August 19, 1942: People in the French coastal town of Dieppe murdered by the Nazi garrison. Top right: Germans carrying heavy weapons during fierce fighting on the Norwegian front. Social Darwinist logic caused a great many deaths in the wars of the last century, and a great many countries to be ruined.
According to Social Darwinism's perverted thinking, war allows societies to advance, selects the fittest and eliminates the weak. War is regarded as a positive force because it eradicates not only weak races, but also the weaker within the "superior race." That's why Social Darwinism approves of war. The Nazism adopted militarism with the same Social Darwinist logic. Robert Clark, in Darwin: Before and After, cites Mein Kampf as a reference and provides the following information about Hitler:
Hitler's attitude to the League of Nations and to peace and war were based upon the same principles. "A world court … would be a joke … the whole world of Nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness - an eternal victory of the strong over the weak. There would be nothing but decay in the whole of nature if this were not so. States which [violate] … this elementary law would fall into decay. … He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist." To think otherwise is to "insult" nature. "Distress, misery and disease are her rejoinders."22
With Social Darwinism, the ideology of conflict and warlike hysteria grew stronger. Darwinist concepts were a very influential catalyst that encouraged these trends and led to them being adopted by an entire society. For the first time, racism and a longing for conflict thus found an alleged scientific foundation and were presented to society as an irrefutable fact. The writings of Dr. Albert Edward Wiggam, an evolutionary theoretician during the Nazi era, published in 1922, reflect one of "deceptions" most frequently encountered in the world of German ideas of the time:
People dying or about to die of starvation at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in which between three and four million people were killed. The Nazis' obsession with the false idea of the master race, which they based on social Darwinism, led to millions of innocents dying in this manner.
... at one time man had scarcely more brains than his [so-called] anthropoid cousins, the apes. But, by kicking, biting, fighting … and outwitting his enemies and by the fact that the ones who had not sense and strength enough to do this were killed off, man's brain became enormous and he waxed both in wisdom and agility if not in size …23
The conclusion the Nazis drew from this imaginary "evolutionary history," the product of a sick mentality, is this: According to the Nazis' false perspective, war was constructive in long term, because evolutionists maintained that human beings advanced only by means of lethal conflict. Like Hitler and Rosenberg, other Nazi ideologues also claimed that contemporary civilizations had come into being chiefly through constant war. Various so-called scientists of the time also defended this twisted viewpoint.
Many German ideologues perversely believed that war and conflict hastened evolution by causing humanity to progress. The Nazis, believing in the alleged superiority of the Aryan race, sparked World War II in order to make their race even more "pure" and cost the lives of some 40 million people.
University of Berlin's Professor Haeckel, for instance, a known proponent of Darwinism, praised the ancient Greek militaristic state of Sparta, claiming that the Spartans being a chosen people explained why they were so successful and superior to others. He said that by killing all but the "perfectly healthy and strong children" the Spartans were "continually in excellent strength and vigor."24 Haeckel regarded these savage practices as justified. According to him, Germany should have followed this Spartan custom too, because infanticide of the deformed and sickly children was "a practice of advantage to both the infants destroyed and to the community." These unconscionable recommendations of Haeckel's are important in revealing the logical framework represented by the unscientific claims of Darwinism, according to which the idea that all lives have equal value and need to be protected was merely a "traditional dogma" and allegedly a violation of scientific truth.25 No rational person of good conscience could ever accept these claims, but eminent Germans strongly adopted them at one time.
Not just in Germany but in a great many parts of the world, Social Darwinism rejected the moral values, along with virtues such as compassion, protection, cooperation, sympathy and patience taught by the Divine religions. In place of these virtues, it claimed that killing those who were incompatible with society's interests—through destruction and ruthlessness, all of which belong to satan, the great misleader of humanity—was actually superior. The hatred they felt for Divine religions lies at the heart of the Nazis' enmity towards the Jews.
Yet neo-Nazism still survives in the world, showing that this sick ideology continues to pose a danger. No matter what name it may go by, the lifestyle that Social Darwinism advances consists solely of conflict, struggle, bloodshed, war, suffering and fear. Death camps like Auschwitz are where Social Darwinism is put into practice. Darwinism inevitably leads to Social Darwinism. In a world where Social Darwinism again comes to rule, new Auschwitzes will be inevitable.
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