Eugenics Perspectives

Definition

The word eugenics means to be "well born" and the scientific portion of it was to understand the principles of genetics in order to improve human heredity (Cogdell). Francis Galton, who first used eugenics, wanted to improve humanity by giving future generation more suitable strains of blood and races; thus a better chance of prevailing over less suitable ones.

Darwin to Eugenics

Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, was one of the first to recognize the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. He noticed that the theory of evolution invalidated many parts of contemporary theology and had opened the door for improving mankind. He discovered through eugenics that by selective mating he could increase the proportion of people with better than average genetic endowments. In 1869 Sir Francis Galton explained his eugenic theory in Hereditary Genius where his main argument was that physical and mental features were equally inherited.

Europe, Colonies, Scientific Thought

Europe

Centuries before Hitler and the Nazis came to power, Europe was ruled by monarchs. Some citizens and some monarchs would abide by the Catholic and Christian code to help the weak and feeble who cannot fend for themselves, but some would not. As in the animal kingdom, those who are looked at as a "drain on society" have always been a debate. It is not possible, even to this day, to decide how much or how little one should help out someone who cannot help themselves. If these people should be "allowed" to breed, whether the argument is economically or scientifically based, is always an issue.

Stopes

Example: in the teens and twenties of the 20th century Stopes was a big advocate for birth control usage and helped teach many thousands about this subject. Her choice, though, was to primarily educate the less fit. These were people who exhibited: feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive syndrome, Huntington's cholera, epilepsy, blindness, speechlessness, severe alcoholism and marked physical deformities. (Boyer et al.) Much before the Nazi's was the thought of bettering the human genome through only allowing the fittest to continue their bloodlines gaining popularity, support and acceptance. (Bergen)

Colonization

During imperialism, many European countries held vast lands under their control around the world. When an uprising or battle took place, the casualties would be enormous for the natives, comparatively low for the Europeans. What this started to do was to advance the idea of the cheapness of life of the "inferior" less advanced races. The idea that there were many different races that were generally better or worse (Western Europeans/Aryans always came first) was commonly accepted.

Links to Today

Even today, one may propose that things have changed, but not by that large of a margin. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Somalians or a poorly built coal mine collapse killing in the high hundreds in China will warrant of turn of the page -- if one makes it to page 26. The death of a dozen American, British, French, etc troops or a coal mine collapse resulting in four deaths will be harder to swallow, and will be read on page 1.

American Roots

In 1906 a group was created by an extension of the American Breeders Association that gave the United States its first organization in eugenics. In 1910 the socio-political portion of eugenics created a stir among the public. It had moral issues of diminishing the unfit while at the same time trying to increase the birthrate of the fit. (Cogdell)

Early Scientific Analysis

Due to the level of scientific analysis of things like heredity and the debate between traits being passed on through birth or being adopted through the environment, Eugenics did not catch on as quickly as the movement wanted it to. For example, a disease which is communicable through birth such as Syphilis, was sometimes thought to be a genetic disorder. A carryover from the mother and father. (McCann) This type of congenital disease would thus be grouped together with something that was actually a genetic disorder.

Errors

This type of error only goes to disprove some of the foundations in the the logic behind eugenics. To add to this another scientific error committed was the thought that genes were transmitted without any sort of mutuation from the parents to the child. When these theories began to be discredited by the scientific community, Eugenics received less support from the scientific community.

Mendelian

The rules of inheritance: ex. "feeblemindedness was transmitted as regularly and as surely as color of hair or eyes." (McCann) From this simple rule, as well as others, Eugenicists would trace the histories of many "degenerate" families and also families of "good stock" and would, time and time again, find the same results. A family of degenerates would produce more of them, and vice versa. Here is where economics would start to play a role. Once the "degenerate" family could be traced back to a single "degenerate" mother, economists/eugenicists would add up the social cost and burden to the community of the large family tree. From this the sterilization of just one "unfit" will save the fit from the ever growing burden or murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. (McCann)

Progression

As any science of its time, Eugenics did progress in America, but there was increasing numbers on both sides of the debate. Science, methodology and studies would justify falsify, prove and disprove both sides. The end result was that the science was accepted, and did play a role in American thought, politics and economics.

American Legislation

In the United States eugenics found its way into not only the minds of economists and and thiners of the day but also into politics. Legislation started a couple decades later than the movement did, as the popularity grew.

Paper Ammo

Propaganda played a major role in convincing or pacifying the masses in Germany at the time. Even now, due to the Nazi regime's ability to sterilize or exterminate who was subjectively defined as "unfit," we have little record of some of the goings on. In particular, before directing the scapegoating at Jews, gypsies and handicapped were sterilized or executed. Since we have few memoirs left by handicapped patients, whether killed off or sterilized.

Nazi Germany

Hitler's Eugenic Beliefs

Hitler was a popular and powerful man during his time in Nazi Germany. Hitler had always had strong beliefs against modern, urban society for its rampant immorality, and even the proliferation of sexual immorality and prostitution. Through out his political campaign he promised moral improvement, health, prosperity, and power. To the young minds, Nazism seemed like a type of utopia because the Nazi propaganda portrayed the Nazis as clean cut. decent, upstanding members of society.

Hitler used eugenics to his advantage to become this powerful political figure. Hitler did not follow the Judeo-Christian ethics,but he did follow the ethics of evolution that made Darwinian fitness and health the only criteria for moral standards. Did Hitler steal Darwinians ideas and use it with his own evil plans or did he just get on the bandwagon and follow the rules of Darwinians. A theory has been made that Hitler imbibed the social Darwinist ideas and blended it with virulent anti-antisemitism.

Hitler's sole arbiter for morality came from the Darwinian struggle for existence, including the the struggle between races. Hitler did not believe in universal moral standards, he believed in his own moral standards. Hitler believed that human morality was a product of the evolutionary process, and considered morality one of the greatest evolutionary advances. Though Hitler had no evidence to support his view on human morality. In other words he had no criteria to determine what was higher or better.

Eugenic Action

It was in his book Mein Kampf, that Hitler explained his eugenic reasons for a better society. He redefined humaneness by stripping individuals of their moral rights and arguing the destruction of the weak by the strong is humane. Hitler used the idea of Darwinist that believed group competition played a crucial role in the developing of human societies and the evolution of morality. Hitler opted for a two prong strategy to promote the "Aryan Race" through artificial and natural selection. Since Hitler believed that the German race were physically, morally, and intellectually better than those outside of Germany, his eugenics and political policies were linked to programs that preserved and improved the human species. His global plan was to eliminate other races because they were not morally superior to the German. Hitler claimed that the Aryan Race were less egotistic and more altruistic than any other race. To continue with his belief about the Aryan Race, any act that promoted victory for the Aryan Race was morally right, since Hitler believed that three characteristics were biological. To explain some aspects of it, Hitler denied abortion to healthy German woman unless the infant would likely have a congenital illness, but he approved abortion for the inferior races. This is also why Hitler was so cruel to the Jews. He accused the "Jews of greed, deceit, sexual deviance and other immoral deeds"(Weikart p. 213)The term inferiority included the three characteristics that Hitler thought that all Germans Had.

Justification for his Actions

It was in an unpublished manuscript in 1928 that Hitler used his eugenics, infanticide and policies to fulfill his vision. He stated: "While nature only allows the few most healthy and resistant out of a large number of living organisms to survive in the struggle for life, people restrict the number of births and then try to keep alive what has been born, without consideration of its real value and its inner merit. Humaneness is therefore only the slave of weakness and thereby in truth the most cruel destroyer of human existence.' (Weikart p. 215) With that being said, Hitler morally accepted the killing of such individuals because it was more humane than to let them live. This was because in Hitler's mind it was better to not live in a society where everyone is perfect and one is not. He used this ideology to encourage the interest to advance the Aryan Race by encouraging reproduction of the "highest" individuals within the race and getting rid of the inferior.

"In Hitler's mind Darwinism provided the moral justification for infanticide, euthanasia, genocide, and other policies that had been considered immoral by more conventional moral standards."(Weikart p. 215) Hitler's conceptions of improvement came from his own values, so thereby incorporated "his own cultural presuppositions and moral opinions into an ostensibly scientific goal." (weikart p. 215)The Darwinian mechanism suggested to increase the population of the fit people to displace the weaker in the struggle for existence. Hitler sped up the evolutionary process by artificial selection and intensifying natural selection. He realized that conflict and competition would help advance the cause of the stronger, more fit individuals and race, but he did not take into account the time for most fit to displace the inferior. Thus he decided to kill off any of the inferior races and individuals to help speed up the process.

The Fall of the Third Reich - The End of Eugenics?

After Hitler and the Third Reich had been defeated, Eugenics still exist today. Some still use it to breed the best race horses and euthanasias are still being practiced. Dog breeders do the same with their dog for dog shows. Yet eugenics is not only used on living objects, they are used when testing certain products. For example, many cars go through various test. The cars that fail certain tests are eliminated from production, while the ones that pass the certain tests move on. Who is to say that eugenics is wrong or right? There is no wrong or right answer, simply because in a society like today we only want what is best. To have that happen we have to eliminate the inferior. One can say eugenics is positive when it comes to practicing it on nonliving objects, but once we start practicing eugenics on living creatures, the debate starts all over again. Is it the view of universal morality that allows us to contemplate the idea of killing off the weak or is it the lack of belief in the eugenic theory?

Germany

Given the view that euthanasia and laws permitting exterminating "useless eaters" never were accepted as Eugenics, the post-1945 change or backlash has not been too great. Also, despite Hitler's perversion of the science, and taking it much farther and more directly against specific weak people than it was taken before, Eugenic Thought has not been killed off. If racial hygiene was considered a fundamental cornerstone by eugenicists, the story would be different. (Adams)

Humans vs. Animals

Since the real science behind genetic coding has replaces the prejudices of the 1930's and 40's of Germany and the Nazis, there is still an ongoing debate. The debate: Since we breed horses by finding mates very specifically, how do we not do the same for a human? Also, the only way to make sure one is buying a 100% purebred poodle, for instance, is to look at the bloodline/family tree of the dog in question. It is impossible to pinpoint what are good qualities and bad qualities, and since genes constantly mutate, there is no telling what will happen. A gene that codes for something like a genetic disorder could mutate into something very useful, or could contain something very desirable in the same gene. For instance, the only survivors of a massive plague could survive due to a genetic code also found in the gene containing a heart condition. With these genes removed from circulation (through sterilization or euthanasia) we would cease to exist at all.

The major differences between the Nazi party's views and post-1945 views is that despite the "useless eater," we, on the whole, have chosen to let those who cannot fend for themselves to live. This is not a new concept though. Christianity and Catholicism advocate helping the weak, and these religions were around far before Hitler, and will remain with us for many years to come. As with some of the higher level animals like primates, it is also in our genes to care for the weak around us if we can.

References

Adams, Mark B. "The Wellborn Science - Eugenics Germany, France, Brazil and Russia". New York: Oxford University Press, 1990

Bergen, Doris L. "War & Genocide". New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. Cogdell, Christina. Eugenic Design: Streamline America in the 1930's. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2004.

Galton, Sir Francis.Encyclopedia Britannica.2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. April 28,2008. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9035934>

Geyer, Michael & Bower, John W. "Resistance Against the Third Reich". Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Kater, Michael H.Hitler Youth. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004.

McCann, Carole R. "Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945". Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Rafter, Nicole Hahn. White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies 1877-1919. Boston: Northeastern University Press,1988.

Rosen, Christine. Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement. New York: Oxford University Press,2004

Solinger, Rickie. "Pregnancy and Power". New York: New York University Press, 2005.

Weikart, Richard. From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2004.