by Edwin Black
ILLUSTRATIONS
TOP
Francis Galton’s original scrap of paper inventing the term eugenics. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON ARCHIVES
BOTTOM LEFT
Gregor Mendel, discoverer of the principles of heredity. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
BOTTOM RIGHT
Francis Galton, father of eugenics. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON ARCHIVES
First Race Betterment Conference Banquet, 1914. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Chicago Tribune report of Dr. Harry Haiselden’s infant euthanasia, November 1915. COURTESY OF MARTIN PERNICK
TOP
Movie industry ad for The Black Stork, April 1917. COURTESY OF MARTIN PERNICK
BOTTOM
Image from The Black Stork depicting a euthanized baby floating to Jesus. “ARE YO U FIT TO MARRY” PRESERVATION FUNDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HISTORICAL FILM COLLECTION; COURTESY OF MARTIN PERNICK AND JOHN ALLEN
LEFT AND ABOVE
Charles B. Davenport. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
RIGHT
Harry H. Laughlin. PICKLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Charles B. Davenport leads a training session with field workers at the ERO, 1913. COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ARCHIVE
Harry H. Laughlin and Charles B. Davenport pose with ERO field workers, 1914. COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ARCHIVE
Eugenics Record Office files. COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ARCHIVE
Exhibit poster showing dwellings of the so-called Tribe of Ishmael. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Exhibit: “Some people are born to be a burden on the rest,” circa 1926. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Exhibit poster: “Marriages, Fit and Unfit.” AMERICAN
ERO copy of the September 1910 edition of Archiv for Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, featuring articles by German eugenics founding father Alfred Ploetz, Ernst Rüdin (who later became president of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations), and Roderick Plate (who would become a demographic and statistical expert for Nazi killer Adolf Eichmann). AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Eugenics, March 1929 edition, featuring articles by Virginia racist Walter Plecker and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. VERMONT STATE PUBLIC RECORDS DIVISION
Carrie Buck standing in a park, date unknown. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
Code list for IBM Hollerith punch card system used in the Jamaica Race Crossing Study, 1928. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
TOP LEFT
Margaret Sanger. PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION
TOP RIGHT
ERO’s copy of German eugenicist Erwin Baur photograph. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
BOTTOM
Ernst Rüdin, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. MAX PLANCK INSTITUT FÜR PYSCHIATRIE, HISTORISCHES ARCHIV DER KLINIK
Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen at Buchenwald with a warm hat he claimed he never wore. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
TOP LEFT
Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick propagandizing for forced sterilization in Eugenical News, March-April 1934. AUTHOR ‘S COLLECTION
TOP RIGHT
Lavish praise for and photos of “Verschuer’s Institute” in Eugenical News, June 1936. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
BOTTOM
Enthusiastic essay about Nazi breeding experiments in Journal of Heredity, 1942. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
Human Betterment Foundation Annual Report for 1935 citing a letter from board member C. M. Goethe to racist eugenicist E. S. Gosney, bragging: “You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation. I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.” VERMONT STATE PUBLIC RECORDS DIVISION
ABOVE AND BELOW, LEFT
Nazi eugenicist Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer examining twins; his assistant, Josef Mengele, continued the experiments at Auschwitz. MAX PLANCK GESELLSCHAFT ARCHIV
Auschwitz’s murderous doctor, Josef Mengele. AUSCHWITZ ARCHIV
Praise for Edwin Black’s War Against the Weak
MOST CHILLING. War Against the Weak is filled with tale after tale of arrogance, ignorance, and cruelty—accounts that Black wisely allows the eugenicists to relate in their own words… Perhaps most chilling, though, were the ways in which American eugenicists influenced their German counterparts.
Carl Zimmer, Discovery
HAIR-RAISER AND EYE-OPENER. A hair-raiser and an eye-opener … contains details so vivid and horrid that one can hardly believe them or bear to read them… This is an important book, filled with little-known facts about how some of our most esteemed institutions and professionals funded and practiced very bad science, if it was science at all, and how this pseudoscience permeated much of the world’s thinking and led to the atrocities of a world war.
Nancy Schapiro, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
SENSATIONAL. At the beginning of the last century, American scientists, politicians, and livestock breeders decided to “create a superior Nordic race.” Sixty thousand men and women, most of them poor or of color, underwent compulsory sterilization—an idea that stimulated the Nazi’s eugenics program. The full extent of this medical crime has been described by Black in this sensational book.
Paul Ranier, Der Spiegel
FIERCE. A PRODIGIOUS FEAT OF REPORTING. War Against the Weak offers a fierce, compelling, account of how American ideas helped inspire—if that’s the right word—Hitler’s Reich… War Against the Weak is well told and extraordinarily sad. It represents a prodigious feat of reporting, as Black has trolled every archive and read every letter. A very persuasive book.
David Plotz, Mother Jones Magazine
SHOCKING AND GRIPPING. An impressive job and the resulting story is at once shocking and gripping.
Publishers Weekly in a Starred Review
IMPRESSIVE. Impressive, probably the history of eugenics for the foreseeable future.
Ray Olson, Booklist
WELL-DOCUMENTED. COMPREHENSIVE. An important, well-documented, comprehensive story, not known to most Americans, about a perversion of the pursuit of knowledge in the interest of race and social superiority.
Steve Courtney, Hartford Courant
CHILLING AND THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED. Chilling and thoroughly researched… it is a book whose message must be made known… for those who say “It can’t happen here.”
Mark Lewis, Tampa Tribune
The Books of Edwin Black
www.edwinblack.com
British Petroleum and The Redline Agreement
The West’s Secret Pact to Get Mideast Oil
www.redlineagreement.com
2011
Banking on Baghdad
Inside Iraq’s 7,000 Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict
www.bankingonbaghdad.com
2004
The Farhud
Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust
www.farhudbook.com
2010
War Against the Weak
Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race
www.waragainsttheweak.com
2003, 2012
Nazi Nexus
America’s Corporate Connections To Hitler’s Holocaust
www.nazinexus.com
2009
IBM and the Holocaust
The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation
www.ibmandtheholocaust.com
2001, 2012
The Plan
How to Rescue Society When the Oil Stops—or the Day Before
www.planforoilcrisis.com
2008
The Transfer Agreement
The Dra
matic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
www.transferagreement.com
1984, 2001, and 2009
Internal Combustion
How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives
www.internalcombustionbook.com
2006
Format C:
A Novel
www.formatnovel.com
1999
Copyright
Copyright © 2003, 2012 Edwin Black
Second paperback edition 2012
Printed and published in the United States
Dialog Press, Washington, DC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database, or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover art: Tallgrass Studios, Nancy Percich and Marcia Escobosa
Modern book text is produced using a variety of collaborative software, including spellcheckers and text revision tools. It is possible for such software to create typographical errors or other textual changes beyond the control of the author, editors, or publisher. Any changes, corrections, or additions to this book should be reported to, and/or can be found at: http://www.waragainsttheweak.com. Web site addresses (URLs) were accurate as of press time. Neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for URLs that have expired or moved since the manuscript was prepared.
The Library of Congress cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Black, Edwin
War against the weak : eugenics and America’s campaign to create a master race / by Edwin Black.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 1-56858-258-7 (hardcover)
1. Eugenics—United States—History 2. Sterilization (Birth Control)—United States. 3. Human reproduction—government policy—United States. 4. United States—Social policy. 5. United States—Moral conditions. I. Title.
HQ755.5.U5B53 2003
363.9’7—dc21
2003048857
ISBN 978-0-914153-29-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-914153-30-6 (ebook)
16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1
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