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Social Darwinism In Nazi Germany

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With Hitler’s rise to power as Chancellor and the progression of Nazi Germany, there lied theories and concepts that guided policies, propaganda, and murder. Hitler, as well as his disciples, educated themselves with these powerful theories and decided to execute them in a way no party had ever dreamed of. These theories derived from racial science and the ideology that a person’s race completely defined their character. One cannot make sense of the Nazi’s tactics without comprehending the abstract foundation that led to the plan of creating a racially purified society in the first place. Therefore, the extreme measures the Nazi regime went to in order to the wipe the existence of any other race besides their own was not strictly based on racism, …show more content…

This is where racial theories included the idea of eugenics or the improvement of the genetic quality of a human population. With a massive death of the “unfit” comes a balance and progress. Furthermore, the Nazis the allegation that the mixture of unsuitable races leads to the destruction to the greatest race of all: Aryan. This also involves distinguishing between positive and negative eugenics. The idea behind Nazism was based solely on both. Positive eugenics was preserving good hereditary characteristics, whereas negative eugenics was the concept of weakening the shunned social groups by restraining their reproduction. In other words, the Nazi regime justified the mass killings of these counter groups as a means of science or cleansing it through eugenic means. Nazi objectives also centered on the idea of Ancestral Proof. It was a condition under the regime and it was later incorporated in the Nuremberg Laws based off the proof of how much Jewish blood a citizen had. Its main objective was to preserve German blood and purity. Under their power, Nazis enforced the idea of ancestral proof on a massive scale with 2,000 regulations on the basis of racial status. Finally, racial eugenic reasoning permitted the Nazi regime to authorize, support, and implement a strategy of slaughtering every race or group that was not Aryan on the

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Summary Adolf Hitler asses race in terms of ranks producing lower and higher groups of people. In his assessment, he alludes to the argument that the lower groups of people mainly Jews polluted the higher groups in their mixing. He contends that when racial mixing occurs the higher group is lowered both physically and intellectually. Hitler also paints the imagery of conflict that would result if the two

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His plans consisted of exterminating all inferior races to Germans, including Jews. Although the Nazis changed the regime to show these ideas, some outliers continued to think differently. Individuals and groups of people opposed the Nazi regime and its ideology when the White

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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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The Nazis believed the Germans were “racially superior” and the Jews were inferior (The Holocaust). Over 6 million Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust (The Holocaust). The main targets were Jews, disabled, Gypsies, and slavic people (The Holocaust). If they did not match the “social norms”, they were killed (The Holocaust). Between the years 1941 and 1944, Jews were deported to concentration camps where they were then killed (The Holocaust).

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After the fall of the Nazis in the 1940s, eugenics continued to impact the lives of those in the United States negatively up until the 1970s. It was not due to the need to be “superior”, but to be able to control reproduction by increasing the top members and decreasing the lower members. The movement took place mainly in the East Coast during the Progressive Era, reaching its climax in the 1920s and 1930s with immigration control, marriage laws, and sterilization of those who were considered dangerous to the society. Due to the Nazis, their rise to power, and the horrifying Holocaust, it had formed the movements in the United States.

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The oppression began with health policies aimed towards the removal of “unfit” persons. Over time, the Nazi strategies intensified; beginning at forced sterilization, and then transitioning into mass murder. Forced sterilization was a government policy that coerced the Disabled into surgical treatments in an attempt to cure them. The most extreme method of manslaughter, known as the “Euthanasia Program”, was a trial run for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (“Euthanasia Program”). The word “Euthanasia” is translated into “good death”, but to the Nazis, it was a term that implied the systematic mass murders of thousands.

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The Holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler, ruler of the Nazi party, and his associates conducted the mass murder of over six million Jews. Nazi Germany under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler was responsible for the brutal, inhuman slaughter of the Jews from 1933 to 1945. Many German civilians were ashamed of the callous, blasé and insensitive killings led by their own ruler and therefore deny any knowledge of the events of the Holocaust. Their claims to be unaware of the events of the Holocaust are not valid and are only used as a shield for their pride and dignity. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed that the Germans were the ‘perfect race’ and all other races were deemed ‘inferior’.

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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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According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, eugenics is: “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. ("Definition of Eugenics by Merriam-Webster") The most common example of this concept would be the Holocaust, which was the extermination of Jewish people and others deemed “unfit” for society in World War Ⅱ. But little do many know, the Nazi’s were not the only people practicing eugenics in the early 1900’s, eugenics was being practiced in the United States long before the Holocaust. The American Eugenics Society aimed to educate American people on the science of Eugenics.

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Holocaust signifies“sacrifice by fire”. The Germans thought that they were “superior” to all other races. They claimed that they had encountered a “final solution” to the “problem” of racial disparity. Germans targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority". They targeted Gypsies, disabled, Poles and Russians.

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The Holocaust is a shining example of Anti-Semitism at its best and it was no secret that the Nazis tried to wipe out the Jews from Europe but the question is why did the Nazis persecute the Jews and how did they try to do it. This essay will show how the momentum, from a negative idea about a group of people to a genocide resulting in the murder of 6 million Jews, is carried from the beginning of the 19th Century, with pseudo-scientific racial theories, throught the 20th century in the forms of applied social darwinism and eugenics(the display of the T4 programme), Nazi ideas regarding the Jews and how discrimination increased in the form of the Nuremberg Laws , Kristallnacht, and last but not least, The Final Solution. Spanning throughout the 19th century, racial theories were seen. Pseudo-Scientific theories such as Craniometry,where the size of one’s skull determines one’s characteristics or could justifies one’s race( this theory was used first by Peter Camper and then Samuel Morton), Karl Vogt’s theory of the Negro race being related to apes and of how Caucasian race is a separate species to the Negro race, Arthur de Gobineau’s theory of how miscegenation(mixing or interbreeding of different races) would lead to the fall of civilisation.

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The Aryans (also known as the Nazis) did not like god’s plan/idea of making all races equal so that there can be peace and love in the world. “ We had already lived through a lot that night. We thought that nothing could frighten us anymore, but his harsh words sent shivers down through us. The word “Chimney” “ (Wiesel 39), when Elie is saying “ We lived through a lot ” (Wiesel 39) he is saying that they have all reached their breaking point, this helped the Nazis side because that just made them weak and hopeless that means that they would obey all of their commands, and that would make things more easier to whip out the Jewish race. Hitler's crazy plan for a ‘Master Race’ was a very good try

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For instance, Hitler believed in ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ a community formed of racially pure people, typically full-blooded German people and anyone who did not fit into this idealistic such as Gypsies, Jews, Disabled People and other minorities -living in Germany- were either killed or sent to concentration camps to work to their death. Throughout Hitlers total dictactorship 11 million people were killed, 6 million of which were

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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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