Bokelskere.no

Indeed, the striking and sad thing is,

eugenics claimed to be rooted in science and genetics,

yet, serious biologists and geneticists even back then knew
perfectly well it was everything but.

There was nothing in the theory of evolution as
outlined by Darwin which justified it;

and, more to the point, a basic understanding of Mendelian
genetics was amply enough to debunk it ['avskrøne']
outright.

In fact, even the man who had coined the word, Francis Galton,
had refused until his death in 1911 to align himself with
such burgeoning socio-political agenda --
he was too clever to rely even on his own assumptions, and
anyway, his was a matter of 'positive eugenics'
(encouraging the supposedly fit to procreate) --
away from the
'negative eugenics'
(the getting-rid of the supposedly unfit, through forced
sterilizations if necessary)

that would ultimately swamp America, and take upon
its own genocidal course under Nazism.

/

It's no secret: although eugenics triumphed in its most
despicable and murderous form in Nazi Germany,

the Nazis were just carrying on to the next extreme
what had been thought and done in the USA during the previous
decades.

In fact, [Hitler's] Nuremberg Laws and even the
sterilization laws that had preceded
them were, at their core, just a copy
of the same type of legislation then defining about 27 states
in the US.

Sadly, though, as far as the victims of the Nazis regime had
been liberated when the gas chambers closed down after the
Third Reich's collapse,
victims of American eugenics were not that lucky --
its practice went well into the 1970s, if not beyond.

It's an horrific story, with gruesome parallels, but which
deserves to be known.

..what happened in Nazi Germany was nothing but the brainchild
of a twisted intellectual movement born in the USA.
War Against the Weak is highly instructive.
It also stands as a powerful warning.

How come, then, such a pseudo-science,
such intellectual fraud, came to be so popular?

How come major political figures would take it up and
enshrine its tenets into laws?

Edwin Black here strikes right at the heart of it all:

the so-called American 'melting pot', and money.

Racism, of course, always had been pernicious in America.
But, if it's obvious and easy to think White vs Black,
in a country that were deeply impacted by slavery,
a Civil War motivated in part by White Supremacy (..)
American racism was also White vs White.

There was no such thing as an admirable 'melting-pot'
indeed (..)
and Ellis Island was as much a beckon of hope for many
fleeing all corners of the world

as it was a center to sort out the undesirables --
for being of the wrong creed, the wrong colour,
including the wrong white.

By no means did the eugenics movement limit its animus
to non-English speaking immigrants.

It was a movement against non-Nordics
regardless of their skin color, language or national origin.

/

Where the book truly rings alarm bells and pops red flags,
though:
is when Edwin Black discusses the crucial influence of
powerful business barons and their fortunes.

Eugenics surely was nothing but a scientific sham adhered to
by looneys; - but these looneys, in America, were backed
by millions of dollars and, oh boy! They didn't waste it!

The Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation,
Mary Harriman (the widow of a railroad magnate, filthy rich),
even IBM.
They would all happily fork in to make sure their social
prejudices were lobbied as they should --
for social prejudices it was too.

Being the instrument of the wealthy, eugenics was not only an
attack upon the 'inferior races',
but, an attack on the poor as well.
But here was a complex and wide-ranging program, which would
target from the disabled to the criminals, and from
the poor to the foreigners.

'Eugenics was nothing less than
corporate philanthropy gone wild.'

"Big money made all the differences for eugenics.
Indeed, biological supremacy, raceology and coercive
eugenics battle plans were all just talk until those ideas
married into American affluence.
With that affluence came the means and the connections
to make eugenics theory an administrative reality."

/ (...)

What I didn't know was, how deeper and closer both sides of
the Atlantic were intertwined,
beyond just mere ideals echoing each other.

Richard Davenport was an unrepentant Nazis apologetic until
his death in 1944.
Harry Laughlin was offered a Honorary Degree from the
University of Heidelberg for his influence on 'racial hygiene'.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, where such 'sciences' were
performed, had been financed by the Rockefeller Foundation
(until the break out of the war, but, still, their money had
made some of such institutions possible in the first place).

In fact, the sickening collaboration will even have weird
consequences:
Dr Katzen-Ellenbogen, one of the doctors at Buchenwald,
had been Chief Eugenicist in New Jersey

(interestingly enough, when Woodrow Wilson was then
its Governor...) before emigrating to Europe;

while a Otto Hoffman, SS in charge of the Race and
Settlement Office, would cite American policies
and legislations as his defense during his trial --
he couldn't understand how the USA could accuse him of
crime against humanity, they who had brainstormed the same
kind of policies in the name of the same views!

(...) /

[ anmelder Aurélien Thomas, via goodreads.com - Jul 16, 2020 ]