|
|
|
|
Nazi eugenics
|
| |
|
| |
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the race through eugenics at the center of their concerns and targeted those humans they identified as "life unworthy of life" (German Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, religious, and weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed in the Action T4.
Hitler's views on eugenics
Adolf Hitler had read some racial hygiene tracts during his period of imprisonment in Landsberg Prison.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Nazi eugenics' Start a new discussion about 'Nazi eugenics' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the race through eugenics at the center of their concerns and targeted those humans they identified as "life unworthy of life" (German Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, religious, and weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed in the Action T4.
Hitler's views on eugenics
Adolf Hitler had read some racial hygiene tracts during his period of imprisonment in Landsberg Prison. The future leader considered that Germany could only become strong again if the state applied to German society the basic principles of racial hygiene and eugenics. Hitler believed the nation had become weak, corrupted by the infusion of degenerate elements into its bloodstream. In his opinion, these had to be removed as quickly as possible. He also believed that the strong and the racially pure had to be encouraged to have more children, and the weak and the racially impure had to be neutralized by one means or another.
The concepts of racist ideas of competition, termed social Darwinism in 1944, were discussed by European scientists, and also in the Vienna press during the 1920s, but how exactly Hitler picked up these ideas is uncertain. In 1876, Ernst Haeckel had discussed the selective infanticide policy of the Greek city of ancient Sparta. In his Second Book, which was kept unpublished during Nazi Germany, Hitler also praised Sparta, adding that this was because he considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State". He endorsed what he perceived to be an early eugenics treatment of deformed children:
Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.
Nazi eugenics program
The Nazis based their eugenics program on the United States' programs of forced sterilization.
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, proclaimed on July 14, 1933 required physicians to register every case of hereditary illness known to them, except in women over forty-five years of age. Physicians could be fined for failing to comply. In 1934 the first year of the Law's operation, nearly 4,000 people appealed against the decisions of sterilization authorities. 3,559 of the appeals failed. By the end of the Nazi regime, over 200 Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichten) were created, and under their rulings over 400,000 people were sterilized against their will.
Nazi eugenics institutions
The Hadamar Clinic was a mental hospital in the German town of Hadamar, which was used by the Nazis as the site of their T-4 Euthanasia Program. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. In its early years, and during the Nazi era, it was strongly associated with theories of eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by its leading theorists Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer, and by its director Otmar von Verschuer. Under Fischer, the sterilization of so-called Rhineland Bastards was undertaken. Grafeneck Castle was one of Nazi Germany's killing centers during the Euthanasia, today it is a memorial place dedicated to the victims of the Action T4.
Further reading
Books
- Aly, G. (1994). . The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-4824-5
- Baer, E. et al. (2003). . Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814330630
- Baumslag, N. (2005). . Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-98312-9
- Biesold, H. (1999). . Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 1-56368-255-9
- Burleigh, M. (1991). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39802-9
- Burleigh, M. (1994). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41613-2
- Caplan, A. (1992). . Totowa, NJ: Humana Press. ISBN 0896032353
- Ehrenreich, Eric. . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-253-34945-3
- Friedlander, H. (1995). . University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2208-6
- Gallagher, G. (1995). . Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press. ISBN 0-918339-36-7
- Glass, J. (1999). Basic Books. ISBN 0465098460
- Kater, M. (1989). . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807818429
- Kuhl, S. (2002). . Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195149785
- Kuntz, D. (2006). . The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2916-1
- Lifton, R. (1986). . Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04905-2
- McFarland-Icke, B. (1999). . Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691006652
- Müller-Hill, B. (1998). . Plainview, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. ISBN 0879695315
- Nicosia, F. et al. (2002). . Berghahn Books. ISBN 157181387X
- Proctor, R. (2003). . Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-74578-7
- Schafft, G. (2004). . University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252029305
- Spitz, V. (2005). . Sentient Publications. ISBN 1-59181-032-9
- Weikart, R. (2006). . Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-7201-X
- Weindling, P.J. (2005). . Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-3911-X
- Weindling, P.J. (1989). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42397-X
Academic articles
- Bachrach, S. (2004). . New England Journal of Medicine, 29 July 2004; 351: 417–420.
- Biddiss M. (1997). Journal of Royal Society of Medicine, 1997 Jun; 90(6): 342-6.
- Cranach, M. (2003). . The Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 2003; 40(1): 8-18; discussion 19-28.
- Lerner, B. (1995). Annals of Internal Medicine, 15 May 1995; 122: 10: 793–794.
- Martin III, Matthew D., "", Cardozo Journal of International Law, Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 2007, pp. 371-421, ISSN 1069-3181.
- O'Mathúna, D. (2006). . BioMed Central, 2006 Mar 14;7(1):E2.
- Sofair, A. (2000). . National Center for Biotechnology Information 2000 Feb 15; 132(4): 312-9.
- Strous, R. D. (2006). . American Journal of Psychiatry, January 2006; 163: 27.
- Weigmann, K. (2001). . European Molecular Biology Organization, 15 October 2001; 2(10): 871–875.
- Eugenical News 1933, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; vol.18:5.
Videos
- Burleigh, M. (1991). Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich. London: Domino Films.
- Michalczyk, J.J. (1997). Nazi Medicine: In The Shadow Of The Reich. New York: First-Run Features.
See also
External links
General reference
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
|
| |
|
|
