Eugenics was a global movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that studied "race science" to create a stronger and more "pure" human race. It originated in England and the United States, where the first eugenics institute was founded in 1904. Germany adopted eugenic ideas and used terms like "racial hygiene" to justify sterilizing and killing Jews and other groups deemed inferior during the Holocaust. Although eugenics began in the US and received early support there for Nazi policies, American eugenicists later tried to cover up their involvement after Nazi war crimes were revealed. The document examines how eugenics helped enable the dehumanization of victims in genocides like the

1.
Eugenics
1
Samantha N. Hunter
Graduate Student
Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Project Title: Eugenics: A Global Movement
Project Link: http://prezi.com/fvzp5gbrengj/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Introduction
Many people believe that the Germans had an especially cruel culture because of
their treatment and murder of the Jews, handicapped, Roma, and other groups during
World War II. However, the truth is that their ideal of the prefect human race developed
in part out of a global movement called eugenics. Eugenics is the study of “race science”
to create a stronger and more “pure” race of humans. The concept of “race” began to be
debunked by the anthropologist Franz Boas in 1940 in his work Race, Language and
Culture, in which he claimed that race was a social structure.1
Race is a social construct
and without the idea that people were different in specific ways and that some were better
than others, the concept of a “super race” might never have developed. Social Darwinism
played a key role in the development of eugenics, since the notion of being the fittest race
was the most important aspect of this movement. For if there is biologically not a race
that can over power all the others, then all is lost.2
Social Darwinism also promoted the
1
Biogaphy.com.
“Franz
Boas.”
Biography.com.
http://www.biography.com/people/franz-­‐boas-­‐9216786.
2
Richard
Weikart.
From
Darwin
to
Hitler:
Evolutionary
Ethics,
Eugenics,
and
Racism
in
German.
New
York:
Palgrave
Macmillan,
2004.
P.
130.

2.
Eugenics
2
idea that in the cycle of life there was race that had to be more socially adapted than any
other.
Studying eugenics was used historically to guide nineteenth- and twentieth-
century European nations in their quest to be the main rulers of the world. Some German
scholars, political activists and state officials also began to take up eugenic arguments,
especially after claiming overseas colonies in the late nineteenth century. As we know,
Germany ended up taking the eugenic movement to greater extremes than most other
countries could never have imaged. Utopian ideas like eugenics appear to be a root cause
of most genocides that have occurred in the world. Without ideas of group purity
promoted by eugenics, the mass killings we saw in the Holocaust or Cambodia or the
Rwandan Genocide might never have happened.
Why Eugenics for my Capstone?
Eugenics is a topic that is frequently raised in the literature on the Holocaust and
genocide. However, eugenics is not examined in depth within the Master of Arts in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies (MAHG) program here at Stockton University. This
lack of examination is why I selected the topic of eugenics for my final Capstone Project.
In my opinion, the topic of eugenics is important to look at when studying any instance of
genocide. This is because the idea of eugenics allows one to gain a better understanding
of the minds of those who lead genocide. Most organizers of genocide appear to believe
in the concept of a superior “race” or group that should be in power because it is the best
adapted to do so. The questions of how to control – and perhaps destroy -- those who do
not meet these requirements might not have been explored so easily without the
introductions of eugenics.

3.
Eugenics
3
The term “Eugenics” was coined by Francis Galton in 1883, in England. The first
established institute devoted to the applied eugenics movement was in New York in
1904.3
It was founded by Charles Davenport and called Cold Spring Harbor.4
The first
law based on applied eugenics is believed to have been passed in the United States in
Indiana in 1907. It stipulated that sterilization was allowed based on eugenic grounds.5
This legally gave permission to the leaders of the eugenic movement to sterilize those
whom they saw as unfit or unworthy of life.
Scholars in many countries studied eugenics and often referred to the subject
using different terms: Applied biology, heredity, biology, genetics, race theory, and
mental hygiene, to name a few. In addition to camouflaging the study of eugenics
through the use of different terms, eugenicists even hid it with in different fields of study.
Genetics, biology, zoology, social science, psychology, and anthropology departments
are all examples of this.6
“Racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene) and “racial science”
(Rassenkunde) were the terms used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to justify their
actions of killing the Jews.
One of the greatest misconceptions about Germany is that the German people
have a particularly violent and racist culture, which explains their campaign against the
Jews, the disabled, and other groups in the 1930s. In reality, Germany was part of the
global movement of applied eugenics originating in the late nineteenth century. As a
member of the MAHG Program at Stockton University, I was taught the complicated
3
Edwin
Black.,
“The
Horrifying
American
Roots
of
Nazi
Eugenics.”
History
News
Network.
25.
November,
2015.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796.
4
Edwin
Black.,
“The
Horrifying
American
Roots
of
Nazi
Eugenics.”
History
News
Network..25,
November,
2015.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796.
5
Paul
Lombarbo,
“Eugenic
Sterilization
Laws.”
Image
Archive
on
the
American
Eugenic
Movement
.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html.
6
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
285.

4.
Eugenics
4
conditions under which ordinary Germans were brought to commit horrible crimes
against the Jews and the handicapped populations.7
People without the same level of in-
depth education on the topic often believe, however, that the behavior of German
perpetrators does not require explanation: for them, the German people, judging from the
crimes they ultimately committed, were hardly anything more than sadists and racists. As
with any other case of genocide, historians of Germany have had to explain how some
Germans became killers. Similarly, historians must explain what made some Germans
believe there was a master race -- and that they were it.
The applied eugenics movement, which in fact began in the United States of
America, was an important contributor to the formation of the Nazis’ antisemitic ideas of
the master race. According to Stefan Kühl, the United States was the role model for
Germany when it came time for the eugenic program: “…the United States had played an
important role as a model of a country in which eugenic sterilization and immigration
legislation were at least to some degree successfully implemented.”8
Kühl shows how
American eugenicists went to Germany during the Third Reich to examine the progress
of the eugenics movement.9
According to Kühl there was a lot of support by American
eugenic leaders for the Nazi implementation of their own eugenics program.10
The even
more shocking aspect of this is that little attention was given by other countries to the fact
that support was given by the American leaders for the Nazi eugenic program.11
7
Christopher
R.
Browning,
Ordinary
Men:
Reserve
Police
Battalion
101
and
The
Final
Solution
in
Poland.
New
York,:
Happer
Perennial,
1992..
P.
166-­‐167.
8
Stefan
Kühl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
14.
9
Stefan
Kühl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
76.
10
Stefan
Kühl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
14
11
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
14

5.
Eugenics
5
However, later the Americans tried to cover their traces of support for the Nazis
after their war crimes had been revealed. After 1945, the Americans attempted to cover
up their approval of the Nazis eugenic program and tried to emphasize that the
relationship between America and Nazi Germany was distant and critical.12
The
leadership of The American Eugenics Society after World War II either ignored the
relationship or falsely claimed that the society did not approve of the Nazis’ activities and
polices.13
Eugenics is a massive topic that has its own origins and sub-topics. It would take
an entire course to fully understand the global, historical and applied aspects of eugenics,
which is why I decided to focus on this as my final project. For the most part, I
understood eugenics as something that allowed genocide to happen because it helped
groups to discriminate against other groups in order to make them appear sub-human.
The T-4 Euthanasia Program established by the Nazis was one of the main programs that
dehumanized the disabled during the Holocaust.14
According to the Nazis, those with any
type of handicap were seen as “life unworthy of life” because they were considered a
drain on the government, given that both physically and financially they could not care
for themselves.15
In the mindset of the Nazis, the most important people were those most
adapted to Nazi society.16
Those would be the ones to survive, not the people who
needed help just to live. After conducting deeper research into eugenics, I now have a
12
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
15.
13
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
15.
14
Michael
Burleigh’s,.
Death
and
Deliverance:
‘Euthanasia’
in
Germany
1900-­‐1945.
Cambridge,
United
Kingdom:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1995.
P.
5
15
Michael
Burleigh’s,.
Death
and
Deliverance:
‘Euthanasia’
in
Germany
1900-­‐1945.
Cambridge,
United
Kingdom:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1995.
P.
5
16
Michael
Burleigh’s,.
Death
and
Deliverance:
‘Euthanasia’
in
Germany
1900-­‐1945.
Cambridge,
United
Kingdom:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1995.
P.
5

6.
Eugenics
6
better understanding of the history behind Nazi policies of sterilization and murder.
My Capstone Project is a Prezi presentation designed to teach in greater depth the
topic of eugenics to those who study the Holocaust as well as comparative genocide
studies. The project itself is a quick overview of the global movement of eugenics that
developed into the extermination of European Jewry. In the project, I highlight the
complexities of the eugenics movement and especially the differences between eugenic
policies in several Western nations. The main difference between the American eugenics
movement and German movement was, for example, that the Americans believed that
America could be biologically strengthened through individualized practices, such as
sterilization. However, when the Nazis came to power they believed they had to hunt and
kill the undesirable groups immediately.
The Nazi approach to eugenics did not emerge out of nowhere. Under the
government of the Weimar Republic in Germany, the approach to eugenics was modeled
on the American movement. German eugenicists followed the policies of separation and
sterilization of those considered to be unfit. However, when the Nazis came to power in
1933, this relationship took a radical and extreme turn. The Nazis began to adopt their
own version of eugenics, which often included finding and killing those they deemed
unfit. With this concept, the goal was to kill all the races and the people they saw as unfit
for life as quickly as possible. That is when genocide begins.
What I most want people to take away from my project is that the eugenics
movement was a global, respected and well-known movement. It involved many different
countries and many different scientists within those countries. Another point I wish to
make with my project is that the ideas of a superior race and of people unworthy of life

7.
Eugenics
7
could (and still can) result in genocide. When people start believing that one race is better
than the other, or that certain (ill-conceived and undeveloped) ideas can create a utopian
society, they have started down the path on the genocidal continuum.
What is Eugenics?
Eugenics is defined as the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the
qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as
discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have
inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons
presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).17
In other words,
eugenics is basically breeding humans in the name of making the prefect race. The idea
was to find the good traits and encourage the people with those traits to continue to breed
children, while those who do not have the positive traits would be discouraged or
prevented from having any more children. The first person to coin the term eugenics was
Francis Galton in 1883, who wanted eugenics to be used for regulating the marriage
process where members of the best families were only wed to carefully selected
spouses.18
Later, during the American applied eugenics movement, these laws were put
into action making it illegal for people to marry those of a “lesser race, “therefore only
allowing the best to be with the best. Galton was working with an idea derived from
Gregor Mendel in reaching his conclusions. Gregor Mendel was a German scientist who
is credited with discovering dominant and recessive genes. Without his knowledge of
17
Dictionary.Com “Ddefinition of Eugenices.“ Dictionary.com. 24, November, 2015.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics.
18
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.110.

8.
Eugenics
8
dominant and recessive genes it would have been more difficult for the eugenicists to see
what traits could be passed on in families.
Mendel’s laws also played a significant role in how eugenics came to be.
According to Edwin Black, “about the time of Darwin, Spencer and Mendel began
explaining the heredity of lower species, Galton was already looking beyond those
theories. He began to discern the patterns of various qualities in human beings. In 1865
Galton authored… Hereditary Genius.”19
Galton wanted to stop the reproduction of the
inferior by controlling who people married. He attempted this though a series of proposed
laws.
Eugenicists wanted to take these ideas of traits and form a better, or superior,
human race. How did they know what was, or, who was the better race? Was it the
“race” in the most control? Or the one that had been in Europe or the United States the
“longest”? And what gave them this idea?
The Eugenics Movement
Eugenics grew from the idea of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is defined as
“the application of Darwinism to the study of human society, specifically a theory in
sociology that individuals or groups achieve advantage over others as the result of genetic
or biological superiority.”20
In other words, only those with the best traits should survive
within human society.21
This concept was the result of the application of Charles
Darwin’s concept of “the survival of the fittest” in animals to human societies.
Charles Darwin himself conducted years of research to find out how animals
19
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.108.
20
Farlex,
The
Free
Dictionary.
24.
November,
2015..<
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/social+Darwinism>.
21
Richard
Weikart.
From
Darwin
to
Hitler:
Evolutionary
Ethics,
Eugenics,
and
Racism
in
German.
New
York:
Palgrave
Macmillan,
2004.
P.
130.

9.
Eugenics
9
survived in the wild. He discovered that the species that lived the longest were the ones
with the best traits and the ones who could kill. The stronger, or the more “fit,” would be
the species that would be the ultimate one to survive. Social Darwinists reasoned that in
order for a superior human race to develop, people who are not worthy of life should not
receive essential health care.22
Another key tactic was only to allow births by the fittest
people.23
Social Darwinism was, in a sense, the mother of eugenics. This is because
eugenics is the science that grants humans themselves the power to decide which people
are allowed to marry, which are allowed to have children, and those which must be
sterilized in order for them not to reproduce. Eugenics requires states to have total control
over their populations. The question that arises from an idea like this is, what to do with
the people who are deemed not to be worthy of life? Do you kill them (as Hitler did to the
Jews in the Holocaust) or do you slowly let them die off with policies of sterilization and
through other ways of preventing births?
The United States
The United States is where the movement of applied eugenics began. Many of the
ideas for the way eugenics was to be applied in other countries came out of the American
eugenicists’ dream of a perfect world. One of the most powerful names in eugenics
comes from the United States, Charles Davenport. He attended Harvard University where
he studied biology in which he received his PhD.24
He eventually became the director of
22
Richard
Weikart,.
From
Darwin
to
Hitler:
Evolutionary
Ethics,
Eugenics,
and
Racism
in
German.
New
York:
Palgrave
Macmillan,
2004.
P.
130.
23
Richard
Weikart.
From
Darwin
to
Hitler:
Evolutionary
Ethics,
Eugenics,
and
Racism
in
German.
New
York:
Palgrave
Macmillan,
2004.
P.
130.
24
PBS,
“A
Science
odyssey:
People
and
Discoveries:
Charles
Davenport”
PBS.
Org.
23,
November,
2015.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhdave.html.

10.
Eugenics
10
a biological research station at Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1904. According to
Edwin Black, “[t]he work of Gregor Mendel had recently been unearthed, and scientists
sought a quantitative study of evolution. Overall, the research done in Davenport's labs
added to basic knowledge of genetic variation, hybridization, and natural selection.”25
Davenport became fascinated with the ideas of Mendel and how traits were passed on to
different generations of pea pods. Davenport believed the same ideas could be applied to
humans in order to make a better race. Davenport was interested in the evolution of
humanity and, because he could not experiment on humans, he began to collect family
histories instead.26
He believed that by studying family histories he could crack the code
on the desirable traits and encourage them to be passed on. Davenport also wanted those
with bad traits to be banned from marrying those with good traits, and those with bad
traits to be sterilized in order to prevent them from passing their bad traits on to the next
generation. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the people who helped Davenport collect
family histories. He used his influence to circulate the form they used to collect family
histories in high schools and colleges.27
The family histories were moved to their own special building called the Eugenics
Record Office. This allowed Davenport a new place to hold and keep extensive files on
families and research them further.28
Within the office, secretaries separated the files of
the desirable from the undesirable. This was not an easy task because the definitions of
feebleminded, epilepsy and many mental handicaps were extremely flexible and could
25
PBS,
“A
Science
odyssey:
People
and
Discoveries:
Charles
Davenport”
PBS.
Org.23,
November,
2015
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhdave.html.
26
PBS,
“A
Science
odyssey:
People
and
Discoveries:
Charles
Davenport”
PBS.
Org.23,
November,
2015
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhdave.html.
27
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.191.
28
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
198.

11.
Eugenics
11
mean whatever the people who were in charge of eugenics wanted them to mean.29
This
office was meant to help people who had the better traits to pass them on while
preventing the ones with bad traits from passing them on.30
Office workers did this
primarily through marriage laws. Marriage laws determined who could be married and
who could not. American marriage laws depended on how much “colored blood” people
had. Only pure whites could marry pure whites, while all the other races could intertwine
with each other. 31
Eugenics did not stop at telling people who they could and could not
marry. American eugenics took the prevention of unwanted, genetically inferior births
one step further with sterilization.
Sterilization is an operation where people are rendered unable to produce
children. In the United States it was used on those people deemed inferior to prevent
them from having children. In the United States, eugenics was never taken past this point.
American eugenicists believed that if they prevented enough people considered inferior
from having children, eventually all sickness, handicaps and other “inferiorities” would
disappear. Americans did not perform sterilization solely on a voluntary basis. The
undesirable were often forced against their will to have the operation. By the end of 1938,
thirty two states had ratified sterilization laws.32
With the ability to sterilize people who
were institutionalized as well as alcoholics or any others seen as “unfit,” eugenicists and
eugenic doctors began to look for those types of people. The American eugenics program
was never meant to be confined to the United States. A central goal of eugenicists in the
29
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
216
30
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
217.
31
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
565.
32
A
list
of
thirty
of
them
is
attached
on
the
link
on
the
first
page.

12.
Eugenics
12
United States was to make it a global movement. They did this through sharing their
findings with other countries, including Germany and England.
England
England moved a little slower in implementing eugenics policies than the
Americans. This is because they believed that the eugenics movement that the Americans
were running would interfere with their nation’s commitments to freedom and liberty.33
The restrictions on marriage were one of a number of things that Great Britain believed
would challenge their beliefs in freedom and liberty because part of being free is the right
to pick whom one shall marry. Having the state tell people who they can and cannot
marry based on eugenicist criteria directly contradicted this right. Nevertheless, the
British eugenicists had their own plan to help eugenics move forward and proposed
sterilization and segregation laws. The members of the English movement wanted
eventually to be where the United Sates was in their movement with marriage restrictions
and sterilization of undesirables. Had these laws been passed, they would have applied
not only to people deemed to be ‘mentally inferior,’ but also to criminals, debtors,
paupers, alcoholics, recipients of charity and ‘other parasites.’34
Initially, the English government, unlike the United States, was not willing to
accommodate eugenicists’ demands.35
The movement began when Galton coined the
term eugenics in 1883 in England. America’s first applied eugenics sterilization law was
33
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
639.
34
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
705
35
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
705.

13.
Eugenics
13
passed in 1907; however, the first English law on eugenics was not passed until April
1913, six years later. Even with the country’s beliefs holding them back, the English
eugenicists would not go down with a fight. They wanted a program that would bring
about a better race of humans. Yet, there were decades between the formation of the
ideology to the actual passage of laws. Finally, in 1913, they celebrated a partial victory.
In that year the British parliament passed most of the provisions of a bill introduced and
prompted by Winston Churchill, which he called the Mental Deficiency Act. The act
identified four groups of people to which it would apply: idiots, imbeciles, the
feebleminded and moral defectives. According to Edwin Black, “people so identified
could be institutionalized in special colonies, sanitariums or hospitals established for the
purpose.”36
Marriage laws were also included in this law, which allowed the government
to break up unwanted marriages that had already happened. However, England did not
take its eugenics program to the level that Germany did. Like most other nations, the
British could not have imaged something as horrible as the Nazi eugenics programs and
ideology.
Germany
The Nazi take over of Germany was the real game changer in the history of
eugenics, not only because eugenics evolved into killing people, but also because of the
particular ideology that went along with those eugenics programs. The Nazi takeover,
with their version of eugenics, was more aggressive than the Americans could have ever
wished it to be. In Edwin Black’s words, “[w]hen Hitler used the term master race, he
meant just that, a biological ‘master race.’ America crusaded for a biologically superior
36
Black,
Edwin.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
717

14.
Eugenics
14
race, which would gradually wipe away the existence of all inferior strains. Hitler would
crusade for a master race to quickly dominate all others. In Hitler’s view, eugenically
inferior groups, such as Poles and Russians, would be permitted to exist but were
destined to serve Germany’s master race.”37
According the Stefan Kühl, “They
[Americans] argued instead that in the 1930s eugenics in the United Sates became more
scientifically oriented, while in Germany the Nazis ‘prevented’ all science, and eugenics
in particular, for the political purpose of improving the Nordic race.” 38
The view and ultimate goal of eugenics, as well as the means used to achieve it,
were very different in Nazi ideology than they were in their American context. However,
it is important to remember that much of what Adolf Hitler wrote and believed about
breeding was strongly influenced by eugenicist policies in the USA.39
Even though the
Americans tried, after 1945, to claim they did not approve of the Nazis’ eugenic activity,
they did. According to Kühl, the Americans tried to show support for the Nazi policies
and promote them by collecting information and evidence to counter the “rumors” of the
Germans using the sterilization laws as a way to eliminate the Jews of Europe.40
The
Americans even came to Germany to help move forward the Nazi eugenic programs.
According to Kühl, Americans even traveled to Germany during the Nazis’ eugenics
movement to help them advance their program and saw many examples of their thoughts
being put into use: “Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have tremendously
37
Black,
Edwin.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.P.
885.
38
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
N
w
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P.
15.
39
Black,
Edwin.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P
885.
40
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
N
w
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
P
.72.

15.
Eugenics
15
stimulated by American thought…”41
The support of American eugenicists is even illustrated in Hitler’s own writings
on eugenics. There are many similarities between Hitler’s worldview and the writings of
American eugenicists. For example, Hitler shared with the Americans the view that
African Americans could dress like white people, learn the English language, and speak
English, but they would still never be equal to the white man.42
Hitler believed that this
applied to the Jews or other so-called “lesser races” in Germany. They could dress as if
they were German, learn the German language, and even speak German, but they would
never be part of the German master race.43
However, Hitler was not the first person to
attempt eugenics in Germany.
In the beginning of the movement during the Weimar Republic the relationship
between the American and the German eugenics movements was fairly simple: the
Americans sent letters to Germany to advise the Germans on how to implement eugenics.
The eugenics movement in Germany was first institutionalized by Alfred Ploetz, a non-
Marxist Socialist, who strongly believed in Darwinism.44
In 1905 he founded the Society
for Racial Hygiene. This was one of the key societies that supported the Nazis once they
came to power.
The Weimar Republic tried to make strides in their eugenic movement with the
leader of eugenic health, Harry H. Laughlin. He created a pro-German speech for the
41
Stefan
Kuhl.
The
Nazi
Connection:
Eugenics,
American
Racism
and
German
National
Socialism.
N
w
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1994.
77.
42
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
901.
43Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
901.
44
Robert
A.
Douglas.
“The
Spirit
of
the
Gothic:
Alfred
Ploetz:
Racial
Hygiene
Before
1933.”
ThatLineOFDankness.com.
1.
December,
2015.
http://www.thatlineofdarkness.com/2013/11/alfred-ploetz-racial-hygiene-before-1933.html.

16.
Eugenics
16
ninth annual meeting at Cold Spring Harbor in 1920.45
He went to the conference with
ideas for laws, for the new constitution, identifying the clauses that authorized eugenic
and racial laws.46
This powerful speech inspired Americans to help him get the German
eugenics movement going. Davenport dispatched materials and supported statements that
would help Laughlin as the advisor to the government on racial hygiene.47
However,
after World War I and the enactment of the Treaty of Versailles, the financial burden now
placed on Germany made it impossible to get the movement off the ground.48
Due to the
financial situation, the German eugenics movement at this time ended up mainly
corresponding with Cold Spring Harbor.49
That balance of power between the American and the German eugenics
movements changed drastically when Hitler came to power and entered the world of
eugenics. It then became an equal partnership. However, the Nazis pursued eugenics
much more aggressively than most people at the time would ever have thought possible.
As Edwin Black notes, “The Nazis took over the whole draft and they used the most
inhumane and execrable methods.”50
Murder had always been an option for eugenicists in
other countries as well as in Germany before 1933.51
It was openly recognized and
debated, but always rejected on moral and political grounds. No country ever took
45
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876.
P,
874.
46
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876.
P.
875.
47
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876.
48
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003..
P.876.
P.
877
49
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876.
P.
880.
50
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876..
P.
972
51
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876.
804

17.
Eugenics
17
eugenics that far until Hitler.52
Hitler did not want to take the option of waiting for years
for the undesirables to slowly weed themselves out of his society; he wanted it to happen
immediately.
The Nazis decided to use lethal injections, gas vans and gas chambers in the T-4
program, which involved the murder of the disabled people of the country that were in
institutions.53
This is where the Nazis really began their plans for genocide and developed
the bureaucratic apparatus as well as the mechanisms eventually used to kill millions of
Jews, Roma-Sinti and others during World War II. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang
Wippermann state, “ ‘elements’ of ‘lesser racial value’ in the German population were
subject to a series of ‘negative’ measures, ranging from compulsory abortion, castration,
sterilization, via commitment to asylums, and to murder.”54
It is important to remember
that even though Hitler took eugenics to the level of extermination, his ideas were
influenced and in part molded by concepts that enjoyed widespread European and
American support in the early twentieth century.
The Nazis not only took eugenics to the next level through killing, but also they
took dehumanization and separation to levels the Americans would never thought to do
on their own. Given, the Americans did have the separate but equal law that came out of
the Plessey V. Ferguson supreme court case.55
This decision forced African Americans to
live in their own areas and have their own schools, which were often underfunded;
nevertheless, the United States did not limit the amount food that was brought into the
52
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.876..P
.804
53
Edwin
Black.
War
Against
The
Weak:
Eugenics
and
America’s
Campaign
to
Create
a
Master
Race.
New
York,
Four
Walls
Eight
Windows,
2003.
P.
1019.
54
Michael
Burleigh
and
Wolfgang
Wippermann,
The
Racial
State:
Germany
1933-­‐1945,
Cambridge,
Cambridge
University
Press,
1991.
P.
46.
55
Eric
Fonder
and
John
A,
Garrty,
“Plessey
V.
Ferguson,”
History.com,
26.
November,
2015.
http://www.history.com/topics/black-­‐history/plessy-­‐v-­‐ferguson.

18.
Eugenics
18
area or forbid by law white or African Americans from moving freely between both
locations.56
There were, however, laws that African Americans could not be in certain
restaurants, movie theaters, and other public locations.57
The Nazis took this separation to the next level because they forced and gathered
Jews up into the ghettos, which were usually located in very run-down and small sections
in cities.58
In the ghettos, many families had to share a room with another family, or even
several, leaving little room for privacy and sanitation.59
Also, the residents of these ghettos were not allowed to leave unless going to
work accompanied by a Nazi guard.60
Rations for these ghettos were extremely low and
people had to stand in long lines to get food; they were given harsh curfews that
sometimes made obtaining food impossible.61
Jews also had to be employed in the ghetto,
as they had to have a job in order to not be sent to a death camp. They had to have
employment cards to prove they had work.62
Life in the ghetto revolved around food. In his diary, David Sierakowiak recounts
how the food rations became so bad that even David’s father was stealing food from his
children when they were working because the father could not find work.63
According to
The Pianist, a memoir by Wladyslaw Szpilman, he saw a scene like this in the street of
the Warsaw Ghetto. “Suddenly the old man lunged forward, seized the can and tried to
56
National
Park
Service.
“Jim
Crow-­‐
Martian
Luther
King
Jr.
National
historic
site
Georgia,”
NationalParkService.Gov,
http://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education/jim_crow_laws.htm
57
National
Park
Service.
“Jim
Crow-­‐
Martian
Luther
King
Jr.
National
historic
site
Georgia,”
NationalParkService.Gov,
http://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education/jim_crow_laws.htm
58
Bauer
Yehuda,
A
History
of
The
Holocaust,
Danbury,
CT,
Franklin
Watts,
2001
P.
160.
59
Bauer
Yehuda,
A
History
of
The
Holocaust,
Danbury,
CT,
Franklin
Watts,
2001.
P.
160.
60
Waldyslaw
Szpilman.
The
Pianist:
The
Extraordinary
True
Story
Of
One
Man’s
Survival
in
Warsaw,
1939-­‐1945.
New
York:
Picador,
1999.
P.
118.
61
Bauer
Yehuda,
A
History
of
The
Holocaust,
Danbury,
CT,
Franklin
Watts,
2001.
P.
170.
62
David
Sieraowiak.
The
Dairy
of
David
Sierakowiak:
Five
Note
books
from
the
Lodz
Ghetto.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1996,
P.
158.
63
David
Sieraowiak.
The
Dairy
of
David
Sierakowiak:
Five
Note
books
from
the
Lodz
Ghetto.
New
York:
Oxford
University
Press,
1996,
P.
230-­‐231

19.
Eugenics
19
tear it away from the women. I don’t know whether he wasn’t strong enough, or whether
she clung to the can too firmly, but in any case, instead of ending up in his hands the can
fell on the pavement, the thick, steaming soup poured out on to the dirty street…Then,
suddenly, he threw himself down full length in the slush, lapping the soup straight from
the pavement…”64
Cruelty of the Nazis was ever-present in the ghettos as well, not only with taking
away food. They had selections in the ghetto where Nazis chose who was too die and
even killed some of their victims in front of others. The Nazis’ cruelty knew no bounds
within the ghetto. Wladyslaw Szpilman recounted one horrifying memory among many:
While the Nazis were conducting a search for Jews to kill or put on a transport, they
would show their brutality. “Before we realized what was going on,” he wrote, “the
Germans had seized the sick man, picked him up, armchair and all, carried the chair to
the balcony, and thrown it out into the street from the third floor.”65
This type of activity
was common in many different ghettos. The Nazis wanted to kill as many Jews as
possible, using some of these means to do so.
The Nazis’ goals were to control every aspect of Jewish life. Impossible and
horrible working conditions, combined with barely any rations or food, resulted in the
constant deaths of people living in the ghettos.66
Of course, eventually the Nazis began to
use stationary gas chambers to kill European Jews, which allowed them to kill thousands
of human beings per day.67
64
Waldyslaw
Szpilman.
The
Pianist:
The
Extraordinary
True
Story
Of
One
Man’s
Survival
in
Warsaw,
1939-­‐1945.
New
York:
Picador,
1999.
P.
74.
65
Waldyslaw
Szpilman.
The
Pianist:
The
Extraordinary
True
Story
Of
One
Man’s
Survival
in
Warsaw,
1939-­‐1945.
New
York:
Picador,
1999.
P.
70-­‐80.
66
Bauer
Yehuda,
A
History
of
The
Holocaust,
Danbury,
CT,
Franklin
Watts,
2001.
P.
228.
67
Bauer
Yehuda,
A
History
of
The
Holocaust,
Danbury,
CT,
Franklin
Watts,
2001.
P.
234-­‐235.

20.
Eugenics
20
The Germans took eugenics to the ultimate level. They were the first to do this
and certainly were not the last, but the fact that an idea that came from America, and that
enjoyed widespread popular support across the world, could end up in the murder of
millions of people is certainly a scary thing.
What I Learned
I could have been one of the people the eugenicists would have deemed
unworthily of life. Being a person with dyslexia, reading and writing can be extremely
hard for me. What would the Nazis, or even American eugenicists, make of someone who
has a hard time reading? How does one know that a person who has a hard time reading
can never be ‘fixed’? Perhaps the educational techniques have not yet been developed.
How can we say that a person who has a hard time reading will not contribute to the
world in some other way? How does one know what ‘feebleminded’ really is? Is it a
stupid person or a lazy person, or even someone who does not care? Apart from outright
murder, what gives the members of a society the right to sterilize other people? Who
decides?
While putting this project together, I learned a lot about what eugenics is and how
it can be used in either a good or bad way. The positive aspects of eugenics were
encouraging families to have children, and lots of children at that. By encouraging people
to marry and have children, eugenicists were attempting to bring more people, and
healthy people, into the world. The bad side of eugenics is, well, almost everything else.
Unfortunately, eugenicists’ support of families and healthy pregnancies was limited to
people considered to be “valuable.” Sterilizing and murdering those who you believe to
be inferior and not worthy of life by the standards your society had set forth is one

21.
Eugenics
21
example of how immoral eugenics can become.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned is that the “logical” or “scientific”
justifications behind eugenics are horribly flawed. Believing that one could successfully
control which traits would be allowed in society to make it utopian lends itself to
totalitarianism. Certainly, the principle of the “survival of the fittest” states that the most
powerful and strong animals would be the ones to survive. Darwin never made claims
about the value of the “fittest” animals over those that died out, however. Eugenics
allowed society to pick which traits were the “best” and which should not make it. Nature
also has something to do with the control of the number of people on the planet. Even if
the leaders of eugenics were to successfully eradicate disease for a hundred years, who is
to say nature would not form new diseases to decrease the world’s population? Finally,
how does one really decide the better race? The logical reasoning behind eugenic thought
makes little sense to me. However, I do understand how societies can get caught up in
utopian ideas like eugenics.
The study of eugenics really brought home to me how potentially genocidal
ideologies can take root in ways that may initially appear normal or harmless. For
example, I can see why people might be convinced that it is in everyone’s best interest to
control the reproduction of the mentally and physically handicapped when they are
portrayed as nothing more than a financial burden. People can rationalize marriage bans
by arguing that if one generation of disabled people were prevented from continuing to
have children the cycle could stop and the children of the healthy would not have to be as
burdened as their parents. It is also not hard to understand how people can become
convinced that another “race” is a threat to their way of life. People tend to fear the

22.
Eugenics
22
unknown and because differently abled people and other “races” are not the same as
them, they fear what they could do to their way of life and see it necessary to stop them
before they become threatening.
Ultimately, I believe eugenics always has the potential to lead to genocide
because of its utopian logic. As an ideology that advances the notion of biological human
perfection, it requires coercion and violence to realize. On the extreme end of that
ideology, people can believe it is justified to kill in order to bring about the ideal society.
In order for people to have the utopia they desire, first they have to see what the most fit
race is, then from there one must find a way to eliminate all that stands in the way. The
process of ‘elimination’ could be a gradual change, such as the one pursued by
eugenicists in the United States, where the policy was to sterilize and prevent births until
the races and people deemed unworthy of life were no more, even if this would take
hundreds of years. The process could also be abrupt and involve maximum violence: the
Nazi ideology of killing all that stands in the way of their perfect society. Eric Weitz
summed up the danger of eugenics well when he wrote “…ideologies of race and nation,
revolutionary regimes with vast utopian ambitions, moments of crisis generated by war
and domestic upheaval, might, in some form, serve as guides to other cases (of genocide)
and warning signs in the future.”68
It is important to see the warning the signs that are
brought forth with eugenic ideas. These types of ideas form into more than ideas. They
turn in to the prevention of births, sterilization, murder and genocide.
68
Eric
D
Weitz.
A
Century
of
Genocide:
Utopias
of
Race
and
Nation,
Princeton,
Nj:
Princeton
University
Press,
2003.
P.
40.

23.
Eugenics
23
Conclusion
In conclusion, eugenics was a global movement that expressed itself differently
across the world. Eugenics research began to really take form in America with the study
of family history and the formation of an institution that was primarily used to study what
were the good traits and what were the bad in human beings. Then, the steps to make sure
the bad traits would not be passed on to future generations through the use of marriage
laws and sterilizations of the undesirable people were created, encouraging those with
good traits to marry each other and to have children. In England this developed into a law
where the state could control marriage and even break apart marriages it saw as unfit. The
history of eugenics culminated in the Nazis, who actively murdered the people they saw
as inferior to the “Aryan” race. They killed them in mass numbers to make sure that the
Aryan race had no threats.
This progression and global scale of the movement is the number one thing I want
people to take away from my project. The Germans were really no different than the
Americans and the rest of the world when it came to thinking that there must be a
superior race of people in the world who should control the world. The actions they took
were different and extreme, but Nazi policy was crafted from similar ideals. Eugenics
was a global movement that changed the world forever. I want people to understand the
danger of eugenics and especially that this type of thinking can lead to genocide and the
elimination of entire groups of people. Especially now at a time of the rising of the new
genocidal regime ISIS, eugenics itself is threatening to make a comeback. I want people
to understand the danger of eugenics and the thinking it includes. The magical world of
the shinny utopia and master race that is biologically and intelligently more superior then

24.
Eugenics
24
others comes at a huge and often genocidal cost.