A Brief History
On July 14, 1933, the Nazi Party that had just taken power in Germany began a program of eugenics with their institution of The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. This law demanded the sterilization of any person deemed to have a genetic disorder.
Digging Deeper
The alleged goal of the this program was a purification of the gene pool, with allowing genetically “fit” people to reproduce abundantly without their children having to compete for valuable resources with genetically inferior children. Achieving this goal would theoretically make the German people and thus the German state stronger.
Targets slated for sterilization included mentally retarded people, people with illnesses and diseases deemed to be genetic, the deformed, the mentally ill, people with birth defects, some of the blind and deaf, and to some extent dissidents, prisoners and general ne’er do wells. Institutionalized people were either to be sterilized or even “euthanized,” killed as “unworthy of life.”
Over the course of the Nazi regime, about 400,000 people were sterilized involuntarily under this law, and a further 300,000 killed. Where would Nazi Party theorists get their ideas about eugenics? From the United States! The US had been ground zero for the eugenics movement since the latter part of the 19th Century, and the notion was well established in America. California, especially, had a thriving eugenics program.
The popularity of the idea of selective breeding of humans was not limited to those elite people in charge. Even African-American leaders such as W. E. B. du Bois espoused the benefits of only allowing the “fittest” 10% of any race to breed to improve the human species. Some of these theorists also supported the idea of the top tier of each race to interbreed with each other to create a single, master race, while others incorporated anti-miscegenation concepts into their proposals (the avoidance of race mixing).
Laws were passed in the US forbidding “feeble minded” people from marrying, and epileptics and others designated also forbidden from marriage. Many states even had programs of sterilization of persons deemed unfit to reproduce, with North Carolina designating an IQ of 70 as the threshold for sterilization. The sterilizations in that state continued until 1977! (Just in case you thought this issue was outdated.)
The Federal government of the US also used these ideas to control what people were allowed to immigrate to the US, and racial, ethnic, and national origin quotas were likewise implemented. Today, the US is still struggling with the idea of controlling immigration as a method to ensure the “quality” of the populace.
The big problem with the idea of eugenics is “Who decides what criteria are used to determine who is sterilized?” Arbitrary ideas about fitness have in the past included “promiscuity” and other goofy concepts as a reason to sterilize someone. Racial origin has also played a large part in involuntary sterilizations, and hapless prisoners have been targeted. Who has the right to decide? Sounds okay unless you or your family are on the list to be sterilized or killed!
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What are your thoughts about eugenics? Does any government have the right to invoke such a program? Is it good or bad for humankind? Do profoundly intellectually disabled people have a right to reproduce? Who decides?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bergman, Jerry. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview: How the Nazi Eugenic Crusade for a Superior Race Caused the Greatest Holocaust in World History. Joshua Press, 2012.
Kühl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press USA, 2002.