Nazi Eugenics – How American Prejudice Influence Nazi Practices

There’s just so much to hate about the Third Reich. Among which were the genocidal practices which ended millions of lives and the selective breeding practices that sought to limit those who could start lives.

The Lebensborn movement, Himmler’s SS program for encouraging the production of a population that was “racially pure,” of good Aryan stock, made parents the equivalent of cattle.

SS soldiers were matched to acceptable mates, and marriage wasn’t a necessary requirement. Many of those born from these “racially pure” unions were taken from their parents and raised by the state. 

In other countries, where the Nazis found suitable children who could make the cut, these were kidnapped and brought to Germany — tens of thousands of them.

How could the Nazis engage in such practices? From where did these ideas of the selective breeding of human beings originate?

In the good old United States of America.

That’s where in the first third of the twentieth century, the science of “eugenics” was heavily promoted.

Now most of us are familiar with the Liberty Bell, a symbol of independence and freedom. Few are familiar with the 1927 Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, where it was determined the sterilization of those deemed feeble minded was constitutionally valid. 

Here’s a quote from the decision that sounds like it came straight out of Adolf’s mouth:

‘It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.’[1]

That came from the highest court in our country. It was accompanied by the establishment of ‘research’ facilities to further the study and promotion of the selective breeding of human beings. There were those who should breed, and those who should not.

Today, it’s not difficult to imagine which groups at that time were desired progenitors, and which groups were classified as those fit for sterilization — or at least to be kept from breeding more of their ‘kind.’

American plutocrats supported these ideas of racial hygiene and donated significant monies to German efforts in this ‘field.’

‘America funded Germany's eugenic institutions as well as providing the framework and guidance for the development of their eugenics research. By 1926, the Rockefeller Foundation had donated some $410,000, almost $4 million in today's money, to hundreds of German researchers.’[2]

The two countries, hand in hand, marched into the nineteen thirties spreading the gospel of sterilization of inferiors, and the restriction of reproduction to those ‘worthy’ of it. ‘By 1930 Germany and the United States had become the leading forces of the international eugenics movement.’[3]

One of the students of American eugenics theories was a certain Austrian, from whom the world would hear much later.

Adolf Hitler.

‘I have studied with great interest, the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, probably, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.’[4]

But before Adolf got active with the Lebensborn project, and started euthanizing undesirables, America was going at it full speed.

‘Eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers.’ And that was before World War II.[5]

So who was allowed to breed, and who were the targets of sterilization? In Germany, that’s not hard to figure out, but was American eugenics policies any different?

If you were black, Jewish, or Southern European, the idea of procreating was not approved. If you were Nordic — be fruitful and multiply.[6]

This wasn’t exactly one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Some of the richest families were supporting these racist policies which were later adopted by the Nazis. Carnegie, Harriman, Rockefeller, their foundations all contributed major monies to the idea that all men were not created equal. In fact the Rockefeller foundation financed Joseph Mengele before he violated his medical ethics at Auschwitz.[7]

This isn’t a bit of history that one will find in our American History books. But it is a bit of our history that should be included in them. Because unfortunately, our country was responsible for the philosophy behind selective breeding. By its nature, that meant selective oppression of people who weren’t blonde, blue eyed, and fair haired.

One of the classic examples of National Socialism sometimes turning a blind eye to non-blondes was the fact that nobody mentioned in public that Hitler and Himmler didn’t exactly look like members of the Swedish Ski Team.

In a widely circulated 1918 textbook on the subject, written by an American scientist, Applied Eugenics, a rather permanent approach to selective breeding was proposed by the author, when he wrote, ‘From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated.’[8]

Public gas chambers were suggested, which might have presaged the Nazi use of the same.

Why You Should Care

The image we have of American History is rose colored by the glasses worn by its acceptable authors. 

Children learn about George Washington and “I cannot tell a lie.” But they miss the part where our nation fed a philosophy of racism and murder to the most murderous country (at the time of World War II) on the planet. 

They are not told about direct American financial aid by some of America’s richest families to the murderers of the Third Reich.

Nowadays, most of us are disgusted by Neo-Nazi rhetoric, but are ignorant of the fact that one of the main ideas behind National Socialism, came from our ‘one nation under god.’

Racism is not dead, and there are many that secretly sympathize with the motivations and methods which were suggested by the American eugenics movement, and the horrible aftermath it birthed in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century.

Hopefully, there will never again in our country be any widespread movement supported by the wealthy that would keep certain ethnicities from procreation.

Whether liberal or conservative, it is assumed that no American would promote what our country actively promoted in the first third of the twentieth century, and what Hitler actively engaged in during the middle of that century — selective breeding and execution of undesirable “strains.”

[1] Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (207)

[2] A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics. Cameron Williams, 8/2020 East Tennessee State University Graduate School thesis, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/VpCqJZNXVrPpRCKVVShLVlnjQXgFQglSTQSvgzCzkLnRGJpqTSFkWvDLKBFDGHcQlJglwMl?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1

[3] IBID.

[4] OP.CIT.

[5] THE HORRIFYING AMERICAN ROOTS OF NAZI EUGENICS, 9/03 Edwin Black, History News Network https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/the-horrifying-american-roots-of-nazi-eugenics

[6] IBID.

[7] OP.CIT.

[8] Op.cit.