, I mean,
if [inaudible] you deal
with people abroad, and
as you know, you know,
the Japanese were allied
with Nazi Germany of course
at a certain point, and I
was recently at a conference.
We had this small seminar
about race in Nazi Germany,
and there was a fascinating
paper by someone
about the question
of the Japanese.
And even before the
Nuremberg laws are passed,
all this public talk about,
actually the Aryan race,
makes the Japanese nervous.
And they want some assurance
that they are going to be
on the good side of this, right?
And there is actually
a myth this person
in her research showed,
there is the myth
that the Japanese were
considered honorary Aryans.
She shows that that's not true.
That's just a myth.
She found some documentation
where the German Japanese
society petitions various
ministries and organizations.
She says, "We need
clarification.
You know, where the
Japanese stand in this."
And one prominent sort
of racial scientist,
wrote a long expert
opinion saying,
"The Japanese are
also on the good side.
They are also kind of basically
equivalent to the Aryans
because if you go back to
you know, ancient history
and language groups
and whatever."
But it doesn't fly,
because once [inaudible]
who does occupy this important
position says absolutely not.
You know, they're not Aryans.
So, there too they
actually have a problem.
But as you can see, this
is just a political debate
about the Nazis.
I mean, there's -- it's
not based on anything.
But yes, thank you for
making me clarify that.
Yes. But the thing is,
the thing to remember is,
I mean this language of
blood is purely metaphorical.
They do this research on
blood groups, but you know,
it doesn't go anywhere.
Any other questions or
comments for that matter?
Okay, then I thank you.
I'll be around if you want
to ask something one on one.
Please take a look at the
table with the great books
from the Library of Congress,
and the "Beyond the
Racial State" book.
And thank you for coming.
[ Applause ]
