By: Anna Heideman
What is Eugenics?
• The study and practice of selective breeding
applied to humans, with the aim of improving
the species
• popular in early 20th century
• most commonly associated with Hitler’s Third
Reich
Origins: Plato
– Human reproduction should be monitored
and controlled by the state
– Proposed that mates should be chosen by a
“marriage number”
• Quality of individual would be quantitatively
analyzed
• High ranking people procreate with other high
ranking people
Origins: Sparta
• Practiced infanticide if child was deemed
incapable of living
• trials for babies
– bathing in wine
– exposing to elements
• ensured that only the strong survived long
enough to procreate
Origins: Galton
• natural selection was thwarted by human
civilization
• “Hereditary Talent and Character”, Hereditary
Genius
– talent and genius are inherited through
generation
– less intelligent are more fertile than the intelligent
Charles Davenport
• Harvard educated professor who taught of the
University of Chicago
• Biological statistics should be applied to the
study of inheritance
• Certain moral traits were connected to
genetics and could therefore be bred into
human race
• Argued against immigration, believing that
immigrants were genetically inferior
Margaret Sanger
• Crusader for contraceptive rights based on
concern for racial control
• Believed that genetically inferior people
should have fewer children
• Placed centers for birth control in
impoverished areas which were commonly
minorities
Origins: Social Darwinism
The belief that one race of people has an
advantage over another because of genetic or
biological superiority
first described by Oscar Schmidt of the
University of Strasbourg, reporting at a
scientific and medical conference held in
Munich in 1877.
Social Darwinism in Germany
• Nazi Germany's justification for its aggression was
regularly promoted in Nazi propaganda films
depicting scenes such as beetles fighting in a lab
setting to demonstrate the principles of "survival of
the fittest".
• Hitler often refused to intervene in the promotion of
officers and staff members, preferring instead to
have them fight amongst themselves to force the
"stronger" person to prevail - "strength" referring to
those social forces void of virtue or principle
Reasons for Nazi Eugenics
• Once the inferior race was eradicated, a new
Aryan race with Nordic characteristics would
replace earlier inferior races.
• Hitler believed that the race that inhabited the
ancient city of Atlantis were a superior group
of human beings excelling in every human
attribute, physical and intellectual. And that
Aryans were descendants of that mythical
race
• When the “lower races” were erased, a utopia
would evolve
Implementing Eugenics
• Mandatory eugenics or authoritarian eugenics: the
government mandates a eugenics program.
• Promotional voluntary eugenics: eugenics is
voluntarily practiced and promoted to the general
population, but not officially mandated.
• Private eugenics: practiced voluntarily by individuals
and groups, but not promoted to the general
population.
Nazi Eugenics
• Hitler thought that
Germany could only
become strong again if the
state applied to German
society the principles of
racial hygiene and eugenics.
• 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.
Nazi Eugenics
• The Hadamar Clinic was a mental
hospital which was used by the
Nazi-controlled German
government as the site of their T4 Euthanasia Program.
• By the end of the Nazi regime,
over 200
Erbgesundheitsgerichten
(Hereditary Health Courts) were
created, and under their rulings
over 400,000 people were
sterilized against their will.
Nazi Eugenics
• Marriage and race laws were instituted.
• Marrying a Jew was a punishable offense because the Jews
were “genetically inferior” according to Hitler.
• Mixed race marriages were seen as unacceptable and
outlawed in Germany.
• Jews who dated or married Aryans were accused of 'racialdefilement' and were publicly humiliated, as were their
mates.
• The Third Reich gave legal and tax benefits to couples who
planned on having children
– These couples were deemed “pure Germans” or of superior
German blood.
– Hitler promoted reproduction for these couples because he
wished to recreate the Aryan race.
Genetically Unacceptable
• The Jewish people
• The Polish
• The mentally
challenged/handicapped
• Gypsies
• Mixed races
• People of color
• Sexual deviants
– Homosexuals
– Pedophiles
• Religiously unacceptable
– Jehovah's Witnesses
– Evangelical Christians
Nazi Eugenics
• In 1940 the need for hospital beds for wounded
soldiers prompted a "final solution" for "lives not
worth living." Psychiatrists and medical doctors
identified more than 70,000 mental patients who
were poisoned with carbon monoxide in
extermination centers at psychiatric hospitals.
• Medical and other personnel with euthanasia
experience were reassigned to concentration camps
in Poland, where hydrogen cyanide gas was used to
kill Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and Social Democrats
Dr. Joseph Mengele
• Mengele took an
interest in physical
abnormalities
discovered among the
arrivals at Auschwitz.
– Dwarfs
– Identical twins
– Those with physical
abnormalities
Dr. Joseph Mengele
• Experimented upon humans
in order to create perfect
bloodline.
• Conducted surgeries on
twins, dwarfs, and others
with physical differences
• Known as the “Angel of
Death”
– Very few survived his
surgeries
Dr. Joseph Mengele
• 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
– the study of wounds inflicted on the victim to
study their course and treatment
Bibliography
• http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.sht
ml
• http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
• http://www.shoaheducation.com/pNEW.html