Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (8 page)

30
Marvin Olasky, “Darwinian Siege,”
World Magazine
(April 11, 2009): 22.

31
Olasky, “Darwinian Siege,”
World Magazine
(April 11, 2009): 22.

32
Jörg Ganzenmüller,
Das belagerte Leningrad 1941–1944
(Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2005), 17, 20.

33
Longerich,
Holocaust
, 241.

34
Longerich,
Holocaust
, 241.

35
Zentner and Bedürftig, eds.,
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich
, 624-625.

36
Zentner and Bedürftig, eds.,
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich
, 624-625.

37
Zentner and Bedürftig, eds.,
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich
, 624-625.

38
Zentner and Bedürftig, eds.,
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich
, 554.

39
Longerich,
Holocaust
, 24, 31, 132, 142.

40
Alan Steinweis,
Studying the Jew: Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Adolf Hitler:
A doctrinaire Darwinist

INTRODUCTION

A
central goal of Hitler and his government was the development and implementation of eugenics to produce a “superior race,” often called the Aryan, Teutonic or Nordic race. At the very least, this goal required preventing the “inferior races” from mixing with those judged superior in order to reduce contamination of the gene pool. Hitler believed that what we today recognize as the human gene pool could be improved by using selective breeding, similar to how farmers breed superior cattle.

In formulating his racial ideas, Hitler relied heavily on Darwinism, especially the elaborations by Darwin’s German disciples such as Professors Fritz Lenz and Ernst Haeckel. The “superior race” belief was based on the theory of racial inequality within each species, a major presumption and requirement of Darwin’s original “survival of the fittest” theory.

This philosophy culminated in the Final Solution, the extermination of 6 million Jews and over 5 million Poles and others who belonged to what German scientists judged were “inferior races,” including Slavs and Gypsies.
¹
Hitler’s writings and speeches reveal that Darwin’s theory and the writings of Darwinists had a major influence on his views of race and eugenics.

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON HITLER

Although it is unknown if Hitler read Darwin’s original writings, he did read those of Darwin’s disciples.
²
One of the leading German eugenicists was Fritz Lenz, professor of eugenics at the University of Münich. Lenz’s publisher, Julius F. Lehmann, was a close personal friend of Hitler. Lehmann’s published many books that promoted “social Darwinist racism, eugenics, and anti-Semitism” and these books

probably had a significant influence on Hitler’s worldview. By the 1890s Lehmann was a leading Pan-German nationalist, and in 1907–8 he became excited about eugenics as a means to rejuvenate the German nation. Toward the end of World War I Lehmann began publishing a magazine…which promoted many ideas that found their way into Hitler’s ideology. Whether it reflected ideas that Hitler already embraced from other sources, or whether it decisively influenced his thought is unclear.
³

Furthermore, Lehmann “regularly gave Hitler copies of the books he published on eugenics and racism” some of which are now part of Hitler’s personal library captured by the U.S. army after World War II and now housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. We know that Hitler read many books on eugenics, racism and related topics because he tended to mark up the books he read, even adding his penciled notes in some.
⁴

Hitler’s personal library included books by the “notorious race theorist Hans F.K. Günther,” the chair in social anthropology at the University of Jena.
⁵
Hitler probably read Günther’s works in the 1920s, possibly even before writing
Mein Kampf
. In his account of the history of racial ideas, Günther honoured Darwin for encouraging his research in racial anthropology, even repeating many common race stereotypes, such as the claim that “Jews lacked creativity and originality, except perhaps in the field of music.”
⁶
Furthermore, Günther

maintained that the racial antagonism that Germans feel toward Jews is not a cultural artifact but rather is rooted in the German’s blood. This idea, that racial animosity was a biological instinct helping to preserve the race in the human struggle for existence, was a common theme in biological racism in the early twentieth century. Finally, he suggested the strict separation of Germans and Jews as the only viable solution to the racial problem. He called intermarriage
Rassenchande
(racial disgrace), a favorite term of the Nazis later when enforcing the Nuremberg Laws.
⁷

Another Nazi who reportedly had a major influence on Hitler was the charlatan Kurt Lüdecke, who read in depth on the topic of eugenics, and foremost among his reading was Sir Francis Galton and his book titled
Hereditary Genius
.
⁸
While all of the books Hitler read are unknown, it is clear that he knew about Darwin and eugenics because social Darwinist eugenic ideals were openly espoused in his two published books (one published after Hitler committed suicide; the other,
Mein Kampf,
made Hitler a fortune), as well as in many of his public speeches that clearly

reflect the influence, either directly or indirectly, of Günther, Lenz…and other racial thinkers of his time. As many scholars have explained, Hitler’s world-view revolved around race. He viewed history as a Darwinian racial struggle, with the victors expanding at the expense of the losers. He spurned any moral codes—especially ones benefiting the weak and sick—that would interfere with the ability of the “Aryan” race to triumph in this struggle.
⁹

Hitler often discussed the motor of evolution, survival of the strongest race and the need to eliminate the weakest, obviously reflecting the Darwinian survival of the fittest idea. This “truth,” Hitler wrote, is “obvious” because interbreeding of two life forms that are

not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness.
¹⁰

Hitler used this Darwinistic philosophy to support his belief that, contrary to Christianity, the strong must dominate the weak, and the evolution of life would be impossible if this “law of Nature” was not allowed to prevail. In the struggle for life, the weak succumb, and the right to propagate is given “by Nature” only to the strongest.
¹¹
Struggle is the means by which a superior species survives and a weaker one perishes. Hitler reasoned that this struggle results in a species evolving to a higher level. In Hitler’s words, the weak inferior humans

can view this as cruel, but…if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both cases, Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction…. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development.
¹²

He added that nature abhors the

blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow. Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people.
¹³

Hitler’s proof for the harm resulting from mingling Aryans with “less evolved,” thus inferior, races was his claim that by far the largest part of the North American population consisted of Germanic races “who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples,” and, as a result, manifested a “different humanity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale.” Hitler believed this observation documented the adverse effect of racial mixture. Furthermore Hitler claimed that the

Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to defilement of the blood. The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level of the higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness.
¹⁴

Hitler also used evolution to justify war by arguing that the natural law, by which he meant natural selection,

teaches us with every look into its working, into its events, that the principle of selection dominates it, that the stronger remains victor and the weaker succumbs. It teaches us, that what often appears to someone as cruelty, because he himself is affected or because through his education he has turned away from the laws of nature, is in reality necessary in order to bring about a higher evolution of living organisms.
¹⁵