Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (50 page)

The concern was

how swiftly the “ethnic value” of an entire nation can change when left alone to the same degree of selection and anti-selection. Let’s assume one half of the population in a nation is less valuable yet produces four children per couple (given the same number of deaths for each group, 15 of 1,000 per annum), the more valuable half having only two children would therefore be extinct within 300 years.
⁴³

The authors’ next claim that the Jews are “a racial mixture of parasitic nature” and that the “disharmony of the Jewish racial mixture” is proven by the higher frequency of certain medical conditions among Jewish-Gentile offspring, such as flat feet. They also claim that diabetes is four times higher in Jews compared to other nationalities (a conclusion not supported by medical research). The authors then argued that the “most repugnant features of the Jewish people” are rooted in their inferior moral disposition, including

craftiness, physical and mental uncleanness, cruelty, greed, a distaste for physical labour, particularly the vocation of farmer or soldier.… It is therefore right to view Jews as a parasitic nation or a racial mix of parasitic characteristics that causes its host nation only disadvantage and spells disaster. The calamity brought upon Europe initiated by the emancipation of Jewry, which gave them equal civil and political rights, was nearly disastrous.… The Gypsy nation is also a foreign body and consequently has to be rejected.
⁴⁴

The text then concluded that, above all else, “it is our sacred and civil duty to protect our blood from being contaminated with alien blood, especially Jewish blood. No greater shame can be inflicted on the honour of the German nation than the breaking of this law.”
⁴⁵

The authors also stressed that “racial reinvigoration of German blood” in German society requires drastic action, and that Nazi Germany, being the

first country on earth to recognize the mortal danger facing civilized nations on this globe due to a violation of fundamental laws of life, has therefore as a consequence adjusted its policies toward armed combat of these dangers.… After the assumption of power by National Socialism, our first concern was to protect the German nation from further increase of hereditarily ill individuals and to reduce to a minimum any further increases. The passing in 1933 of the
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring
stems from this desire.
⁴⁶

The text concluded with the amazing statement that this new German race law “is an immense blessing” because it uses “advanced science to keep our race clean in a humane way, a method that otherwise is brought about in nature more brutally.”
⁴⁷

Although some textbooks were more tactful, many, if not most, Nazi era texts came to similar conclusions. This was one reason for the high level of German support for Nazism. Another reason for teaching Darwinism in school was that Hitler’s goal of “total militarization” required acceptance of war “as an integral part of a life of Darwinian struggle.”
⁴⁸

Racism was not just limited to Jews, but extended to all putative inferior peoples, even those from India, which one text taught had unfortunately

gone downhill due to mixing with lesser races, but the fact that an Indian, Dr. Chandrasekhara Raman, had won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1930 made clear that the Nordic element in India had not yet been completely eradicated. In Africa, the Negro had “triumphed biologically” over the white settlers and would soon do the same in the hopelessly heterogeneous United States. What’s more, the French, in…carrying on the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, had severely diminished their Nordic population, which accounted for their “intellectual decline.”
⁴⁹

Few national groups were left out of the racially inferior category:

Along with the Jews, Negroes and the yellow races were specifically mentioned, [in the textbook] and the reader was cautioned that mixing with “Middle Eastern” and “Oriental elements” to “the east of our Reich”…thus introducing the Slavs, who would be the next ethnic group to be designated subhumans, or
Untermenschen
.
⁵⁰

The texts discussed above are only a few of the many published during the Nazi era that endeavoured to indoctrinate students into Darwinism. Others include Hans Heinze’s
Rasse und Erbe: Ein Wegweiser auf dem Gebiete der Rassenkunde, Vererbungslehre und Erbgesundheitspflege für den Gebrauch an Volks- und Mittelschulen
(
Race and Inheritance: a Guide to the Study of Race, Genetics and Heredity Hygene for Use in Elementary and Middle Schools
) from 1934 and Otto Steche’s
Leitfaden der Rassenkunde und Vererbungslehre der Erbgesundheitspflege und Familienkunde für die Mittelstufe
(
Guide to Race and Genetics for Heredity, Hygiene and Genealogy for Junior High Schools
) from 1935.
⁵¹

Nazi educators also published a journal titled,
Deutsche Wissenschaft Erziehung und Volksbildung: Amtsblatt des Reichsministeriums für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung und der Unterrichtsverwaltungen der anderen Länder
(
German Science and Education: Official Journal of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Culture and the Education Authorities of the Other Countries
).

SUMMARY

The evolution and eugenics content of German biology textbooks printed during World War II shows that a form of Darwinian racism was openly taught and necessarily influenced the Holocaust. Furthermore, the Nazi government control of German schools was driven by the need to indoctrinate German children into evolution. A central Nazi policy was to ensure that Nazi racism and other programmes had as much support—and as little opposition—as possible.

The Nazis aggressively pushed the teaching of Darwinism in their schools during the entire time that they ruled Germany, just as is now being done in America and other nations.
⁵²
In Germany, Darwinism indoctrination was part of the process to ready the population for the elimination of the Jews and other putative inferior races to achieve the goal of producing a superior race.

Racism, especially anti-Semitism, was a major Nazi party policy and Darwinism was part of the strategy that the Nazis used to spread it.
⁵³
Clearly, “Darwinism provided support for Nazi propaganda campaigns warning of the threat of Jewish blood to [the] German population.”
⁵⁴
They failed, and we today view their attempt as one of the worst acts of inhumanity in history—yet the West is pursuing a similar Darwinian indoctrination policy today.

_______________

1
I relied heavily on the research of Professor Richard Weikart for this chapter, specifically his unpublished essay, “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought.” Any mistakes that remain are mine.

2
Cited in Christopher J. Klicka and Gregg Harris,
The Right Choice: The Incredible Failure of Public Education and the Rising Hope of Home Schooling
(Gresham: Noble Publishing Associates, 1992), 89.

3
Gilmer W. Blackburn,
Education in the Third Reich: A Study of Race and History in Nazi Textbooks
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 22.

4
William L. Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 249.

5
Gregory Wegner,
Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich
(New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002), 72.

6
Blackburn,
Education in the Third Reich
, 21–22.

7
Blackburn,
Education in the Third Reich
, 127.

8
Wegner,
Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich
.

9
Lynn H. Nicholas,
Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 84.

10
Mario Bendiscioli,
Nazism versus Christianity
(London: Skeffington & Son, 1939), 193.

11
Abraham Wolf,
Higher Education in Nazi Germany
(London: Methuen, 1944), 24.

12
Maxine Block, ed.,
Current Biography: Who’s News and Why
, Vol. 2. (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1942), 727.

13
H. Linder and R. Lotze, “Lehrplanentwurf für den biologischen Unterricht an den höheren Knabenschulen. Bearbeitet im Auftrag des NSLB. Reichsfachgebiet Biologie,”
Der Biologe
, Vol. 6 (1937): supplement, 239–246. [ In English: “Draft syllabus for biology teaching at senior schools for boys. Adapted by order of the NSLB (National Socialist Teachers Association). Reich subject area ‘biology.’”]

14
Linder and Lotze, “Lehrplanentwurf für den biologischen Unterricht an den höheren Knabenschulen: 148–149.

15
Nicholas,
Cruel World
, 84–85.

16
Linder and Lotze, “Lehrplanentwurf für den biologischen Unterricht an den höheren Knabenschulen: 141, 157, 160.

17
Peter Kramp and Gerhard Benl, eds.,
Vererbungslehre, Rassenkunde und Rassenhygiene: Lehrbuch für die Oberstufe Höherer Lehranstalten
, 2 vols. (Leipzig : G. Thieme, 1936). [In English:
Genetics, Study of Race and Race Hygiene: Textbook for Senior High Schools
.]

18
Hermann Wiehle and Marie Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen. Fünfter Teil. Klasse 5 für Mädchen
(Halle: Hermann Schroedel Verlag, 1942), 168. [In English:
Biology for Middle School
.]

19
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 168.

20
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 168.

21
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 169. See also, Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin/The Riverside Press, 1962), 20.

22
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 169–170.

23
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 170–172.

24
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 172.

25
Cited by Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 172. See also, Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 275, 460.

26
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 173. See also, Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 474, 105, 459.

27
Wiehle and Harm,
Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen
, 174. See also, Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 314.

28
Paul Brohmer,
Der Unterricht in der Lebenskunde
, 4th ed. (Osterwieck-Harz: A.W. Zickfeldt, 1943). [In English:
The Teaching of Biology
.]

29
Ferdinand Rossner,
Der Weg zum ewigen Leben der Natur: Gegenwartsfragen der biologischen Lebenskunde
, 2nd ed. (Langensalza: Verlag von Julius Beltz, 1937), 100. [In English:
The Way to Eternal Life in Nature: Contemporary Questions of Biology
.]