by Edwin Black
Jews were indeed on the minds of the eugenicists at Cold Spring Harbor. For example, the New York Times of January 7, 1934, had run an article on Hitler’s race policy headlined “NAZIS INSIST REICH BE RACE MINDED,” and subheadlined “No One Knows Exactly What That Means There, Except That Jews Are Target.” The article went into Laughlin’s clipping folder. So did other New York Times articles from January and early February about German-Jewish refuges in Europe, as did articles about financial assistance to Jews in the United States.96 The folder grew thick.
With so much anti-Nazi publicity in the air, putting a positive face on the Reich’s conduct was a continuing priority at Eugenical News. Even as the New York Times was denigrating the Reich’s eugenics as pure racial and religious oppression, and using quotes from Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick to illustrate the point, Laughlin was assuring colleagues that the Cold Spring Harbor publication would help counteract that impression among eugemcists. Laughlin’s January 13, 1934, letter to Madison Grant explained, “We propose devoting an early number of the Eugenical News entirely to Germany, and to make Dr. Frick’s paper the leading article. Dr. Frick’s address sounds exactly as though spoken by a perfectly good American eugenicist in reference to what ‘ought to be done,’ with this difference, that Dr. Frick, instead of being a mere scientist is a powerful Reichsrninister in a dictatorial government which is getting things done in a nation of sixty million people. Dr. Frick’s speech marks a milepost in statesmanship. The new German attitude and resolution mean that in the future, regardless of nationality, every statesman, who takes the long view of his country’s problems, will be compelled to look primarily to eugenics for their solution.”97
In the very next issue, March-April 1934, the speech in question, delivered by Frick nine months earlier, led off an edition devoted to German eugenics. It included a detailed directory of the Third Reich’s leading eugenicists, exuberant praise of the Nazi sterilization campaign, and one article describing the flood ofJewish refugees with the phrase, “it is ‘raining’ German Jews.” Another article examined the destinations of some 60,000 German-Jewish refugees: 25,000 had fled to France, 6,500 to Palestine, 6,000 to Poland and so on.98
There was room in the issue to discuss other minorities as well. One article discussed the question of sterilizing some six hundred “negroid children in the Rhine and Ruhr districts-Germany’s legacy from the presence of French colonial troops there during the war.”99 In a salute to the Führer, another article clearly suggested that Hitler’s eugenics would soon be applied across all of Europe. “This State Cause does not only concern Germany but all European peoples. But may we be the first to thank this one man, Adolf Hitler, and to follow him on the way towards a biological salvation of humanity.”100
Eugenical News was the official voice of the American eugenics movement. Its masthead declared it “the official organ of the Eugenics Research Association, the Galton Society, The International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, [and] the Third International Congress of Eugenics.” It was published at the Carnegie offices in Cold Spring Harbor. A three-man editorial committee, listed on every masthead, tightly controlled all text: Harry Laughlin, Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda (Davenport’s assistant on the Jamaica project).101
Eugenical News was read by virtually the entire eugenics community in America and enjoyed an equally attentive overseas readership. In Nazi Germany, race hygienists followed the publication closely. After the March-April 1934 issue, for example, Ploetz wrote a letter to the editor correcting several typos and adding a clarification. “The 60,000 Jews… were not expelled…. Nobody chased them away…. They went, frightened by the Jewish reports of horror.” Ironically, in the same issue, Eugenical News ran a report headlined “Jewish Physicians in Berlin” that declared, “The city of Berlin quite logically is trying to reduce the number of its Jewish physicians, which is not in keeping with the racial composition of the general population.” The article added that anti-Jewish laws were still not working and the numbers of Jewish doctors “were but slightly reduced.”102
Rockefeller funding continued even as anti-Nazi protest groups complained directly to foundation executives. For example, shortly after Hitler attained power, Rüdin and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes became known as mere scientific fronts for Nazi ideology. The foundation’s own best contact within Rüdin’s institute, Dr. Walther Spielmeyer, confirmed in a November 3, 1933, letter, “Prof. Rüdin… also holds the post of Reichskomissar for Race Investigation.” Once word surfaced in late 1933 of the foundation’s ties to Rüdin and his Munich-based Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry, the anti-Nazi boycotters and protest movement mobilized. One typical complaint letter from New Republic editor Bruce Bliven to the Rockefeller Foundation, sent December 20, 1933, asked whether the reported link could be true. Concerned officials at the foundation jotted notes on Bliven’s letter: “June 3, 1932 $9,000 3 for 3 yrs.” Under that, someone wrote, “Inst for Anthro.” Under that: “Sexuality & Genetics.”103
On January 10, 1934, Rockefeller executive Thomas Appleget replied to Bliven that the foundation had indeed helped erect the building some years before, and had then approved another eight-year grant for two of its doctors. But, Appleget added, “Strictly speaking this [Rüdin’s institute] is not an institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft.” A Rockefeller colleague who saw the falsity scribbled in the margin, “TBA-What basis for this?” On January 31, Appleget wrote to Bliven “in correction of my earlier communication” and admitted that the Institute for Psychiatry was indeed “one of the regular institutes.”104
Protests did not subside. Two days later, Jewish newspapers across the country published notices similar to the one that appeared in the American Hebrew: “Recently the American Committee Against Fascist Oppression in Germany declared that the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, a German institute for psychiatric research with headquarters in Munich, and subsidized by the Rockefeller Foundation is carrying on a bitter pro-Nazi agitation…. The Committee accuses the Institute of spreading Nazi propaganda under the cloak of science and paid for by the money of the Rockefeller Foundation…. One of the Institute’s departments, devoted to the study of racial theories, has ‘proved’ through ‘scientific claims’ that Hitler’s theory regarding the superiority of the ‘Nordic race’ and the inferiority of the Semitic and other races is altogether correct…. Dr. Theodore Lang, founder of the National Socialist Doctors’ Association, is also a research worker at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; his Doctors’ Association is carrying on a bitter campaign against Jewish physicians in Germany.”105
The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America continued the pressure, sending the foundation the American Hebrew article and asking for an explanation. Worried Rockefeller officials sent a note to a foundation attorney explaining, “As a matter of fact, it is not research that would lend itself to propaganda purpose. Rüdin was, and continues to be, a member of the staff of the [Kaiser Wilhelm] Institute [for Psychiatry]. No grants have ever been made for his work or for the general budget of the Institute. Rüdin’s present political affiliations are not under the control of the Institute or the Kaiser William Gesellschaft [Society]. Undoubtedly some of the [anti-Semitic] publications, which your correspondent describes, have been written in the building that we donated…. In the circumstances, I think it is quite untrue to say that Foundation funds are being used to subsidize race prejudice.”106
Yet the protest letters still flowed in. “We are getting a number of inquiries from various liberal groups as to our connection with the Forschungsanstalt fur Psychiatrie [Research Institute for Psychiatry] in Munich…. The principal complaint is that Professor Rüdin… [is] apparently very active in the preparation of the anti-Jewish propaganda.” Rockefeller officials tried to provide assurances to protestors that they were not funding Rüdin himself but rather two doctors working under his direction. But this hardly believable story was itself internally contradicted. A March 16, 1934, letter to Apple
get by the foundation’s Paris representative reminded, “There is however another grant of funds made through… the Notgemeinschaft der [Deutschen] Wissenschaft [Emergency Fund for German Science] which at least in part is utilized by Professor Rüdin…. $125,000 over a period of five years.” The sum of $125,000 equals more than a million dollars in twenty-first-century money.107
Despite anti-Nazi protests, Rockefeller continued its subventions to Germany. Indeed, the foundation made periodic increases to account for the fluctuating exchange rate. Moreover, it quickly learned that while its grants specified that money go to one project, Nazi science administrators were quite willing to divert it to another department with a greater ideological priority. For example, in October of 1934, Alan Gregg, director of the foundation’s Division of Medical Sciences received a blunt letter from the foundation’s most reliable contact in Rüdin’s institute, Dr. Spielmeyer. “In the field of medicine,” Spielmeyer unhappily conceded, “both practice and scientific research is concerned primarily with genetics and race hygiene, as you know. You convinced yourself of that this summer, during your visit.” He went on to explain that the space and resources that the foundation financed for his blood chemistry research had been appropriated by Rüdin’s race investigations. Rüdin, reported Spielmeyer, simply required more space, more stenographers and more race investigators. “For this reason, it was unfortunately not possible to maintain the chemical division properly…. The Rockefeller Foundation has, for the past four years, provided funds for the maintenance of the chemical division,” said Spielmeyer, but those funds were now being used for “racial research.”108
At about the same time, an internal note was circulated to Rockefeller Foundation officials informing them that a Jewish doctor at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics had made clear to the foundation that, “In his lifetime, the Jews will not be permitted to return to Germany.” Nonetheless, the foundation found additional recipients for its German research funding.109
The foundation began financing biologist Alfred Kuhn’s hormone studies on meal moths. German race hygienists had been actively researching moths for years, claiming they exhibited what Lenz in the Archiv for Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie called “Mendelian segregation in later generations.” As such, moths were an ideal species to study for “carriers” of defective genes. Rockefeller official WIlbur Tisdale commented on Kuhn’s 1934 grant, “However uncertain the political situation might make a large or longtime project, [we are] safe in dealing with sound men as Kuhn on a year-to-year basis.” Tisdale added, “Nowhere in the continent or England [does one] find chemists, embryologists, and geneticists willing to cooperate among themselves as are these German scientists.”110
For Rockefeller, it was just eugenics. But for Hitler, science and technology were magical weapons to wield against the Jews and all other non-Aryan undesirables. Just after Hitler rose to power, IBM initiated an aggressive commercial compact with Nazi Germany, generating windfall profits as it organized and systemized the Reich’s anti-Jewish and eugenic programs. As the Hitler regime took each step in its war against the Jews and all of Europe, IBM custom-designed the punch cards and other data processing solutions to streamline those campaigns into what the company described as “blitzkrieg efficiency. “111
It began in 1933, when the company designed and executed Hitler’s first census. From there, IBM’s involvement with the Reich mushroomed. On January 8, 1934, IBM opened a million-dollar factory in Berlin to manufacture Hollerith machines and coordinate data processing functions. At the factory opening, the manager of IBM’s German subsidiary, Willi Heidinger, spoke vividly about what IBM technology would do for Germany’s biological destiny. Standing next to the personal representative of IBM president Thomas J. Watson, and with numerous Nazi Party officials in attendance at a ceremony bedecked by swastika flags and Storm Trooper honor guards, Heidinger emotionally declared that population statistics were key to eradicating the unhealthy, inferior segments of German society.112
“The physician examines the human body and determines whether… all organs are working to the benefit of the entire organism,” asserted Heidinger to the crowd of Nazi officials. “We [IBM] are very much like the physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German cultural body. We report every individual characteristic… on a little card. These are not dead cards, quite to the contrary, they prove later on that they come to life when the cards are sorted at a rate of 25,000 per hour according to certain characteristics. These characteristics are grouped like the organs of our cultural body, and they will be calculated and determined with the help of our tabulating machine.113
“We are proud that we may assist in such task, a task that provides our nation’s Physician [Adolf Hitler] with the material he needs for his examinations. Our Physician can then determine whether the calculated values are in harmony with the health of our people. It also means that if such is not the case, our Physician can take corrective procedures to correct the sick circumstances…. Our characteristics are deeply rooted in our race. Therefore, we must cherish them like a holy shrine, which we will-and must-keep pure. We have the deepest trust in our Physician and will follow his instructions in blind faith, because we know that he will lead our people to a great future. Hail to our German people and der Führer!”114
Most of Heidinger’s speech, along with a list of the invited Nazi Party officials, was rushed to Manhattan and immediately translated for Watson. The IBM leader cabled Heidinger a prompt note of congratulations for a job well done and sentiments well expressed.115
Following up, an August 1934 article in IBM’s German customer newsletter, Hollerith Nachrichten, extolled the benefits of advanced data processing for eugenics. The article, entitled “An Improved Analysis of Statistical Interdependencies via Hollerith Punch Card Process,” illustrated how complex data calculations could be better interpreted and predict probabilities. As a prime example, the journal cited “the field of medicine, and the science of genetics and race.” Complex tabulations could be rendered, the article suggested, regarding “the size of fathers and their children, number of children and parents. Diphtheria and age, and the different racial characteristics.”116
Medical questionnaires to be filled out by hand were jointly designed by IBM engineers and Nazi disability or welfare experts for compatibility with Hollerith cards. For example, diseases were coded: influenza was 3, lupus was 7, syphilis was 9, diabetes was 15; these were entered into field 9. As a notice from IBM’s German subsidiary advised, the questionnaires would have to be adapted to the technical demands of IBM’s Hollerith system, not the other way around. A vertical notice printed along the bottom left of typical welfare forms often indicated the information was to be processed “by the punch card office,” generally an in-house bureau.117
Raceology in Nazi Germany was enabled as never before. Statistical official Friedrich Zahn extolled the fact that “registered persons can be observed continually, [through] the cooperation of statistical central offices… [so] other statistical population matters can be settled and regulated.” Zahn proposed “a single file for the entire population to make possible an ethnic biological diagnosis [to] turn today’s theory into tomorrow’s practice. Such a file would serve both practical considerations as well as science.” He added, “Clarified pictures of the volume of genetic diseases within the population… now gives science a new impetus to conduct research… which should promote good instead of bad genetic stock.”118
Mathematic formulas and high-speed data processing of population and medical records would indeed become the key to Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany. In November of 1935, Germany took the next step.
Defining just who was a Jew was problematic, since so many of Jewish ancestry were practicing Christians or unaffiliated. Throughout 1935, German race specialists, bolstered by population computations and endless tabular printouts, proffered their favorite definitions of Jewishness. Some proposals were so sweeping as to incl
ude even those with the faintest Jewish ancestry-similar to the familiar “one drop” race purity laws in Virginia. But many tried to create complex pseudoscientific castes, comprised of “full Jews,” who professed the religion or possessed four Jewish grandparents, as well as the so-called “three-quarter,” “half,” and “one-quarter” Jews with fewer Jewish ancestors.119
Adolf Hitler was personally aware of preliminary findings showing that while only about a half million Germans had registered as Jews in the census, the veins of many more coursed with traces of Jewish blood. About a million more, he thought.120 The Jews Hitler feared most were the ones not apparent-what eugenicists called the “carriers.”
Suddenly, on September 13, 1935, der Führer demanded that a decree defining Jewishness be hammered out in time for his appearance two days later before the Reichstag (Parliament) at the culmination of Party Day festivities. Top eugenic experts of the Interior Ministry flew in for the assignment. Working with drafts shuttled between Hitler’s abode and police headquarters, they finally patched together twin decrees of disenfranchisement and marriage restriction. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and a companion statute, the Reich Citizenship Law, deprived Jews of their German citizenship. These laws-the Nuremberg Laws-would apply not only to full Jews, but also to half and quarter Jews, all defined according to complex eugenic mathematics. Jewish hybrids were called Mischling, or mixed-breeds.121 High-speed Hollerith systems offered the Reich the speed and scope that only an automated system could deliver to identify not only half and quarter Jews, but even eighth and sixteenth Jews. It was a new, automated system, yet applied to the well-developed, decades-old Cold Spring Harbor procedure of developing family pedigrees.122
The new formulaic approach to Jewish persecution exploded into world headlines. Under a page one banner story, the New York Times’s lead was typical: “National Socialist Germany definitely flung down the gauntlet before the feet of Western liberal opinion tonight… [and] decreed a series of laws that put Jews beyond the legal and social pale of the German nation.” The newspaper went on to detail the legal import of the new ancestral fractions.123
