Even though Germany had been the leader in the Protestant Reformation, the so-called Enlightenment and Darwinian ideas rapidly replaced the Christian worldview. German society rapidly adopted a thoroughly secular worldview that relied on science and materialistic philosophy for values and morals. Nazis rationalized that forcing Jews and other “inferior races” into concentration camps was not cruel or even punishment, but similar to quarantining the sick to prevent them from spreading their disease to the healthy. Conditions in the camps later deteriorated but, certain Nazis claimed, the main concern at first was to quarantine inferior races so as to prevent race contamination of the Aryan gene pool. Actually, the largest number of Jews were exterminated before camp
Conditions had deteriorated.
These ideas were not opposed by most scientists then, but rather “most members of the scientific and academic communities” not only “did very little to oppose the rise of Hitler and national socialism” but in many cases they
Lent their considerable prestige as scientists to the support of the ideas of the national socialist movement [The Nazis]. It is simply true historically that German academics and scientists did, in fact, contribute to the development and eventually success of national socialism, both directly through their efforts as scientists and indirectly through the popularization or vulgarization of their scientific work.96
Dr. Wertham, himself a German psychiatrist, notes that psychiatrists became so carried away with their Darwinism that they later actually reached into the outside community looking for victims for their death camps! They first convinced the parents or guardian that “such people [should] be placed under [their] guardianship and sent to an institution” and from there “they were quickly put into the gas chambers.”97 Wertham concluded that the whole procedure of determining those deemed “unfit” for mating (and even living) was characterized by an almost complete Absence of compassion, mercy or pity for the victims. He judged that the most reliable estimate of the number of “psychiatric” and other patients killed in German institutions as part of the euthanasia programme was at least 275,000.98
One institution alone, Hadamar, celebrated in 1941 the “cremation of the ten thousandth mental patients [p]sychiatrists, nurses, attendants, and secretaries all participated. Everybody received a bottle of beer for the occasion.”99 Dr. Wertham even claimed that the entire population of every institution in German-controlled territory would likely have been eliminated if the Allies had not defeated Germany. In many cases, the total population of many institutions—even large ones—was eradicated, and the institutions closed.100
Because certain church leaders and humanitarians protested these eugenic killings, Hitler himself finally intervened. While on leave, many soldiers learned that a mentally ill brother, grandparent, aged relative or a friend injured in the war had “disappeared.”101 The knowledge that their countrymen at home were being murdered by the hundreds of thousands was demoralizing. Wertham claims that the Nazi government realized that many soldiers became fearful that they may well end up in the gas chambers if they were wounded in the war.102
Hitler recognized that the expansion of the race “purification” programme to those who were not “economically able to contribute,” such as the war injured, hindered Germans’ motivation to fight for their fatherland. Wertham concluded that this latest expansion of killing “officially stopped” but in reality continued, though less blatantly and more hidden than before.
Nazism is often used as a example of the danger of “religious” zeal, yet only occasionally does popular literature mention the key role of the eugenics of Francis Galton, whose theories were based on the theory of natural selection espoused by his cousin, Charles Darwin. Firmly convinced that Darwinian evolution was true, Hitler saw himself as a benefactor of all humankind. By breeding a superior race, he thought he would, in the end, gain the world’s admiration as the man who pulled humanity up to a higher level of evolutionary development. What Hitler attempted to do must be ranked alongside the most heinous crimes of history, and Darwin as the father of one of the most destructive philosophies in history.
World History
