Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview

HITLER AND THE NAZI DARWINIAN WORLDVIEW

Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview
is a powerful reminder of the central role Darwin’s ideas played in opening the way for the depraved minds of Hitler and his henchmen to conceive and carry out some of the most shocking crimes in world history. Well documented in the writings of the participants themselves as well as in the accounts of both American and German historians, this book is a sobering study of the evil fruits of a false belief.

STEVEN E. WOODWORTH, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas

A challenging read! Before delving into this book readers should brace themselves for encountering a blistering attack against Adolf Hitler’s mid-twentieth-century German quest to produce a “superior race.” This philosophy culminated in the so-called Final Solution, the extermination of approximately 6 million Jews and over 5 million other people who belonged to what German scientists judged were “inferior races,” including blacks, Slavic peoples, especially Poles and Russians and Ukrainians, Gypsies and some Asiatic races—essentially all peoples in the world except Aryans (Western Europeans). The Nazis also killed the disabled and were anti-Church fanatics. Bergman’s new book contains an extensive bibliographic collection of writers who have recognized that the German conquest had its foundational doctrines solidly based upon Darwinian evolutionary thinking.

WAYNE FRAIR, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Biology, The King’s College, New York

If you think that there was only a superficial connection between evolution and Nazism, be astonished at the facts when reading this book. Learn how evolutionary theory animated so many aspects of Nazi ideology. Realize why Hitler’s “Christianity” was purely tactical in nature and why evolutionary theory played a major role in driving erstwhile devout Christians into hardened Nazis.

JAN PECZKIS, M.A., Author, teacher and lecturer

Professor Jerry Bergman’s book is certainly much needed, and I am in total agreement with his overall theme. I found the book interesting and engrossing, especially the second part. I heartily recommend it.

EMERSON THOMAS McMULLEN, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of History, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia

If you want to be informed about the details of what happened to cause World War II, and we all should, Jerry Bergman’s latest exposé is required reading. Long before I got to the end of the book, it was obvious that Charles Darwin’s ideas were deeply embedded in the minds of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. While Darwin certainly wasn’t the only culprit, one has to wonder how much less horrific things might have been without Darwinism.

MILT MARCY, author and lecturer

A reasonable attempt to help a popular audience understand the Darwinian influences on leading Nazi officials.

RICHARD WIEKART, Ph.D., Professor of History, California State University, Stanislaus

www.joshuapress.com

Published by

Joshua Press Inc., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Distributed by

Sola Scriptura Ministries International

www.sola-scriptura.ca

First published 2012

© 2012 Jerry Bergman. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission from the publishers.

Cover and book design by Janice Van Eck

The publication of this book was made possible by the generous support of
The Ross-Shire Foundation

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Bergman, Jerry, 1946–

     Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian worldview : how the Nazi eugenic crusade for a superior race caused the greatest holocaust in world
history / Jerry Bergman.

Includes bibliographical references.

Electronic monograph issued in various formats.

Also issued in print format.

ISBN 978-1-894400-50-3 (ePub).

     1. Social Darwinism—Germany—History—20th century. 2. Darwin, Charles, 1809–1882—Influence. 3. Eugenics—Germany—History—20th century. 4. Racism—Germany—History—20th century. 5. Holocaust,
Jewish (1939–1945). 6. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945—Philosophy. 7. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945—Political and social views. 8. National socialism—Philosophy.
9. Nazis—Germany—Biography. I. Title.

DD256.6.B47 2012                    943.086                         C2012-906172-7

To my wife Dianne, the love of my life,
and our children, Aeron, Christine, Scott and Mishalea,
and our grandchildren, Kearstin, Bryn, Bryson, Sienna,
Owen, Abigail, Mackenzie, Mia and Josie.

Contents

      Foreword by Dr. Carl Wieland

      Preface by Dr. David Herbert

      Acknowledgements

00  Introduction

01  The Holocaust: Government-sponsored
mass murder inspired by social Darwinism

02  Adolf Hitler: A doctrinaire Darwinist

03  Was Adolf Hitler a Christian?

04  Darwinism, Nazi race policies and the Holocaust

05  Hitler’s leading Darwinian scientists

06  Hitler’s academics and doctors

07  Dr. Josef Mengele: Darwin’s angel of death

08  Martin Bormann: Hitler’s right-hand man

09  Heinrich Himmler: Darwinist and mass murderer

10  Dr. Joseph Goebbels: Darwinist father of the Holocaust

11  Hermann Göring comes under the influence of Hitler and Darwinism

12  Reinhard Heydrich: Fervent anti-Christian and Holocaust mastermind

13  Dr. Alfred Rosenberg: The “scribe of the new gospel” of Darwinism

14  Julius Streicher: Anti-Catholic Darwinist and Hitler’s mentor

15  Lebensborn: Breeding better Nazis using Darwinism

16  Darwinism in the biology textbooks of the Third Reich

17  What can be learned from attempts to apply Darwinism to society

Bibliography

“There was an ideological dimension to Hitler’s foreign policy, an ideological level which saturated these geopolitical ideas.… The new greater German Reich—Greater German Empire that…was to dominate the European continent—was to be a racially pure empire.… Germany was…[the Nazis believed] the last best racial hope of mankind.”
¹

—Thomas Childers, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

_______________

1
Thomas Childers,
World War II: A Military and Social History
(Chantilly: The Teaching Company, 1998), 27–28.

Foreword

Amazingly, though we live in an age of overwhelming amounts of information, people still swallow some ridiculous notions about one of history’s most famous sets of villains: Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. One of the most bizarre is that somehow Darwinism was not at the front and centre of Nazi ideology. My late mother, who grew up under the National Socialist German Worker’s Party government, confirmed the all-pervasive influence of evolution on that society’s aberrations as a “given.” She would have been surprised to hear that anyone could deny something so patently obvious.

Yet the myth persists in some circles, as does the perhaps even more “off the wall” idea that Hitler was somehow a Christian! At least the latter idea has some grains of reality as its possible seed material—Hitler did on numerous occasions try to pull the wool over the church’s eyes while he was actively working to destroy it.

This thoroughly documented work by Dr. Bergman is therefore both timely and welcome. It adds to the recent spate of scholarly books that together should hammer the remaining nails into the coffin of such urban myths.

Bergman’s unique approach is to make his point not just from Hitler’s own writings and actions, but from examining one by one the lives, actions and statements of those of his disciples closest to him. The result is both fascinating and chilling. Much still has the power to surprise and shock, even for those who, like myself, think they are thoroughly familiar with what went on in the Third Reich.

All in all, a very important, interesting and most readable book.

—Dr. Carl Wieland

Physician, author and managing director of CMI

Preface

Harvard-trained historian Robert G. L. Waite stated in the preface of his book,
The Psychopathic God
(1977), that the appeal of Adolf Hitler as the leader of Nazi Germany still piques the interest of many people. At the time that he was writing his book, he was able to make the astounding observation that between 1945 (Hitler’s suicide) and 1975, “There were already 50,000 serious works about Hitler and his Reich.”
¹
On a current website, “Adolf Hitler and Popular Culture,” one is able to find Hitler featured in video games, television comedy, theatre and films. This site also mentions that, according to WorldCat—the world’s largest library catalogue—there are 553 fictional works related to Adolf Hitler.
²
The public’s fascination regarding this fiendish dictator seems insatiable.