Nazi Eugenics Chapter Summary

Chapter 1: How and why eugenics became popular before Nazism

"Science would provide an even firmer foundation for morality than religion had"-Ernst Haeckel- Uber die heutige Entwickelungslehre im verhaltnisse zur Gesamtwissenschaft

Eugenics is one of the oldest practices our world has, from Pre-Galtonian philosophies famously presented by Plato, to the Nazi regime. The book "The Origin of Species" shock the world with it publication in November 1859 with the famous doctrine of evolution- though this theory had been well known long before this point. Darwin’s theory had led the way to a "radical departure from the traditional ways of grounding morality” (Weikart, (2004) P21) and therefore human nature had been called into question. In the Metaphysics of evolution

Though Darwin himself never talked about eugenics; the book removed Judeo-Christian morality replacing it with the belief that human morality was subject to natural selection. The belief that humans were created in the image of a deity was also removed as it was now known that people evolved and had to struggle for existence like all the other creatures who were previously deemed less important than humans. Once the new ideas had taken its place amongst the intellectual masses, it allowed for the once sacred human being to become separated into categories of fit and unfit. Using new scientific discoveries eugenicists victimised those who they felt were unfit and accused them of lowering the genetic stock of society. The victims of the eugenicist’s twisted philanthropic desires were dehumanised and the law dealt with by taking away their rights to their bodies and sterilising them. This is a technique which was used by the Nazi party before and during World War Two. By making itself seem like a benign and philanthropic practice eugenics gained its popularity before