War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, Expanded Edition (52 page)

Two years later, in 1911, Ploetz raised his group’s profile again, this time by participating in the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden. But the Anglo-American bloc was clearly reluctant to see the German wing rise on the world eugenic stage. After a series of negotiations, the Anglo-American group for all intents and purposes absorbed Ploetz’s budding international network into their larger and better-financed movement.
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Ploetz was brought in as a lead vice president of the First International Congress of Eugenics in London in 1912. He was one of about fifteen individuals invited back to Paris the next year to create the Permanent International Eugenics Committee. This new and elite panel evolved into the International Eugenics Commission and later became the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, which governed the entire worldwide movement. After some failed attempts to regain leadership, Ploetz and his societies finally bowed to American eugenicists and their international eugenics agencies.
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After 1913, the United States continued to dominate by virtue of its widespread legislative and bureaucratic progress as well as its diverse research programs. These American developments were closely followed and popularized within the German scientific and eugenic establishment by Geza von Hoffmann, an Austro-Hungarian vice consul who traveled throughout the United States studying eugenic practices. Von Hoffmann’s 1913 book,
Racial Hygiene in the United States (Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika),
exhaustively detailed American laws on sterilization and marriage restrictions, as well as methods of field investigation and data collection. With equal thoroughness, he delineated America’s eugenic organizational structure-from the Rockefeller Foundation to the institutions at Cold Spring Harbor. Then, in alphabetical order, he summarized each state’s eugenic legislation. A comprehensive eighty-four-page bibliography was appended, with special subsections for such topics as “euthanasia” and “sterilization.”
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Most importantly, von Hoffmann’s comprehensive volume held up American eugenic theory and practice as the ideal for Germany to emulate. “Galton’s dream,” he wrote, “that racial hygiene should become the religion of the future, is being realized in America …. America wants to breed a new superior race.” Von Hoffmann repeatedly chided Germany for allowing mental defectives to roam freely when in America such people were safely in institutions. Moreover, he urged Germany to follow America’s example in erecting race-based immigration barriers. For years after
Racial Hygiene in the United States
was published, leading German eugenicists would credit von Hoffmann’s book on America’s race science as a seminal reference for German biology students.
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Laughlin and the Eugenics Record Office were the leading conduits of information for von Hoffmann. The ERO sent von Hoffmann its special bulletins and other informational summaries. In turn, von Hoffmann hoped to impress Laughlin with updates of his own. He faithfully reported the latest developments in Germany and Austria, such as the formation of a new eugenic research society in Leipzig, a nascent eugenic sexology study group in Vienna, and genetic conference planning in Berlin.
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But it was the American developments that captivated von Hoffmann. Continually impressed with Laughlin’s ideas, he frequently reported the latest American news in German medical and eugenic literature. “I thank you sincerely,” von Hoffmann wrote Laughlin in a typical letter dated May 26, 1914, “for the transmission of your exhaustive and interesting reports. The far-reaching proposal of sterilizing one tenth of the population impressed me very much. I wrote a review of [the) report … in the
Archiv for Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie
[Ploetz’s journaI].”
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Eager to be a voice for German eugenics in America, von Hoffmann also contributed articles about German developments to leading U.S. publications. In October of 1914, his article “Eugenics in Germany” appeared in the
Journal of Heredity,
explaining that while sterilization was being debated, “the time has not yet come for such a measure in Germany.” In the same issue, the
Journal of Heredity
published an extensive review of Fischer’s book about race crossing between Dutch and Hottentots in Africa, and the resulting “Rehoboth bastard” hybrids. Indeed, German eugenic philosophy and progress were popular in the
Journal of Heredity.
In 1914, for example, they published an article tracing the heredity of Bismarck, an article outlining plans for a new experimental genetics lab in Berlin, an announcement for the next international genetics conference in Berlin, and reviews of the latest German books.
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In the fall of 1914, the Great War erupted. During the war, “the eugenics movement in Germany stood entirely still,” as one of Germany’s top eugenic leaders later remembered in
Journal of Heredity.
Ploetz withdrew to his estate. Sensational headlines in American newspapers reported and denounced German atrocities against civilians, such as bayoneting babies and mutilating women’s breasts. Many of these stories were later found to be utterly unfounded. But despite the headlines, the American eugenics movement strengthened ties with its German scientific counterparts. In 1916, Madison Grant’s
The Passing of the Great Race
declared that the white Nordic race was destined to rule the world, and confirmed the Aryan people’s role in it. German nationalists were heartened by America’s recognition of Nordic and Aryan racial superiority. Reviews of the book inspired a spectrum of German scientists and nationalists to think eugenically even before the work was translated into German.
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American fascination with the struggling German eugenics movement continued right up until the United States entered the war in April of 1917. In fact, the April issue of
Eugenical News
summarized in detail von Hoff-mann’s latest article in
Journal of Heredity.
It outlined Germany’s broad plans to breed its own eugenically superior race after the war to replace German men lost on the battlefield. The article proposed special apartment buildings for desirable single Aryan women and cash payments for having babies.
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America entered the war on April 6, 1917. Millions died in battle. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, a defeated Germany finally agreed to an armistice, ending the bloody conflict. The Weimar Republic was created. A peace treaty was signed inJune of 1919. American eugenics’ partnership with the German movement resumed.
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Laughlin prepared a detailed pro-German speech for the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Eugenics Research Association, held at Cold Spring Harbor in June of 1920. In the text, Laughlin analyzed Germany’s newly imposed democratic constitution point by point, identifying the clauses that authorized eugenic and racial laws. These included a range of state powers, from “Article 7 … [allowing] protection of plants from disease and pests” to “Articles 119 to 134 inclusive [which] prescribe the fundamental law of Germany in reference to the social life.” Declaring that “modern civilization” itself depended on German and Teutonic conquest, Laughlin closed by assuring his colleagues, “From what the world knows of Germanic traits, we logically concede that she will live up to her instincts of race conservation….” Laughlin never actually delivered the speech, probably because of time constraints, so
Eugenical News
published it in their next issue, as did a subsequent edition of the official British organ,
Eugenics Review.
Reprints of the
Eugenics Review
version were then circulated by the ERO.
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Scientific correspondence also resumed. Shortly after Laughlin’s enthusiastic appraisal, a eugenicist at the Institute for Heredity Research in Potsdam requested ERO documentation for his advisory committee’s presentation to the local government. Davenport dispatched materials and supporting statements “that will be of use to you in your capacity as advisor to the Government in matters of race hygiene.” ERO staffers had missed their exchanges with German colleagues, and Davenport assured his Potsdam friend, “I read your letter to our staff at its meeting on Monday and they were interested to hear from you.” Information about the new advisory committee was published in the very next issue of
Eugenical News.
German race scientists reciprocated by sending their own research papers for Davenport’s review, covering a gamut of topics from inherited human traits to mammalian attributes.
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But efforts by German eugenicists to join America’s international movement were still hampered by the aftershocks of the war. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany agreed to pay the Allies massive war reparations, 132 billion marks or 33 billion dollars. This crippled the finances of all of Germany, including its raceologists. Meanwhile, German nationalists were enraged because France and Belgium now occupied the Rhineland. France’s army had long included African soldiers from its colonies-such as Senegal, Mali and North Africa-who were now mingling with German women and would ultimately father several hundred children of mixed race in Germany.
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Infuriated Germans refused to cooperate with international committees that included Belgian or French scientists. Nor did they have the money to travel, even within Europe. The International Congress of Hygiene, for instance, originally scheduled for May of 1921 in Geneva, was cancelled because “the low value of the currency of many countries and the high value of the Swiss franc make it impossible for many countries to send delegates,” as one published notice explained.
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Hence German scientists were unable and unwilling to attend the Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York in September of 1921. Instead, they sent bitter protest letters to Cold Spring Harbor, denouncing the French and Belgian occupation of their land and seeking moral support from colleagues in America. Indeed, even though invitations to the congress were mailed to eugenicists around the world by the State Department, the Germans were excluded due to escalating postwar diplomatic and military tensions. Three weeks before the Second Congress, Davenport wrote to one prominent Berlin colleague, Agnes Bluhm, “profound regrets that international complications have prevented formal invitations to the International Eugenics Congress in New York City.” He added his “hope that by the time of the following Congress such complications will have been long removed.” So once again American science took center stage in international eugenics. Alienated from much of the European movement, Germany’s involvement in the field was now mainly limited to correspondence with Cold Spring Harbor.
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In 1922, Germany defaulted on its second annual reparations payment. France and Belgium invaded Germany’s rich industrial Ruhr region on January 11, 192 3, to seize coal and other assets. During the height of the harsh Ruhr occupation, the Weimar government began printing money day and night to support striking German workers. This shortsighted move made Germany’s currency worthless nearly overnight, leading to unprecedented hyperinflation.
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All of these factors contributed to Germany’s isolation from organized eugenics. Efforts by Davenport in 1920 and 1921 to include German scientists in the International Eugenics Commission were rebuffed. None of the players wanted to sit together. Determined to bring German eugenicists back into the worldwide movement, Davenport traveled to Europe in 192 2. He selected Lund, Sweden, as the site of the 1923 conference, because, as he confided to a German colleague, “it would be convenient to Berlin.” It also circumvented Allied nations such as Belgium, England and France. Davenport then arranged for his colleagues on the IEC to take the first step and formally invite German representatives to join the commission. But tensions over the Rhineland and reparations were still too explosive for the Germans to agree. By the spring of 192 3, Davenport had to concede in frustration, “German delegates would not meet in intimate association with the French.”
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Davenport wrote to one key German eugenicist, “I implore you, that you will use your influence to prevent such a backward step. The only way we can heal the wounds caused by the late war is to repress these sad memories from our scientific activities. It will do a lot to restore international science and to set an example for other scientific organizations to follow if a delegate is sent to the meeting of the Commission to be held in Lund next autumn.“
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But the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian forces further inflamed angry German eugenicists. “Cooperative work between Germans and French seems to be impossible so long as the Ruhr invasion lasts,” one embittered German eugenic leader wrote Davenport. “If in America a foreign power had entered and held in its grasp the chief industrial area surely no American man of science would sit with a representative of that other nation at a table. Therefore, one should correspondingly not expect Germans to do this.”
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Weimar continued to print money around the clock, creating hour-to-hour hyperinflation. Fabulous stories abounded of money being carted around in wheelbarrows and being used to stoke furnaces. One famous story centered on a Freiburg University student who ordered a cup of coffee listed on the menu for 5,000 marks; by the time he ordered a refill, the second cup cost 9,000 marks. Another told of an insurance policy redeemed to buy a single loaf of bread. The American dollar, which had traded for 1,500 marks in 1922, was worth 4.2 trillion marks by the end of 1923.
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German extremists tried to exploit the hyperinflation crisis to start a political revolution to abrogate the Treaty of Versailles. Among the agitators was Adolf Hitler.
In
November of 1923, Hitler organized the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. He hoped to seize power in Bavaria and march all the way to Berlin. His rebellion was quickly put down. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, to be served at Landsberg Fortress. Referring to his jail cell as his “university,” Hitler read voraciously. It was during these prison years that Hitler solidified his fanatical eugenic views and learned to shape that fanaticism into a eugenic mold.
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