“…it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply…”
-Adolf Hitler
The Topics Covered in This Essay Are As Follows:
Hitler’s and Nazism’s Darwinism
Use, Abuse and Misuse of Darwin
Hitler’s and Nazism’s Darwinism
From Charles Darwin’s autobiography:
“I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.”1 [italics in original]
Theodore D. Hall, Ph.D.:
“Among primitive men,” wrote foremost2 Social Darwinist T.H. Huxley, “the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, survived. Life was a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence. The human species, like others, plashed and floundered amid the general stream of evolution, keeping its head above water as it best might, and thinking neither of whence nor whither.”3
Adolf Hitler stated:
“The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.”4
Hitler also stated:
“The idea of struggle is as old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle. In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.”5
This is a paraphrase of Charles Darwin’s statement:
“Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would soon sink into indolence, and the more highly-gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted.”6
Prussian General and Social Darwinist Friedrich von Bernhardi wrote,
“‘If it were not for war we should find that inferior and degenerate races would overcome healthy and youthful ones by their wealth and their numbers. The generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, and thus war becomes a biological necessity.’”7
1933 Nuremberg Trial Transcript, Vol. 4, p. 279,
“a higher race subjects to itself a lower race…a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right.”8
In a speech concluding the Reichsparteitag at Nurnberg on 3 September 1933 Hitler stated:
“Thus there results the subjection of a number of people under the will, often of only a few persons, a subjection based simply upon the right of the stronger, a right which, as we see in Nature, can be regarded as the sole conceivable right, because it is founded on reason.”9
Jerry Bergman, teacher of biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology at Northwest State College:
“A review of the writings of Hitler and contemporary German biologists finds that Darwin’s theory and writings had a major influence on Nazi policies…In the formation of his racial policies, [Hitler] relied heavily upon the Darwinian evolution model, especially the elaborations by Spencer and Haeckel. They culminated in the ‘final solution,’ the extermination of approximately six million Jews and four million other people who belonged to what German scientists judged were ‘inferior races.’”10
Sir Arthur Keith wrote:
“The leader of Germany is an evolutionist, not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him, the national ‘front’ of Europe is also the evolutionary ‘front;’ he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people…[Hitler was] an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his action….The German Fuhrer…consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.”11
The late Stephen Jay Gould Professor of Biology at Harvard University,
“Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”12
“1859” refers to the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Gould referencing Benjamin Kidd:
“Darwin’s theories came to be openly set out in political and military text books as the full justification for war and highly organized schemes of national policy in which the doctrine of force became the doctrine of Right.”13
Joe Keysor notes:
“There were important aspects of Naziism such as slaughtering the Jews and blind obedience to Hitler which Darwin never dreamed of and would have condemned unhesitatingly. Hitler’s thought, including his understanding of evolution, was uniquely German. Nevertheless, the idea of survival of the fittest as being the source of all progress (without reference to a divinely given system of ethics and morality) is integral to Hitler’s thought….
In the conclusion to The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote: Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted….
Hitler frequently appealed to Darwinian logic. Here are a few examples from one chapter of Mein Kampf:
…the most patent principles of Nature’s rule…
…it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level…
…the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life…
Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only aweak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable
higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.
In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or lessdetermined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grantsthe right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle isalways a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and,
therefore, a cause of its higher development.
…since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, ifboth had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferiorwould multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best wouldinevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state ofaffairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker partto such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited,and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making
a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health.
…exact scientific truth…cold logic…
…the rigid law of necessity and the right to victory of the best and
stronger in this world. [vol. I chapt. 11,’Nation and Race’].When the physician Ludwig Buechner wrote the following words in 1882, he was in harmony with Hegel’s concept of history: ‘…history as well as nature mark every step forward, even the smallest, with innumerable piles of corpses….
It is no coincidence that Wilhelmine Germany’s leading advocate of Darwinism [Ernst Haeckel] was so close to Hitler spiritually, and did so much to prepare the way for horrors unimaginable in his day….
The profound harmony between Schopenhauer’s concept of life here and Darwin’s is also evident. The ground was well-cultivated and watered, ready long in advance for the reception of Darwin’s ideas. This explains not only why they caught on so quickly, but also why they were taken to further extremes than they were in other countries. As to Hitler’s use of the word “God,” there are many examples in German philosophy of how the word “God” was used in a non-Christian context to represent not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but rather a philosophical concept dreamed up by human minds.”14
Use, Abuse and Misuse of Darwin
Sir Arthur Keith, Britain’s leading evolutionary scientist of the mid-20th century,
“To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied rigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution provides the only real basis for a national policy. Long before he had reduced greater Germany to a tribal unit he gave this as a “national ultimate”: “To fight for security and increase of our race and people . . . so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.” In the words of Dr. Waddington, Hitler accepted “the direction of evolution as good simply because it is good.” The means he adopted to secure the destiny of his race and people were organized slaughter, which has drenched Europe in blood. I shall return to the part which war plays and has played in the evolution of mankind; meantime let me quote from a speech which Goebbels has just delivered: “We conquer territory in order to organize it for ourselves . . . not for prestige, but for reasons of state and nation.” Such conduct is highly immoral as measured by every scale of ethics, yet Germany justifies it; it is consonant with tribal or evolutionary morality. Germany has reverted to the tribal past, and is demonstrating to the world, in their naked ferocity, the methods of evolution, with this difference what were mere border forays between tribes have become the clash of massed millions using the forked lightning of modern science. She protects her own people and nurses her own Kultur while she seeks to undo all other people and to destroy their civilization.”15
In 1889 essayist and journalist Max Nordau wrote:
“…the greatest authority of all the advocates of war is Darwin. Gladly do they accept his ‘struggle for existence’ as the fundamental law of all life and all progress…In this way, however, the pseudo-Darwinian philosophers and politicians do not understand the ‘struggle for existence.’ They always impart to the word of Darwin the sense of the prize-fighter and the gladiator and subject the history of mankind to the law of the jungle. As Christians, as citizens of communities theoretically based upon right, they felt hitherto that sense of decorous duty impelled them to simulate love of peace and to weep a few crocodile tears over war as a necessary evil. But since the theory of evolution has been promulgated, they can cover their natural barbarism with the name of Darwin and proclaim the sanguinary instincts of their inmost hearts as the last word of science. Only this faintly veiled foundation of savagery can explain the fact that the ravings of Nietzsche, an insane man, suffering with psychic paresis, which finally paralyzed the enfeebled brain entirely, could be enthroned as the philosophy of fashion. Nietzsche thinks that he is an opponent of Darwin, but, in reality, his work is but a parody on Darwin’s theory misunderstood. And this by reason of grotesque exaggeration. ‘The Over-Man’-‘the free-roving blond beast’-‘all is allowable’-‘the laughing lion’-‘on the other side of good and evil’-‘the morals of the classes’-these prison formulae, these shibboleths of brigandage harmonized too well with the most secret sentiments of the red-skins in dresscoat and uniform, wherewith alleged white humanity teems, not to be greeted by them with joy as the highest form of revelation.”16
Jonathan Freedland, “Master Race of the Left,” The Guardian, August 30, 1997:
The trouble began with Charles Darwin. His breakthrough work, The Origin of the Species, did not restrict its impact to the academy and laboratories. Instead it transformed the very way mankind understood itself in the 19th century, its message fast spilling over into the realm of political ideas. Suddenly the religious notion that all life was equally sacred was under attack. Human beings were like any other species – some were more evolved than others. The human race could be divided into different categories and classes. When Karl Marx took on the task of charting human development and defining the class structure, he acknowledged his debt – dedicating an early edition of Das Kapital to none other than Charles Darwin. From the beginning socialism regarded itself as the natural ally, even the political version, of science. Just as biologists sought to understand animals and plants, so scientific socialism would master people. According to Adrian Wooldridge, author of Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England 1860-1990, and a recognised authority on early ideas of human merit, progressives believed the only enemies of Darwin were reactionaries, the religious and the superstitious…
Many progressives were drawn to the hope that science could build up the strong parts of the nation, and slowly eliminate the weak. The communist and one-time editor of the Daily Worker, J. B. S. Haldane, considered equality a ‘curious dogma…we are not born equal, far from it’…
Non-Britons came even lower on the Darwinian pecking order. In those times it was the Jews who were regarded as posing the chief threat of alien dilution of English blood. Bernard Shaw described the Jews as ‘the real enemy, the invader from the East, the ruffian, the oriental parasite.’ H. J. Hobson, a radical journalist who made his name covering the Boer war for The Guardian, declared that the Transvaal had fallen prey to ‘Jew Power’…For years, leftists, historians and everyone else have drawn a veil over Adolf Hitler’s naming of his creed National Socialism. It has been dismissed as a perverse PR trick of the Fuhrer’s, as if Nazism and socialism represented opposite faiths. The same view has infused the left’s understanding of the genocides committed in the name of communism, whether by Stalin or Pol Pot, as if those men were merely betraying the otherwise noble theory whose cause they proclaimed. But the early history of British socialism tells a different story. It suggests that socialism – with its unshakeable faith in science, central planning and the cool wisdom of the rational elite – contained the seeds of the atrocities that were to come later.”
Obviously, much has been stated, perhaps quite logically, with regards to the question of whether Darwinism is or is not applicable to issues of human society. However, is there anything intrinsic about biology, or human society, or Darwinism which forces this as a logical conclusion? Or is this a politically correct separation of Darwinism and human society which came about due to the dreadful results that such a concoction produced? Is it simply preferable to disregard Darwinism’s logical conclusions and actively “rebel” against it in the case of human society (as Richard Dawkins does by arguing from his personal preferences and assertions, see the “Is and Ought” section of my essay, Introducing the Dawkinsian Weltanschauung)? Is there any logical, or biological reason to escape from Darwinism’s bitter end and not capitalize on it for the benefit of the fitter race? The answer seems to be “No.” It appears to be a case of It appears to be a case of “That’s you interpretation of Darwin”? Since Darwinism does not imply its end one way or the other, and particularly if we live in an absolutely materialistic universe, it is business as usual: if the fittest takes the dark road of Darwinism applied to human society they will only be stopped if the opposing view becomes fitter still and topples it. Thus goes the dance, back and forth moves the zeitgeist, round and round it goes where it stops nobody knows.
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