American eugenics and Nazism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Book Review, October 5, 2003

'War Against the Weak': Here Comes the Master Race
By DANIEL J. KEVLES

WAR AGAINST THE WEAK
Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race.
By Edwin Black.
Illustrated. 550 pp. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. $27.

Eugenics -- the idea of manipulating human genes to the end of improving
individuals, groups or entire populations -- is strongly associated with
the Nazi programs of sterilization, euthanasia and genocide. But during the
first third of the 20th century, eugenics movements flourished in many
nations, including the United States. In the last few years, newspaper
articles have called attention to -- and prompted official apologies for --
state-mandated sterilizations done legally to rid society of its alleged
human trash, the ''weak'' in the title of Edwin Black's new book, notably
in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon and California.

Black is the author previously of ''IBM and the Holocaust,'' a work
strongly suggesting that the company, with its punch-card machines,
knowingly assisted Hitler's brutalities. His ''War Against the Weak,''
apparently written with similar intent, is a muckraking book about a
subject incontestably awash in muck. In the vein of the genre, it is a stew
rich in facts and spiced with half-truths, exaggerations and distortions.
The most pungent ingredient is its central thesis: eugenic doctrines and
policies favoring ''Nordic superiority'' were in fact invented in the
United States, were developed in alliance with American wealth and power,
and were then exported, inspiring Hitler and achieving their ultimate
realization in the Holocaust.

(clip)

In support of his main thesis, Black stresses that European eugenicists
were linked with their American counterparts through international
organizations, meetings, correspondence and visits several made to the
United States, some to work at the Eugenics Record Office. German
eugenicists praised American policies, research and writings and
incorporated accounts of them into their works. In ''Mein Kampf,'' Hitler
himself praised America's sterilization laws and immigration restriction
act. Black also emphasizes that beginning in the 20's and continuing well
into the Nazi period, the Rockefeller Foundation provided sizable funds for
research at three eugenically oriented research institutes in Germany. All,
he writes, would ''make their mark in the history of medical murder.''

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/books/review/05KEVLEST.html


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