By: Anna Heideman Angela Mullins

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 superiorityfirst 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 T-4 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 'racial-

defilement' 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.shtml

• http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/• http://www.shoaheducation.com/pNEW.html