War Against the Weak

by Edwin Black

  In the March-April edition of Eugenical News, the long essay “Hitler and Racial Pride” heaped praise on the up-and-coming leader. One passage proclaimed, “The Aryans are the great founders of civilizations…. The mixing of blood, the pollution of race… has been the sole reason why old civilizations have died out.” The Hitlerite term Aryan was now becoming synonymous with the traditional Nordic. In another passage, the article cited an earlier New York Times report declaring, “The Hitlerites hold the Nordic race to be ‘the finest flower on the tree of humanity’… It must be bred… according to the ‘criteria of race hygiene and eugenics.”‘66

  On May 13,1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office:

  JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM. NATURE OF STUDIES REQUIRES ASSURANCE OF AT [Rockefeller’s director of science in Europe, Augustus Trowbridge].67

  At about that time, Fischer and other eugenicists were busy presenting drafts of compulsory sterilization laws to the Weimar authorities. During a committee meeting on the subject in the summer of 1932, Fischer shouted at the Nazi representative, “Your party has not been in existence nearly as long as our eugenic movement!” One leading eugenicist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology later bristled, “The Nazis took over the whole draft and they used the most inhumane and execrable methods to put the humane measures, which we had conscientiously and responsibly drafted, into everyday practice.”68

  The Third International Congress of Eugenics was held in New York City in August of 1932, once again at the American Museum of Natural History. Although organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation were donating vast sums to German eugenics for research and travel, the grants were frequently limited to specific activities within Germany or neighboring countries. Hence there was no money for the German delegation to travel to Manhattan. Nor did Carnegie make up the shortfall. Davenport apologized in a letter to Fischer. “Of course, the depression at this time has interfered with our efforts to secure funds to help defray the expense of our foreign colleagues…. We are very much disappointed that you and other friends from Europe may not be able to… come to the United States and see the work going on there. We had hoped you would come and find your expenses paid by giving some lectures.” But the German delegation did not come, and instead sent a few poster exhibits from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. At the opening ceremonies Davenport lamented the absence of the German delegation and lauded their leadership.69

  The September-October Eugenical News carried another long article praising Hitler and his eugenic ideas. It also explained how his ideology had been guided by such American authors as Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. German elections were looming, and the article prophesied the results. “The Hitler movement sooner or later promises to give him full power, [and] will bring to the Nordic movement general recognition and promotion by the state.” The article added, “When they [the Nazis] take over the government in Germany, in a short time there may be expected new race hygienic laws and a conscious Nordic culture and ‘foreign policy.'“70

  The next month, November of 1932, Germany held a fractious election. Hitler received twelve million votes, approximately a third, but no majority. A coalition government was out of the question because other parties refused to share power with Hitler and vice versa.71

  January 30, 1933, as America awoke, swastikas flew above Berlin, Munich, Leipzig and the other strongholds of Nazi agitation. Brown-shirted mobs marched through the streets in celebration, swaggered in beer halls, rode their bicycles in tandem and joyously sang the “Horst Wessel Song.” For years the Nazis had promised that upon assuming power they would rebuild Germany’s economy, dismantle its democracy, destroy the German Jewish community and establish Aryans as the master race. On January 30,1933, President Paul von Hindenburg, exasperated with fruitless all-night attempts to create a governing coalition, finally exercised his emergency powers. Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler interim chancellor. The Third Reich was born.72

  * * *

  Years later, many would deny knowledge of what Germany was doing, would claim they only discovered Hitler’s merciless anti-Semitic and political repression, as well as the Reich’s fascist medical programs, after the Allies triumphed in 1945. But in truth, Hitler’s atrocities against Jews and others were chronicled daily on the pages of America’s newspapers, by wire services, radio broadcasts, weekly newsreels, and national magazines.73 Germany bragged about its anti-Jewish measures and eugenic accomplishments. An entire propaganda operation was established under Joseph Goebbels to publicize the information.74 Simultaneously, American eugenicists kept day-to-day tabs on the Nazi eugenic program. As of January 30, 1933, however, the American-German eugenic partnership was obsolete. Germany was now completely leading the way, despite a hurricane of anti-Nazi denunciations and retaliatory economic boycotts,75

  Once in power, Hitler’s government immediately began issuing legal decrees to exclude Jews from professional and governmental life, and used other brutal methods-including condoned street violence-to eliminate political opponents. Dachau concentration camp opened on March 20, 1933, amid international news coverage of the event. Refugees, including many Jewish scientists, poured out of Germany. Their plight was visible in the cities of the world.76

  It did not take Germany long to implement its eugenic vision. The first law was decreed July 14, 1933: Reich Statute Part I, No. 86, the Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny. It was a mass compulsory sterilization law. Rüdin was coeditor of the official rules and commentary on the law.77

  Nine categories of defectives were identified for sterilization. At the top of the list were the feebleminded, followed by those afflicted by schizophrenia, manic depression, Huntington’s chorea, epilepsy, hereditary body deformities, deafness and, of course, hereditary blindness. Alcoholism, the ninth category, was listed as optional to avoid confusion with ordinary drunkenness. The Reich announced that 400,000 Germans would immediately be subjected to the procedure, beginning January 1, 1934,78

  A massive sterilization apparatus was created: more than 205 local eugenic or hereditary courts would be ruled by a physician, a eugenicist and a panel chairman. For contested cases, there were at least twenty-six special eugenic appellate courts. Anyone could be reported for investigation. Doctors who failed to report their suspect patients would be fined. In hearings, physicians were obligated to provide confidential patient information. Fischer’s institute was asked to quickly train the legion of race experts required for the task.79

  Germany’s program was immediately seized upon by the world’s media as the latest example of Hitler’s inhumane regime. Many eugenic leaders felt pressured into publicly disassociating themselves from Nazi barbarism, but their denunciations were only lip service. An anxious C. P. Blacker, director of Britain’s Eugenics Society, watched as his own sterilization campaign lost public support as the obvious comparisons were made. “This Society deprecates the use of the term Eugenics to justify racial animosities,” Blacker announced, adding that he condemned, “its misuse as an instrument of tyranny by racial or social majorities.”80

  “While much of the world recoiled in revulsion, American eugenicists covered eugenic developments in Germany with pride and excitement. By the summer of 1933, Eugenical News had become bimonthly due to Depression-era finances, and had changed its subtitle again, this time to Current Record of Genetic News and Race Hygiene. Cold Spring Harbor quickly obtained a full copy of the eighteen-paragraph Nazi sterilization law from German Consul Otto Kiep, and rushed a verbatim translation into the next issue as its lead item. In accompanying commentary, Eugenical News declared: “Germany is the first of the world’s major nations to enact a modern eugenical sterilization law for the nation as a unit…. The law recently promulgated by the Nazi Governme
nt marks several substantial advances. Doubtless the legislative and court history of the experimental sterilization laws in 27 states of the American union provided the experience, which Germany used in writing her new national sterilization statute. To one versed in the history of eugenical sterilization in America, the text of the German statute reads almost like the ‘American model sterilization law.”‘81

  Proudly pointing out the American origins of the Nazi statute, the article continued, “In the meantime it is announced that the Reich will secure data on prospective sterilization cases, that it will, in fact, in accordance with ‘the American model sterilization law,’ work out a census of its socially inadequate human stocks.”82

  Countering criticism that Hitler’s program constituted a massive human rights abuse, Eugenical News asserted, “To one acquainted with English and American law, it is difficult to see how the new German sterilization law could, as some have suggested, be deflected from its purely eugenical purpose, and be made ‘an instrument of tyranny,’ for the sterilization of non-Nordic races.” The publication argued that in the 16,000 sterilizations performed in America over recent years, not a single “eugenical mistake” had been made. The publication concluded, “One may condemn the Nazi policy generally, but specifically it remained for Germany in 1933 to lead the great nations of the world in the recognition of the biological foundations of national character.”83

  Throughout 1933, American eugenic groups continued their enthusiastic coverage of and identification with German mass sterilization. Birth Control Review ran an extensive article entitled “Eugenic Sterilization, An Urgent Need,” authored by Rüdin himself, and also reprinted a pamphlet he had prepared for British eugenicists. “Act without delay,” urged Rüdin. By this time Margaret Sanger had left the publication, and Birth Control Review had relaxed its previous position that birth control was for everyone, not just the unfit, and that it was wrong to encourage greater birth rates for the eugenically preferred. Indeed, Rüdin’s article did just that. “Not only is it our task to prevent the multiplication of bad stocks,” he demanded, “it is also to preserve the well-endowed stocks and to increase the birth rate of the sound average population.”84

  Eugenic influence continued in mainstream medical publications. In 1933, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on the new sterilization statute as if it were an almost routine health measure. JAMA’s coverage included unchallenged data from Nazi eugenicists such as: “The fact that among the Jews the incidence of blindness is greater than among the remainder of the population of Germany (the ratio is 63 to 53) is doubtless due to the increased danger of hereditary transmission resulting from marriage between blood relatives.”85

  JAMA, in another 1933 issue, continued its tradition of repeating Nazi Judeophobia and National Socialist doctrine as ordinary medical news. For example, in its coverage of the German Congress of Internal Medicine in WIesbaden, JAMA reported that the congress chairman “brought out the following significant ideas:… A foreign invasion, more particularly from the East, constitutes a menace to the German race. It is an imperative necessity that this menace be now suppressed and eliminated.… Racial problems and questions dealing with hereditary biology must receive special consideration.” The article continued, “Eugenics and the influences of heredity must be the preferred topics [at future medical meetings],” and then warned of “the severity of the measures to be adopted for the preservation of the German race and German culture.”86

  Eugenical News spoke in similar terms. In a September-October 1933 review of yet another Lehmann-published anti-Semitic epistle, Race Culture in the Nationalistic State (Rassenflege in Volkischenstaat), Eugenical News insisted in italics, “There is no equal right for all…. Nature is not democratic, but aristocratic…. [German racial] demands appear harsh, but… the very existence of the race is at stake.”87

  Rockefeller money continued to stream across the Atlantic. The 1933 financial books of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics reflected the foundation’s continuing impact. Page four of the balance sheet: Rockefeller paid for a research assistant, a statistician, two secretaries and a gardener. Page six of the balance sheet: Rockefeller paid clerical costs associated with research on twins. Ironically, while Fischer remained in charge at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, he was being replaced at the Society for Racial Hygiene. He had taken over the society for Ploetz, but in 1933 Nazis overran the society and Fischer was considered too moderate. He was replaced by Rüdin, then president of the IFEO.88

  Unlike eugenic leaders associated with Eugenical News, Rockefeller officials did not propagandize for Nazism, nor did they approve of the Reich’s virulent repression. The Rockefeller Foundation’s agenda was strictly biological to the exclusion of politics. The foundation wanted to discover the carriers of defective blood-even if it meant funding Nazi-controlled institutions. Moreover, Rockefeller executives knew their money carried power, and they used it to ensure that the most talented scientists continued at the various Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, frequently shielding them from periodic Nazi purges.

  For example, in early June of 1933, one of the foundation’s favorite researchers, Oskar Vogt, head of the Institute for Brain Research, was threatened with removal because of his perceived socialist leanings. Rockefeller mobilized.89 On June 7,1933, H. J. Muller, a University of Texas geneticist working at the Institute for Brain Research, alerted Robert A. Lambert in Rockefeller’s Paris office. Just days before, Lambert had toured various Berlin research facilities. In his letter, Muller warned Lambert, “If this director loses his position it is a foregone conclusion, and common knowledge, that the head of the genetics department and all other non-Gennans, as well as Gennans closely associated with the director, will also lose their positions…. I realize that the Rockefeller Foundation must preserve its neutrality so far as matters of politics are concerned. On the other hand, it wishes to have its funds used so that they can best serve the furtherance of truly scientific work. “90

  Muller asked Lambert and other Rockefeller executives to consider “the making of a statement, not necessarily a public one, but, it may be, one expressed in a letter to some responsible person, such as for example [physicist] Dr. [Max] Planck, which could then be shown to the authorities concerned, so that they could be informed of your policy, in advance. Some statement similar to that which you made orally to the director of the institute here, would suffice, namely, that the Rockefeller Foundation would not feel justified, from the point of view of the furtherance of scientific work, in sending additional funds to the support of institutions in Germany, (1) if, on grounds other than their scientific work, worthy scientists, not engaged in political activity, are dismissed from institutions which have been founded or supported in part by funds of the Foundation, or (2) if persons who have been assigned stipends from the Foundation are dismissed from such institutions.”91

  Oskar Vogt was not removed. He remained at his post until well after his Rockefeller funding had run its course.92

  With each passing day, the world was flooded with more Jewish refugees, more noisy anti-Nazi boycotts and protest marches against any scientific or commercial exchanges with Germany, more public demands to isolate the Reich, and more shocking headlines documenting Nazi atrocities and anti-Jewish legislation. Still, none of this gave pause to America’s eugenicists. Correspondence on joint research flowed freely across the Atlantic. American eugenicists, and their many organizations and committees, from New York to California and all points in between, maintained and multiplied their contacts with every echelon of official and semiofficial Gennan eugenics. As the Reich descended into greater depths of depraved mistreatment and impoverishment of Jews, as well as territorial threats against its neighbors, these contacts seemed all the more insulated from the human tragedy unfolding within Europe. Eager and cooperative letters, reports, telegrams and memoranda did not number in the hundreds, but in the thousands of pages per
month.

  While concentration camps, pauperization and repression flourished in Nazi Gennany, and while refugees filled ships and trains telling horrifying stories of torture and inhumanity, it was business as usual for eugenics.

  Nor were the contacts and scientific support a secret. For example, in March of 1934, eugenicist W. W Peter published a long article in the American Journal of Public Health defending Germany’s sterilization program. Peter had traveled some 10,000 kilometers over the course of six months, visiting every region of Germany to study the Reich’s plan. He gave it an unqualified endorsement, declaring, “This particular program which Germany has launched merits the attention of all public health workers in other countries.”93

  Sterilizations had begun January 1 of that year. Within forty-eight hours, the Reich Interior Ministry’s eugenics expert announced that the list would include a vast cross-section of the population-from children as young as ten to men over the age of fifty. The ministry added that the first to be sterilized would not be residents of “institutions,” but those who were “at large.” Quickly, the procedure became known as the Hitlerschnitte, or “Hitler’s cut.” During 1934, the Third Reich sterilized at least 56,000 individuals-approximately one out of every 1,200 Germans.94

  In mid-July of 1934 the IFEO met in Zurich, and congratulated Germany on a campaign being conducted “with characteristic thoroughness and efficiency… mainly on sound and truly eugenic lines.” That conclusion was publicized in Eugenical News. The idea was to rebut mounting criticism that the Reich’s mass sterilization program was not only a medical sham, but undisguised racial persecution. In Germany, “racial persecution” invariably meant “Jewish persecution.” Newspapers around the world were filled with condemnation of Germany and its treatment of the Jews.95