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Genocide and Darwinism

by Theodore D. Hall, Ph.D.

THE SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND OF THE NAZI "RACE PURIFICATION" PROGRAM, US &

German Eugenics, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, Population Control ...

1995-1998 Theodore D. Hall, Ph.D, Leading Edge International Research Group

In the conclusion of his remarkable book The Nazi Doctors--Medical Killing and the Psychology of

Genocide, Robert Jay Lifton writes of a visit to Auschwitz: "I went to the camp a few years ago andwas shown the many exhibits maintained there, exhibits that leave nothing to be added concerning the

evil human beings can do to other human beings. But the one that left the most profound impression on

me was the simplest of all: a room full of shoes, mostly baby shoes."

Genocidal campaigns are not new. They occurred before the Holocaust; and they are occurring at this

moment. What distinguishes the Nazi "race purification" extermination program from other genocidal

campaigns is its "scientific" character. At a mass meeting in 1934, Nazi Deputy Party Leader RudolfHess stated, "National Socialism is nothing but applied biology." "The entire Nazi regime was built,"

Lifton writes, "on a biomedical vision that required the kind of racial purification that would progress

from sterilization to extensive killing." As early as the publication of Mein Kampf (1924-26), Liftonindicates, "Hitler had declared the sacred racial mission of the German people to be 'assembling and

preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements [and] . . . . slowly and severely raising

them to a dominant position.' . . ."

Where did the "biomedical vision" of Hitler and his party originate? The primary sources were:

Darwinian biology and evolutionary theory; Social Darwinism, the evangelistic dissemination ofDarwinism; and a pseudo-science called "eugenics." In the first several decades of the twentieth

century, eugenics was considered by many as humanity's best hope for the future. It played the rolenow played by "genetic engineering." It was applied Darwinism. The following outlines, briefly, the

nature of these related sources:

Today, our orthodox theory of biology and evolution is "neo-Darwinism." Neo-Darwinism combines

what is called "classical Darwinism" with modern genetics. Classical Darwinism dates from 1859, theyear in which English naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of

Natural Selection, subtitled (note carefully) The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for

Life. Despite the fact key premises underlying Darwin's theory were unproven scientifically, the theorywas embraced by numerous scientists and intellectuals as if it was gospel -- the Gospel of Science. In a

relatively short time, the Origin replaced the Bible as western civilization's preferred authoritative text

on the subject of the nature of life on Earth. In 1871, Darwin published the even more controversialThe Descent of Man.

The major premises of Darwinism may be summarized as follows:

(1) The first premise, the concept of the evolutionary transformation of one species into others, was

derived from the "Transformism" of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who founded evolutionary science in 1809

with the publication of Philosophie Zoologique. In his History of Creation (1873), evolutionist ErnstHaeckel writes, "To him [Lamarck] will always belong the immortal glory of having for the first time

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worked out the Theory of Descent, as an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as thephilosophical foundation for the whole science of Biology." Indeed, the very term "biology" was coined

by Lamarck.

Darwin became acquainted with the work of Lamarck through his friend and mentor, the eminentgeologist Charles Lyell. Volume II of Lyell's Principles of Geology, which contains a long exposition of

the Lamarck theory, was received by Darwin in South America in 1832, in the first of his five years

engagement as ship's naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle.

(2) The second premise of Darwin's theory is that "natural selection" is the cause of divergence in

species, i.e., the origin of species. The first published mention of the idea of Nature-as-selector is inRousseau's "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men" (1755). In a

discussion of the conditions of life in ancient Sparta, Rousseau writes, "Nature used them precisely as

did the law of Sparta the children of her citizens. She rendered strong and robust those with a goodconstitution and destroyed all the others."

A more immediate source was the evolutionary theory of English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who

committed to paper a theory of evolution by natural selection prior to the completion of Darwin's work.In June of 1858, Wallace submitted to Darwin an unpublished work titled "On the Tendency of

Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type." Shortly thereafter, Darwin wrote to Lyell,

"Your words have come true with a vengeance -- that I should be [could be] forestalled. You said thiswhen I explained to you here very briefly my view on Natural Selection depending on the struggle for

existence. I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my M.S. written out in 1842, he

could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters . . . . "

Had Wallace simply published his manuscript, he would have had priority with regard to the concept of

evolution by natural selection. Instead, priority went to Darwin. The questionable means by which

priority was conferred on Darwin are discussed in a fascinating book by Arnold Brackman titled ADelicate Arrangement. Darwin's understanding of natural selection derived from his work with

breeding. The breeding of plants and animals Darwin called "artificial selection;" the breeding that

occurs in "the wild" he called "natural selection." Early in the Origin, Darwin defines natural selectionin these (anthropomorphic) terms: "Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing . . . . every

variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good;

silently and insensibly working . . . . at the improvement of each organic being . . . ." In effect,Darwinism replaces the traditional belief that order in nature is the result of a divine presence (God)

with the idea it is the result of a natural presence (Natural Selection).

(3) The third premise in Darwinism is that the drive behind evolution is the sexual-reproductiveinstinct. Given the tremendous influence of this drive, life is an incessant struggle for existence:

"A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend toincrease. Every being . . . must suffer destruction . . . otherwise, on the principle of geometrical

increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the

product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every casebe a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the

individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. . . ." The basic premise ("the high

rate at which all organic beings tend to increase") and the "principle of geometrical increase" are, asDarwin indicates, "the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and

vegetable kingdom. . . . "

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The Malthus in question is the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), famous "pessimist" and

author of one of the most influential essays in modern times -- the "Principle of Population" (1798). In

this essay, Malthus argues that because "all animated life [tends] to increase beyond the nourishment

prepared for it," there can never be real progress or happiness for mankind. Give man a little morebread than usual, he'll breed more than usual, wiping out his little gains. Populations increase by

geometrical progression, Malthus asserted, while the means of subsistence increase by only mathematic

progression. Thus man is doomed to procreate himself into destitution. Malthus, one of the founders ofthe "dismal science" of economics, painted visions of a future filled, inescapably, with starving and

diseased multitudes.

Before Malthus and his nightmarish visions, the rulers of Europe looked upon large populations as

assets; after the "Principle of Population," they began to view the same populations as liabilities,

potentially disastrous liabilities. The revolution in America and the abortive revolution in France hadmade it very clear that masses can be lethal to the ruling classes, and Malthus provided just the

perspective the rulers of Europe were looking for. The masses are totally unprincipled. Populations

must be strictly controlled. In 1789, the first year of the French Revolution, the European country with

the largest population was France. The statistics were on the wall, and the rulers of Europe were notslow in reading them.

In the opening half of the nineteenth century, throughout Europe, members of the ruling classesgathered to discuss the newly discovered "Population problem" and to devise ways of implementing the

Malthusian mandate, to increase the mortality rate of the poor: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to

the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower,crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build

our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome

situations," and so forth and so on.

The Reverend Malthus, who took the understandable precaution of publishing his "Population" essay

anonymously (in 1798), is the prototype of the Nazi-style social theorist. "Malthusianism," as it was

called, found adherents throughout Europe, but few of these dared to express their opinions outside theprivate chambers of fellow believers. By the end of the century, however, the Malthusians were out of

the closet.

In Germany, "racial scientists" openly advocated the killing of unwanted members and segments of the

population. One of these scientists, Adolf Jost, "issued an early call for direct medical killing in a book

published in 1895 . . . The Right To Death (Das Recht auf den Tod)." Jost argued that for the sake of the

health of the social organism, the state must take responsibility for the death of individuals. Adolf Jostwas a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who agreed 100 percent. "The state must see to it that only the healthy

beget children," Hitler said. "The state must act as the guardian of a millennial future. . . . It must put

the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagationall who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on."

Between the first decade of the nineteenth century and the last, what was it that occurred that madeMalthusianism "respectable?" Darwinism. Specifically: Darwin's adoption of the "Malthus doctrine" as

his third premise. In the third premise is a foundation of the Third Reich. In effect, if not intent,

Darwinism is Malthusianism, re-presented in the guise of true science. Under the banner of Darwinism,"The Only True & Sacred Biology & Evolution," the Malthusians and their masters were able to wreak

havoc in our civilization. Among their legacies are the ravages of the imperialists in the late nineteenth

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century, the lethal socialisms that have plagued our century, the world wars, holocaust after holocaust,and very possibly one or more of the serious diseases which now afflict humanity.

In Palo Alto, early 1994, I attended a lecture on evolution by a distinguished Stanford professor. The

professor began his lecture with the bald statement, "Today, the science of evolution is synonymouswith Darwinism." The professor paused, smiled. There were no challenges from the audience, and so

he continued, repeating the "truisms" of Darwinism, truisms that are not true but only seem so because

they've been repeated so often. Unlike any other scientific theory I know of, Darwinism has survivedrefutation after refutation. In 1971, Norman Macbeth, a Harvard-trained lawyer who made the study of

Darwinian theory his avocation for many years, published quite a good critique of Darwinism --

Darwin Retried. One of Macbeth's major concluding points, which is well documented, is that mostDarwinists have little confidence in their own theory. The eminent Karl Popper calls the book "an

excellent and fair, though unsympathetic retrial of Darwin." (What "sympathy" has to do with science I

do not know.) It is 1995, almost twenty-five years later. Darwinism is still our orthodox biology.

In 1986, Australian scientist Michael Denton published Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, a thoroughgoing

critique of Darwinism which concludes that the much-celebrated theory is "the great cosmogenic myth

of the twentieth century." "One might have expected," Denton writes, "that a theory of such cardinalimportance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than

metaphysics, something more than a myth." Practically in the same breath, Denton remarks that

"Darwinism remains . . the only truly scientific theory of evolution."

Denton's confusion is understandable. It is difficult to believe that a theory with so little merit could

have become so profoundly entrenched in our science -- and in the conventional wisdom. Isn't sciencesupposed to free us from myth? Darwinism may remain the teflon orthodoxy for another twenty-five

years. That should not dissuade us from the vital work of critique. So far, we've analyzed Darwinism

into its three basic premises. How valid (strong) are those premises?

(1) The strength of Darwinism is in the first premise, the Lamarckian premise of the evolutionary

transformation of one species into others. Lacking sufficient data, Lamarck viewed the evolutionary

line as strictly linear. Species A produces B, B produces C, C produces D, and so on. In 1855, AlfredWallace re-articulated the premise,

arguing that the evolutionary line may be branched, i.e., Species A may produce C as well as B, B mayproduce D, E and F, etc. Further, Wallace argued, evolutionary steps are not necessarily "progressive"

(more and more perfect), as Lamarck had maintained.

The Wallace articulation came to be known as "the Sarawak Law." Every species has come intoexistence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species. The long and

short of it is: When the Lamarck-Wallace premise fell into Darwin's hands, it was in good shape

scientifically. It was, and is, a valid premise, supported by much evidence.

(2) Darwin's second premise, that natural selection is the cause of divergence in species, is what is

called an "empty generalization." It sounds good, but it tells us nothing. If I were to tell you that thecause of divergence in species was the "environment," would you find that an adequate explanation?

No, of course not. "You must be more specific," you would say. "What is it, specifically, in the

environment that causes divergence?" "Natural selection" is no more specific than "environment."

It is not difficult to understand why so many scientists have accepted the premise of natural selection

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uncritically. It does seem to be an explanation more in the scientific direction than "Zeus," for instance,of "Jehova." Nevertheless, natural selection is simply a "false scent" that takes us nowhere, except

deeper and deeper into the woods. Darwin himself was uneasy with the term. In the sixth and last

edition of the Origin, he says that survival of the fittest is a "more accurate" expression of what he had

previously called natural selection. Interestingly, the phrase "survival of the fittest" was coined not byDarwin, but by philosopher-evolutionist Herbert Spencer some seven or eight years before the

publication of the Origin. By 1872, the phrase had become the common catchword (slogan) for

Darwinism. Darwin laid claim to it ("selected" it, we should say), preferring it over the meaninglessnatural selection.

Further, the concept of natural selection was tied too closely to Alfred Wallace, the talented youngevolutionist who had been totally eclipsed by Darwin. (When the famous theory of evolution was first

presented, it was called the "Darwin-Wallace" theory. A correct title would have been the "Wallace-

Darwin" theory.) The phrase "survival of the fittest" was the product of one of Darwin's most ardentapostles. Mr. Spencer was quite delighted Darwin adopted the phrase.

(3) Darwin's third premise -- the so-called "Malthus doctrine" -- has no scientific validity, and it never

did. In the modern jargon of critique, we would call the Malthus doctrine an example of "reductive, orsimplistic, sexual determinism." (Sigmund Freud is whipped routinely by contemporary commentators

for having fallen into the trap of sexual determinism.) The idea that "all animated life" is governed

exclusively by the sexual-reproductive drive was suggested to Malthus by early eighteenth centuryreports regarding goats that had been released by buccaneers on certain of the Galapagos islands circa

the 1670s. The reports indicated that the goats had multiplied to the point that scarcely a bit of

vegetation was left.

Malthus read the reports and concluded that human beings, if left to their own devices, would do the

same thing. They would reproduce themselves right out of house and home, to the point the entire

population would be left without a can of beans. This conclusion is the pseudo-scientific basis of the"Malthus doctrine" that Darwin so enthusiastically embraced, and amplified -- by his declaration that it

"applied . . . to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom."

Any form of reductive determinism is the intellectual equivalent of a tar pit. Malthus was trapped in his

own tar. In later life, he endeavored to correct the erroneous doctrine, but by then, it was too late. The

doctrine had become a part of our common stock of "true ideas about the way things are." Thus it isthat Darwin writes with such certainty, that "There is no exception to the rule, that every organic being

naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed [Italics mine], the earth would soon be

covered by the progeny of a single pair . . . ."

"Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years," Darwin continues, "and at this rate, in a

few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny." This "Malthus-Darwin

doctrine," let us call it, was the basis for much hysteria in the ruling classes of the last century. TheMalthus-Darwin doctrine clearly suggested that the human population of the planet had become a

problem. "If not destroyed," to use Darwin's phrase, this population would soon leave the planet as

barren as the goat-infested Galapagos islands. The Malthus-Darwin doctrine had no scientific basiswhatsoever; it was based on the erroneous reasoning of Malthus. Darwin should have known better.

Perhaps he did. Whatever the case, the doctrine was a big hit with the rulers of the last century, a strong

incitement -- sanctioned by science -- to over-run the planet before others did so.

Suddenly, the nations of Europe found themselves with "surplus populations." The Age of Imperialism

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was born, as nation after nation entered the race to acquire foreign lands and foreign countries, notbecause of greed, but because of national survival. The nations that would survive into the future would

be those in possession of vast tracts of land for the dumping of surplus population. In a very short time,

all of Africa was carved up by the European nations. Aboriginal peoples of that continent who objected

to slavery were slaughtered. Many great tribes -- tribes that for thousands of years had existed inbalance with their environment -- were eradicated in the "African Holocaust."

Imperialistic competition for "empire" (i.e., colonies throughout the world) was probably the principalreason for World War I. In 1901, Arthur Dix, the editor of two Berlin journals, writes, "A timorous

people, which knows not how to use its elbows, may of course put a stop to the increase in its

population -- it might find things too narrow at home. The superfluity of population might find noeconomic existence. A people happy in its future, however, knows nothing of an artificial limitation; its

only care can be to find room on the globe for a livelihood for other members of its own race."

In Britain as Germany's Vassal (1912), German Social Darwinist (and retired general) F. Von Bernhardi

writes, "In the interest of the world's civilization it is our duty to enlarge Germany's colonial empire.

Thus alone can we politically, or at least nationally, unite the Germans throughout the world, for only

then will they recognize that German civilization is the most necessary factor in human progress. Wemust endeavor to acquire new territories throughout the world by all means in our power, because we

must preserve to Germany the millions of Germans who will be born in the future, and we must

provide for them food and employment. They ought to be enabled to live under a German sky, and tolead a German life." Given such attitudes -- not only in Germany, but throughout Europe -- war became

inevitable. It was inevitable for another reason as well:

War was viewed by Bernhardi and his many Social Darwinist colleagues in Europe as "an

indispensable regulator" of populations. "If it were not for war," Bernhardi writes, "we should probably

find that inferior and degenerate races would overcome healthy and youthful ones by their wealth and

their numbers. The generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, and thus warbecomes a biological necessity."

The German word for "colonies around the world in which to dump surplus populations" was"Lebensraum" -- living space. For the Germans, the loss of the First World War meant, among other

dire things, the loss of their lebensraum. The punitive reparations demanded by the victors was a

serious matter; far more serious was the fact that Germany was physically contracted and stripped ofher colonies. This contraction of Germany was, from the point of view of the Darwinists in that

country, a death sentence. With the empire-building option blocked (momentarily at least), German

social planners began to focus more exclusively on internal options for guaranteeing the survival of the

German race.

In 1923, Fritz Lenz, a Germany physician-geneticist who became a leading ideologue in the Nazi racial

purification program, complained bitterly that Germany under the Weimar Constitution was falling farbehind America in the all-important field of eugenics, the science of improving the race by means of

"selection" of degenerate individuals and groups for sterilization: "Lenz complained that provisions in

the Weimar Constitution (prohibiting the infliction of bodily alterations on human beings) preventedwidespread use of vasectomy techniques; that Germany had nothing to match the eugenics research

institutions in England and the United States (for instance, that at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, led

by Charles B. Davenport and funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington and by MaryHarriman)." Mary Harriman was the widow of the railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman. Both E. H.

Harriman and Andrew Carnegie had been great admirers of Herbert Spencer, who was the chief conduit

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in America for Darwinian dogma.

In historical context, "eugenics" may be defined as applied Darwinism. The founder of eugenics is

Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin's and the author of several highly influential books on heredity,

including Hereditary Genius (1869), Inquiries into Human Faculties (1883), and National Inheritance(1889). Not long after Galton published the last-named book, a group of so-called "racial scientists"

became quite active in Germany. (Also influential in the formation of the group was German Social

Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, who declared that the various races may be defined as separate species.) Oneof these scientists was Adolf Jost, previously cited as the author of The Right to Death (1895). The

main thesis of this book is that the final solution to the population problem is state control over human

reproduction. The book is couched in the rhetoric of (Darwinian) natural rights. The state has a naturalright and a sacred responsibility to kill individuals in order to keep the nation, the social organism,

alive and healthy.

Later advocates of state-medical killing, such as law professor Karl Binding of the University of

Leipzig and Alfred Hoche, professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, would stress the

therapeutic value of destroying "life unworthy of life." The destruction of such life is "purely a healing

treatment." Between the world wars, sterilization became the most preferred tool for the control ofpopulation. The fact the Weimar Constitution did not allow sterilization was no small matter; Social

Darwinistic scientists and their followers saw it as a dire threat to the nation. "If the power to fight for

one's own health is no longer present," Hitler wrote, "the right to live in this world of struggle ends."

To understand why sterilization was such an important issue for the Social Darwinists, we need not

look far. "In civilized man," Ernst Mayr (America's dean of Darwinism) writes, "the two components ofselective value, adaptive superiority and reproductive success, no longer coincide. The individuals with

above-average genetic endowments do not necessarily make an above-average contribution to the gene

pool of the next generation." Indeed, Mayr continues, "shiftless, improvident individuals who have a

child every year are certain to add more genes to the gene pool of the next generation than those whocarefully plan the size of their families. Natural selection has no answer to this predicament. [Italics

mine} The separation [in] the modern society of mere reproductive success from genuine adaptedness

poses a serious problem for man's future."

In other words: When humans are in the state of nature, their numbers (and their quality as biological

organisms) are effectively controlled by natural selection. In the struggle for existence, the fittestusually win, and the weakest usually lose. The winners get to pass on their winning genes; the losers

get to skulk away and die. When man becomes "civilized," however, the game changes. The weak are

no longer destroyed. Indeed, the weak are protected by unnatural do-gooder religions and philosophies.

They are given advantages they have not earned. They have nothing to do in life but reproduce, andreproduce they do -- "a child every year," according to Mayr. While those who are unworthy of life

proliferate right and left, the genuinely superior find themselves more and more restricted, more and

more disadvantaged in the evolutionary struggle.

Thus it is Mayr issues his dark prognosis . . . this situation "poses a serious problem for man's future."

Mayr's view is essentially a contemporary re-statement of the old eugenics propaganda. When Hitlerand his Nazis commenced their programs of sterilization and extermination, they were operating on the

firm conviction that for the sake of the German people and the future of man, National Socialism must

take over where Natural Selection left off. In Darwinism -- both classical and neo-Darwinism -- naturalselection is the only ordering principle in nature. If the principle of natural selection is thwarted by

misguided man, what is the inevitable result? Disorder, degeneracy, and destruction.

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In a great many ways, the Nazi movement was a crusade against what they perceived as degeneracy, a

crusade in the name of the new god . . . Science. The legacy of the Malthus-Darwin doctrine is sad

indeed. The mandate it gave our rulers was, "Control population and progress . . . or perish." From this

mandate arose two political strategies that were to make the twentieth century the most cruel andbarbaric on record. One of these strategies was strictly Malthusian: "Do nothing for the masses except

that which accelerates their destruction." This was called "laissez-faire" . . . don't interfere. The other

strategy saw in totalitarianism, the complete control of society by the state, the only satisfactory answerto the population problem. Most of the "socialisms" of our century fall in this category.

This article Copyright 2003 by by Theodore D. Hall, Ph.D.. According to the author, the text on thispage may be freely reproduced and distributed.