Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

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Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

Edwin Black

Sunday, November 9, 2003

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

 

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL

 

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions

in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't

originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated

in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists

played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics

movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at " improving " the human race. In its

extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed " unfit, "

preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the

philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and

segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In

1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics

practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage

of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in " colonies, " and persecuted untold

numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of

coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the

state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During

the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but

little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul

Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well

as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the

University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for

extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie

Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They

were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such

prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These

academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted

data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of " race and blood "

in his 1902 racial epistle " Blood of a Nation, " in which the university scholar

declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were

passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold

Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary

Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines

and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the

legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and

associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau

of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants

in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation,

confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even

funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics

movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as

Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American

Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics

Research Society in Long Island. These organizations -- which functioned as part

of a closely-knit network -- published racist eugenic newsletters and

pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics,

and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863,

Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented

people married only other talented people, the result would be measurably better

offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported to the

United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered.

American eugenics advocates believed with religious fervor that the same

Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also

governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In a United States demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by

post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early 20th

century. Elitists, utopians and so-called progressives fused their smoldering

race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They

reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent:

Populate the Earth with vastly more of their own socioeconomic and biological

kind -- and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by

tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types.

This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the Earth. In the process,

the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers,

Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark- haired hill folk, poor people,

the infirm and anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up

by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called defective family trees and subjecting them to

lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The

grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those

deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit. The eugenicists hoped to

neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none

were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 " Preliminary

Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's

Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off

the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population. " Point No. 8 was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in the United States was a

" lethal chamber " or public, locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the

Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used

textbook, " Applied Eugenics, " which argued, " 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. " " Applied Eugenics "

also devoted a chapter to " Lethal Selection, " which operated " through the

destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such

as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency. "

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an

organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced

improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One

institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular

cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40

percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive

eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions

engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was

the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more

marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all

sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of

eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women.

Many were classified as " bad girls, " diagnosed as " passionate, " " oversexed " or

" sexually wayward. " At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because

of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 on

women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State

Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other

sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and

Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927

decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, " 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 . . . Three generations of imbeciles

are enough. " This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively

sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the

Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes' words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign

transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California

eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them

to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti- Semitism

by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific

facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable

Germans by claiming that science was on his side. Hitler's race hatred sprung

from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted

in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep

personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In

" Mein Kampf, " published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and

openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. " There is today one

state, " wrote Hitler, " in which at least weak beginnings toward a better

conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model

German Republic, but the United States. "

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of

the American eugenics movement. " I have studied with great interest, " he told a

fellow Nazi, " the laws of several American states concerning prevention of

reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value

or be injurious to the racial stock. "

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant,

calling his race-based eugenics book, " The Passing of the Great Race, " his

" bible. "

Now, the American term " Nordic " was freely exchanged with " Germanic " or " Aryan. "

Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind

Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted

in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi

doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and

other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the

eugenic formulas, and hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and

mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's

plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort.

California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption.

They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display

at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health

Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month,

the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe, upon returning from Germany,

ebulliently bragged to a colleague, " You will be interested to know 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

.. . . 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. "

That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph

DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the

Richmond Times-Dispatch, " The Germans are beating us at our own game. "

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's

eugenic institutions.

By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in today's

money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded

$250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among

the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin,

who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical

repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of eugenics institutions was

the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single

room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of

$317,000 allowed the institute to construct a major building and take center

stage in German race biology. The institute received additional grants from the

Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the institute,

once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization

became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and

research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental

institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between

50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared of

Nazism, " While we were pussy-footing around ... the Germans were calling a spade

a spade. "

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for

Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades,

American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity.

The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented

level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a

radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND

DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH

ONTWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in

American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for

Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that institute

continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's

early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the institute to form a rival eugenics

facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenics press.

Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed by government decrees.

Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenics doctor's journal he edited, that

Germany's war would yield a " total solution to the Jewish problem. "

Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.

On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German

Research Society, " My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in

this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer (captain)

and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing

of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried

out with permission of the SS Reichsführer (Himmler). "

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them,

he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the

paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes

and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the

foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the

war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men

Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the great institutions they helped found, and

the science they helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity -- an act of

genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their

defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re- established

his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed

their crusade " human genetics. " Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946, when

Popenoe wrote Verschuer, " It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I

have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose

sterilization has been discontinued in Germany? " Popenoe offered tidbits about

various American eugenics luminaries and then sent various eugenics

publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other

goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, " Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of

pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another

bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never

again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and

stimulation. "

Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the

world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American

Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at

its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early

and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious

societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological

Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

 

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious

generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding

generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now

governors of five states, including California, have issued public apologies to

their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by

the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late 20th century.

Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the

Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and

classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the

genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a

master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for

example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On Oct. 14,

the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the

Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single

nation's law can stop the threats.

Edwin Black is author of the award-winning " IBM and the Holocaust " and the

recently released " War Against the Weak " (published by Four Walls Eight

Windows), from which this article is adapted.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

 

 

 

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