Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (34 page)

When inside of what they thought were delousing showers, the door was locked and Zyklon B crystals were dropped into the now sealed room. In minutes, everyone in the “showers” died. Their bodies were then removed by other prisoners, taken to the crematorium to be turned into ashes, and buried in an attempt to hide this horrendous crime from the world.

The murdering was previously carried out by shooting the victims at close range, a killing method that, contrary to Himmler’s claims, caused much consternation among the mostly young German army recruits. Gassing reduced the gore that was caused by mass shootings and, consequently, reduced the demoralizing effect that the killings had on the Nazi soldiers.

HIMMLER’S END

After Germany was defeated, Himmler unsuccessfully attempted to flee from his homeland. When he was captured, rather than face his crimes, Himmler followed his master and committed suicide in 1945 by swallowing a cyanide capsule that he broke open with his teeth. He was buried in a secret grave—which is more respect than he gave his victims, millions who were buried in mass graves— so that his final resting place could not become a Nazi shrine.
⁵²
He took his own life, historian Bradley Smith concluded, because “short of death he could draw no line between the [Nazi] party and himself.”
⁵³
In the end, both Himmler’s “positive eugenics,” encouraging the racially fit to rapidly multiply, and his “negative eugenics,” killing the racially inferior, failed miserably.
⁵⁴

SUMMARY

Eugenics and race were so central to Himmler’s worldview that he believed not only Jews, but other “inferior races” such as Slavs, must be exterminated or made slaves to the superior races, a policy the SS had begun to implement as early as 1939.
⁵⁵
Toward this goal, he gave his life.

_______________

1
Richard Lukas,
The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939–1944
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1997).

2
Bradley Smith,
Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900–1926
(Stanford: Hover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1971), 1, 172.

3
Linda Schmittroth and Mary Kay Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust,
Vol. 1: A-J (Detroit: Gale, 1998), 222.

4
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:222–223.

5
Oswald Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
(New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1940), 42.

6
Smith,
Heinrich Himmler
, 87.

7
Smith,
Heinrich Himmler
, 29.

8
Christopher Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race
(New York: Wiley, 2003), 102.

9
Peter Longerich,
Heinrich Himmler. Biographie
(München: Siedler Verlag, 2008), 85; Smith,
Heinrich Himmler
, 177.

10
Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade
, 102.

11
Helmut Krausnick, ed., Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszut and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, contrib.,
Anatomy of the SS State
, trans. Richard Barry, et. al. (New York: Walker & Company, 1968), 10.

12
Smith,
Heinrich Himmler
, 122, 147.

13
Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade
, 83.

14
Paul Johnson,
A History of Christianity
(New York: Atheneum, 1976), 493.

15
Albert Speer,
Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer
, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: MacMillan, 1970), 188.

16
Norman Cohn,
Warrant for Genocide
(New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 188.

17
Krausnick, ed.,
Anatomy of the SS State
, 11.

18
Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry,
Of Pure Blood
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 23.

19
Hillel and Henry,
Of Pure Blood
, 27.

20
Krausnick, ed.,
Anatomy of the SS State
, 11.

21
Krausnick, ed.,
Anatomy of the SS State
, 11. Emphasis in original.

22
Michael Berenbaum, ed.,
Witness to the Holocaust
(New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 177.

23
Berenbaum, ed.,
Witness to the Holocaust
, 178.

24
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:225.

25
Richard Weikart,
Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 67–68.

26
Weikart,
Hitler’s Ethic
, 68.

27
Richard Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991), 73.

28
Weikart,
Hitler’s Ethic
, 174.

29
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:225.

30
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
.

31
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:225.

32
Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade
.

33
Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade
.

34
Hillel and Henry,
Of Pure Blood
, 11.

35
Hillel and Henry,
Of Pure Blood
, 12.

36
Weikart,
Hitler’s Ethic
, 157.

37
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
, 89–90.

38
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
, 75–76.

39
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
, 76.

40
Elizabeth Wiskemann, “Introduction” in Krausnick, ed.,
Anatomy of the SS State
, ix–x.

41
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
, 242.

42
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann,
The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 52.

43
Burleigh and Wippermann,
The Racial State
, 53.

44
Heather Pringle,
The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust
(New York: Hyperion, 2006).

45
Pringle,
The Master Plan
, Book jacket.

46
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:225.

47
Laurence Rees,
Auschwitz: A New History
(New York: Public Affairs Press, 2005), 17.

48
Hale,
Himmler’s Crusade
, 345.

49
Rees,
Auschwitz: A New History
, 37.

50
Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide
, 88.

51
David Cesarani,
The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 75.

52
Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel,
Heinrich Himmler: The Sinister Life of the Head of the SS and the Gestapo
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007).

53
Smith,
Heinrich Himmler
, 172.

54
Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “The Failure of Himmler’s Positive Eugenics,”
Hastings Center Report
, Vol. 7, Issue 5 (October 1977): 43–44.

55
Manvell and Fraenkel,
Heinrich Himmler
, 23, 29, 99, 107, 126, 256, 260.

Dr. Joseph Goebbels: Darwinist father of the Holocaust

INTRODUCTION

J
oseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was a leading Nazi, one of Hitler’s closest associates, and probably the second most infamous Nazi after Hitler. So important was Goebbels that, without him, some leading Nazi historians have concluded Hitler never would have gained totalitarian power.
¹

The son of working class Catholic parents, he was named Joseph “in honor of Dr. Josef Joseph, a revered local Jewish attorney and close family friend.”
²
The deeply religious Goebbels family wanted Joseph to become a priest, but it was not to be. Instead, he became an anti-priest, conducting “acrimonious and vulgar campaigns against the Catholic clergy.”
³

A bright child, he devoured every book and encyclopedia he could obtain. He studied at eight universities, and earned degrees from the University of Bonn, the University of Würzburg and the University of Freiburg.
⁴
Later, supported financially by the church, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in Germany in 1921.

Little or no evidence existed of any anti-Semitism in Goebbels’ background until much later in his life.
⁵
The love of his youth and the woman he wanted to marry, his “little rosebud,” Fräulein Else, was Jewish, as were many of his friends.
⁶
Goebbels’ major professor (and his favourite professor as well), Dr. Friedrich Gundolf, and his doctoral supervisor, Max Baron von Waldberg—both whom he praised to the skies—were also Jews, as was his wife’s stepfather.
⁷