Darwinian Racism

To hear some tell it, Adolf Hitler was a Christian creationist who rejected Darwinian evolution. Award-winning historian Richard Weikart shows otherwise. According to Weikart, Darwinian evolution crucially influenced Hitler and the Nazis, and the Nazis zealously propagated evolutionary theory during the Third Reich. Inspired by arguments from both Darwin and early Darwinists, the Nazis viewed the "Nordic race" as superior to other races and set about advancing human evolution by ridding the world of "inferior" races and individuals. As Weikart also shows, these ideas circulate today among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, who routinely use Darwinian theory in their propaganda to advance a racist agenda. Darwinian Racism is careful history. It is also a wake-up call.

In this work, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary 'fitness' (especially intelligence and health) to the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and racial extermination. This was especially important in Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism.

In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.

Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, an imprisoned doctor in the Auschwitz camp, wrote that Nazi doctors hoped studying twins would solve the problem of faster reproduction of superior races. Nazis hoped to have each German mother bear as many twins as possible.What Darwin influenced went far beyond the Nazi death camps: Shocking political, social, and scientific legacies of Darwin and his family Disturbing disclosure of how over 45 million Christians were killed in the 20th century because of their faith Revealing and layman-friendly presentation. This book is the result of 30 years of research and study carefully documenting the common destructive threads that tie some of history’s most murderous dictators, uncaring capitalists, and aggressive social activists to the flawed concepts of Charles Darwin in an effort to change the world — and how they succeeded. The extermination of races considered “lower” than others, the profound lack of empathy for less-advanced cultures, the corrupted atheistic justifications for taking the lives of millions — all done to advance the agendas of social Darwinism at work in the world today. More than mere theoretical discussions, we have seen the horrifying evidence of the practical results when applying these destructive and misleading concepts to society in the last 100 years!

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: in the footsteps of Franz Boas -- 2 Franz Boas and the argument from presumption -- 3 Demarcating anthropology: the boundary work of Alfred Kroeber -- 4 Theodosius Dobzhansky and the argument from definition -- 5 Unifying science by creating community: the epideictic rhetoric of Sherwood Washburn -- 6 A kairos moment unmet and met: the controversy over Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races -- 7 Epilogue: the roots of the Sociobiology controversy, the infirmities of Evolutionary Psychology, and the unity of anthropology -- Index

In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.

Bergman takes a fresh look at Germany's most influential Nazi leaders to provide compelling evidence that the rising influence of Darwinism, eugenics, and race theory in early-20th-century society set the foundation for the Nazi pursuit of engineering a German "master race" and exterminating European Jews, gypsies, Blacks, most Slavs, and the Christian religion.

Darwin once pondered what it would be like to talk to an ape if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case. The ape, he said, would have to admit he was inferior to humans. Darwin was obsessed with ranking organisms. It was no different with human beings. It is not hard to prove that racism deeply infected the work of Charles Darwin. Turn the pages of his writingshis letters, Journal, Notebooks, and published worksand its there. There is hardly a source that does not contain it. It seems like every time he picked up his pen, he had something to say about the inferiority of certain races. For him, evolution produced inequality. But Darwin and evolution are not synonymous terms. It is possible to criticize Darwin without criticizing the theory of evolution. Some previous evolutionists, as well as some of his contemporaries, were more holistic and humanitarian than he was. They looked for connections rather than disconnections and ranking. They defied the ideology of conquest and domination of their day and paid a price. We can continue to eliminate them from our memories, or we can retrieve their voices and let them inspire.