Guest
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was an Austrian-born politician, who was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is famous for his involvement in World War II, and his involvement in the Holocaust. Ideas of racial purity and mental hygiene had already been circulating throughout Germany before Hitler rose to power. German eugenicists were actively involved with eugenicists in other countries, such as Charles Davenport in America. Hitler, however, was largely inspired after having read Eugen Fischer's, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institution for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (an institute funded through the Rockefeller Foundation), book, Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene while imprisoned. The ideas presented by Fischer influenced Hitler's own book, Mein Kampf, particularly towards the use of eugenics to “purify“ an Aryan race. Under Hitler's rule, German medicine became greatly engaged in racial hygiene. Nazi policies in general were often portrayed as “applied biology“, building on ideas that had already been circulating. Influenced by theories of racial hygiene and anti-semitism, Hitler believed that eugenic practices were necessary to remove degenerate elements from the nation's bloodstream. In 1934, a law was passed allowing forced sterilization of the mentally ill, the “feeble-minded“, and those with other undesireable traits, modelled after sterilization laws suggested by American eugenists such as Harry Laughlin (German/Nazi Eugenics, n.d.). Marriage laws followed, forbidding marriage to the “unfit“. Many public education campaigns were also held to eliminate “genetic poisons“, such as homosexuality. By the start of World War II, nearly 400,000 people had been sterilized in Germany. During the war, measures enacted for “lives not worth living“ led to the killing of thousands of mental patients. Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and Social Democrats were also targeted for segregation and “elimination“. In addition to the notorious practices of negative eugenics in Nazi Germany, Hitler also advocated for positive eugenic practices by encouraging those that were racially pure and strong to have more children for the good of the nation and the formation of the “Aryan“ race. In his Second Book, Hitler notably praised the Greek city of Sparta for its practice of selective infanticide, what he saw as an early eugenic practice. #NikolaysGeneticsLessons #eugenics #sterilization #IQTests #IQScore #Genetics #margaretSanger #reproduction #nazis #naziGermany #naziEugenics #racialHygiene #civilRights #AryanRace #breeding #humanMating #matingOfPeople #peopleMating #eugenicsTheory #darkSideOfScienceDocumentary #CharlesDarwin #galton #scienceDocumentary #BabyAlbertExperiment #theMonsterStudy #DarkSideOfScience #scientificDocumentary #historyDocumentary #adolfHitler
