In the light of what has been revealed about Social Darwinism so far, it should be no surprise that the Nazis, infamous architects of one of the most terrible acts of genocide in history, were tightly linked to it.
When one examines the writings, speeches and documents of Hitler and other Nazi ideologues, it's clear that they founded their policies on Darwinism.
Hitler thought that he could improve human race, as animal breeders do. He claimed that those he saw as "polluting" the Aryan race, those with genetic illnesses and the weak all needed to be eliminated; and he ordered the ruthless extermination of millions—proofs that he regarded human beings as animals and was attached to Darwinism. In an article titled "The Nazi Terror," Alexander Kimel—one of the few to survive the Nazi genocide—emphasizes the link between Darwinism and Nazism and describes how it was that the Nazis, with their belief in Social Darwinism, were able to treat people like animals and feel absolutely no pity for them:
Nazism with the acceptance of social Darwinism, equated man with animals, rob him of individual freedom of making choices, the ability to think for themselves. Brutality, terror, mendacity and ruthless exploitation of man by men became the norm of behavior. If the same laws of natural selection like the animals rule man, when the spark of the divine is removed from man's consciousness than [sic] men can be treated like an animals [sic]; he can be bred artificially, and treated like cattle. For example the war and the reckless conduct of the war brought very high casualties. Hitler tried to improve the situation, not by cutting losses, but by improving the breeding methods. In Auschwitz ... Mengele [a Nazi doctor] was [sic] conducted "scientific" experiments on twins, killing them, dissecting them, trying to figure out how to improve the breeding methods, to double the output of the German women. The Germans were treated like breeding animals the S.S. - their shepherds and their master breeder - their Fuhrer. The Germans were treated like prize cattle, other nationalities were treated like ordinary cattle and the Jews like vermin.7
The Nazis adopted this perspective to perpetrate one of the worst acts of genocide ever. The deception of the "superior race" that Hitler maintained was based on the falsehood of inequality among groups within a particular species. According to Hitler and his supporters, while some species evolved, some individuals or groups within that species had remained backward and primitive. This perverted claim, constituting the bedrock of racism, was one fundamental element of Darwin's theory. In a book about Auschwitz, Dr. Karl A. Schleunes, a professor of history, accepts Darwinism's so-called scientific justification for racism:
Darwin's notion of struggle for survival … justified the racists' conception of superior and inferior peoples and nations and validated the conflict between them.8
Evolutionist scientists painted just the kind of theoretical picture the Nazis desired. For example, the evolutionist Konrad Lorenz, regarded as the founder of modern ethology (the science of animal behavior), compared the improvement of races with biological structures:
Just as in cancer the best treatment is to eradicate the parasitic growth as quickly as possible, the eugenic defense against the dysgenic social effects of afflicted subpopulations is of necessity… When these inferior elements are not effectively eliminated from a [healthy] population, then - just as when the cells of a malignant tumor are allowed to proliferate throughout the human body - they destroy the host body as well as themselves.9
Orphaned and neglected children were some of those who came in for the greatest share of Nazi cruelty.
Regarding different races or a society's poor and needy as a kind of burden to be eliminated is inexplicably primitive and barbaric. The Nazis sought to conceal their savagery behind a so-called scientific mask, citing Darwinism's deceptions. Joseph Tenenbaum, author of Race and Reich:The Story of an Epoch, summarizes how Nazi policies took shape:
… struggle, selection, and survival of the fittest, all notions and observations arrived at … by Darwin … but already in luxuriant bud in the German social philosophy of the nineteenth century. … Thus developed the doctrine of Germany's inherent right to rule the world on the basis of superior strength … [of a] "hammer and anvil" relationship between the Reich and the weaker nations.10
After describing how the Nazis shaped their entire policies according to the lights of Darwinism, missing not a single point, Tenenbaum goes on:
Their political dictionary was replete with words like space, struggle, selection, and extinction (Ausmerzen). The syllogism of their logic was clearly stated: The world is a jungle in which different nations struggle for space. The stronger win, the weaker die or are killed…11
In the 1933 Nuremberg rally, Hitler proclaimed that "higher race subjects to itself a lower race … a right which we see in nature and which," because it was founded on science, "can be regarded as the sole conceivable right."12 By making this claim, he of course defended one of the worst falsehoods in history.
Hitler at the Nuremberg rally
Hitler's words in his "On the Fate of the Nation" speech are a summary of Darwinist views:
Among the most motivating factors of life are self-defense and the protection of future generations. Politics is nothing more than people's struggle for survival. This powerful wish to live is universal and directs the entire nation. The desire to survive must lead to conflict, because as well as being unsatisfiable this desire is also the foundation of life. The room to live is limited. Ruthlessness is therefore an inseparable part of humanity! Man became lord of the earth as the result of conflicts and constant struggle. This is the superiority not of mankind but of the strength of those who attain power and dominion. There are differences between races. The world took its culture from an elite class. Whatever we see today is all the result of Aryan work and success. However, the real factor in every race that leads to results is the important individuals it manages to raise. It is not democratic multitudes that have shaped mankind, but important individuals.13
Hitler's perverted rantings influenced a great many at the time. Tens of thousands of the ignorant signed up to these assumptions, products of Hitler's imagination. As already emphasized, the urge for conflict or a ruthless struggle for survival does not advance societies' progress. All individuals strive for a wealthier, more pleasant life, but achieving that goal is directly proportionate to their society's attachment to spiritual and moral values. Seeking to eliminate others through endless aggression merely damages all parties. Physical or cultural differences do not make one race superior to another. On the contrary, in climates where peace and security prevail, differences are valuable elements that bring about cultural enrichment.
If these differences are to be transformed into cultural richness, religious moral values are essential. No matter what the circumstances, God has commanded people to be forgiving, never to depart from the path of justice, and to treat others with affection and compassion. Believers know that there is great wisdom in the creation of different races and nations, and therefore act in a spirit of brotherhood and solidarity. Arrogantly seeking to classify people according to the race they belong to, in the absence of any justification, is a feature of unbelievers and those who set up other deities beside God. One verse describes the unbelievers' fanatical rage:
Those who disbelieve filled their hearts with fanatical rage – the fanatical rage of the Time of Ignorance... (Surat al-Fath, 26)
Under the influence of his mental imbalance, Hitler saw the fact that Darwin's theory ran so parallel to his own twisted views as an excellent means of spreading them. His attachment to Darwinism can be seen in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. In Chapter 4, for example, he wrote that Darwinism was the only basis of a successful Germany. Robert Clark, author of Darwin: Before and After, makes this comment on Hitler's devotion to Darwinism:
Evolutionary ideas - quite undisguised - lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf - and in his public speeches. … Hitler reasoned … that a higher race would always conquer a lower.14
An image of Germany in 1945
Beate Wilder-Smith, author of The Day Nazi Germany Died, describes the fundamental factor in Nazi doctrine:
One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was … evolutionary theory [and] … that all biology had evolved … upward, and that … less evolved types … should be actively eradicated [and] … that natural selection could and should be actively aided, and therefore [the Nazis] instituted political measures to eradicate … Jews, and … blacks, whom they considered as "underdeveloped".15
In American Scientist, Professor George J. Stein wrote an article headed "Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism":
… straightforward German social Darwinism [was] of a type widely known and accepted throughout Germany and … more importantly, was considered by most Germans, scientists included, to be scientifically true. More recent scholarship on national socialism and Hitler has begun to realize that … [their application of Darwin's theory] was the specific characteristic of Nazism. National socialist "biopolicy," … [was] based on a mystical-biological belief in radical inequality, … based on the eternal struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest as the law of nature, and the consequent use of state power for a public policy of natural selection…16
Professor Stein's article makes clear that the claim that human beings are no different from animals underlay German Social Darwinism. He continues:
The basic outline of German social Darwinism [was] … man was merely a part of nature with no special transcendent qualities or special humanness. On the other hand, the Germans were members of a biologically superior community … politics was merely the straightforward application of the laws of biology. In essence, Haeckel and his fellow social Darwinists advanced the ideas that were to become the core assumptions of national socialism…. The business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection….17
These errors of National Socialism, clearly set out in Stein's text, prepared the groundwork for a world war in which many countries were forced to participate. Nazism, which grew and developed with the support of Darwin's illusory theories, was the architect of a disaster the like of which the world had seldom ever seen. So terrible was this catastrophe that millions lost their lives and whole cities were wiped off the map. The worst harm was suffered by German society itself—which Nazi propaganda had claimed would gain strength and progress. Once again it was demonstrated that ruthless conflict and seeking to eliminate others can never carry a nation forward.
As long as he lived, Hitler never abandoned the view Nazis held of themselves and others, which he summarized in the words: "We Nazis … are barbarians! We want to be barbarians. It is an honorable title [for, by it,] we shall rejuvenate the world."18
As in Sir Arthur Keith's words, Hitler "consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."19 About the theory of evolution, Hitler and war, Keith says the following:
Hitler's book Mein Kampf included a great many Darwinist statements.
If war be the progeny of evolution - and I am convinced that it is - then evolution has "gone mad", reaching such a height of ferocity as must frustrate its proper role in the world of life... There is no way of getting rid of war save one, and that is to rid human nature of the sanctions imposed on it by the law of evolution.20
In Hitler's Personal Security, Peter Hoffmann discusses Hitler's Darwinist views:
Hitler believed in struggle as the Darwinian principle of human life that forced every people to try to dominate all others; without struggle they would rot and perish. Even in his own defeat in April 1945, Hitler expressed his faith in the survival of the stronger and declared the Slavic peoples to have proven themselves the stronger.21
In short, as can be seen from the opinions of a great many historians and researchers, as well as from Hitler's writings and speeches, Nazism drew strength and nourishment from Darwinism and using allegedly scientific arguments, Hitler and the other Nazi leaders sought to justify all their own psychopathic cruelty. In fact, the cultural environment that encouraged such an ideology also bore traces of Darwinism. As we shall see in the following pages, the Social Darwinism that entered Germany in the first half of the 20th century, thanks to fanatical Darwinists like Ernst Haeckel, profoundly influenced German society and constituted a most important philosophical foundation for Nazism's success.
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