Customer Reviews

From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The subject of Nazi Germany still is a very popular topic for books, articles and public discussion. Having read many books and articles on this area of history, I can confidently conclude that this is one of the most important (and one of the best scholarly sources). In contrast to many authors who quote each other (and must rely on secondary sources printed in English), Weikart's work relies heavily on primary sources published in German during the time he is covering. Weikart is fluent in the language (I only studied it to pass my Ph.D. reading exams) and lived in Germany to do his research. As a result, Weikart includes much new material for scholars to mull over for the next century. He covers the basic question asked about this era, namely, why did Nazism start and grow in the most educated nation in the world and why did so many scientists (especially biologists of various types) and medical doctors firmly side with Nazism? Understanding why Nazism happened is critical to insure that it never happens again. This work focuses on the major influence of Darwinism, but also covers in a very balanced way other influences. Like a story, he develops a major point in each chapter, building onto the story and his conclusion. The 42 pages of notes fully document his conclusions. This book is a must for anyone interested in not only Nazi Germany but the whole question of the source of morality and ethics.

The review by G. Sherwood is silly.

He criticizes Weikart's book for not showing how the eugenics movement in the United States provided a model for Hitler. But that's not the concern of Weikart's book, which is to provide an intellectual history of the orgins of Nazism in German social Darwinism.

I disagree with Weikart. I think the title of his book should be "From Haeckel to Darwin," because I think Daniel Gasman has shown conclusively that Ernst Haeckel was the primary ideological influence on Nazism and Hitler. Actually, if you look at the index to Weikart's book, you will see more references to Haeckel than to any other person.

But I agree with Weikart that Hitler and his Nazis exploited an ambiguity in Darwinian biology that could be used to promote racism and eugenics. Hitler was able to use the Darwinian language of "survival of the fittest" to promote his own schemes. This is the dark side of Darwinian science.

The problem is that there is little evidence that Darwin himself promoted Nazi eugenics. In fact, the social Darwinists that influenced the Nazi movement often disagreed with Darwin's account of the natural moral sense, as Weikart indicates.

And yet Weikart does show very clearly the intellectual history of Nazi racism as the product of a distorted Darwinian legacy. For that, we should be grateful.

This is an excellent overview of late 19th -early 20th century German `Social Darwinism', detailing the widespread politicisation of intellectualism and `science' in Germany, well before the Nazis and Hitler ever came to power. It reveals much of where Hitler and the Nazis actually got their views from; eg ideas on extreme militarism, race superiority and race determinism, human inequality and expendability, `might is right' policies and ideas, and various other extreme forms of eugenic/Social Darwinism, which were widespread amongst German intellectuals. Numerous German intellectuals and their ideas are detailed in his book (eg Forel, Ploetz, H.Chamberlain, Hellward, Schonerer, Haeckel, Dodel, Woltmann, Lenz, Fritsch, Ribbert, Kirchhoff, Peschel, Kaup, Jaeger, Buchner, Lehmann, Schallmayer, Luschan, Tille, and others), in the decades preceeding Nazism, many advocating Nazi-type ideas supposedly based on `science', before Hitler ever came to power, who followed a long trend of data distortion probably derived from the tenuous relationship between German political culture, and German science.

It is very surprising what various, highly respected German scientists/intellectuals of the time, well before the Nazis, actually believed or debated, as being `justified' by biology. Examples include:

-infanticide,
-euthanasia,
-suicide,
-marriage control,
-state-selected abortion,
-utopian societies,
-racial extermination,
-killing the disabled,
-killing off the old or weak,
-capital punishment,
-separation of the `unfit',
-sterilisation of the `unfit',
-`false humaneness',
-equating physical health with moral superiority,
-ascribing physical abnormalities as throwbacks to `lower' animals,
-confidence in the ability of scientists to categorise and physically measure `might', and `value';
- Aryan race ideas, (Nietzsche's `Dionysian'),
-`providence' equating with the `holy law of evolution'; (used by Hitler),
-the `inferior' `parasitising' the `superior',
-parasitic races
-anti-Semitism
-`struggle for space'
-`progress' through destruction,
-`living space' and population expansion with racial struggle,
-blonde hair-blue eye superiority,
-`struggle of annihilation',
-racial purity,
-`Teuton' superiority (Hitler preferred `Aryan' to `Teuton'),
-racial hygiene,
-medical experimentation of the 'unfit',
-the glorification of war for race,

the list goes on and on. All of these ideas, before Hitler and the Nazis ever came to power. This book is an excellent, careful and detailed analysis of the development of these ideas in late 19th-early 20th century Germany.

The presence of so many widespread Nazi-type ideas, well before World War 1 and the interwar years, also helps to explain how many ordinary Germans allowed the Nazis to get into power and get away with so much; the `soil was prepared' by intellectuals in Germany for decades, and Hitler read many of the works of these intellectuals.

However, in his claim that Darwinism led to Hitler and Nazism, one major criticism is that Weikart doesn't spend much time in attempting to make a connection between the actual Darwinian `data', and Nazism/Hitler. Weikart does say that the path from Darwin to Hitler is tortuous and convoluted, but he is of the opinion, that the idea of `Darwinian natural selection' and its implications, even a perverted/distorted form of it, ultimately led, one way or another, to Hitler and Nazi ideology. To repeat, he doesn't spend much time actually investigating the data or its distortions, either psychologically or scientifically, rather, he mostly limits himself to overviews of the development and beliefs of the various eugenicists themselves.

The distortion of biological data into Social Darwinism, eugenics, and ultimately, Nazism in the 19th -early 20th century is an age-old IS/OUGHT issue. Just because something happens in nature, such as lightning, radioactivity, cancerous cells, or wasteful death by `blundering' natural selection (as Darwin himself put it), doesn't mean we humans, or nature itself for that matter, somehow `condones' these things. This issue is barely discussed, but it is the KEY issue. Just because something IS, doesn't mean it OUGHT to be, promoted by humans, or otherwise. This was the mistake of German intellectuals, Weikart barely discusses this process, only describing how intellectuals in late 19th -early 20th century routinely equated `is' with `ought' in their ideology. Perhaps the problem then, was a widespread and accepted, extreme type of socialist-determinism, within both science and culture, rather than a problem with `Darwinism' itself (?).

The German Social Eugenicists infused the scientific data with politics, occasionally overturning the data with politics (eg Haeckel's 12 races diagram p107, which `shows' that `lower' humans are closer to the apes than `higher' humans are to `lower' humans). The data doesn't give any support for many of the ideas eugenicists/social Darwinists advocated, which shows how science can become so infused with the prevailing culture and politics, that it blinds even the best and most influential scientists. Science, with its connections to high culture and politics, its human vanity, its power by default, its need for special funding, and its innate careerism, is VERY susceptible to subtle political distortion and preconceived ideas, especially in cases where it is difficult to disprove or falsify paradoxes and data ambiguities, and society at large invariably suffers from this.

What was perhaps going on in late 19th -early 20th century Europe/Germany, was the development of unrestrained bureaucratic ideologies masquerading as science-a science distorted by prevailing assumptions which supported the interests of the bureaucratic/aristocratic elite. Both Bolshevik-communism, and Intellectual-Social Darwinism/Eugenics were examples of this, and both produced expendable death, since truth, and the individual, were `expended' by intellectuals well before WW1 and 2, and well before the Bolsheviks and Nazis came to power. One could argue, from the writing of the intellectuals themselves, that Nazism (and Bolshevism-which is not discussed here) was born in 19th century bureaucratic/aristocratic `convenient', unexamined, `assumptions'.

If one reads some of the late 19th -early 20th century German views detailed in this book, one shouldn't be all that surprised at what the Nazis eventually did: many of the worst policies of the Nazis were already formulated by intellectuals in the name of `science', dripping with distortion, vanity and expediency.

Overall a very good, detailed and intriguing book, but also a tortuous read, which reflects the very difficult and tortuous subject matter- that is-the intellectual origins of Nazi ideology.

From Darwin to Hitler is controversial because its author is associated with the Discovery Institute, an organization that advocates intelligent design and criticizes naturalistic evolution. From this it has been argued that the book is merely a hit piece on Darwin that argues two things: 1) the Holocaust was the inevitable result of embracing Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and 2) Hitler's worldview and his Nazi agendas were solely derived from evolutionary biology.

After reading the book I am honestly at a loss at how such distorted criticisms could have materialized. Perhaps it is because Weikart appears to believe this in the eyes of his critics because he is part of the Discovery Institute and was featured in Ben Stein's movie Expelled, which was rather reckless in its guilt by association tactics. Whatever the reason, the critics have it wrong as Weikart diligently and professionally handles a careful argument that merely suggests that Darwinism was a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for Hitler's ethic. The book's unfortunate title perhaps reduces things a bit too much, but the subtitle evokes a more judicious curiousity, "Evolutionary ethics, eugenics, and racism in Germany." These, no doubt, are the plot twists in a very grim view of humanity.

Ironically enough, Weikart doesn't spend a lot of time on Darwin and focuses more attention on Ernst Haeckel , Bartholomäus von Carneri, Christian von Ehrenfels, August Forel, Eugen Fischer, Theodor Fritsch, Friedrich Jodl, Friedrich Hellwald, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, Wilhelm Schallmayer, and Helene Stöcker. One could go on and on furnishing quote after quote from the German intelligentsia showing that they believed it was a scientific fact that humans were no more than animals in competition with one another, and that the humanitarian ethics of Christian morality which compels society to care for the sick and weak ought to be thrown off. In their view, there was no such thing as a human soul or human nature. There is no free will since everything is biologically determined. Humanity does not share a common ancestor as evidenced by the vast differences between racial categories. The the distance between the "higher" and "lower" human races is greater than the distance between apes and the "lower" races (!) making the belief that all persons are created equal a liberal fable. The superior are given the right to dominate, if not eliminate, the inferior from within their ranks. The mentally handicapped and the disabled are not only "worthless" to society but actually count as "negative worth" because they sap the strength of the "strong." It therefore, is a moral duty to the community to segregate the population and sift out the bad elements from the good.

After one reads through the litany of German scientists, eugenicists, ethicists, and political reformers one cannot help but see how morality was turned on its head. The strongest part of Weikart's book is that he provides an explanation for how German legal theorists, physicians, and scientists could have supported and carried out Hitler's policies. The mantle of evolutionary progress was so powerfully motivating that it captured the hearts and minds of Germany's intelligentsia long before Hitler arrived on the scene. In the wake of World War I the fear of biological degeneration (the "best" of German men dead on the battlefield, and the "worst" at home) and the economic oppression Germany experienced made Hitler's heinous vision one that was morally necessary.

To be sure, Darwinism was not the cause of Hitler's Germany, but it played no small part in re-imagining the human race in the German mind. Without a doubt, it helped prepare the way for some of the most inhumane treatment of humanity in history.

This book reveals a lot about German intellectuals and their love of the "mad" philosophers who called for a superior race and a "Superman Leader." Weikart provides an interesting and detailed review of those intellectual currents leading up to the rise of the Nazi Party. Hitler's most vicious and racist ranting seemed to represent a mere paraphrasing of earlier intellectual arguments that had long-since seeped into the German psyche. Darwin's role by comparison was minor and less directly supportive of eugenicists' positions.

Most of the reviewers emphasize the importance of Darwin and the varied Darwinian theories--debating to what degree Darwin's theory of Evolution actually inspired Hitler's policies. Indeed the author is faulted for not making that connection either stronger or weaker. I suspect those who must connect Darwin with Hitler's theories are primarily motivated by a desire to bring some "science" into their pre-conceived ideas about racial differences. But, note that Hitler's policies and success were assured with or without Darwin and his Book.

For readers interested in this subject I would recommend the 4th chapter in William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Shirer had actually lived in Germany during Hitler's rise to power, and he documents the same intellectual history in Germany that had advanced the extreme hatred for other races, the worship of power, a lust for conquest, and dreams of a superman leader who, free of all moral constraints, would lead them to crush all weaklings and enemies of the Aryan culture. Such perverted intellectuals included Nietzsche, Wagner, Hegel,and a host of others from both within Germany as well as from France, England and America, who had set forth that inhuman agenda for over a hundred years before Hitler was born, and well before Darwin set pen to paper.

One of the first and most strident of these intellectuals was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a philosophy teacher at the University of Berlin. He delivered his "Addresses to the German People" in 1807 and set forth his dream that Germany create a new all-powerful state, led by a small elite of pure German blood, free of any moral restrictions. It would subjugate the inferior races, and consolidate power in a central national government that would lead the mighty in destroying the weak. Professors Von Trietschke and Hegel followed at the University, and like Nietzsche and Marx, they glorified the State--"the people, the subjects, are to be little more than slaves in the nation." It is extraordinary that the leading lights of "The Enlightenment" were instilling these ideas within the old European nations during the first century that the newly minted United States of American was demonstrating freedom and democracy and a constrained foreign policy. Talk about back-sliding!

I recommend Weikart's book for its gripping and easy to read coverage of that 19th and 20th century's backsliding of civilization. Much of Western Europe had for centuries been the cradle of democracy, human rights, Christian ethics, and personal liberty--and then there was this fascination with racism, power, and aggression, fueled by the new and deadly idea that man is descended from the apes, and that there is no moral law from God to guide us.

This book provides a thorough examination of the resulting impact that these intellectual and philosophical theories had on religion, morality and political organizations. And, in retrospect, those results underscore the dangers that all free societies face from their least suspected enemies--the intelligentsias within who wish to rule from the top, and experiment with their new visions, over and upon the common people.

Richard Weikart's "From Darwin to Hitler" is a comprehensive look at how German ethics gradually evolved socially, economically, and politically from a Judeo-Christian worldview into a philosophical materialism worldview. Weikart did extensive historical research that showed how Darwinism altered conceptions of human nature and the value of human life that ultimately contributed to a eugenics ideology and scientific racism that became prominent in Germany, the United States, and Europe during the late 19th Century and into the early 20th Century.
He doesn't blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, but acknowledges it is one of the contributing factors. Weikart's conclusion at the end of the book states: "Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism, especially its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world's greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy. Darwinism--or at least some naturalistic interpretations of Darwinism--succeeded in turning morality on its head."
While there will be many critics of Weikart's work one cannot but be impressed with his extensive historical research and his care in revealing the influence of Darwinism on Hitler. I found the book insightful and sobering. Weikart acquainted me with how some in the intellectual community of Germany came to devalue human life based on their interpretation of Darwinism.

Extremely well written and well thought out. Richard Weikart has crafted a very meaningful work here which is filled with data and history about social Darwinism and attempts by Darwinists to derive ethics from evolutionary theory. Mr. Weikhart lets the data speak for itself while making very limited editorial comments. This work is a wonderful resource for Christians and non-Christians alike. Highly recommended for any one interested in learning the history of the eugenics movement and its ties to Nazi Germany.

Amazing book that makes the connections between reality and its outworking in reality. People like to blame Hitler as a madman, when in reality he was just a devout evolutionist and eugentist/social darwinist with a strange mad bent towards jews, the rest of the darwinists just wanted blacks, old people, and handicapped folks; so the only thing that progressives today still hang onto is abortion and euthanasia...

the book is presented much more balanced that I am. Get it!

This well documented scholarly book shows how (and why) naturalistic Darwinian thinkers in late 19th and early 20th century Germany and elsewhere used Darwinism to undermine the traditional notions of natural "inalienable rights", especially human individual rights. Simultaneously, these thinkers often exalted the Darwinian process of survival of the fittest to the highest arbiter of morality. Hitler and many Nazis enthusiastically embraced this new evolutionary ethic that negated traditional morality, and promoted what they thought would promote human evolution through any possible means. Weikarts's work carefully documents the conclusion that natural law advocates were often open about rejecting traditional Christian morality, especially the conclusion that the weak, the poor, the sick, and the lame were to be cared for and treated with respect. The new morality stressed that whatever "improves" the race is justified morally and this included not only euthanasia and abortion for certain groups, but even infanticide and genocide. The importance of elimination of what the government decided were the inferior races (Jews, Blacks, and others) and individuals, and at the same time promoting the superior races and individuals to reproduce, was at the heart of the Nazi program for the world. Even using polygamy for the "most valuable" males was encouraged by some leading thinkers. We all know the end result of the attempt to apply the latest scientific thinking (Darwinism) to government. And Weikart adequately documents the fact that the biologist and other scientists advocating these policies were not in the minority but dominated German science (and science in many advanced societies, especially biology). This is a story that needs retelling especially in view of the fact that Darwinism is increasingly being questioned by scientists themselves (at my university I am seeing more and more controversy in this area by biologists).

This is a great book on post enlightenment Germany and the impact of enlightenment thinking on the German people. It explains the true causes of WWI and WWII the German belief in racial superiority. It shows how science becoming the new religion was able to be infused with politics. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys WWII especially Hitler and the Nazi Party.