War Against the Weak

by Edwin Black

  Verschuer and his institute remained prominent in the American medical and eugenic press. When in mid-193 5, Verschuer’s new institute began deploying a force of young women as field workers to assemble family trees, Eugenical News reported it. JAMA covered the new institute in-depth in its September 1935 issue, specifying that cards on individuals arising from the investigations were being sent to other Reich health bureaus. JAMA reported on Verschuer’s work again a few months later in 1936, focusing on his desire to engage in mass research on heredity and illness.20

  Verschuer’s well-received book, Genetic Pathology (Erbpathologie), claimed that Jews disproportionately suffered from conditions such as diabetes, flat feet, deafness, nervous disorders and blood taint. In its January-February 1936 edition, Eugenical News enthusiastically reviewed Genetic Pathology and parroted Verschuer’s view that a physician now owed his first duty to the “nation,” adding, “The word ‘nation’ no longer means a number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological entity.” Verschuer’s language on citizenship was a clear precursor to the Reich’s soon-to-be-issued decree declaring that Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany, even if they resided there. Stripping German Jews of their citizenship was the next major step toward mass ghettoization, deportation and incarceration. Eugenical News closed its review of Genetic Pathology with this observation: “Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between medical science and theoretical scientific research.”21

  Verschuer’s popularity with American eugenicists had soared by 1937. Senior U.S. eugenicists were clamoring for his attention. Anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer Charles M. Goethe sent a letter introducing himself. “I am National President of the Eugenics Research Association of the United States,” Goethe wrote. “I have heard much of your work at Frankfurt…. May I ask whether I could visit your Institution? I feel, because of the violent anti-German propaganda in the United States, our people know almost nothing of what is happening in Germany.”22

  Later that year, Goethe sent an equally fawning correspondence, apologizing for not visiting Germany but appealing to Verschuer’s anti-Jewish sentiment. “It was with deep regret that I was unable to come to Frankfurt this year,” he wrote. “Dr. Davenport and Dr. Laughlin of the Carnegie Institute have told me so much about your marvelous work…. I feel passionately that you are leading all mankind herein. One must exercise herein the greatest tact. America is flooded with anti-German propaganda. It is abundantly financed and originates from a quarter which you know only too well [Jews]…. However, this ought to not blind us to the fact that Germany is advancing more rapidly in Erbbiologie than all the rest of mankind.”23

  By 1938, the plight of the Jews in Germany and thousands of refugees had become a world crisis, prompting the Evian Conference. Hitler’s Reich had become identified in the media with brutal concentration camps. Germany was again menacing its neighbors’ territory. Yet Goethe continued his zealous propagandizing for Nazism. “Again and again,” Goethe wrote Verschuer in early 1938, “I am telling our people here, who are only too often poisoned by anti-German propaganda, of the marvelous progress you and your German associates are making.” In November of 1938, less than two weeks after the Kristallnacht riots, Goethe again wrote Verschuer, this time to lament, “I regret that my fellow countrymen are so blinded by propaganda just at present that they are not reasoning out regarding the very fine work which the splendid eugenists of Germany are doing…. I am a loyal American in every way. This does not, however, lessen my respect for the great scientists of Germany. “24

  Clyde Keeler, a Harvard Medical School researcher at Lucien Howe’s laboratory, visited Verschuer’s swastika-bedecked institute at the end of 1938. There he was able to see the center’s anti-Jewish program and its devotion to Aryan purity. Upon his return to the United States, Keeler gave fellow eugenicists a glowing report. On February 28, 1939, Danforth of Stanford wrote Verschuer to applaud him, adding that Keeler “thinks that you have by all means the best equipped and most effective establishment of the sort that he has seen anywhere. May I extend my congratulations and express the hope that your group will long continue to put out the same excellent work that has already lent it distinction.”25

  Davenport was equally inspired by Verschuer. On December 15, 1937, he asked Verschuer to prepare a special summary of his institute’s work for Eugenical News, “to keep our readers informed.” Davenport also asked Verschuer to join three other prominent Nazi eugenicists on Eugenical News’s advisory committee. Falk Ruttke, Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rüdin were already members. With a letter of gratitude, Verschuer agreed to become the fourth.26 Verschuer was now an essential link between American eugenics and Nazi Germany.

  Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer had an assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.

  * * *

  Mengele began his career as a doctrinaire Nazi eugenicist. He attended Rüdin’s early lectures and embraced eugenic principles as part of his fanatic Nazism. Mengele became a member of the SA, also known as the Storm Troopers, in 1934. His first academic mentor was the anti-Semitic eugenicist Theodor Mollison, a professor at Munich University. Just as Goddard claimed he could identify a feebleminded individual by a mere glance, Mollison boasted that he could identify Jewish ancestry by simply examining a person’s photograph. Under Mollison, Mengele earned his Ph.D. in 1935. His dissertation on the facial biometrics of four racial groups-ancient Egyptians, Melanesians and two European types-asserted that specific racial identification was possible through an anthropometric examination of an individual’s jawline. Medical certification in hand, Mengele became a practicing doctor in the Leipzig University clinic. But this was only temporary. Mengele’s dream was research, not practice. In 1937, on Mollison’s recommendation, Mengele became Verschuer’s research assistant at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. Here Mengele’s eugenic knowledge could be applied. Some of Mengele’s work involved tracing cranial features through family trees.27

  Verschuer and his new assistant quickly bonded. Mengele had applied for Nazi Party membership as soon as the three-year ban was lifted in 1937. He and Verschuer made a good professional team. Together the two wrote opinions for the Eugenic Courts enforcing anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws. In one case, a man suspected of having a Jewish father was prosecuted for engaging in sexual relations with an Aryan woman. Under the Nuremberg Laws, this was a serious criminal offense calling for prison time. As the prosecution’s eugenic consultants, Mengele and Verschuer undertook a detailed examination of the suspect’s family tree and carefully measured his facial features. Their eugenic report declared the man to be fully ofJewish descent.28

  However, the accused man provided convincing evidence that he was in fact the illicit offspring of Christians. His father was indeed Jewish, but his mother was not. The man claimed to be the product of his non-Jewish mother’s illicit affair with a Christian; hence he was no Jew. Illegitimacy was a common refrain of Jews seeking safe harbor from the Nuremberg statutes. The court believed the man’s story and freed him. The decision outraged Mengele and Verschuer, who wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice complaining that their eugenic assessment had been overlooked. Approximately 448 racial opinions were ultimately offered by Verschuer’s institute; these were so doctrinaire that Verschuer frequently appealed when the opinions were not accepted.29

  Mengele’s relationship with Verschuer was more than collegial. Staff doctors at the institute recalled that Mengele was Verschuer’s “favorite.” Verschuer’s secretaries enjoyed Mengele’s constant visits to the office, and nicknamed him “Papa Mengele.” He would drop by the Verschuer home for tea, sometimes bringing his family. Mengele even made an impression on Verschuer’s children, who years later remembered him in friendly terms.30

  In 1938, Mengele joined the SS and received his medical degree, yet continued his close association with Verschuer. In fact his SS personnel file, number 317885, listed his employment in 1938 as an assistant doctor at th
e Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. In the fall of that year, preparing for field assignment with an SS unit, Mengele underwent three months of rigorous basic training. Afterwards, he returned to Verschuer’s institute in Frankfurt to resume eugenic research. For example, he examined the inheritance of ear fistulas and chin dimples, and then published the results. In a summary of 1938 projects for the German Research Society, Verschuer listed Mengele’s work on inherited deformities and cited two of Mengele’s papers, including one he completed for another doctor.31

  In December of 1938, Mengele and Verschuer, as well as two other Nazi doctors associated with the institute, requested a grant from the Ministry of Science and Education to attend the International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, scheduled for the last week of August 1939. All four men secured initial authorization to attend as part of a large Nazi delegation, approved by the Party. Train and ferry schedules were researched. But after further review, the ministry lacked the funds to send them all. Ministry officials decided Mengele could not go. Germany began World War II on September 1, 1939. England and Germany were now enemies, so Nazi conferees returned in the nick of time.32

  Mengele wanted to get into the war, but a kidney condition prevented him from joining a combat unit. He continued working with Verschuer and in early 1940 was still listed on Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene rosters as being on Verschuer’s staff. An internal list of publications and papers, dated January 1939, listed two papers written by Verschuer with the help of assistants including Mengele. One was entitled “Determination of Paternity,” recalling their days providing genealogical testimony for the Eugenic Courts. Mengele authored a third paper on the list with two ofVerschuer’s other assistants.33

  Mengele also contributed several book reviews to Verschuer’s publication, Der Erbarzt, in 1940. One review covered a book called Fundamentals in Genetics and Race Care, in which Mengele criticized the author for failing to adequately describe “the relationship between the principal races that are to be found in Germany and the cultural achievements of the German people.” In another review critiquing a book about congenital heart defects, Mengele complained, “Unfortunately the author did not use subjects where the diagnosis could be verified by an autopsy.”34

  By June of 1940, when Germany was advancing on Western Europe, Mengele could no longer wait to enter the battle. He joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to the Genealogical Section of the SS Race and Settlement Office in occupied Poland. He undoubtedly benefited from Verschuer’s March 1940 letter of recommendation averring that Mengele was accomplished, reliable and trustworthy. At the SS Race and Settlement Office, his mission was to seek out Polish candidates for Germanization. He would perform the racial and eugenic examinations. Eventually, in 1941, he was transferred to the Medical Corps of the Waffen SS, and then to the elite Viking unit operating in the Ukraine, where he rendered medical assistance under intense battlefield conditions. He was awarded two Iron Crosses and two combat medic awards. The next year, 1942, as the Final Solution was taking shape, Verschuer arranged for Mengele to transfer back to the SS Race and Settlement Office, this time to its Main Office in Berlin.35

  By 1942, an aging Fischer was preparing to retire from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. His replacement was a major source of debate within eugenic and Nazi Party circles. By this time, Hitler’s war against the Jews had escalated from oppressive disenfranchisement to systematic slaughter.36

  Fischer had emerged as a major advocate of “a total solution to the Jewish question.” His view was that “Bolshevist Jews” constituted a dangerous and inferior subspecies. At a key March 1941 conference on the solution to the Jewish problem held in Frankfurt, Fischer had been the honored guest. It was at this meeting that Nazi science extremists set forth ideas on eliminating Jews en masse. A leading idea that emerged was the gradual extinction (Volkstod) of the Jewish people by systematically concentrating them in large labor camps to be located in Poland. Later, Fischer specified that such labor must be unpaid slave labor lest any “improvement in living standards… lead to an increase in the birth rate.”37

  Given Fischer’s high profile in Nazi Party extermination policies, his successor would have to be selected carefully. Lenz was considered for the job, but Fischer worked behind the scenes with the Nazi Party to have Lenz passed over. Fischer thought Lenz was too tutorial, and not bold enough for the challenges ahead. Instead, Fischer’s hand-picked successor would be Verschuer-something Fischer had actually planned on for years.38

  In 1942, Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt that Germany’s war would yield a “total solution to the Jewish problem.” He wrote a friend, “Many important events have occurred in my life. I received an invitation, which I accepted, to succeed Eugen Fischer as director of the Dahlem Institute [Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics at Berlin-Dahlem]. Great trust was shown toward me, and all my requests were granted with respect to the importance and authority of the institute…. I will take almost all my coworkers with me, first Schade and Grebe, and later Mengele and Fromme.” Even though Mengele was still technically attached to the Race and Settlement Office, he was still Verschuer’s assistant. Mengele’s name was even added to the special birthday list for the institute’s leading staff scientists.39

  In January 25, 1943, with Hitler’s extermination campaign in full swing, Verschuer wrote to Fischer, “My assistant Mengele… has been transferred to work in an office in Berlin [at the SS Race and Settlement Office] so that he can do some work at the Institute on the side.”40

  On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.

  * * *

  Eugenics craved one type of human being above all others to answer its biological questions and to achieve its ultimate biological goal. The quest to locate this type of human being arose at the dawn of eugenics, and continued ceaselessly for four decades, throughout the voluminous discourse, research and publishing of the worldwide eugenic mainstream. To the eugenic scientist, no subject was of greater value. Young or old, healthy or diseased, living or dead, they all wanted one form of human-twins.

  Twins were the perfect control group for experimentation. How people developed, how they resisted or succumbed to disease, how they reacted to physical or environmental change-all these questions could be best answered by twins precisely because they were simultaneous siblings. While fraternal twins sprang from two separate eggs fertilized at the same time, identical twins were, in fact, one egg split in two. Identical twins were essentially Nature’s clones.41

  Twins were valued for a second eugenic reason: Nature itself could be outmaneuvered if desirable individuals could be biologically enabled to spawn twins-or even better, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets. In other words, a world of never-ending multiple births was the best assurance that the planned super race would remain super.

  About a decade before Galton coined the term eugenics, he was convinced he could divine the secret of human breeding by studying twins. In 1874 and 1875, he published various versions of a scientific essay entitled “The History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture.” In analyzing whether environment or heredity was responsible for an individual’s success, Galton complained that his investigations were always hampered by the unending variables-that is, until he located biological comparables. “The life history of twins supplies what I wanted,” he wrote. Galton had closely studied some eighty sets of twin children by the time he wrote that essay. These included twins of the same and different gender as well as identical and non-identical twins.42

  Cold Spring Harbor’s handwritten outlines for key Mendelian traits listed twinning as one of the ten salient physical characteristics to explore. Davenport’s 1911 textbook, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, included a section on twins with the introduction, “It is well known that twin production may be an hereditary quality.” Three years later, Heinrich Poll, Rockefeller
’s first fund administrator in Germany, published a major volume on twin research; Poll’s interest in the topic dovetailed with the Rockefeller Foundation’s years-long support of the subject.43

  American eugenic publications constantly dotted their pages with the latest twin theory and research. Identifying the mechanism governing the creation and development of twins quickly became a major pursuit for eugenics. In 1916, Eugenical News published three articles on the subject, including one that examined a recent article in Biological Bulletin on armadillo quadruplets, hoping to apply the principle to multiple births in humans. One of the 1917 articles on twins in Eugenical News indicated that in about a quarter of same sex twins, “there is some factor that definitely forces the two children to be of the same sex.” A second article in 1917 announced that a doctor in a Michigan institution for the feebleminded was searching the nation for mongolism in twins, especially cases in which only one of the siblings manifested the condition.44

  The problem with studying twins was that in adulthood most twins lived separate lives, often in separate cities and even in different countries. It was hard to locate them, let alone bring them together for examination. In 1918, the American Genetic Association, the renamed American Breeders Association, announced that it desired to “communicate with twins living in any part of the world.” The AGA explained, “It has been discovered that twins are in a peculiar position to help in the elucidation of certain problems of heredity…. ‘Duplicate’ twins have a nearly (though never an absolutely) identical germ plasm…. It is fortunate for our knowledge… on account of the chance it gives [us] to study the relative importance of heredity and of environment.” Within a year of its announcement, the AGA had identified some six hundred twins, and by soliciting photos it had assembled a photo archive of several hundred.45