Ideas of Politicians During the Second World War

Francis Galton (1822-1911) was the father of eugenics. He was the cousin of Charles Darwin and developed the first bases for the improvement of the race. His first idea was inspired by the process of selection and improvement of racehorses. He decided to apply the methodology of breeding horses to raise men and thus improve the human race.

‘… just as it is easy, despite certain limitations, to obtain by careful selection stable breeds of dogs or horses endowed with special faculties for the race or to do anything else, so it should be feasible to produce a race of men highly endowed using sensible weddings along with several consecutive generations.

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Francis Galton

In 1883 Francis Galton embodied his theory on eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.

His theory is based on the following premises:

1. The evolution of the species and the theory of natural selection of Darwin.
2. Malthus’ ideas that world resources had a limited capacity are inversely proportional to population growth.

3. The degeneration of the race because of: overcrowding in the cities, and theandand emergence of diseases that were thought to be hereditary, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, or alcoholism.

Galton founded 1904 the Eugenics Laboratory in London. There he developed the model of identifying the social variables that should be under the control of the state, to avoid damaging the racial qualities of future generations, both physically and mentally. He concluded that the state should guide marriages. If marriage was encouraged among the best-placed and most endowed couples in society, then society would improve, since one of their main concerns was that lower-class marriages produced more children than those of higher or dominant classes.

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To top it off, Galton denounced charitable organizations, since assuming the care of the poor and the sick degenerates, inept and inferior; prevent the spontaneous process of ‘natural selection’

After the world war, and due to the impact caused by the radical application of the eugenics model by the National Socialists of the German Workers Party, the American Eugenics Society changed its strategy, adopted a hidden model to apply its policy in a hidden way and now behind the back of the society. In 1958, Dr. Carlos Paton Blacker, general secretary and president of the English Eugenics Society since 1931 made the following proposal: ‘That the Society (of Eugenics) should pursue eugenic objectives by less visible means, ie a policy of crypto-eugenics, which is a success in the American Eugenics Society. ‘ Doctor Carlos Paton Blacker.

THE ENGLISH MODEL

One of the greatest defenders of eugenics in Europe was the Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill. When he was Minister of the Interior in 1910, Winston Churchill proposed to sterilize 100,000 mental degenerates and send several thousand others to concentration camps to save the British race from decay.

‘The rapidly increasing and unnatural increase of sick and imbecile classes constitutes a national and race danger, impossible to exaggerate. I believe that the front should be cut and sealed from which the current of madness is nourished before another year passes ‘ Winston Churchill 1910. Secretary of the Interior and future Prime Minister of England.

The truth is that Churchill, years later, was able to put some of his ideas into practice during the Second World War. In July 1944 he proposed to his chiefs of staff to use poisonous gas or any other method of warfare that they had not yet used against the Germans. On July 24 and 25, 1943, he ordered the arson bombing of Hamburg during which he killed at least 48,000 civilians. Then he ordered the Dresden (February 13, 1945), causing between 135,000 and 200,000 dead. He even said that ‘everyone bombs civilians’. These data are of the same order of magnitude as the official data of deaths from atomic bombs dropped by the United States. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively 83,793 and 71,370.

The English Eugenics Society among its aims pursue the following:

1. Educate the people in the eugenic sense and inculcate the responsibility before the offspring for the ennoblement of motherhood and paternity.
2. Fight against the factors that impede the reproduction of the best and that allow the multiplication of the lower types, eugenically speaking.
3. Propagate the idea that tared or degenerate types should not be reproduced, which can be achieved by voluntary and mandatory segregation and sterilization procedures.
4. Work actively and immediately with the legislative work, to be able to intervene effectively, already opposing the measures taken, and defending them, whenever the interest of the race demands it.

Together with Francis Galton, Leonard Darwin, son of the biologist Charles, led the eugenics movement in England. In 1913 they developed the Mental Deficiency Act where it was clearly defined to whom the eugenic methodology should be applied.

‘If you visit a good establishment of this species you will see that the animals are well housed, that they are fed conveniently, neither too much nor too little, and that, in addition, they are carefully preserved from any infection. Would not it be a real satisfaction to be able to make similar observations in any of the poor neighborhoods of the big cities? ‘ Leonard Darwin 1928

THE NAZI MODEL

In history one of the crudest and most radical applications of eugenics was in Germany during the period of National Socialism. The Nazi ideology sought to populate Germany with the so-called Aryan race. Hitler applied a policy of mass extermination and all those who did not enter the ideal, especially Jews, gypsies, and people with some kind of defect.

National Socialism officially applied the eugenics criteria through the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935:

1. Preventing marriages with people of inferior races

To protect the German race, marriages between ‘healthy people’ and people considered genetically impure were prohibited. All behaviors that attempted against procreation, such as abortion and homosexuality, were persecuted.

• Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or related blood are forbidden.
• Carnal extramarital commerce between Jews and citizens of German or related blood is prohibited.

2. Compulsory sterilization program

300 special courts of Justice were created, formed by two doctors and a Judge to decide who should be sterilized. 25% of German doctors collaborated in the process of identification and mass sterilization. During the massive sterilization program, more than 350,000 people were sterilized against their will.

The murder of the mentally ill was carried out using sterilization, lethal injections, malnutrition, gas, or by most injecting low doses of barbiturates, which favored the appearance of pneumonia that was usually terminal. In August 1941, the murder of mental patients by gas was suspended.

3. Program to promote the birth of people of the Aryan race on Nazi farms

Lebensborn (German for ‘source of life’) was an organization created in Germany. Its goal was to expand the Aryan race. This organization provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and single mothers. It also administered orphanages and programs to give children up for adoption. During the Lebensborn program, thousands of single girls entered specially equipped centers with the sole intention of procreating and bringing into the world Aryan children, worthy of belonging to the SS. On these Aryan child-rearing farms, single mothers selected for procreation gave up their babies at 3 months for the state to take care of their education. That is, once the children were born they belonged to the Third Reich. But if Mendel’s genetics and laws did not play their part and the newborn had some non-Aryan trait, it was ‘thrown out.’

4.Euthanasia program: Aktion T4

Under the name of Aktion T4, the Nazis hid a terrible program of mandatory euthanasia. T4 comes from the place where the program was organized, Tiergartenstraße 4. It is the address of the current headquarters of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin.

It was designed and executed under the supervision of doctors during the Nazi regime. The objective of the program was to eliminate people identified as incurable patients, children with hereditary defects, or unproductive adults, considered a burden on society. 70,273 victims were killed in the euthanasia program.

The Aktion T4 program was applied for interests in the German economy. Health resources, beds, staff, etc. were saved. Medical programs, such as the T4 of euthanasia, contributed to the racial hygiene necessary for the good health of the German economy since the people eliminated were presented by the Nazi propaganda as a burden for the German society. The Nazis considered genetically ill people as: schizophrenic, epileptic, manic-depressive, blind and with genetic deafness, chronic alcoholics, senile demented, paralytic, syphilitic, and all those with symptoms of mental retardation and physical deformities.

An agency was created to make a registry of hereditary and congenital diseases. 6 Euthanasia centers were established, directed by Karl Brandt. In Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. The Physicians’ Role was: to create a calm and relaxing medical environment; open the keys of carbon dioxide; and, and issue death certificates to inform the family that they had died of natural causes.

The idea was to study the patient in life, for years, and then murdered discreetly and their brains were studied. The investigations were suspended after the defeat of Stalingrad.

For babies, commissions were created that decided on the health status of newborns. They consisted of two children’s doctors and a psychiatrist. The commission was obliged to report all births affected by disability, deformation, microcephaly, down syndrome, and, encephalopathies. The children who were deserving of euthanasia were transferred to one of the 20 specialized hospitals iforfornforlorn the treatment. The Berlin Topography Museum of Terror documents the murder of more than 5,000 children under 10 years of age because of physical handicaps or classified as ‘weak-minded’ or ‘unfit to be educated’.

The method selected to end the life of the patient consisted of asphyxiation with carbon dioxide (CO2) or b means ofanof an overdose of barbiturates (Luminal).

The T4 Aktion allowed the National Socialists to develop efficient technological capabilities that they later applied in the extermination camps in the final solution.

THE USA MODEL

According to the Foundation of the Victims of Eugenics:

At the end of 1940, the Department of Public Welfare of the USA began to promote sterilization as a solution to poverty. Thirty-three (33) States of the USA recognized that they carried out sterilization programs during the 20th century. At first, they were only aimed at people admitted to mental institutions but, finally, as the years passed, they were applied to entire groups. They suffered criminalascriminals s, epileptics, blind, deaf, alcoholics, women considered promiscuous, and also considered mentally weak. As of today, only seven (7) of the 33 States that applied the sterilization programs have publicly acknowledged and apologized to the victims. In North Carolina, victims have been compensated for damages. More than 65,000 people were sterilizetheconfirmed sterilization were theUSthe majority without their knowledge.

The first victim of sterilization in Virginia was Carrie Buck in 1924. Carrie lived with her adoptive parents, John and Alice Dobbs. But Carrie’s life at 17 was cut short. A nephew of the Dobbs raped her and made her pregnant. The Dobbs decided to enter Carrie in Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, an institution for epileptics and mentally weak where her mother had been admitted years before for prostitution. Carrie, a normal girl was locked up to hide a scandal that would stain the Dobbs’ last name. She was accused of being promiscuous and weak-own defense sterilization and was sentenced to sterilization.

Carrie appealed to the Supreme Court in the so-called Buck v. Bell. John Bell, director of Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, was the accuser in the sterilization process. Bell argued that mother and daughter had been admitted to the Institution and that the Buck gene was deficient. In addition, Carrie’s lawyer, Irving Whitehead, was a personal friend of Aubrey Strode, the lawmaker who had written Virginia’s sterilization law. Carrie was sentenced. In 1927, by eight votes to one, the Supreme Court confirmedsterilization. The Court’s ruling included justifications such as Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Carrie’s daughter was given to her adoptive parents, and in addition, her little sister was also sterilized, not knowing until years later because, in theory, she underwent an operation for appendicitis.

Eugenics received extensive funding from philanthropic companies, such as the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. The programs included researchers from the most prestigious universities, such as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even financed the program in which Josef Mengele worked before going to Auschwitz.

Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court of Justice, wrote: ‘It is better for everyone, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate descendants of crime or let them starve for their imbecility, that society can avoid those who are manifestly unfit to continue his kind …. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. ‘ This decision opened the doors for thousands of people to be sterilized or coercively persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials quoted the words of Holmes in their ownefense.

CALIFORNIA THE LEADING STATE OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT

The concept of a white white-white, blond, blue-eyed, Nordic-race master race developed before Hitler led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The idea was original to the United States, and the eugenicists of California led the American eugenics movement for ethnic cleansing. Before the Second World War, 50% of forced sterilizations were performed in California, and after the war, 30% of all sterilizations arrived.

Thanks to the efforts of the eugenics of Californians, after eugenics became entrenched in the United States, the campaign was moved to Germany, which published leaflets idealizing sterilization and distributed them to German officials and scientists. Hitler studied the American laws of eugenics. During the 1920s, eugenics scientists at the Carnegie Institution cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany’s fascist eugenicists.

In 1926, Rockefeller donated about $ 410,000 to the research program of German researchers. In May of 1926, Rockefeller granted $ 250,000 for the creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry. Among the avant-gamine confirmedrde psychiatrists of the German Institute of psychiatric problems was Ernst Rudin, who became director and, finally, architect of Hitler’s systematic medical repression. The organization of Rüdin became the main target of experimentation and criminal investigation carried out on Jews and Gypsies.