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Argumentative Essay On Eugenics

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Recommended: The social impacts of the first world war

Urte Petraityte
History 20
Andrew Frantz
Section 31
3 February 2016
Delegate Paper #1

After the first world war economies started slowing down, soldiers came home and a new way of living had to be created to accommodate the post war changes in society. More people were living in the cities than ever before, the birth rate of the elite was rapidly declining while the lower class began to over populate. The government believed it was their duty to get involved which they did by creating the concept of Eugenics. Although people define eugenics in many different ways the main concepts include artificially selecting desired traits which then allows scientific improvement of the population by controlled breeding. Eugenics became a science used …show more content…

During the time Hitler was coming to power and right before, the idea of Eugenics in Germany was spreading. “Scientists dreamed of a perfect human being by changing the genetic makeup of the population.” Even before the Nazi party was formed they already had these ideas in mind and once Hitler starting supporting the idea the results were horrific. Just like in America the Germans believed that the “unfit” were reproducing while the “fit” generation was using birth control and having kids later bringing down the overall population. Similarly to the United States the government warned about mixing races and was afraid that the population was becoming worse and something had to be done. Surgical Sterilization was another parallel to prevent the spreading of bad genes although the practice didn’t gain as much support as it had in other countries around the globe. Similarly to the United States there were birth and marriage laws, for example the Marital Health law of October 1935 banned unions between the Hereditarily healthy and person deemed genetically unfit, Getting married and having kids was a duty for the racially fit.” So far German Eugenics seem very similar to those in the United Sates, the government worked on controlling every aspect of the population. They government was afraid of the spread of the bad genes that

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He encouraged all Germans to keep their bodies pure of any intoxicating or unclean substance. A main Nazi concept was the notion of racial hygiene. New laws banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans, and deprived "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. Hitler's early “selective breeding” policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities, and later authorized an euthanasia program for disabled

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That did not mean eliminate the possibilities of poorer areas reproducing. It did not involve permanent defects on test subjects simply because they are poor. Eugenics in the penal system took the negative approach and called it a “movement” using the poor and imprisoned as subject studies of that movement. The eugenics movements in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia favored the negative approach. The courts would offer shorter sentences to people who would agree to be sterilized, knowing that they would take it because they could not afford bond and would want a shorter sentence.

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In 1933, the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ was passed, ordering forced sterilization of those who were considered to be Disabled. These people included those with deafness, blindness, physical deformities, epilepsy, schizophrenia, etcetera. (“Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”). Hitler backdated his order to September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began, to make it appear as if this was a wartime measure. The individuals were taken to supposed “Eugenics Court” where doctors and lawyers loyal to Hitler reviewed the cases.

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Darwinists in turn, believed biology to be destiny and that if one's ancestors were unfit their children would be as well. Much like in evolution, Spencer assumed that the unfit populations would decline overtime due to their failure to compete, however paranoia led some Americans to speed up this process, introducing eugenics. Eugenics were supposed to improve men, ridding the undesirable traits of the unfit and changing genetic structure to create more fit individuals. The Eugenics movement in America took people of color, the mentally ill or disabled, LGBTQ individuals, and other members of society deemed unfit, and conducted experimentation ranging from forced breeding, involuntary sterilization, or institutionalization on them. Although the movement was eventually stomped out, it violated thousands of

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Eugenics was prominent during the twenties and aimed to improve the human population by reducing the likeliness of defective genetic traits. Eugenics was practiced mainly in institutions for patients who possessed traits that could be passed through reproduction. During the time of eugenics, a young woman named Carrie Buck was sterilized in order to prevent passing on the traits that she and her mother possessed. Carrie and her mother were both institutionalized and considered “feeble minded”, therefore they were seen as unable to contribute to the procreation of the human race. These ideas of perfecting the human race resembled that of Hitler’s, as described in the Mein Kampf.

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Accounts about the behavior past generations were taken from children and grandchildren, or sometimes even people like neighbors or friends. (The University of Florida, "Science of Eugenics", 2014) This made the accuracy of their studies questionable. It is not certain that the science of eugenics was really science at all, but rather the scientists twisted the information or their sources to prove what they wanted to prove. The Americans then took their inaccurate science and sent it to countries including Germany.

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Eugenics was a racist pseudoscience the aimed at clearing out all human beings that we regarded as unfit leaving behind only a selected that were conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Sterilization and segregation policies and marriage restrictions were enacted enshrining elements of philosophy. California was among the top five states to adopt such laws by early 1910. This attributed to a substantial number of marriages being barred and thousands of Americans being sterilized. On average about half of coercive sterilizations were done in California before the eruption of World War II in the 1940s.

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The impact of the inauguration of scientific beliefs and studies on eugenics in the 1800’s is still evident in modern United States today. Eugenics is defined as eugenicists promoting the naturally fit people who carried desirable traits to increase a population with hopes of a community filled with intelligent citizens. Positive eugenics advocated the superior people to marry each other and reproduce to create as many offsprings in order to increase the number of the fit. Negative eugenics would discourage the disabled from reproducing at all, so that they would not compete with the superior. The endorsement from the government allowed scientists to implement their ideas on eugenics and some aspect of their policies is used today.

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This was a law created in 1933 called the “Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”. The sterilization process was involuntary, people with and undesirable qualities, like a history of mental illness or a physical handicap, wouldn’t be able to breed. It is likely that if the Nazis won the war, this program would have extended throughout most of Europe, furthering the Nazi

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"Instead, the ‘Blood Protection Law,’ announced in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935, criminalized marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans." (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Hitler not only wanted to get rid of the bad heredity in Germany, but he wanted to pass down good genes. His goal was to create a genetic blueprint of Germany (Nazi Eugenics), to ensure that everyone was a part of “The Nordic Race” (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Hitler believed anyone that was a descent of “The Nordic Race” was genetically superior to other race.

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Both Jewish men and women had unimaginable experiments performed on them by doctors. These experiments never had been done before and were obviously life threatening. Some were just done for cruel pleasure (Ringelheim). Not only did Jewish women have experimental procedures done, but they would also be sterilized. The German Nazis did not believe that children born to a Jewish family could be “germanized”; which means you get swiped from all Jewish beliefs, you were

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(Social Darwinism, Cory Jensen) This was Hitlers belief. He believed that anyone of “pure” German decent was inherently better than anyone else. This lead to him wanting to “purify” Germany via the

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The year before Hitler’s rise to power in 1932, “just under 44,000 German women applied to terminate a pregnancy and 34,698 of these were approved. Between 1935 and 1940, there were only 14,333 applications and 9,701 approvals.” This suggests that the Nazis propaganda describing abortion as a “crime against the body and against the state” did influence women within German society to refrain from getting abortions, therefore indicating that the position of women did not improve under Nazi rule, due to the fact that the majority of women were denied abortions due to the ideas of the Nazi regime towards women and children. As well as placing restrictions on abortions, the Nazis placed restrictions on contraceptives. Historian Jill Stephenson states that the Nazi’s attitudes towards contraceptives became “a curious of repression and apparent enlightenment” The Nazis wanted to bring the birth rate up, most significantly between Aryan race and members of the SS - but the need to also understand the debilitating effects of sexually transmitted diseases, meant that condoms remained available in German cities, while most contraceptives were banned.

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Eugenics is the science of using artificial selection to improve genetic features of the population. It is thought that improvement of the human race can be seen through sterilization of people who exhibit undesirable traits and selective breeding. Often called Social Darwinism, the concept was widely accepted during the time of World War I. It quickly became a taboo after World War II when Nazi Germany used it as an excuse for genocide. The thought of improving the human race by manipulating who is allowed to breed can either be appalling or compelling.

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Eugenics The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton. He defined it as the study of “the conditions under which men of a high type are produced” and also as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race”. However, it is not just a field of study and, could be taken as a social movement or policy as well. “Eugenics” may refer to the theory that infers hereditable intelligence and fortune which are possessed by the wealthy, successful and intelligent were made as a result of their good selective breeding, and that the lower classes would remain so because they continued to breed with other poor people from lower social classes or casts. Eugenics could be popular amongst people with a vested

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