War Against the Weak - Excerpts

XV: The US Elite decide to create a superior Nordic race:

"[From the early 1900s through to the mid-1970s],[1] hundreds of thousands of Americans and untold numbers of others were not permitted [to reproduce. Many, including approximately 70,000 Americans],[2] were forcibly sterilized…This battle to wipe out whole ethnic groups was fought not by armies with guns nor by hate sects at the margins. Rather, this pernicious white-gloved war was prosecuted by esteemed professors, elite universities, wealthy industrialists and government officials colluding in a racist, pseudoscientific movement called eugenics. The purpose: create a superior Nordic race.

To perpetuate the campaign, widespread academic fraud combined with almost unlimited corporate philanthropy to establish the biological rationales for persecution. Employing a hazy amalgam of guesswork, gossip, falsified information [and] academic arrogance, the eugenics movement slowly constructed a national bureaucratic and juridical infrastructure to cleanse America of its 'unfit.'"

XXI: Excellent summary of those involved:

"When we were done, we had assembled a mountain of documentation that clearly chronicled a century of eugenic crusading by America's finest universities, most reputable scientists, most trusted professional and charitable organizations, and most revered corporate foundations. They had collaborated with the Department of Agriculture and numerous state agencies in an attempt to breed a new race of Nordic humans, applying the same principles used to breed cattle and corn.

The names define power and prestige in America: the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Harriman railroad fortune, Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Stanford University, the American Medical Association, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Yerkes, Woodrow Wilson, the American Museum of Natural History, the American Genetic Association and a sweeping array of government agencies from the obscure Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics to the U.S. State Department."

4: "Feebleminded" arbitrarily defined:

"No one was quite sure how 'feebleminded' was defined. No matter. The country authorities were certain that the hill folk swept up in their raids were indeed mentally – and genetically – defective. As such, they would not be permitted to breed more of their kind."

6: "Mary" was told that the operation was for her health, she learned years later she had been sterilized

7: Eugenics movement is born:

"The movement was called eugenics. It was conceived at the onset of the twentieth century and implemented by America's wealthiest, most powerful and most learned men against the nation's most vulnerable and helpless. Eugenicists sought to methodically terminate all the racial and ethnic groups, and social classes, they disliked and feared. It was nothing less than America's legalized campaign to breed a super race – and not just any super race. Eugenicists wanted a purely Germanic and Nordic super race, enjoying biological dominion over others.

Nor was America's crusade a mere domestic crime. Using the power of money, prestige and international academic exchanges, American eugenicists exported their philosophy to nations throughout the world, including Germany. Decades after a eugenics campaign of mass sterilization and involuntary incarceration of 'defectives' was institutionalized in the United States, the American effort to create a super Nordic race came to the attention of Adolf Hitler.

Those declared unfit…did not know it, but they were connected to a global effort of money, manipulation and pseudoscience that stretched from rural America right into the sterilization wards, euthanasia vans and concentration camps of the Third Reich. Prior to World War II, the Nazis practiced eugenics with the open approval of America's eugenic crusaders. As Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, complained in 1934, 'Hitler is beating us at our own game.'

Eventually, out of sight of the world, in Buchenwald and Auschwitz, eugenic doctors like Josef Mengele would carry on the research begun just years earlier with American financial support, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution. Only after the secrets of Nazi eugenics horrified the world, only after Nuremberg declared compulsory sterilization a crime against humanity, did American eugenics recede, adopt an enlightened view and then resurface as 'genetics' and 'human engineering.' Even still, involuntary sterilization continued for decades as policy and practice in America."

117 – 121: Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"If the Supreme Court would uphold Carrie Buck’s sterilization, the floodgates of eugenic cleansing would be opened across the United States for thousands. Carrie’s destiny, and indeed the destiny of eugenics, rested upon nine men – and most heavily on the one man who would ultimately write the court’s opinion. That man was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., considered by many to be America’s clearest thinker and most important judicial authority."

Holmes wrote the words that would reverberate forever. '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. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.' It was over. Carrie Buck was sterilized before noon on October 19, 1927."

The totals from 1907 to 1940 now changed dramatically…by the end of 1940, no fewer than 35,878 men and women had been sterilized or castrated – almost 30,000 of them after Buck v. Bell."

125 – 132: Birth control and Margaret Sanger:

"The global effort to help women make independent choices about their own pregnancies was dominated by one woman: Margaret Sanger…Sanger was an ardent, self-confessed eugenicist, and she would turn her otherwise noble birth control organizations into a tool for eugenics, which advocated sterilization of so-called defectives, mass incarceration of the unfit and draconian immigration restrictions. Like other staunch eugenicists, Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from ‘the unfit.’ She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as ‘human waste’ not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that human ‘weeds’ should be ‘exterminated.’ Moreover, for both political and genuine ideological reasons, Sanger associated closely with some of America’s most fanatical eugenic racists."

Steeped in eugenic science, Sanger frequently parroted the results of U.S. Army intelligence testing which asserted that as many as 70 percent of Americans were feebleminded. In January of 1932, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle sent Sanger a quote from a British publication asserting that one-tenth of England’s population was feebleminded due to ‘random output of unrestricted breeding.’ In a letter, the Eagle editor asked Sanger, ‘Is that a fair estimate? What percentage of this country’s population is deficient for the same reasons?’ Sanger wrote her response on the letter: ‘70% below 15 year intellect.’"

133: Stoddard: Isolate and starve the unwanted:

"Stoddard added the eugenic maxim, ‘We now know that men are not, and never will be, equal. We know that environment and education can develop only what heredity brings.’ Stoddard’s solution? ‘Just as we isolate bacterial invasions, and starve out the bacteria, by limiting the area and amount of their food supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat [which will] as with all organisms, eventually limit…its influence.’"

Shortly after Stoddard’s landmark book was published in 1920, Sanger invited him to join the board of directors of her American Birth Control League, a position he retained for years."

138: Sanger’s Birth Control Review magazine:

"In the December 1924 Birth Control Review, another typical article, this one by eugenicist John C. Duvall, was simply titled ‘The Purpose of Eugenics.’ In a section subtitled ‘Dangerous Human Pests,’ Duvall explained…. ‘It is interesting to note that there is no hesitation to interfere with the course of nature when we desire to eliminate or prevent a superfluity of rodents, insects or other pests; but when it comes to the elimination of the immeasurably more dangerous human pest, we blindly adhere to the inconsistent dogmatic doctrine that man has a perfect right to control all nature with the exception of himself.’ It was the second time that year that Sanger’s magazine had published virtually the same phrases declaring lower classes to be more dangerous than rats and bugs. Such denunciations were commonplace in Birth Control Review."

145 – 146: Lucien Howe and “blindness” / sterilization:

"Their drive was not to reduce blindness arising from accident or illness, but to prevent the far less common problem of ‘hereditary blindness.’ How? By banning marriage for individuals who were blind, or anyone with even a single case of blindness in his or her family. According to the plan, such individuals could also be forcibly sterilized and segregated – even if they were already married. If eugenicists could successfully lobby for legislation to prevent hereditary blindness by prohibiting suspect marriages, the concept of marriage restriction could then be broadened to include all categories of the unfit…Eugenic leaders understood their campaign was never about blindness alone. Blindness was only the test case to usher in sweeping eugenic marriage restrictions."

149 – 150: If your vision is bad / blurry, you’re “defective”

"By 1921, the ERO and AMA Section subcommittee had drafted sweeping legislation that pushed far beyond hereditary blindness or even general blindness. It targeted all people with imperfect vision. Under the proposal, any taxpayer could condemn such a person and his family as ‘defective.’ Such a measure would, of course, apply to anyone with blurry vision or even glasses, or any family that included someone with imperfect vision. According to the plan, one ophthalmologist and one eugenic practitioner, such as Laughlin, would render the official assessment…The draft law read: ‘When a man and woman contemplate marriage, if a visual defect exists in one or both of the contracting parties, or in the family of either, so apparent that any taxpayer fears that the children of such a union are liable to become public charges, for which that taxpayer would probably be assessed, then such taxpayer…may apply to the County Judge for an injunction against such marriage.’"

168 – 170: Virginia’s “racial integrity act” (NO TRACE of colored blood should be present):

"‘Thousands of men and women who pass for white persons in this state have in their veins negro blood…it will sound the death knell of the white man. Once a drop of inferior blood gets in his veins, he descends lower and lower in the mongrel scale.’"

Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act was ratified on March 8, 1924, and became effective on June 15. Falsely registering one’s race was defined as a felony, punishable by a year in prison…Plecker quickly began using his office letterhead and the public’s uncertainty about the implications of the new law to his advantage. His letters and bulletins informed and sometimes hounded new parents, newlyweds, midwives, physicians, funeral directors, ministers, and anyone else the Bureau of Vital Statistics suspected of being or abetting the unwhite.

‘We have a report of the birth of your child, July 30th, 1923, signed by Mary Gildon, midwife. She says that you are white and that the father of the child is white. We have a correction to this certificate sent to us from the City Health Department at Lynchburg, in which they say that the father of this child is a negro. This is to give you warning that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. A new law passed by the last legislature says that if a child has one drop of negro blood in it, it cannot be counted as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.’

Plecker followed this with a short note to the midwife, Mary Gildon. ‘This is to notify you that it is a penitentiary offense to willfully state that a child is white when it is colored. You have made yourself liable to very serious trouble by doing this thing. What have you got to say about it?’

On July 29, 1924, Plecker wrote to W.H. Clark, who lived at Irish Creek in Rockbridge County. ‘I do not know you personally and have no positive assurance as to your racial standing, but I do know that an investigation made some time ago by the Carnegie Foundation of the people of mixed descent in Amherst County found the Clark family one of those known to be thus mixed. We learned also that members of this family and of other mixed families have crossed over from Amherst County and are now living on Irish Creek.’ After informing Clark that his ancestors included ‘three Indians who mixed with white and negro people,’ Plecker asserted that the man was now one of five hundred individuals who would be removed from the list of white people.

Adding a threat of prosecution, Plecker warned, ‘We do not expect to be easy upon anyone who makes a misstatement and we expect soon to be in possession of facts which we can take into court if necessary.’ Plecker seemed to enjoy taunting the racially suspect. He sardonically added that he looked forward to tarring even more of Clark’s extended family. ‘I will be glad to hear what you have to say,’ quipped Plecker, ‘and particularly to have the dates and places of the births and marriages of yourself, your parents and grandparents.’"

200: Rebuttal, possibly written by H.L. Mencken:

"Perhaps no better example of the ridicule directed at Laughlin at the time was a forty-seven-page lampoon written under the pseudonym Ezekiel Cheever, who in reality was probably either the irreverent Baltimore Sun commentator H. L. Mencken or one of his associates…In page after page of satirical jabs, Laughlin’s statistics were cited verbatim and then dismembered for their preposterousness."

208 & 219: Carnegie, Rockefeller and Harriman “big 3” supporters

210: A Negro is seldom satisfied with intercourse with a white woman; he has to kill her

215: Churchill

"Winston Churchill, an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics, reassured one group of eugenicists that Britain’s 120,000 feebleminded persons ‘should, if possible, be segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations.’"

215 – 216: Leonard Darwin

"Leonard Darwin and his colleagues hoped ‘a system will also be established for the examination of the family history of all those placed on the register as being unquestionably mentally abnormal, especially as regards the criminality, insanity, ill-health and pauperism of their relatives, and not omitting to note cases of marked ability.’ Their near kin were to be shipped off to facilities, and marriages would be prohibited or annulled.

But once the plan to incarcerate entire families became known, revolted critics declared that the eugenic aspects of the Mental Deficiency Act would ‘sentence innocent people to imprisonment for life.’"

223: Problem with war is that it’s dysgenic:

"Eugenicists seemed more distressed that the strong were dying on the battlefield while the inferior remained…War was denounced as dysgenic because ‘the cream of the race will be taken and the skimmed milk will be left.’"

225: Sterilize the entire family:

"Laughlin emphasized that it was not enough to sterilize an individual; his entire extended family needed to be sterilized as well."

232: Pope Pius the XI condemns eugenics

242: Sterilizations in Canada, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland

247: Eugenicide: kill the unwanted in “lethal chambers”

248 – 250: George Bernard Shaw and others on “Lethal Chambers”:

"In 1910, the eugenic extremist George Bernard Shaw lectured at London’s Eugenics Education Society about mass murder in lethal chambers. Shaw proclaimed, ‘A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence, simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.’"

Leaders of the American eugenic establishment also debated lethal chambers and other means of euthanasia. But in America, while the debate began as an argument about death with dignity for the terminally ill or those in excruciating pain, it soon became a palatable eugenic solution. In 1900, the physician W. Duncan McKim published Heredity and Human Progress asserting ‘Heredity is the fundamental cause of human wretchedness…The surest, the simplest, the kindest, and most humane means for preventing reproduction among those whom we deem unworthy of this high privilege [reproduction], is a gentle, painless death.’ He added, ‘In carbonic acid gas, we have an agent which would instantaneously fulfill the need.’"

By 1910, the idea of sending the unfit into lethal chambers was regularly bandied about in American sociological and eugenic circles…"

251 – 257: Justifying killing babies (and actually doing it) + eugenicide by neglect:

"In Robinson’s book, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics), he advocated gassing the children of the unfit. In plain words, Robinson insisted: ‘The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children or to give them a dose of potassium cyanide.’"

Haiseldon continued to rally for eugenic euthanasia with a six-week series in the Chicago American. He justified his killings by claiming that public institutions for the feebleminded, epileptic and tubercular were functioning as lethal chambers of a sort. After clandestinely visiting the Illinois Institution for the Feebleminded at Lincoln, Illinois, Haiselden claimed that windows were deliberately left open and unscreened, allowing drafts and infecting flies to swarm over patients. He charged that Lincoln consciously permitted ‘flies from the toilets, garbage and from the eruptions of patients suffering from acute and chronic troubles to go at will over the entire institution. Worse still,’ he proclaimed, ‘I found that inmates were fed with the milk from a herd of cattle reeking with tuberculosis.’

At the time, milk from cattle with tuberculosis was a well-known cause of infection and death from the disease. Lincoln maintained its own herd of seventy-two cows, which produced about 50,000 gallons of milk a year for its own consumption. Ten diseased cows had died within the previous two years. State officials admitted that their own examinations had determined that as many as half of the cows were tubercular, but there was no way to know which ones were infected because ‘a tubercular cow may be the fattest cow in the herd.’ Lincoln officials claimed that their normal pasteurization ‘by an experienced employee’ killed the tuberculosis bacteria. They were silent on the continuous handling of the milk by infected residents."

259: Adolf Hitler takes up the eugenic cause:

"U.S. proposals, laws, eugenic investigations and ideology were not undertaken quietly out of sight of German activists. They became inspirational blueprints for Germany’s rising tide of race biologists and race-based hatemongers, be they white-coated doctors studying Eugenical News and attending congresses in New York, or brown-shirted agitators waving banners and screaming for social upheaval in the streets of Munich."

One such agitator was a disgruntled corporal in the German army. He was an extreme nationalist who also considered himself a race biologist and an advocate of a master race…While in prison, he spent his time poring over eugenic textbooks, which extensively quoted Davenport, Popenoe and other American raceological stalwarts. Moreover, he closely followed the writings of Leon Whitney, president of the American Eugenics Society (AES), and Madison Grant, who extolled the Nordic race and bemoaned its corruption by Jews, Negroes, Slavs and others who did not possess blond hair and blue eyes. The young German corporal even wrote one of them fan mail.

In The Passing of the Great Race, Madison Grant wrote: ‘Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.’

One day in the early 1930s, AES president Whitney visited the home of Grant, who was at the time chairing a eugenic immigration committee. Whitney wanted to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter stated that Grant’s book was ‘his Bible.’

The man writing both letters to the American eugenic leaders would soon burn and gas his name into the blackest corner of history. He would duplicate the American eugenic program – both that which was legislated and that which was only brashly advocated – and his group would consistently point to the United States as setting the precedents for Germany’s actions…The man who sent those letters was Adolf Hitler."

262: Alfred Ploetz:

"Ploetz emerged as Germany’s leading race theorist and was often described as ‘the founder of eugenics as a science in Germany.’"

263: US Eugenicists lead the way:

"Quickly, Davenport and the Carnegie Institution became the center of the eugenic world for German researchers. America was enacting a growing body of eugenic laws and governmental practices, and the movement enjoyed wealthy backers and the active support of U.S. officials. While a small group of German social thinkers merely expounded theory, America was taking action. At the same time, by virtue of their blond and blue-eyed Nordic nature as well as their stellar scientific reputation, Germany’s budding eugenicists became desirable allies for the Americans. A clear partnership emerged in the years before World War I. In this relationship, however, America was far and away the senior partner. In eugenics, the United States led and Germany followed."

274: Mein Kampf quotes:

"Hitler openly displayed his eugenic orientation and thorough knowledge of American eugenics in much of his writing and conversation. For example, in Mein Kampf he declared: ‘The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole.’"

277: Hitler takes power and gets to work:

"During the 12-year Reich, [Hitler] never varied from the eugenic doctrines of identification, segregation, sterilization, euthanasia, eugenic courts and eventually mass termination of germ plasm in lethal chambers. During the Reich’s first ten years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler’s plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. Indeed, they were envious as Hitler rapidly began sterilizing hundreds of thousands and systematically eliminating non-Aryans from German society.

Most of all, American raceologists were intensely proud to have inspired the purely eugenic state the Nazis were constructing. In those early years of the Third Reich, Hitler and his race hygienists carefully crafted eugenic legislation modeled on laws already introduced across America, upheld by the Supreme Court and routinely enforced. Nazi doctors and even Hitler himself regularly communicated with American eugenicists from New York to California, ensuring that Germany would scrupulously follow the path blazed by the United States…As they followed the day-to-day progress of the Third Reich, American eugenicists clearly understood their continuing role. This was particularly true of California’s eugenicists, who led the nation in sterilization and provided the most scientific support for Hitler’s regime.

In 1934, as Germany’s sterilizations were accelerating beyond five thousand per month, the California eugenic leader and immigration activist C.M. Goethe was ebullient in congratulating E.S. Gosney of the San Diego based Human Betterment Foundation for his impact on Hitler’s work….Goethe wrote Gosney a letter of praise. ‘You will be interested to know,’ Goethe’s letter proclaimed, ‘that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation. I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.’"

280: “National Socialism promised a sweeping hereditary revolution, establishing dictatorial racial procedures American activists could only dream of. During the period between wars, the American movement viewed National Socialism as a rising force that could, if empowered, impose a new biological world order. Nazi eugenicists promised to dispense with the niceties of democratic rule.”

283: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes:

"By the mid-twenties, Germany had achieved preeminence in both legitimate genetic research and racial biology. Germany’s new status arose, in large measure, from its distinguished Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. An outgrowth of the esteemed Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes would over time develop a network of research institutions devoted to the highest pursuits of science…The twenty-plus Kaiser Wilhelm organizations were easily confused and bore related names. But while they were related, they were independent and often located in different cities. In fact, at one point Davenport confessed to a London colleague, ‘There are so many Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, that it is necessary to specify.’

Among the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes were several that would soon make their mark in the history of medical murder. The first was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. The second was the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. The third was the Institute for Brain Research. All received funding and administrative support from Americans, especially the Rockefeller Foundation."

289 – 290: IBM’s role in Hitler’s holocaust:

"International Business Machines would be a perfect match for eugenics. People tracking was the company’s business. IBM’s technology involved hundreds of thousands of custom-designed punch cards processed through punching, tabulating and sorting machines. Hollerith punch cards could store an almost unlimited amount of information on people, places and processes by virtue of the holes strategically punched into their columns and rows…people identified with certain traits could be easily located for additional eugenic action.

IBM engineers [conferred] with Davenport’s eugenic investigators to jointly plan the program, ensuring that data was collected in a fashion that could be systematically coded and punched into Hollerith machines for later retrieval and management. To design the system correctly, the IBM engineers needed to know both the eugenic information that Carnegie researchers wanted to input as well as how they wanted the results retrieved.

The 1927–1928 Jamaica race-crossing investigation was the first time IBM devised a system to track and report racial characteristics. Five years later, IBM, under the leadership of its president, Thomas J. Watson, would adapt the same technology to automate the race warfare and Jewish persecution in Hitler’s Reich. IBM custom-designed the indispensable systems that located European Jews and other undesirables, and then provided a multiplicity of custom-tailored punch card programs to help the Nazis trace family trees, index bank accounts and other property, organize eugenic campaigns and even manage extermination in death camps."

295: Sterilize all members of the extended family:

"Rüdin advocated sterilization of all members of an unfit individual’s extended family. ‘It became clear,’ he argued, ‘that, in these cases, propagation ought to be renounced…for other degrees of relationship, e.g., for the nephews and nieces, grandchildren…We must make the eugenic ideal a sacred tradition. It must be rooted so deeply in man, and at the right time, that the respect he owes it becomes a matter of course with him, and that he will find love without trespassing on the laws of eugenics.’

In 1931, Rockefeller approved an additional ten-year grant totaling $89,000 (nearly $1.5 million in today’s dollars) to Rüdin’s Institute for Psychiatry."

299 – 300: Hitler’s actions were no secret:

"Years later, many would deny knowledge of what Germany was doing, would claim that they only discovered Hitler’s merciless anti-Semitic and political repression, as well as the Reich’s fascist medical programs, after the Allies triumphed in 1945. But in truth, Hitler’s atrocities against Jews and others were chronicled daily on the pages of America’s newspapers, by wire services, radio broadcasts, weekly newsreels, and national magazines. Germany bragged about its anti-Jewish measures and eugenic accomplishments. An entire propaganda operation was established under Joseph Goebbels to publicize the information. Simultaneously, American eugenicists kept day-to-day tabs on the Nazi eugenic program.

It did not take Germany long to implement its eugenic vision. The first law was decreed July 14, 1933: Reich Statute Part I, No. 86, the Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny. It was a mass compulsory sterilization law. Rüdin was coeditor of the official rules and commentary on the law.

Nine categories of defectives were identified for sterilization. At the top of the list were the feebleminded, followed by those afflicted by schizophrenia, manic depression, Huntington’s chorea, epilepsy, hereditary body deformities, deafness and, of course, hereditary blindness. Alcoholism, the ninth category, was listed as optional to avoid confusion with ordinary drunkenness. The Reich announced that 400,000 Germans would immediately be subjected to the procedure, beginning January 1, 1934.

Eugenical News declared: ‘Germany is the first of the world’s major nations to enact a modern Eugenical sterilization law for the nation as a unit…The law recently promulgated by the Nazi Government marks several substantial advances…’ Proudly pointing out the American origins of the Nazi statute, the article continued, ‘In the meantime it is announced that the Reich will secure data on prospective sterilization cases, that it will, in fact, in accordance with the American model sterilization law, work out a census of its socially inadequate human stocks.’"

302: Rockefeller Foundation’s biological agenda:

"Unlike eugenic leaders associated with Eugenical News, Rockefeller officials did not propagandize for Nazism, nor did they approve of the Reich’s virulent repression. The Rockefeller Foundation’s agenda was strictly biological to the exclusion of politics. The foundation wanted to discover the carriers of defective blood – even if it meant funding Nazi-controlled institutions. Moreover, Rockefeller executives knew their money carried power, and they used it to ensure that the most talented scientists continued at the various Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, frequently shielding them from periodic Nazi urges."

305: Hitler to save humanity:

"In a salute to the Fuhrer, another article [in Eugenical News] clearly suggested that Hitler’s eugenics would soon be applied across all of Europe. ‘This State Cause does not only concern Germany but all European peoples. But may we be the first to thank this one man, Adolf Hitler, and to follow him on the way towards a biological salvation of humanity.’"

Eugenical News was the official voice of the American eugenics movement. Its masthead declared it ‘the official organ of the Eugenics Research Association, the Galton Society, The International Federation of Eugenic Organizations [and] the Third International Congress of Eugenics.’ It was published at the Carnegie offices in Cold Spring Harbor. [It] was read by virtually the entire eugenics community in America and enjoyed an equally attentive overseas readership."

307: Rockefeller ignores protests:

"Protest letters…flowed in. ‘We are getting a number of inquiries from various liberal groups as to our connection with the [Research Institute for Psychiatry] in Munich…The principal complaint is that Professor Rüdin…[is] apparently very active in the preparation of the anti-Jewish propaganda.’

Rockefeller officials tried to provide assurances to protestors that they were not funding Rüdin himself but rather two doctors working under his direction. But this hardly believable story was itself internally contradicted… ‘There is however another grant of funds made through the…[Emergency Fund for German Science] which at least in part is utilized by Professor Rüdin…$125,000 over a period of five years.’ The sum of $125,000 equals more than a million dollars in twenty-first century money.

Despite anti-Nazi protests, Rockefeller continued its subventions to Germany…Moreover, it quickly learned that while its grants specified that money go to one project, Nazi science administrators were quite willing to divert it to another department with a greater ideological priority."

308: IBM’s Nazi partnership:

"Just after Hitler rose to power, IBM initiated an aggressive commercial compact with Nazi Germany, generating windfall profits as it organized and systemized the Reich’s anti-Jewish and eugenic programs. As the Hitler regime took each step in its war against the Jews and all of Europe, IBM custom-designed the punch cards and other data processing solutions to streamline those campaigns into what the company described as ‘blitzkrieg efficiency.’ …Willi Heidinger spoke vividly about what IBM technology would do for Germany’s biological destiny. Standing next to the personal representative of IBM president Thomas J. Watson, and with numerous Nazi Party officials in attendance…Heidinger emotionally declared that population statistics were key to eradicating the unhealthy, inferior segments of German society.

‘The physician examines the human body and determines whether…all organs are working to the benefit of the entire organism,’ asserted Heidinger to the crowd of Nazi officials. ‘We [IBM] are very much like the physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German cultural body. We report every individual characteristic…on a little card…We are proud that we may assist…[Adolf Hitler] with the material he needs for his examinations. Our Physician can then determine whether the calculated values are in harmony with the health of our people. It also means that if such is not the case, our Physician can take corrective procedures to correct the sick circumstances…We have the deepest trust in our Physician and will follow his instructions in blind faith, because we know that he will lead our people to a great future. Hail to our German people and der Führer!’"

317: Worthless eaters:

"The concept of describing people as leading a ‘life unworthy of life,’ sometimes known as ‘worthless eaters,’ rose to the fore. Eugenic terminology and conceptualizations such as subhuman and bacterium were becoming more than jargon. They were becoming policy guidelines. Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared, ‘While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade.’ Goddard expressed his frustration another way: ‘If Hitler succeeds in his wholesale sterilization, it will be a demonstration that will carry eugenics farther than a hundred Eugenics Societies could. If he makes a fiasco of it, it will set the movement back where a hundred eugenics societies can never resurrect it.’"

On September 1, 1939, Germany launched its blitzkrieg against Poland, beginning World War II. Now the medical men of German eugenics would graduate from sterilization to organized euthanasia."

324: Nazi medical experiments and torture:

"Buchenwald functioned for two purposes: to inflict cruelty on the Nazis’ enemies and to systematically work its inmates to death in service of the Reich – in that order. In the hierarchy of hell, Buchenwald was considered among the worst of Nazi labor camps. Hundreds to thousands of people died within its confines each week from beatings, disease, starvation, exhaustion or execution.

Cruel and painful medical experiments were conducted at Buchenwald, especially in Block 46, known for its frosted windows and restricted access. Nazi doctors deliberately infected prisoners with typhus, converting their bodies into so many living test tubes, kept alive only as convenient hosts for the virus. Doctors then carefully observed the progress of the disease in order to help evaluate potential vaccines…In addition, Russian POWs were deliberately burned with phosphorus to observe their reactions to drugs…Experimental Section V employed gland implants and synthetic hormones on homosexuals to reverse their sex drive…Those who survived these heinous tests, or otherwise outlived their usefulness, were often murdered with injections of phenol.

Horrible punishments were everyday occurrences. Many were hung from their wrists with their hands tied behind their backs, thus painfully tearing arms from their sockets. Weakened inmates who did not die quickly enough were bludgeoned…Russian POWs were systematically shot in the back of the neck through a small hole as they stood at the height-measuring wall…Death was an hourly event at Buchenwald – ultimately more than 50,000 perished.

Nuremberg Trial judges denounced ‘conditions so ghastly that they defy description. The proof is overwhelming that in the administration of the concentration camps the German war machine, and first and foremost the SS, resorted to practices which would shame the most primitive race of savage barbarians. All the instances of human decency which distinguished men from beasts were forgotten…’"

335: Katzen Ellenbogen convicted under “common design”:

"Without evidence of specific murders, he could not be hanged, as were other medical war criminals at Buchenwald. Instead, the tribunal used the legal theory that applied to so many Nazi conspirators. This theory was called ‘common design,’ meaning that Katzen-Ellenbogen joined ‘a common design’ to perpetuate the horrors of Buchenwald on the inmates. ‘It is clear,’ concluded the tribunal, ‘that the accused, although an inmate, cooperated with the SS personnel managing the camp and participated in the common design.’” (He was sentenced to life, later reduced to 12 years.)

337: Joseph Mengele:

"SS troops, backed up by barking German shepherds, would begin shouting for the eighty or ninety people in each boxcar to jump down from the train and onto the ramp… Quick! Schnell! Terrified, the helpless Jews massed into orderly groups, unaware they were being assembled for eugenic selection. Teams of doctors swarmed everywhere, organizing people into lines. Two groups would be selected: those strong enough to be worked to death, and those to be gassed immediately. Women and children under fourteen to one side. Men to the other.

Then camp doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, would review the frantic lines: one by one, Jew by Jew. Then with the power of his thumb, he pointed to the left, to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right, to the left. As he condemned and spared, moment-to-moment, he whistled, as though conducting a Devil’s orchestra.

Jews sent to the left were hustled to the showers for gassing, a procedure completely administered and supervised by doctors from start to finish. Once doctors gave the all-clear signal, groups of prisoners called Sonderkommandos were compelled to scavenge piles of corpses for gold teeth and rings.

Those sent to the right could live another day and in the process endure their own brutalities and degradation."

358 - 359: Twins:

"In fact, Mengele loved his twins not because he thought they should be preserved, but only because they briefly served his mad scientific quest. Nyiszli recounted that siblings were subjected ‘to every medical examination that can be performed on human beings,’ from blood tests to lumbar punctures. Each was rigorously photographed naked, and calipered from head to toe."

386: Davenport’s kid dies of Polio

387: Eugenics was criticized early, but money and prestige took care of that:

"The Carnegie Institution continued to back eugenics long after its executives became convinced it was a worthless nonscience based on shabby data, and years after they concluded that Harry Hamilton Laughlin himself was a sham.

Laughlin and eugenics in general had become the butt of jokes and the object of reprehension as far back as 1912, when the world learned that its proponents planned to sterilize millions in America and millions more in other nations. Scientists from other disciplines ridiculed the movement as well. Despite the widespread derision, eugenics persevered as a science under siege, battling back for years, fortified by its influential patrons, the power of prejudice and the big money of Carnegie."

389 – 393: Carnegie Institution starts trying to reign in Laughlin

394: Carnegie finally dumps Eugenical News:

"In late 1938, the Carnegie Institution finally disengaged from Eugenical News. The publication became a quarterly completely under the aegis of the American Eugenics Society, published out of AES offices in Manhattan, with a new editorial committee that did not include Laughlin or any other Carnegie scientist…Shortly thereafter, the Carnegie Institution formalized Laughlin’s retirement, effective at the end of the year…Efforts by Laughlin in the final months of 1939 to find a new sponsor for the Eugenics Record Office were unsuccessful. On December 31, 1939, Laughlin officially retired. The Eugenics Record Office was permanently closed the same day."

395: Laughlin had epilepsy:

"Among his many crusades, Laughlin may best be remembered for his antagonism toward epileptics. He claimed that epilepsy was synonymous with feeblemindedness, and that people with epilepsy did not belong in society. He fought to keep such people out of America and demanded their sterilization and even their imprisonment in segregated camps. No wonder the family kept his condition a secret. Childless and frustrated, Harry Hamilton Laughlin reportedly suffered his genetic disease in silence and died under its grip. The disease: epilepsy."

396 – 397: Carnegie Institute gets rid of Eugenics Record Office’s files:

"After World War II, when the magnitude of Hitler eugenicide became apparent, the Carnegie Institution decided to get rid of its records. It sold the ERO building at Cold Spring Harbor but retained the rest of the facilities…Eventually, Carnegie officials decided the best idea was to disperse the ERO records. In January of 1948, the Dight Institute agreed to house the ERO’s extensive individual trait and family documents if Carnegie would defray the expected $1,000 shipping costs. Some six months later the Minnesota Historical Society agreed to take a half-ton of biographical jubilee books, family genealogical volumes and related materials. At the same time, the New York Public Library received a thousand ERO volumes of family genealogical books and local histories…Carnegie donated Davenport’s voluminous papers and Laughlin’s ERO operational papers to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, while maintaining some documents at a Cold Spring Harbor archive and retaining some others in Washington. When the Dight Institute closed its doors in the 1990s, its ERO papers were also sent to the American Philosophical Society, which now holds the largest consolidated eugenic collection anywhere."

398: Sterilizations continued:

"Although the ERO stopped functioning in 1939, America’s eugenic laws did not. Tens of thousands of Americans continued to be forcibly sterilized, institutionalized and legally prevented from marriage on the basis of racial and eugenic laws. During the 1940s, some 15,000 Americans were coercively sterilized, almost a third of them in California. In the fifties, about ten thousand were sterilized. In the sixties, thousands more were sterilized. All told, an estimated 70,000 were eugenically sterilized in the first seven decades of the twentieth century; the majority were women."

400: Many laws are still on the books:

"Nonetheless many of the laws are still on the books. For example, North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization law, although not used for years, remains in force and was even updated in 1973 and 1981. Chapter 35, Article 7 still allows for court ordered sterilization for moral as well as medical improvement. While most states stopped enforcing sterilization statutes in the sixties and seventies, the practice did not stop everywhere. Across the country, additional thousands of poor urban dwellers, Puerto Rican women and Native Americans on reservations continued to be sterilized – not under state laws, but under special federal provisions."

402: “Genocide” term is coined in 1940 by Raphael Lemkin

403: Hitler quote on depopulation:

"We are obligated to depopulate as part of our mission of preserving the German population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation. If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the removal of entire racial units. And that is what I intend to carry out…Nature is cruel, therefore we, too, may be cruel….I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin! And by ‘remove,’ I don’t necessarily mean destroy; I shall simply take the systematic measures to dam their great natural fertility…There are many ways, systematical and comparatively painless, or at any rate bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out."

409: Treaty Against Genocide:

"For three – perhaps four – decades after the Treaty Against Genocide was adopted, the United States continued to sterilize targeted groups because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed; continued to prevent marriages because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed; and continued to hamper reproduction, interfere with procreation, and prevent births in targeted groups."

411: “Eugenics” becomes “Genetics”

"After Hitler, eugenics did not disappear. It renamed itself. What had thrived loudly as eugenics for decades quietly took postwar refuge under the labels human genetics and genetic counseling…For America’s eugenic holdouts, it was only the fear of guilt by scientific association with genocide that reshaped their memories and guided their new direction."

417: Eugenical News after World War II:

"By 1943, reformers were shouting down diehard Nazi supporters such as Davenport. In the same issue in which Davenport forecast a new biological order, other Eugenical News correspondents were condemning Hitler’s eugenics and negative eugenics in general. Following Davenport’s remarks, another article entitled ‘Eugenics in 1952’ prophesied various views of eugenics some nine years ahead. One writer urged new thinking on the subject, insisting, ‘The history of the Nazi movement in Germany proves…[that] unless the new brain functions in an emotional climate of decent social mindedness, it is going to breed a race of madmen rather than of supermen.

The transformation of eugenics into human genetics accelerated after the war. By 1944, the American Eugenics Society informed its membership that it now defined eugenics as ‘genetics plus control of physical and social environment.’ Meanwhile, Eugenical News was publicly debating whether eugenics would even exist after the war. The June 1945 edition, released just after the fall of Germany, admitted, ‘The question as to what the AES should do after the war is a difficult one. The times will not be very favorable.’"

425: “Old guard” dies out and names are changed:

"During the sixties, seventies and eighties, the racist old guard of eugenics and human genetics died out…Many entities changed their names. For example, the Human Betterment League of North Carolina changed its name to the Human Genetics League of North Carolina in 1984. In Britain there were name changes as well. The Annals of Eugenics became the Annuls of Human Genetics and is now a distinguished and purely scientific publication. The University College of London’s Galton Chair of Eugenics became the Chair of Genetics. The University’s Galton Eugenics Laboratory became the Galton Laboratory of the Department of Genetics. The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Galton Institute.

In 1954, Eugenical News changed its name to Eugenics Quarterly and was renamed again in 1969 to Social Biology. As of March 2003, both the organization and its publication are operating out of university professors’ offices. Social Biology editors and the leaders of the society are aware of their society’s history, but are as far from eugenic thought as anyone could be. The group is now researching genuine demographic and biological trends. Professor S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Social Biology’s associate editor as of March 2003, denounced eugenics and his journal’s legacy during an interview with this reporter. ‘You couldn’t find anyone better to run this society,’ he insisted. ‘I carry a potentially lethal genetic disorder. Plus, I’m a Jew. I would be the exact target of any eugenics campaign.’"

441 – 442: Newgenics:

"Prominent voices in the genetic technology field believe that mankind is destined for a genetic divide that will yield a superior race or species to exercise dominion over an inferior subset of humanity. They speak of ‘self-directed evolution’ in which genetic technology is harnessed to immeasurably correct humanity – and immeasurably enhance it…But correction will not be cheap…Hence, economic class is destined to be associated with genetic improvement. If the genetically ‘corrected’ and endowed are favored for employment, insurance, credit and the other benefits of society, then that will only increase their advantages.

Mass social engineering is still being advocated by eminent voices in the genetics community. Celebrated geneticist James Watson, codiscoverer of the double helix and president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, told a British film crew in 2003, ‘If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease. The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what’s the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, “Well, poverty, things like that.” It probably isn’t. So I’d like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent.’

For the first half of the twentieth century, Cold Spring Harbor focused on the ‘submerged tenth’; apparently, the passion has not completely dissipated."