Re: The Nazis mass murdered many millions of slavs, serbs & Jews [and Gypsies and disabled] during WWII, a crime that has been documented beyond the reasonable doubt of rational people.
American Eugenics and the Nazi Regime
By Thais
To understand how the Nazi regime grew to power in the 1930's, it is important to observe that which influenced the political and social thought of those in positions of power and influence. By far the most significant factors in the German rise to power included a fanatical push for population control, racial hygiene, the science of racism and the study of genetics, and a worldwide depression.
Today we hear very little of U.S. involvement on the side of the Nazi movement, though our role in the science of eugenics was drawn upon by German physicians, eugenicists, and propagandists to promote themselves and their ideas during the regime. Hitler accredited eugenics in America as the most important factor influencing his policies on racial and hereditary science. Mainstream history continually underemphasizes the Nazi connection of American eugenicists, instead claiming that only an unimportant and marginal wing of the eugenics movement reacted positively to such measures of mass sterilization, special support for "hereditarily valuable" couples, prohibition of miscegenation (marriage or sexual relations between those of different races), and euthanasia (voluntary or otherwise). The reality, however, is that the U.S. played an important role as a model of a country in which eugenic sterilization and immigration legislation (which was founded on biological principles) were at least to some degree successfully implemented.
The U.S. was widely acclaimed by Germans for their role in implementing such measures as the sterilization of those considered a threat to a clean hereditary line, or those who had a mental or physical disability, so as not to breed more of a "degenerate" race. Those affected included those hereditarily blind, deaf, mentally or physically handicapped, the psychiatrically ill, sexual "perverts", fathers who had more than two illegitimate children, and habitual criminals. The first law on sterilization in the United States was passed in 1907 in Indiana, which made mandatory the sterilization of the handicapped. From 1907 to early 1920, 3,233 people were sterilized. In the 1930's, the rate was about 4,000 sterilizations per year.
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the eugenicists and the general public in support of the aforementioned measures[*]. At one point a bill in the house, which was under serious debate, would have eradicated the "lowest" 10% of the American population. In 1927 they passed a decision which ruled in favor of the constitutionality of compulsory sterilization. Said the Supreme Court, "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."
Aside from governmental support of such measures, many influential powers in society also offered a helping hand, either by contributing financially, conducting studies on genetics, publishing books promoting scientific racism, etc. Prominent figures in support of eugenics and the Nazi rule included Leonard Darwin [son of the British naturalist Charles Darwin], Alexander Graham Bell, Charles B. Davenport, Herbert Hoover, Charles Eliot (President of Harvard University), David Starr Jordan (President of Stanford University), the Pioneer Fund [http://www.pioneerfund.org/ ], and the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. In the 1980's, there seemed to be a resurgence in the studies of racial inferiority in the U.S. Roger Pearson, an anthropologist and promoter of the theory that "the white race has been endangered by inferior stock for more than 30 years", and well known for being authoritarian and neo-fascist, succeeded in combining his right wing politics with an academic career as a college professor and head of the Institute for the Study of Man in Virginia. In 1982, Ronald Reagan wrote him a letter commending his "valuable service" and voiced appreciation for his "substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad."
Looks like eugenics isn't dead today either.
Propaganda seems to be the most important link between Nazi Germany and the United States. The propaganda served many purposes, such as quelling much of the opposition by promoting the notion that Nazi race policies were of scientific character and politically necessary, and by convincing the German people that Germany served as a model for other nations. Favorable statements by well known scientists from other countries gave the German people the impression that scientific communities abroad favored Nazi race policy and viewed it as compatible with scientific knowledge. Nazi's relied on the approval of foreign scientists to further their propaganda efforts outside of Germany. Statements by non-German scientists were more credible than were those of German scientists, who were often regarded as mere puppets of the new regime.
Unfortunately for Germany, foreign support was wavering. At the beginning outbreak of World War II, American eugenicists and geneticists prepared a resolution against Nazi race policy called the "Genetic Manifesto." It was prepared and supported primarily by scientists from the United States. It demanded effective birth control and the emancipation of women, stressed the importance of economic and political change, and condemned racism against ethnic minorities. In the late 1930's, American eugenicists became more interested in how eugenics measures in Sweden, which had developed a comprehensive program to support large hereditarily healthy families, could combine with a sterilization law; they were searching for a model that combined democracy with eugenics. International criticism focused on the possibility that this power could be abused if applied specifically to ethnic minorities or political enemies. The shift away from interest and support for Nazi Germany and its Law Preventing Hereditarily Ill Progeny was because of opposition to the totalitarian political regime, not because of the Nazi eugenics program.
Public criticism of blatantly anti-Semitic Nazi policies rose.[**] Important figures in the genetics movement died or retired. Discoveries in genetics contradicted the scientific basis of scientific racism and eugenics. Germany retaliated by pointing to a hypocritical double standard in American society. They pointed to strict segregation between the whites and blacks and gave references to the lynching of blacks and the failure of an anti-lynching bill in the Senate. They also pointed out the law in 30 states preventing the marriage of blacks and whites. An article in the Nationalsozialistische Partei Korrespondenz stated, "the nigger would well be surprised that the white American becomes outraged at the elimination of Jews from German universities, while they do not consider the exclusion of Negroes from American universities." The final withdrawal of American support of Nazi policies came when the U.S. sided with the allies against Germany during World War II.
Today historians mask the truth of American involvement and influence in Nazi race policy and propaganda. The United States's history of scientific racism is unheard of in textbooks and as a general rule, goes unspoken of. It is important to realize that this movement is not gone in its entirety, but instead has been absorbed into particular institutions in society today. To escape its bad name, "eugenics" is now found in many cases to be hidden behind such field names as "human geneticists," "population scientists," "psychiatrists," "anthropologists," "sociologists," "anthropologists," and "family politicians." Eugenicists attempted to separate themselves from the legacy of the Holocaust by eliminating ethnic racism from the official agenda of eugenic societies. Many scientists continue to engage in providing findings for genetic differences between races. Scientific racism, which is known to be almost entirely a strictly German phenomenon should also be recognized as an American one.
profaneexistence.com
[*] “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.”
[1.1] Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Buck v. Bell
healthsystem.virginia.edu
faculty.uml.edu
[**] As Stefan Kuhl noted in his seminal monograph(***), part of the rift between Nazi eugenicists and their American fellows lay in the fact that American anti-Jewish feelings were not so much about anti-Semitism as about anti-Judaism... Somehow, mainstream Protestant America had the same attitude towards Jews as the Catholic Church: conversion to Christianity provided Jews with a ready way out of their ostracism. Unlike 1930s Germans, Americans viewed racism as basically a white vs black divide and were not appealed by the Nazi breakdown of the "white race" into sub-categories. Contrariwise, it made no sense for Nazi Germany to found her racial order on the segregation of Negroes!?! Before the 1950s, non-white immigration in Germany (and, more generally, in Europe) amounted to no more than a few hundreds of people....
(***) amazon.com |
