WORLD WAR II & EUGENICS

EUGENICS

Crime, alcoholism, poverty, etc., are hard social problems to solve

Analyze exterior observable differences

Physical traits & evidence connected to intelligence or morality or heredity?

The simple idea…

Find ‘unwanted’ sick, criminal, etc., & remove from society

Led to a ‘Rational’ justification for racism and elitism

Definition: the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population

reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics)

promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics)

What is Eugenics?

Eugenics had worldwide appeal

Eugenics = bad science

Nazi Eugenics Propaganda

Nazi’s sucking at racism

Werner Goldberg, who was of half Jewish ancestry (Mischling in Nazi terminology), who was blond and blue-eyed, was used in Nazi recruitment posters as "The Ideal German Soldier."

Goebbels personally selected Hessy Levinsons Taft, a young Jewish baby, to show the "ideal Aryan baby" in Nazi propaganda. He was unaware of her ancestry. (ca. 1935)

"We do not stand alone". Nazi propaganda poster from 1936. The woman is holding a baby and the man is holding a shield inscribed with the title of Nazi Germany's 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (their compulsory sterilization law). The couple is in front of a map of Germany, surrounded by the flags of nations which had enacted (to the left) or were considering (bottom and to the right) similar legislation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wir_stehen_nicht_allein.png

Where did Nazi’s get the idea?

“Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in… eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. …the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.”

USA & Eugenics

US Private Propaganda

Eugenics supporters hold up signs on Wall Street, NY, circa 1915

c. 1930, US Traveling exhibit on eugenics

The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C.M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:

Influence on Germany

"You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler … Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

One of the methods that was commonly suggested to get rid of "inferior" populations was euthanasia. A 1911 Carnegie Institute report mentioned euthanasia as one of its recommended "solutions" to the problem of cleansing society of unfit genetic attributes. The most commonly suggested method was to set up local gas chambers. However, many in the eugenics movement did not believe that Americans were ready to implement a large-scale euthanasia program, so many doctors had to find clever ways of subtly implementing eugenic euthanasia in various medical institutions. For example, a mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis (reasoning that genetically fit individuals would be resistant), resulting in 30-40% annual death rates. Other doctors practiced euthanasia through various forms of lethal neglect.

Euthanasia or Murder?

North Carolina

2006-2010, California prisons accused of forced sterilization of female inmates.

Listen: http://

www.npr.org/2013/09/20/219366146/calif-seeks-answers-on-questionable-prison-sterilizations

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/15/health/california-forced-sterilizations/

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/Female-Inmates-Sterilized-in-California-Prisons-Without-Approval-214634341.html

Sadly, some ideas still continue…

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/controversies/human%20difference.aspx

http://www.policymic.com/articles/53723/8-shocking-facts-about-sterilization-in-u-s-history

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/tp/Forced-Sterilization-History.htm

http://nancydavenport.org/eugenics.html http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796 http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

Sources: