FrontPageMag.com ^ | March 10, 2010 | Ben Johnson
Posted on Friday, February 27, 2009 10:38:26 AM
by FrontPageMag.com
When Barack Obama nominated John P. Holdren as his
Science Adviser last December 20, the president-elect
stated "promoting science isn’t just about providing
resources" but "ensuring that facts and evidence are
never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology." In
nominating John Holdren, his words could scarcely
have taken a more Orwellian ring.
Some critics have noted Holdren's penchant for making
apocalyptic predictions that never come to pass, and
categorizing all criticism of his alarmist views as not only
wrong but dangerous. What none has yet noted is that
Holdren is a globalist who has endorsed "surrender of
sovereignty" to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime"
that would control all the world's resources, direct global
redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits. He has castigated the United States as "the meanest of wealthy countries," written a justification of compulsory abortion for American women, advocated drastically lowering the U.S. standard of living, and left the door open to trying global warming "deniers" for crimes against humanity. Such is Barack Obama's idea of a clear-headed adviser on matters of scientific policy.
First Lab on the Left
All of these positions are consistent with a man who began his career as a "dissident scientist." Peter Collier remembers Holdren working by day at a national laboratory and by night writing for Ramparts, the intellectual journal of the New Left. Holdren has authored numerous books and journal articles with his mentors Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the infamous doomsayers who predicted overpopulation would force most of the world's population to perish during the 1980s "great die-off." Holdren has gone on to a distinguished academic career in his own right. A longtime professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Teresa Heinz Kerry used her late husband's tax-exempt billions to endow a chair at Harvard for Ehrlich's disciple; Holdren is now the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, where his (and her) ideas influence the next generation of policymakers. Holdren himself has a background in political "philanthropy," serving for 14 years on John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Board of Trustees, steering its grants to far-Left organizations. He also pursued the intersection of science and diplomacy by joining the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an organization founded during the Cold War by former nuclear scientist and fellow traveler Joseph Rotblat. Pugwash hewed to the Communist Party line and was subsequently feted by Czechslovakian and Polish Communist leaders.
The Neo-Malthusians
Holdren gave a clear indication of his philosophical views in the 1977 book Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich. [1] In its pages, the authors noted, "The neo-Malthusiasn view proposes...population limitation and redistribution of wealth." They concluded, "On these points, we find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp" (p. 954).
Economist Thomas Malthus is one of the most literally anti-human theorists in human history. He viewed overpopulation as the fount of all woe, but one which could be staunched with enough blood. In "An Essay on the Principle of Population" Malthus wrote, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons...if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use...and court the return of the plague." Like their intellectual forebear, Holdren and the Ehrlichs proposed their own acceptable sacrifice to the environment.
Compulsory Abortion for American Women
The trio prescribed a rigidly enforced, government-imposed limit of two children per family. Holdren and the Ehrlichs maintained "there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated." Hiding behind the passive voice, they note, "it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." (Emphasis added.) To underscore they mean business, they conclude, "If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" (pp. 837-838). Moreover, if the United States government refuses to take proper measures, they authorize the United Nations to take compelling force.
"A Comprehensive Planetary Regime"
Holdren believed a world government might play a moderate role in the future: setting and enforcing appopriate population levels, taxing and redistributing the world's wealth, controlling the world's resources, and operating a standing World Army.
Such a comprehensive Plenetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable...not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes...The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade...The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits...the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. (p. 943.)
Part of the power wielded by this "Regime" would be in the form of a World Army. The trio wrote that the United States must destroy all its nuclear arsenal. But this would not render us defenseless against Communist aggression. "Security might be provided by an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force...The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization" (p. 917, emphasis added).
Far from distancing himself from this wooly-headed notion as he matured, Holdren explicitly reaffirmed it in his 1995 Nobel Prize acceptance speech on behalf of Pugwash, declaiming, "The post-Cold-War world needs a more powerful United Nations, probably with a standing volunteer force -- owing loyalty directly to the UN rather than to contingents from individual nations." As recently as last January, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) the world needs "a universal prohibition on nuclear weapons, coupled with means to ensure confidence in compliance." (Emphasis added.)
U.S. Blood and Treasure for the UN
The redistribution of blood and treasure were high priorities for Holdren, et. al. They advised the "de-development of overdeveloped countries...should be given top priority" (p. 926), and such nations -- e.g., the United States and the developed West -- should "divert their excess productivity into helping the poorer people of the world rather than exploiting them" (p. 931).
How much wealth redistribution would be sufficient? The authors favorably cited a proposal that "the rich nations devote 20 percent of their GNPs for ten or fifteen years to the task of population control and development of the poor countries." They comment, "We believe an effort of this magnitude is not only justified but essential." (p. 925). Reaffirming the goal in his 1995 Nobel speech, he stretched this to a program "sustained over several decades." (Emphasis added.)
He detailed the mechanism for global socialism just two years ago. In a February 2007 report of which he was a coordinating lead author, urges the United Nations to undertake "a global framework" that is "more comprehensive and ambitious" than the Kyoto Protocol. Holdren states the UN must mandate "A requirement for the early establishment of a substantial price on carbon emissions in all countries, whether by a carbon tax or a tradable permit approach." Although he prefers a global carbon tax presided over by a United Nations-strength IRS, he is open to a stringent global cap-and-trade program. However, that program must contain: "A means for transferring some of the revenue produced by carbon taxes upon, or permits purchased by, countries and consumers with high incomes and high per capita emissions to countries and consumers with low incomes and low per capita emissions" (pp. 70-72). (Emphases in original.)
Every Man a Duke
His thirst for economic redistribution (read: socialism) is not limited to foreign affairs. In a chapter of Ecoscience entitled "Changing American Institutions," Holdren and the Ehrlichs call for a "considerably more equitable distribution of wealth and income" in the United States, offering in passing, "Possibly this would be achieved by some formal mechanism" (p. 875). Might that mechanism perchance be government force? The text praises an economist's plan to limit American achievement at a $100,000 maximum annual salary, or just under $350,000 in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation (p. 850). Such would be the most socialistic proposal made in modern times. Even Huey Long allowed men a million dollars a year, in 1934.
"The Meanest of Wealthy Countries"
But the intervening years have not been pleasant ones for such as Holdren. In a 1995 article co-written with Paul Ehrlich, he lists among the factors preventing a "sustainable" world such "Underlying human frailties" as "Greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness." These, he expounds, "collectively have been elevated by conservative political doctrine and practice (above all in the United States in 1980 92) to the status of a credo."
Holdren blasted his country last January before the AAAS as "the stingiest among all" wealthy nations in its development of the Third World, making us "the meanest of wealthy countries." He summed up his view of the U.S. budget by favorably quoting Robert Kates: "Too much for warfare, too little for welfare."
Making You Poorer For Your Own Good
The function of such welfare is twofold: to enrich citizens of the Global South and to impoverish Americans for their own good. In a 2006 paper, Holdren noted that reducing "GDP per person" -- that is, cutting your personal wealth -- also reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions. True, it is "not a lever that most people would want to use to reduce emissions"; "People are not getting rich as fast as they think, however, if GDP growth is being achieved at the expense of the environmental underpinnings of well-being" (pp. 15-16).
Holdren addressed the economic costs of his massive restructuring of the economy some 32 years ago, acknowledging it "will entail considerable retraining and temporary unemployment in the workforce" (p. 853). Yet he continues to support economy-crushing energy taxation. In a 1997 press conference, he surmised that if alternative energy sources were to get a foothold, either they "would have to get a great deal cheaper, which seems unlikely, or natural gas would have to get considerably more expensive. The latter is actually a good idea." One is hardly encouraged to learn that last December, environmentalist Dr. James Hansen sent a four-page letter via Holdren to "Michelle and Barack." (Hansen wrote it as surgeons in Vienna placed a stent in his wife's chest following an unexpected heart attack.) His personal note to "John" states, "When gasoline hits $4-5/gallons again, most of that should be tax." Five months earlier, Holdren rated Hansen "one of the most distinguished climate scientists in the world."
P.S.: He's Frequently Wrong
To understand the impact of those words, one must consider the source. In addition to his extremist, globalist views, Holdren is frequently mistaken in his pronouncements in his alleged field of specialization, environmental science -- often tremendously so. As with Ehrlich, he has been predicting global catastrophes since the 1970s, beginning with the global cooling scare. Modern critics have noted his role in Paul Ehrlich's famous wager with Julian Simon: Holdren chose five metals that he believed would be more expensive in ten years' time due to scarcity, while Simon predicted each would be less expensive. A decade hence, Ehrlich's group was $1,000 poorer (a chance to reduce their carbon footprint, perhaps). Holdren advised Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth, a film that by one scholar's count contained 10 pages of falsehoods, exaggerations, distortions, and ignored evidence.
And there is the little matter of his prediction a billion people will die within the next 11 years.
Paul Ehrlich recorded that in 1986 Holdren predicted "carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." Holdren reiterated this view in Newsweek just two years ago. When he faced Senate questioning this February 12, only one man, Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, dared to ask him about his failed predictions. The Washington Post reported Holdren's response as a brilliant riposte, artfully parrying the query. On the contrary, the transcript shows Holdren actually reaffirmed that he still believes one billion people may die within the next 11 years from a climate-related drought:
Vitter: So you would stick to that statement?
Holdren: I don't think it's likely. I think we should invest effort - considerable effort - to reduce the likelihood further.
Vitter: So you would stick to the statement that it could happen?
Holdren: It could happen, and ...
Vitter: One billion by 2020?
Holdren: It could.
Vitter managed to show Holdren was wrong on yet another front: just two years ago, he wrote that current emissions levels could cause the a 13-foot rise in sea levels. Under cross-examination, Holdren admitted science's most dire estimates are now half as much as Holdren pronounced just two years ago. Yet this "expert" will have the ear of the president in setting scientific policy.
Criticizing Holdren = "Crimes Against Humanity"?
Holdren reacts to correction the way a rattlesnake reacts to sudden movement: with velocity and venom. As long ago as the early 1970s, he and Paul Ehrlich engaged in a campaign to silence fellow radical Barry Commoner, a onetime fringe presidential candidate, because the latter viewed technology as more damaging than overpopulation. More recently, he co-authored a scathing, 11-page attack against Bjorn Lomborg for having the temerity to question Green-Left orthodoxy. Yet that pales in comparison to his view of some global warming "deniers."
Last July 3, as an advisor to the Obama campaign, Holdren appeared on the radical program "Democracy Now!" hosted by Amy Goodman. Goodman asked him about comments made by his friend Dr. James Hansen (see above). Specifically, Hansen said, "large energy companies are guilty of crimes against humanity, if they continue to dispute what is understood scientifically and to fund contrarians, and if they push us past tipping points that end up destroying many species on the planet and having a huge impact on humanity itself." Goodman asked Holdren if he agreed "the CEOs of large energy companies are guilty of, should be tried for crimes against humanity?"
Holdren replied: "I couldn't really say. I'm not qualified to assess what the heads of oil companies, past or present, have done in this domain. My understanding is that Exxon, in particular, did fund a variety of small think tanks to generate what amounts to propaganda against understanding of what climate change was doing, the human role in causing it. Whether that sort of activity really constitutes crimes against humanity is something for people more embedded in the legal system than I to judge." He went on to say heads of oil companies now were more "enlightened" on carbon emissions, so "I guess I would find the statement that all oil company CEOs, past and present, are guilty of crimes against humanity is maybe a little bit over the top." (Emphasis added.)
In other words, he hedged his bets, pleaded that he was not a legal scholar, but still held out that at least some of the CEOs may well be guilty of crimes against humanity. His reply to whether American citizens should be tried for a capital offense because they exercised their First Amendment rights to disagree with him was a firm maybe.
DDT: A Truly Malthusian Policy
The lack of correction has led to a correlative lack of introspection. This author could find no retraction of his 1977 statement, "In our opinion, no biologist has made a greater contribution to humanity in this century than Rachel Carson" (p. 854). Carson's primary contribution, through banning the DDT on erroneous grounds, has been the preventable death of 50-90 million souls in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
In a way, Holdren's support for Carson is a microcosm of his entire philosophy: a deadly and ill-conceived policy based on false evidence of potential harm, whose catastrophic impact has been the opposite of that intended -- never retracted, never regretted, never reconsidered. Such a reflexively self-reverential tone is unhelpful in any public servant. John Holdren's globalist, redistributionist, Malthusian views could prove more damaging for the world than those of his hero.
ENDNOTES:
1. Unless otherwise noted, all page citations are from Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren. Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment. (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977).
By Edwin Black
Mr. Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and the just released War Against the Weak:
Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, from which the following article
is drawn.
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest
for a co-called "Master Race."
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with
Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before
Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role
in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed
"unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the
philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as
well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third
state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000
Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.
Sir Francis Galton, aged 73Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.
In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German official and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."
Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key 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."
That same year, ten years, after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."
Josef MengeleMengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.
ShareThis
The Eugenics Movement | Brief History| Eugenics| Experiments | |Marriage & Race Laws| Judenrein | The Aryan Experiment|
The Same Blood: Blueprint of the "Master Race"
I. The Eugenics Movement
* "Those of the same blood, belong to the same Reich."
# A. A Brief History and Definition of the Eugenics Movement
Probably one of the most hideous aspects of the Third Reich was their notorious fascination and experimentation with Eugenics. Eugenics may be defined as "The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding."1 It is a science of applied Eugenics, negatively characterized by many because it it often used in the interest of racial "refinement" or in extreme cases, genocide. The general movement of Eugenics prospered from the late 1800s to the 1950s; there are still outspoken advocates. While the notions of 'pure-breeding' the human race has been around since the time of the Greek philosophers, the actual 'science'(or pseudo-science) of Eugenics has taken hold mostly in the last 100 years, as more accepted sciences such as Genetics and studies of "Individual Differences" and Psychometrics began to appear. Encarta sites the United States, England and Germany as the foremost nations in which the Eugenics Movement Developed.
Philosophies
Several philosophical underpinnings are important for the understanding of the rise of the Eugenics Movement. In the then newly developing area of Psychology, Sir Francis Galton in England became fascinated at patterns of optimal functioning (genius) running in families. At the time, most of the idea of inherited traits was speculative: measurements of individual differences such as hand-strength, height, weight, reaction-time, and so on , were the subject of exhibitions; one such exhibition appeared in the World Fair of 1.... Galton collated great bodies of data tracing individual differences in prominent families in London as well as collecting and analyzing histories. His work greatly influenced also the growing interest of psychological measurement and studies of intelligence measures.3
Darwin around the turn of the century influenced the development not only of the emerging social sciences but also the emerging concepts in Eugenics. Most have heard of the "survival of the fittest" or natural selection theories of Darwin, in which he believe according to evolutionary patterns, over the course of human history, the most fit individuals and hence traits would survive and prevail over the weaker, leading in course to a more fit and able person, presumably ending in a perfected homo sapien. He also developed the concept of the GAS: General Adaptation Syndrome; in which this evolving perfection would suit itself progressively to the enviroment and social conditions. Inherent in his beliefs was the assumption that over time, man and the world would evolve in every level towards a more perfect state. Eugenics relied heavily on that process, hoping to hurry it along by genetically altering and selecting what were deemed more desireable4 traits. What many do not know, is that Darwin recanted much of what he had proposed near his death.5
In Addition to Natural Selection and the Study of Individual
Differences, a religious philosophy of the time was re-introduced after laying dormant since the early Christian era. It is believed to stem from gnostic writings6 The philosophy was called "Root-Race" Theory and was held by some occultists in Europe at the time, particularly Mme. Blavatsky and Theosophy.7 Root Race Theory held that there was originally a 'root-race' which was basically analogous to the Jews. They believed there was a superior race, descendants of the population of Atlantis, and that over time, the superior, Master Race of Aryans, those descendants, would be pre-eminent at first and then virtually populate the world which would in turn become a utopia. In order for this Master Race to succeed, the 'root-race' would need to either die out over time or be eliminated. This was to ensure the pure blood lines of these Atlantean "paragons." This theory along with nordic mythology of a superior nation of warriors was incorporated into a network of sinister philosophy which fueled the concept of Eugenics, or the breeding of the perfect human race. Other philosophies also contributed to the support of Eugenics, such as Nietzche's concept of the SuperMan: the ultimate in Human attributes and optimal functioning: this model became the forefront paradigm for Hitler's goals in human breeding. (see: Philosophies and Religious Beliefs of the Nazis)
# B.The Eugenics Movement and the Third Reich
The Third Reich did not announce publicly its more sinister beliefs and plans as they took over political control of Germany in the early 1930s. Goebbels, in his conference notes8 noted that "we will of course not mention Wotan", meaning Woden, the Norse Warrior God. The Nazis, especially the upper echelon such as Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were keenly interested in the emerging field of Eugenics. They were training youth from the cradle in their new philosophies and goals with a strong emphasis on nordic traits, physique and physical fitness and procreation: German mothers were encouraged in a variety of ways to have many children. New icons of perfect aryan children were promoted in the culture of the time. Early in the Reich, doctors were recruited to the field of Eugenics: one of Hitler's more prominent doctors published research in Margaret Sanger's journal on Birth Control in the United States. By the time research and experimentation in Eugenics hit the Concentration Camps, it had already been well-developed. Volumes had been written and compiled on racial features and characteristics and the measurement thereof. Eugenics figured heavily in the facilitation of proposed replacement of the Aryan race and culture for others.
# C. The Eugenics Movement in America
The Eugenics Movement in America was more pronounced than many knew. Two persons figured heavily in the new field: Margaret Sanger, known for Birth Control, Women's Liberation and the founding of what was to become Planned Parenthood; and W.Davenport, a reknown Eugenicist and Zoologist. Davenport, a Harvard educated Scientist who taught at the University of Chicago, and headed the "Station for Experimental Evolution"1in New York, believed that biological Statistics could be applied to the Study of Inheritance. He proposed that certain moral traits were also subject to inheritance/genetic factors such that one could 'breed' moral traits into the human race. He was one of a number of scientists, who in the first part of the century argued heartily against immigration; redefining bigotry as science, believing that immigrants were largely genetically inferior. His ideology set the the tone for the emerging interest in Eugenics in this country.
Equally or even more influential on popular culture was Margaret Sanger 1883-1966. Sanger is known as a crusader for contraceptive rights; but few know that her concern for contraception was based firmly on concern for racial control. Her early work in impoverished environments led her to the belief that 'genetically inferior' persons should have less children, and that centers for birth control should be 'wisely' placed in neighborhoods which were impoverished, which also frequently happened to be in minority settings. Her first major 'research' journal, Birth Control Review published articles and research by Eugenicists including a few published by one of Hitler's Eugenicists. 9 Few know of Sanger's concern with racial policies and control, but a careful perusal of authors and articles in these early journals demonstrate her concern with human engineering. She was later in life appointed honorary head of Planned Parenthood, the group which grew out of her original organization in the 1940s; the journal has continued as a research arm of Planned parenthood till this day, under a different name. These and other influences of Eugenics proponents in the United States were formidable contributing factors in the lobbying for isolationism and restricted immigration during World War II, hurting mostly Jewish persons wishing to escape the Shoah.
II. The Genetically Unacceptable
# A. The Jews
Why were the Jewish people genetically unacceptable to the Nazis? The answer lies in the way the Third Reich viewed the Jews. Much of this has been discussed in other sections.(See "Judenrein") While many people throughout history have seen and defined the Jews as both a race and religion, the Nazis went to great links to define the Jews first as a race, with complex racial definitions R and secondarily as a religious and political threat.p The Nazis wanted to rid Europe of the Jews not just because of their religion and politics, but because they believed that the Jews were the modern day descendants of the Hebrews, a group they considered the "root-race". ( See Root Race Theory A Superior or Master Race would emerge and take over Europe and then the World when this 'root race' was eradicated, ushering in a Utopian period populated by a genetically superior people. That people, according to the belief of the Nazis was the Aryan Race, with strong Nordic characteristics, white, with blue and light-colored eyes and light-colored hair, with strong physiques. The upper-most decision makers believed that by eliminating the Jewish bloodlines of Europe and the other bloodlines of 'less-desireable' peoples, that within a generation or two, this perfect Aryan Race would emerge, and usher in the Third Millenium, the Third Reign, which Hitler would rule. Himmler even believed he was the re-carnation of Heinrich I, who reigned earlier in history in a similar matter. The plan to make Europe "Jew-free" Judenfrei or Judenrein was from the beginning: excuses and apologetics having to do with 'relocating' the Jews for economic reasons covered the true motivation of the upper echelon of the Third Reich. The aim was to annihilate even the remnant of Jewish blood (we would now say DNA) from the peoples of Europe.
# B. The Polish
the Jews were by far the most criminally treated in the Shoah, but the Poles were among the peoples seen as "less-desireable" than the Germans. For the most part, German-Polish marriages were not forbidden or outlowed as were Jewish liasons, which were seen as racial-defiling. The Poles however were seen as less intelligent, and less noble a people than the Germans, in part because of their tolerance for the Jews in Poland. While many Poles were in league with, or were Nazis, many also saw German occupation as a very intolerable condition. Polish citizens were among those relocated and deported to Auschwitz, and a number of Polish children who were not Jewish were the subject of the bizarre experiments of Mengele. Polish land once confiscated was seen as the manifest destiny for the accomplishment of "Lebensraum" or the brancing out of the German populace into the realm of Europe to reign and command resources.
# C. The Mentally Retarded
Even before the Jews were targeted by Hitler as genetically unacceptable, the developmentally delayed or 'mentally-retarded' citizens of Germany came under the bitter scrutiny of the Third Reich. Hitler had no no appreciation of the value of a human life for its own sake: the mentally unfit were seen as a flaw in the German bloodlines and an economic/social burden to the state. For this reason, early on, the Reich sought sterilization and euthanasia procedures in institutions which housed large numbers of what Hitler considered the 'unfit'. Called the T4 Program,named for the address of its headquarters, this program was often carried out without the consent of families of the 'feeble-minded' as they were often called: parents and families would often receive a notice that their loved one had died a peaceful death, without explanation. They would often have to carry the costs of burial. With the mentally ill, the developmentally delayed were also the subjects of early experiments in mass murder, as the Nazis sought 'efficient' means of killing large numbers of persons with minimum problems. One of the first pamplets by Bishop Galen which the White Rose group at the University of Munich distributed, had to do with a protest and cry against the Reich's treatment of the mentally infirm. 10
# D. The "Mentally Ill"
The mentally-ill, while not slow in intelligence were also seen as genetically inferior to ideals for Hitler's Master Race. His scientists believed then as many believe now that "mental-illness' is a genetically predisposed condition, and that it can be bred in or out of the human condition. Others disagree vehemently to the nature of what we call "mental-illness", attributing much of it to social-adaptibility and developmental factors.11 Most of the deaths of the mentally ill took place earlier in the 'final solution' and were independent of racial factors.
# E. Political and Philosophical Protestors
Political Prisoners and Prisoners of Conscience are the only category here which were not really a 'genetic' category: but often their treatment was the same: they were forbidden procreation in order to breed out if possible even political/religious predispositions. They were not seen or handled in the same way the others were handled.
# F. The Roma and Sinti ( Gypsies)
The Roma and Sinti were European groups of peoples, often having roots in Hungarian and Slovak areas which are popularly called 'gypsies'. They were considered undesireable and targeted for eradication because of their perceived qualites of deceptiveness, instability and wanderings. They were considered of lesser intelligence and some even considered them 'evil'. Many Roma and Sinti were sent to the Killing Centers for extermination along with the Jews.
# G. Mixed Race
Mixed race marriages early on were seen as unacceptable and outlawed in Germany. Jews who dated or married aryans wee accused of 'racial-defilement' and were publicly humiliated, as were their mates. However, when Jewish spouses were arrested and deported and robbed of citizenship, their spouses most often were not and retained full citizenship rights.
# H. The Religiously Unacceptable
Again, while not considered a racial group to be expunged, the 'religiously-unacceptable' were often treated in the same manner, and were also sent to concentration camps and often executed. The most prevalent were Jehovah's Witnesses, Evangelical Christians, and what the Nazis called "Political" Catholics and Protestants. These persons were considered incorrigible because of their firm stands against Nazi policies and beliefs and because they seldom recanted their positions even under pressure. Freemasons were also watched carefully, but the Nazis also incorporated certain of their beliefs in their own. their inclusion here is not because they were a direct target of the Reich's Eugenics programs, but becuase their treatment was the same as those who were.
# I. The Elderly
The elderly were often targeted for euthanasia or extermination not because of bloodlines or defects but because of their lack of contribution in a utilitarian philosophy. Jewish elderly were sent often to Terezin which the Nazis tried to promote as a 'retirement community', but which in fact proved to be a disguised gateway to Auschwitz. In Hitler's progressive views of youth and vitality and a new Germany, the elderly of all racial backgrounds were denigrated as contributing little to the new Reich. They were among the first killed when deported to the killing centers because of their perceived burden.
# J. People of 'Color'
One would automatically assume that Hitler and the Nazis would see all non-Aryan people as genetically inferior, and to a certain extent, this was true. All non-white, non-European peoples were seen as genetically inferior to the Nordic peoples. However, the Nazis views towards for example, the blacks or Indians, was more complex than one might think. Early in the war, the Nazis courted the Indians for their anti-British sentiment: Goebbels encouraged comparisons between Hitler and Ghandi.12 There were very few persons of African descent in Europe, but the views of the Nazis on the persons of color were at once disparaging, and sometimes 'magical': they were seen as having a role in the move towards the replacement of the root-race with the Master Race.
# K. Sexual Deviants
Sexual deviants were seen as genetically and socially unacceptable, although this was a hypocritical position because it is now known that many of the upper-level Nazis were sexual deviants. This category included homosexuals, pedophiles and those with perversions. In Dachau, homosexuals were forced to wear pink triangles as badges to denote their reason for incarceration. Many have strongly speculated that Hitler and his cohort may have had a homosexual relationship, although this may have equally played in the removal and death of the many who is credited with the fierce countenance of the "Brown Shirt"s or SA. Often in a 'reaction-formation' or 'projection' mechanism, those behind the Third Reich at once condemned social deviants and at the same time participated in the deviancy in a perverse catharsis.
III. Nazi Germany and the Eugenics Projects
As mentioned previously, Germany, America and Britain were the three nations leading in fascination and experimentation with the pseudo-science of Eugenics in the first half of the 20th Century. While we tend to think only of Germany in this manner, the Eugenics programs flourished in this country, reaching even the legislature for avenues of acceptance. Many Eugenists on both continents believed that society and a nation could rid itself of human ills by 'breeding-out' genetically based unacceptable temperaments and behaviors: there was an underlying assumption than much criminal behavior had a genetic base. In this pre-cloning, pre-DNA era, the emphasis was on breeding: the principles of animal breeding were thought to be closely applicable to the breeding of humans as well. German scientists, in line with views on race began to search for viable means of establishing "clear" or "pure" Nordic/German/Aryan bloodlines. In addition to wishing to establish a perfect physical race, their spiritual beliefs intertwined to produce the concept of a genetically perfect, and intellectually superior people who would tke the reigns of Europe in the 3rd Reich (or Realm, or Millenium)
# A. The Aryan Cause/Belief and the "SuperRace"
The funding and focus on developing a science of "Eugenics" or human engineering increased immediately with the Nazis taking power in 1933. This was also a function of timing: American interest in Eugenics was at its apex also; it fit perfectly into early plans of Hitler to create a Europe free of Jewish citizens. This 'racial cleansing' was decided early. While some argued for years after the war that Hitler either did not know about the mass exterminations or that he had no direct decision-making role, nothing could be further from the truth. Early documents, speeches and writings of Adolf Hitler show clearly that he formulated plans early in his involvement in the Nazi party to eradicate the Jewish Race and begin 'Endlosung or final solution to the "Jewish Problem". For example:
Hitler did not stop at the idea of eradicating Jews and Judaism from Europe. Once this "inferior race" was eradicated, a new Aryan race with Nordic characteristics (see above) would over a generation or two replace earlier inferior races. A master race concept is not new: the idea or concept appears in many cultures, and the description of the race usually fits the archetype of the racial group describing it. Hitler's concepts however went far deeper. He believed with many of his inner circle that the race that inhabited the Ancient possibly mythical city/civilization of Atlantis were a superior group of human beings excelling in every human attribute, physical and intellectual. This race disappeared with some cataclysmic event but certain descendants survived. The Nazis believed the German/nordic people called "Aryans" were descendants from this super-race of people. They also believed that the races evolved from more primitive races, and a 'root-race' to more and more complex races. When the 'lower' races were erased, a utopia would evolve. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and others believed that a new Aryan Germany would take leadership in this era, over a unified Europe and then over a global society. Eugenics was the science which would aid in this process: people, like animals would be bred towards this Aryan perfection: anomalies would be removed from the bloodlines. In Hitler's estimation, the Jews fouled the bloodlines and this purpose: if Jewish children could not be germanized they also would be killed. (Those few chosen for 'germanization' after their parents were deported were often those with aryan-looking phenotypes). Experiments in bring about that perfect bloodline included Lebensborn, the Medical Experiments of Mengele and others in the Killing centers including "Twin " Studies, basic research and the implementation of Racial Laws. Additionally men and women were separated in the Camps to avoid procreation, in the hopes of erasing Jewish birth rates. Forced abortions and outlawed Jewish pregnancies were also legislated in some areas. (See Ghettos
# B. Early Laws in Germany
Many laws were enacted when Hitler took the reigns of both Chancellor and President, giving him absolute dictatorial power of enactment and veto, meaning that no German legislation went into law without his approval, and that no law he wished enacted would fail. The early laws began to erase the rights of Jews (1933); The Nuremberg Laws (1935) erased Jewish Citizenship and access to due process and ownership, and various Race Laws, developed other concepts among which was 1)outlawing marriage between Aryans & Jews and 2)Limiting Jewish Procreation. ( See "Jewish Civil Liberties Timeline".)
Marriage and Race Laws
a belief in 'Social Darwinism' as well as the 'natural' kind, the Third Reich went to task with the German people to propigate the 'superior' German-aryan race whatever way possible. One of the first ways that Hitler promoted this cause was to give legal and tax benefits to couples marrying and bearing children. One such act, enacted shortly after he came to office in 1933, was to provide a loan to couples marrying who planned to bear children. This loan could be paid off at 25% per child, hence, with 4 children, the loan was forgiven. The promotion of the large German family was for a variety of reasons, including producing an upcoming generation totally raised in on 'fuhrer principles' and on the vision of the "New Reich". The promotion of the increase in propagation was reflected, in art, advertisement, media messages, literature and speeches of the hierarchy of the Reich.
Corollary to the promotion of the 'pure-aryan' family; was the push legally and medically to make Germany and then Europe Jew-free. One of the first measures was social: mixed marriages of Jews and Gentiles were mocked and ridiculed and even persecuted. By 1935, Jews and Germans were forbidden mixed marriage by law, as they were denied civil rights and access to the the courts. Mixed couples were often in distress when one was set for deportation and degradation, and one was allowed to stay as a free citizen in Germany: some even chose deportation and the killing centers over separation from spouses and children: others sought avenues of hiding family members or aiding escapes.x
In the ghettos, many Judenrats were forced into policies and laws regarding a ban on Jewish offspring and pregnancy. A woman already pregnant entering the ghetto could have the child, but in some ghettos, if a woman became pregnant, she was required to have an abortion: if she did not willingly have one, it was forced upon her, so intent were the Nazis on putting an end to the Jewish race. The camps were the same, only worse: infants born in camps such as Auschwitz were immediately put to death or used in experimentation, therefore many Jewish midwives would smother or drown newborns and tell the mothers their children had been stillborn. A live baby meant both mother and child would be destroyed in the gas chambers. Couples were also separated in the camps: partly this was due to difference in labor divisions, and partly to avoid married couples having children. The aim was clearly a generation that would see an end to Jewish youth.
# C. Measurements of Impurity and the determinants of "Jewishness"(genetic & phenotypical)
# .....1.The Nazi definition of "Jewishness"
How Jewish did one have to be to be included in the Nazi Laws? This question was greatly in discussion among"Racial Scientists" early in the Reich. Generally, to be even 1/4 Jewish would suffice to have one fall under the laws of racial impurity. Marriage to a Jew was discouraged at first and later outlawed, but the Nazis mistreated but did not deport aryans married to Jews: it was the 'race' of Jews which was the target of the Final Solution. The Nazis wanted to erase BLOODLINES, not just the present generation. They wanted to make sure first, that all Jews were removed from Germany and Europe, then that all Jews were exterminated, and lastly that there would be no seed to begin again. The Laws declaring German Citizenship, the Nuremberg Laws, , stated in Article 2, the requirements for citizenship:
ARTICLE 2. (1) A citizen of the Reich may be only one who is of German or kindred blood, and who, through his behavior, shows that he is both desirous and personally fit to serve loyally the German people and the Reich. (2) The right to citizenship is obtained by the grant of Reich citizenship papers.
and the exact definitions of Racial Purity:
An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews, insofar that he is not a Jew according to Section 2 of Article 5. Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to the Jewish religious community
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 went on to blantantly outlaw German Citizen for Jews, stating they had no part in the Civil Rights of the Reich.13
# .2. Nazi measurement/methodology of racial impurity
Racial Science by the beginning of the Reich had become so engrained in German Society, that it rapidly gained scientific status. Methods of verifying race like the methods that were developing in the Psychological fields of Individual differences and personality theory, took hold and German scientist developed methods of measurements that included
# 1)Skull formation and size;
# 2)Eye Color,
# 3)Facial Features,
# 4)Background histories, and even stature and other measures.
They were essentially looking at the 'phenotype', or outward visible manifestations of 'jewishness', before the days of DNA testing. Many of these tests took place before deportations allowing Nazis to identify Jewish persons for their planned pogroms.
# D.Judenrein
# 1. Marriage & Relationship Laws Following the destruction of Civil Rights for the Jews, marital laws and policies were enacted which forbade anyone of Aryan Descent from dating, or marrying a Jew. The picture above shows the humiliation of a mixed race couple who were publicly embarassed. Aryans married to Jews were not forced to divorce their spouses, and they were not given the same punishments such as deportations, but the mixed couple was constantly endangered by public opinion and mistreatment as well being subject to separation. Some Aryan spouses chose to join their husband or wife when deported, but many couples became separated until the end of the war unless a death occurred. To have any government deciding such personal issues is seen by most free societies as anathema to civil liberties, but it became mandatory in wartime and pre-war Germany. Mixed race married couples were seen as polluting bloodlines and making the fabric of the New Germany and the future of a nordically 'pure' Germany possible. See [Mischling
# 2. Sexual Segregation in the Killing Centers
Husbands and wives, and in most cases all females and males were segregated in the Work Camps and Killing Centers. More than just a move for convenience, it was so there would be no sexual contact, and hence no births: it was deemed fruitless by the Nazis to proceed with a 'final solution' to the Jewish Question if they continued having offspring. When on occasion a child was born in the camps, some midwives killed the child. While this may sound brutal and heartless, a mother giving birth meant death for both the mother and the child at the hands of the Nazis, so in dire conditions, some midwives tried to save the mothers, since the children were seen as a resource burden and would most certainly be killed anyway. Separation of husbands and wives and males and females in the Camps, was one further means of ending the Jewish race in the Nazi's eyes.
# 3. Offspring: German and Jewish As mentioned before, Jewish offspring were not welcome. In many Ghettos, the Judenrats were forced by the Nazis to pass decrees insisting that Jewish pregnancies be terminated. If pregnancies occurred and were not terminated, the infants and mothers could face sterilization and/or death. German Children and large families, though were greatly encouraged. The Reich passed a law granting loans to families of childbearing years, in which the terms of repayment were reduced with the birth of each additional child. The slogan 'Kirche und Kitchen" {Church and Kitchen} was promulgated in the hopes of promoting strong and large Aryan families on the homefront, ready for indoctrination as soon as the children could talk. Other financial incentives were given for reproduction during war time. Those willing to participate in a 'birthing' experiment at Lebensborn were allowed subsidies for bearing 'genetically favorable' children, thought mostly to be fathered by members of the SS and other elite Nazi Leaders. These Lebensborn children were placed with 'suitable' German families to be raised. The Nazis spread the concept throughout Germany and Scandanavia, and noted the patriotic duty of young women to bear future German citizens. Art and Culture both reflected the preoccupation with motherhood and the propagation of aryan children, which the Reich believed, properly educated would lead to a new uptopia. Hitler at one point made reference to his lack of concern with the present generation in comparison with with the next. He believed that totally taught and raised by the Reich, he could have his perfect generation.14
# 4. "Germanization" and Jewish Children The 'Germanization' or Aryanization of a select few Jewish children was allowed. These children were high in intelligence, with notably aryan features, who were orphaned or confiscated from deported parents, usually 8 or under. These children were placed with German families and raised as complete aryans. Theoretically, the very few, intermingled in the gene pool would add positive characteristics of intelligence and health, and would not be sufficient in numbers to defuse the Aryan genetic pool.
IV. The Eugenics Experiments in the Camps: Souless Science
# 1. Early pre-Shoah Experiments Early in Hitler's Administration, the political-social milieu included new ethical discussions about the 'fitness' of life as it applies to society and the health of a society, and whether or not some lives could be determined to be 'unfit' or without value to the society, and therefore expendable. These ideas were firmly entrenched in those already in theories posited by Binder and Darwin, and applied not only to the 'fitness' of the person , e.g. economic value to society, but also to the hierarchy of power and leadership. Along with these theorists, hotbeds of Racial Science sprang up in such Universities as Jena under Haeckel, reinforcing theory with experiment, and integrated with the general Eugenics movement in Europe and the US. A resurgence since the 1880s of German culture and archetype/mythology, and the introduction of root race theory into the common philosophy or world view [Weltenschaunng], undergirded even further an outlook in which some lives were seen as promoting German society and cause and others were seen not only as unnecessary, but detrimental. Additionally, economic arguments were promoted vigorously, in which the cost to the state of useless lives such as the retarded, the psychotic, terminally ill, and later even alcoholics, epileptics and the chronically unemployed or habitual offender was calculated publicly and even used as math problems in public schools.
On this foundation, Hitler's earliest experiments in Eugenics and deliberate influencing of 'bloodlines' came under the T-4 program. The T-4 program, named for its Headquarter address, was founded on the principles of Binder and others who posited that some lives, could be classifed as "Lebensunwerte Leben" or Life Unworthy of Life. This term meant to Binder that the state need have no conscience in terminating lives which did not reach a certain criteria of value or consciousness, redefining those lives as subhuman and not for equal consideration, detrimental to both society and to the 'cost-effectiveness' of the economy. Binder had recommended that a State Review panel of at least three persons be appointed to determine the degree of 'unworthiness' of the life at hand, but by the time Conti and Brandt put the T4 program into practice, the criteria had degenerated to a single doctor assessment, and then to a single physician 'caretaker' assessment in which , for example, the head of a State home for 'mental deficients' could make the decision for all those in the institution. By the end of the program, through starvation, lethal injection and other means, close ot 75,000 deaths were accounted for in this manner with many more continuing after public outcry stop the practice, at least officially. The men trained in the T-4 experiments became the central figures in Operation Reinhard, developing from experience, excellent deceptions to keep victims calm until extermination, and methods of extermination which would kill the most in the shortest time, with the least 'demoralization' to the killers.
# 2. Camp Experiments-
Many of the Concentration or 'Killing Center' experiments were begun partly as funded investigations of Racial Science, and partly as a larger body of Medical Experiments in general. Scientific research was given a wide berth and paranormal phenomena, racial and racial-determinant research, rare language and culture research as it applied to Race were funded along with traditional sciences which grew to focus on rocketry and technology for the war effort. The vast number of those in forced labor, also allowed for ease in selection 'subjects' [victims] for medical research, without screenings or consent. Experimentation included submerging victims in frigid waters to study hypothermia in pilots down over waterways, disease and bacilli transmission, studies of skeletal structures and preparation of skeletons of certain types for University research [see Nazweiler near Strasbourg] the study of wounds in which victims would be inflicted with wounds to study their course and treatment, and Eugenics studies, such as Mengele at Auschwitz conducted.
# a.Auschwitz and Mengele
Mengele is perhaps the most widely known physician of the Shoah era, known predominately for his cruelty and horrific experiments, even on children. During and after conducting his doctoral research on cranial size and features across the races, Mengele continued with his chairperson work on Eugenics, distinguishing features across races, and other studies involving cruelties not allowed by modern standards. Known for his "Twin Studies" at Auschwitz, which was government funded research, Mengele and others selected out certain 'kinds' of individuals such as twins, dwarfs, or those with physical abnomalies for clinical 'investigation'. Medical Experimentation) The investigations and 'research' into racial science issues at Auschwitz and several other camps (e.g.Natzweiler) were of such a cruel and bizarre calibre that they became issues of the War Crimes trials. The Physician Trials were heard separately, from the traditional charges, and while some experimentation had to do with the war effort (e.g. studies of hypothermia, typhoid), many of the charges had to do with human experimentation in investigations of racial science. Massive studies were made of criteria to differentiate racial characteristics for further use after the war.
# .....b. Nuremberg, Justice and the Eugenics Experiments
#
V. The Creation of a Master Race
One of the best known 'facts' about the Nazis and the Holocaust among the general public is that the Nazis thought they were and wanted to produce a 'Master Race' or in German 'Herrenvolk'. This Master Race would have utopian qualities and characteristics of high intelligence, and cleverness, superior strength, and a variety of other human qualities. Many believed that the superior qualities included paranormal abilities. Nazi scientists and Racial theorists believed they could breed this superior race, from the stock of Nordic/ Aryan peoples, and that ridding the bloodlines of Germany of other influences, particularly the Jews and infirm, would facilitate the emergence of a superior people.
# A. Theories of Aryan Superiority There are a number of theories regarding the creation of a Master Race which affected Nazi belief. Many high level Nazis had belonged to boys' groups with occultic philosophies when they were young including the Artamaren and ..., many of which stressed ties to the land, German bloodlines, and Nordic heritage. The influence of these groups did not end, and what had before been obscure and archetypal ideologies began to move forefront in the thinking of several with Hitler's inner circle. (See Philosophies of the Nazis) One of the base theories affecting the Nazi's belief about Aryan superiority was 'Root Race Theory'. While there are a number of complex versions, the basic belief based upon work by Mme. Blavatsky's Theosophical Circle, was that humankind had moved in cycles of 'root races' and as time moved forward, there had been an evolution towards more and more superior root races. The Jews were considered one of the first or first Root race of a primitive nature.
# B. Lebensraum & Eugenics
# c. Lebensborn and after
