Social Darwinism
The Nazis took on the Social Darwinian idea of "survival of the fittest" to justify their actions. They studied the Darwinian books that had recently been translated into German, and even went on to replace theology with Darwinism in schools.
Survival of the Fittest
“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”
- Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler:Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany
As leader of Nazi Germany, Hitler believed it was his right to move this process along by exterminating all the other races. Only people of the Aryan race could marry and breed with other Aryan people. Marriages and sexual relationships between the Aryans and the Jews were prohibited. Once the inferior races were exterminated, Hitler believed that future generations would be grateful for the improvements that his programs brought to humanity.
"The Jews, labeled subhumans, became nonbeings. It was both legal and right to exterminate them in the collectivist and evolutionist viewpoint. They were not considered...persons in the sight of the German government. " -Jerry Bergman
Scientific Truths
One's prejudice views became justifiable as scientific truths. The Darwinian revolution and the works of its chief German spokesperson, Professor Haeckel, led racists to believe that extermination of a race was acceptable. The philosophy that humans were able to use Darwinism to produce a "higher level" of human is mentioned repeatedly in the writings and speeches of prominent Nazis. Accomplishing this Darwinian goal for the world required elimination of those considered less fit by open barbaric behavior.
"Darwin's notion of struggle for survival...legitimized by the latest scientific views, justified the racists' conception of superior and inferior peoples and nations and validate the conflict between them." -Jerry Bergman |
"The basic outline of German social Darwinism was man was merely a part of nature with no specific transcendent qualities or special humanness. On the other hand, the Germans were members of a biologically superior community. Politics was merely the straightforward application of the laws of biology. In essence, Haeckel and his fellow social Darwinists advanced the ideas that were to become the core assumptions of natural socialism. The business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection." -Jerry Bergman |
The Nazi view on Darwinian evolution and race was consequently a major part of the fatal combination of ideas and events which let to the Holocaust and World War II. The first Nazi eugenics policy, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, was passed in July 1933. It required German doctors to register all genetically related illnesses in all patients other than women over 45. Reportable cases could have been disorders such as mental retardation, manic-depression, blindness, deafness, or other severe physical deformities. Even chronic alcoholism could be considered a genetic disorder. The law also set up "heredity health courts." These courts examined individual cases and ruled whether they thought the patient should be "rendered incapable of procreation."
“Eugenics was central to the entire Nazi enterprise, joined with romantic nativist and racist myths of the pure-bred Nordic. The emphasis on ‘blood’ called for a purifying of the nation’s gene pool, so that Germans could regain the nobility and greatness of their genetically pure forebears.” Alison Thompson (historian)