Eugenics in the Creation of a Racial State

Eugenics in the Creation of a Racial State: How the NSDAP “Rationalized” the Holocaust for Racial Purity Allison Brown HIST 4310: WWII in Europe Dr. Blackler 31 March, 2022 In 1925, Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “Everything we admire on this earth today— science and art, technology and inventions—is only the creative product of a few peoples and originally perhaps one race [thAeryans] … on them depends the existence of this whole culture. If they perish, the beauty of this earth will sink into the grave with th1eE mu.”genics, among other factors, impacted Hitler’s goal for an establish Ve oldks gemeinschaft. 2 Cumulative radicalization rationalized by the pseudoscience of eugenics was enforced legally by the practices of the NSDAP and socially reinforced in popular culture by state-controlled news, films, and novels. Rationalization would allow for the Holocaust to be executed as a project to establish racial purity and reform the German state without a Jewish population. Understanding how eugenics impacted Hitler and the policies of the NSDAP key factors in understanding Nazism, how the NSDAP legally built a basis for eugenics and racial purity laws, and ultimately the evolution of the Holocaust. For the NSDP Racial Hygiene Program, sterilization started with those who qualified as “ Lebensunwertes Leben”, or life unworthy of life. Eugenics was a pseudoscience that aimed to “purify” society of the “undesirables” in the German state to promote the ideal Aryan race. The NSDAP and Hitler’s vision of an Aryan-Germany was a notion of racial superiority also common in the U.S. and world, which partially added to the pseudoscience recognition of eugenics on a global stage. With eugenics, there are two different means to achieving the desired racial state. Positive eugenics refers to efforts aimed at increasing desirable traits, while negative eugenics refers to efforts aimed at decreasing undesirable traits. 1 The initial step in negative eugenics in Nazi Germany began on June 28, 1933, when Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Interior, drew up a detailed plan of “Population and Race Policy” and with Hitler issuing the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” on July 14, 1933. These laws required Germany physicians to register every case of hereditary illness known to them except in women over forty-five years of age, a law which represented both positive and negative eugenics, more so a way to display who was and was not “fit” to reproduce. Efforts to support the “productive” members of society brought negative measures. For instance, often there were economic redirections to divert resources from the “less valuable” in order to provide for the “worthy” in society. Eugenicists in Nazi Germany viewed the as an U.S. example of promoting eugenic strategies to marginalize segments of society by limiting their reproduction through voluntary or compulsory sterilization. Between 1907 and 1930, 29 U.S. states passed compulsory sterilization laws and many states also had laws that banned marriages between white people and people of color. Both sets of laws were prompted by a desire to promote eugenics in the U.S. Eugenicists argued that there was a direct link between diminished capacity and depravity, promiscuity, and criminality. A linkage that would shift from applying to those with limited mental and social capacities to any individuals perceived by the NSDAP to not adhere to the Aryan standard perceived in Germany. By 1933, the theories of racial hygiene were embedded into the NSDAP policy, judicially in Germany, and with the German public. The start of World War II allowed for a growth in population for eugenics with a wider global audience with news articles, films, and other forms of global media. For state institutions, Germany created Deutscher the Bund Fur Volksaufartung und Erbkunde (German League for National Regeneration and Heredity) in 1925 to promote eugenics in Germany through pseudoscience and publications. 2 The Gesetz Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Law for the Reestablishment of a Professional Civil Service) on April 7, 1933, and shortly after the establishment of the Nuremberg Laws (September 15, 1935). The Nuremberg Laws further institutionalized eugenics in Nazi Germany. The Blood Protection Law stated: “Entirely convinced that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has 3 unanimously resolved upon the following law .T”he Nuremberg Laws which followed only further limited and restricted German-Jewish life as much as possible. Alongside the laws, the NSDAP invested in scientists, academics, and medical professional to form the Gemeinschaftsaufgaben with funding from the German Research Council, charged with a specific NSDAP mission to continue to research and publish on issues related to eugenics. The continued “rationalization” of eugenics with scientific and medical evidence from groups such as this starting by leading to the sterilization of Jewish populations and eventually to the final solution as the only seeming way in which German eugenics could be preserved. In the coming years, the NSDAP and the German government would continue to rationalize eugenics and policies against Jewish populations in the German judicial system as well as the social and political culture in Germany, “racist ideology, economic productivity, and a focus on partial applications always with an emphasis on the ‘purity’ and efficacy of the national [German] community.4”In all sectors of the German public and cultural centers, eugenics was upheld. From student textbooks, the news media, films, and art exhibitions, Nazi ideology was inescapable. This infusion of eugenics and “values” of the NSDAP in all aspects of 3 everyday life further ingrained the ideologies of eugenics. And coupled with the judicial and political value assigned to eugenic ideals, led to the cumulative radicalization of Nazi Germany. Guided by the over-riding principles of racial hygiene, racial purity, and eugenics, the Nazi regime was committed to negative eugenics and the removal of those unfit to live and “produce inferior offspring” in the Aryan-German state. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws provided for the forced sterilization of the “unfit”. Cumulative radicalization with eugenics’ “scientific credibility”, popular media, and NSDAP legal justifications for eugenics only increased culminating in the atrocities which would unfold during the Holocaust. 4