Eugenics

Theories of eugenics, or “racial hygiene” in the German context, shaped many of Nazi Germany’s persecutory policies.

Eugenics, or “racial hygiene,” was a scientific movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

While today eugenics may be regarded as a pseudoscience, it was seen as cutting edge science in the early decades of the twentieth century. Eugenics societies sprang up throughout most of the industrialized world, particularly in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany.

Eugenics provided the basis for the Nazi compulsory sterilization policy and underpinned the murder of the institutionalized disabled in the clandestine “euthanasia” (T4) program.

Background

A significant number of Nazi persecutory policies stemmed from theories of racial hygiene, or eugenics. Such theories were prevalent among the international scientific community in the first decades of the twentieth century. The term “eugenics” (from the Greek for “good birth or stock”) was coined in 1883 by the English naturalist Sir Francis Galton. The term's German counterpart, “racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene), was first employed by German economist Alfred Ploetz in 1895. At the core of the movement’s belief system was the principle that human heredity was fixed and immutable.

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Nazi Racial Hygiene

German eugenics pursued a separate and terrible course after 1933. Before 1914, the German racial hygiene movement did not differ greatly from its British and American counterparts. The German eugenics community became more radical shortly after World War I. The war brought unprecedented carnage. In addition, Germany saw economic devastation in the years between World War I and World War II. These factors heightened the division between those considered hereditarily “valuable” and those considered “unproductive.” For instance, some believed that hereditarily “valuable” Germans had died on the battlefield, while the “unproductive” Germans institutionalized in prisons, hospitals, and welfare facilities remained behind. Such arguments resurfaced in the Weimar and early Nazi eras as a way to justify eugenic sterilization and a decrease in social services for the disabled and institutionalized.

By 1933, the theories of racial hygiene were embedded into the professional and public mindset. These theories influenced the thinking of Adolf Hitler and many of his followers. They embraced an ideology that blended racial antisemitism with eugenic theory. In doing so, the Hitler regime provided context and latitude for the implementation of eugenic measures in their most concrete and radical forms.

Racial hygiene shaped many of Nazi Germany’s racial policies. Medical professionals implemented many of these policies and targeted individuals the Nazis defined as “hereditarily ill”: those with mental, physical, or social disabilities. Nazis claimed these individuals placed both a genetic and a financial burden upon society and the state.

Nazi authorities resolved to intervene in the reproductive capacities of persons classified as “hereditarily ill.” One of the first eugenic measures they initiated was the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (“Hereditary Health Law”). The law mandated forcible sterilization for nine disabilities and disorders, including schizophrenia and “hereditary feeblemindedness.” As a result of the law, 400,000 Germans were ultimately sterilized in Nazi Germany. In addition, eugenic beliefs shaped Germany’s 1935 Marital Hygiene Law. This law prohibited the marriage of persons with “diseased, inferior, or dangerous genetic material” to “healthy” German “Aryans.”

Conclusion

Eugenic theory provided the basis for the “euthanasia” (T4) program. This clandestine program targeted disabled patients living in institutions throughout the German Reich for killing. An estimated 250,000 patients, the overwhelming majority of them German “Aryans,” fell victim to this clandestine killing operation.