War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race [Hardcover]

Edwin Black (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2008

In War Against the Weak, award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black connects the crimes of the Nazis to a pseudo-scientific American movement of the early twentieth century called eugenics. Based on selective breeding of human beings, eugenics began in laboratories on Long Island but ended in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Ultimately, over 60,000 unfit Americans were coercively sterilized, a third of them after Nuremberg declared such practices crimes agains thumanity. This is a timely and shocking chronicle of bad science at its worst which holds important lessons for the impending genetic age.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The plans of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazis to create a Nordic "master race" are often looked upon as a horrific but fairly isolated effort. Less notice has historically been given to the American eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although their methods were less violent, the methodology and rationale which the American eugenicists employed, as catalogued in Edwin Black's Against the Weak, were chilling nonetheless and, in fact, influential in the mindset of Hitler himself. Funded and supported by several well-known wealthy donors, including the Rockefeller and Carnegie families and Alexander Graham Bell, the eugenicists believed that the physically impaired and "feeble-minded" should be subject to forced sterilization in order to create a stronger species and incur less social spending. These "defective" humans generally ended up being poorer folks who were sometimes categorized as such after shockingly arbitrary or capricious means ! such as failing a quiz related to pop culture by not knowing where the Pierce Arrow was manufactured. The list of groups and agencies conducting eugenics research was long, from the U.S. Army and the Departments of Labor and Agriculture to organizations with names like the "American Breeders Association." Black's detailed research into the history of the American eugenics movement is admirably extensive, but it is in the association between the beliefs of some members of the American aristocracy and Hitler that the book becomes most chilling. Black goes on to trace the evolution of eugenic thinking as it evolves into what is now called genetics. And while modern thinkers have thankfully discarded the pseudo-science of eugenics, such controversial modern issues as human cloning make one wonder how our own era will be remembered a hundred years hence. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

In the first half of the 20th century, more than 60,000 Americans-poor, uneducated, members of minorities-were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from passing on supposedly defective genes. This policy, called eugenics, was the brainchild of such influential people as Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and Margaret Sanger. Black, author of the bestselling IBM and the Holocaust, set out to show "the sad truth of how the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island" at the Carnegie Institution's Cold Spring Harbor complex. Along the way, he offers a detailed and heavily footnoted history that traces eugenics from its inception to America's eventual, post-WWII retreat from it, complete with stories of the people behind it, their legal battles, their detractors and the tragic stories of their victims. Black's team of 50 researchers have done an impressive job, and the resulting story is at once shocking and gripping. But the publisher's claim that Black has uncovered the truth behind America's "dirty little secret" is a bit overstated. There is a growing library of books on eugenics, including Daniel Kevles's In the Name of Eugenics and Ellen Chesler's biography of Margaret Sanger, Woman of Valor. Black's writing tends to fluctuate from scholarly to melodramatic and apocalyptic (and sometimes arrogant), but the end result is an important book that will add to the public's understanding of this critical chapter of American history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Dialog Press (September 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914153056
• ISBN-13: 978-0914153054
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.7 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international investigative author of 80 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. Editors have submitted Black's work nine times for Pulitzer Prize nomination, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies worldwide. For his work, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US to the leading networks of Europe and Latin American. His works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. All of his books have been optioned by Hollywood for film, with three in active production. His latest film is the screen adaptation War Against the Weak, based on his book of the same name. Black's speaking tours include hundreds of events in dozens of cities each year, appearing at prestigious venues from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles in America, and in Europe from London's British War Museum and Amsterdam's Institute for War Documentation to Munich's Carl Orff Hall. He is the editor of The Cutting Edge News, which receives more than 1.5 million visits monthly.

Black's ten award-winning bestselling books are IBM and the Holocaust (2001), British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement (2011), The Farhud (2010), Nazi Nexus (2009), The Plan (2008), Internal Combustion (2006), Banking on Baghdad (2004), War Against the Weak (2003), The Transfer Agreement (1984), and a 1999 novel, Format C:. His enterprise and investigative writings have appeared in scores of newspapers from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to the Sunday Times of London, Frankfurter Zeitung and the Jerusalem Post, as well as scores of magazines as diverse as Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Reform Judaism, Der Spiegel, L'Express, BusinessWeek and American Bar Association Journal. Black's articles are syndicated worldwide by Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Syndicate, JTA and Feature Group News Service.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 87 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating and important October 26, 2003

By Charles Patterson

This book is a fascinating account of the eugenics movement that flourished in the United States during the first third of the twentieth century. With the help of an international team of researchers the author details the movement's history: creation of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island; the leadership of poultry researcher Charles Davenport; extensive Harriman, Rockefeller, and Carnegie funding; state laws legalizing compulsory sterilization; widespread acceptance by college presidents, clergymen, mental health workers, school principals, and leading progressive thinkers such as Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Woodrow Wilson; its validation by the United States Supreme Court in 1927 when it voted 8 to 1 to uphold the constitutionality of Virginia's eugenic sterilization law; and much, much more.

The book's most dramatic and controversial conclusion is that the American eugenics movement fueled the triumph of Nazism in Germany and thereby helped bring on the Holocaust. As Black writes in his Introduction, "the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island at the Carnegie Institution's eugenic enterprise at Cold Spring Harbor." To his credit he provides a great deal of evidence to make his contention plausible, if not totally convincing.

The extremes to which the Nazis took their eugenics--euthansia killings of "unfit" Germans and the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and others--gave eugenics a bad name from which it never recovered. This important book sheds much needed light on one of the darkest and most bizarre chapters of American history.

Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rise of Eugenics. August 2, 2010

By New Age of Barbarism

Format:Hardcover

_War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (2003) by Edwin Black is a fascinating history of the rise and role of eugenics in American history and Nazi Germany. The book demonstrates some of the faulty fundamental premises behind the eugenics movement as well as showing some of the horrors that resulted from the implementation of the eugenics in both the United States and Nazi Germany. The book also shows the relationship between eugenicists and social Darwinists in the United States and Adolf Hitler who later adopted many of their ideas to implement in Germany. The book also shows how following World War II eugenics became discredited but was slowly morphed into the new field of genetics which achieved many positive scientific and medical results for humanity. However, with the new field of genetics came the baggage of eugenics and the possibility that eugenics could be implemented again. The book shows how the weak, poor, and "feeble-minded" were particularly targeted by the eugenics movement and many were sterilized in America or euthanized in Germany. The book also shows how ideas of racial supremacy entered into the thinking of eugenicists in their goal of creating a master Nordic race. Many of the individuals targeted by eugenicists had little wrong with them and thus the role of sterilization was completely unnecessary.

The book includes the following chapters-

Introduction - explains the role of eugenics in America and the need to give voice to those never born because of its implementation. Explains some of the misdeeds of eugencists in both America and Nazi Germany (including the role of the Holocaust) and notes the role of prominent organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegies, and Planned Parenthood in implementing eugenics.

Part One: From Pea Pod to Persecution.

Mountain Sweeps - acknowledges the role of poverty in the formulation of eugenics by America's wealthy elite. Explains how many of those particularly among the Brush Mountain "hill folk" of Virginia were targeted by American eugenicists because of their alleged inferiority and "feeble-mindedness". Explains the role of "human engineering" and the frightening possibility that the eugenic crimes of the twentieth century could be repeated.

Evolutions - examines how the Christian worldview which its emphasis on charity came to be overturned. Notes the problem of poverty both in the Middle Ages following the "Black Death" and in industrial England. Notes the role of "paupers" and the role of socially conscious reformers such as the author Charles Dickens who called attention to these matters. Examines the role of Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin in founding the scientific theory of evolution as well as the role of the Czech monk Gregor Mendel in his studies of pea pods which began the science of genetics. Focuses on the life of Francis Galton (a relative of Darwin in Britain) who began scientific and statistical investigations into these matters and who was to coin the term "eugenics". In particular, Galton developed the field of "positive eugenics" in his study of hereditary genius and wealthy families.

America's National Biology - explains how eugenics came to be implemented in the United States following studies of the feminist Victoria Woodhull, the racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard, the Carnegie Institution, and the eugenicist Charles Davenport in his goal of creating a superior "Nordic race". Notes the role of "the Jukes" a small family of "paupers" who served as propaganda for the eugenics movement.

Hunting the Unfit - explains how the "unfit" were singled out by the American Breeder's Association as being harmful to society. Notes the role of epileptics and the "feeble-minded" as being particularly singled out by eugenicists.

Legitimizing Raceology - notes the role of "raceology" as well as the role of IQ tests in legitimizing it. Notes some of the problems encountered by the early eugenicists.

The United States of Sterilization - explains how eugenicists sought to sterilize the "unfit" to prevent them from breeding. Notes the prominent role of eugenicists behind such efforts of sterilization which were implemented in the United States.

Birth Control - notes the role of Margaret Sanger founder of Planned Parenthood in promoting birth control for the poor. Explains how Sanger promoted both abortion and eugenics at the time. Also notes the role of individuals such as Lothrop Stoddard and others.

Blinded - explains the role of eugenicists behind the persecution of the blind who were singled out for their schemes.

Mongrelization - explains the role of the Census Bureau and the relationship between eugenicists who frequently believed in Anglo-Saxon supremacy and other races as well as fear of "mongrelization".

Eugenicide.

Origins - explains the role of eugenicists in implementing their sterilization techniques which focused particularly on outcaste groups. Examines the role of Charles Davenport behind the eugenics movement (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie). Notes the importance of opposition to immigration (particularly that of Jews, Italians, and Poles) by eugenicists.

Britain's Crusade - notes the role of eugenics in Britain in its goal of sterilizing "paupers" and the other victims of the Industrial Revolution. Notes the role of Charles Davenport in collaborating with Francis Galton and others. Explains the role of Britain's "Poor Laws", illegal surgeries, the Ministry of Health, and other issues behind eugenics in Britain.

Eugenic Imperialism - notes the role of "global eugenics" and the hope of eugenicists to implement eugenics worldwide especially as it concerned the events of World War I. Notes the prominent role of conservationist Madison Grant behind the eugenics movement at this stage.

Eugenicide - explains how the idea of a "lethal chamber" arose in the thinking of various eugenicists at this time as a means to euthanize and exterminate the unfit. In particular, this notion was to play a role in the novels of Robert Chambers, and in the thinking of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Explains how this notion was used to promote abortion and the euthanasia of deformed infants.

Rasse und Blut - explains how "negative eugenics" came to be implemented in Germany after Adolf Hitler discovered American eugenicists in his _Mein Kampf_. Notes the role of major American eugenicists such as Charles Davenport and Madison Grant in promoting eugenics and raceology in Germany.

Hitler's Eugenic Reich - explains how Hitler came to implement eugenics in Nazi Germany in his persecution of the mentally ill, "feeble-minded", and handicapped. Notes the role and support of American eugenicists including Lothrop Stoddard for these ideas. Explains the race laws in Nazi Germany as well as the role of American companies such as IBM behind eugenics and the death camps. Notes the importance of Catholic opposition to eugenics in Germany as expressed by the pope and also by Catholic thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton in Britain. Explains how Hitler altered eugenic ideas of Anglo-Saxon and "Nordic" supremacy to include Aryan and Teutonic supremacy.

Buchenwald - explains the role of Katzen-Ellenbogen, a psychoanalyst who promoted eugenics and aided German officers, at Buchenwald concentration camp. Explains how Katzen-Ellgenbogen came to counsel German officers who frequently suffered from neuroses caused by the mass killings they were forced to engage in.

Auschwitz - explains the role of Auschwitz concentration camp for implementing human destruction. Notes the prominent role of the eugenic lethal chamber. Shows the inhumane and sick experiments of such individuals as Dr. Josef Mengele on various individuals in the death camps. Notes the prominent role of Nazi science and some of the results that came out of grossly unethical Nazi experimentation. Notes in particular the results of experiments on human reaction to extreme cold and the Nazi doctors' obsession with twins for their experimentation.

Newgenics.

From Ashes to Aftermath - explains the end of the Nazi terror at the end of World War II. Notes how the Americans came to make use of Nazi experimentation following the Second World War (medical results obtained from experiments conducted on Nazi victims).

American Legacy - explains how the results of Nazi medical experimentation were brought to America under Project PAPERCLIP. Notes the prominent role of Nazi science for the American military as well as some of the results obtained through unethical experimentation for medical science. Explains the results of various lawsuits filed by the ACLU against the United States for sterilizing the "unfit". Notes the prohibition on marriages for the unfit in the United States as well as the advocacy of sterilization by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his remark that "three generations of imbeciles is enough".

Eugenics Becomes Genetics - explains the discrediting of eugenics following the end of World War II but the continuing of some eugenics movements. Explains the role of the new science of genetics but notes its tarnished past in eugenics. Explains how genetics has offered many positive contributions to medical science and humanity but also is fraught with certain dangers. Notes the role of Francis Crick and Thomas Watson who helped discover DNA and their eugenic theories.

Newgenics - explains how in the twenty-first century issues raised by eugenics promise to become prominent again. Notes the role of animal cloning and the possibility of human cloning. Read more ›

90 of 106 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From Eugenics to Newgenics August 28, 2003

By John C. Landon

You learn something new everyday, here in an important book: the history of the American eugenics movement and its influence on the perpetrators of the Nazi version leading to the Holocaust. Sanitized or amnesiac history has forgotten the details here, and they are grisly, the more so being American data of record, deep in the many archives the author and his team researched. The details include the involvement of many of the foundations, Carnegie, Rockerfeller, et. al. The eugenics era is routinely denounced, but the facts are diffused from discussion and this book is eminently worth reading carefully to see how it actually happened. The account has eye-popping details on every second page,viz. the actual episodes of tracking down hill billies for enforced sterilization. That's right, in the US of A.
The cheerleading of the Eugenics movement for the Nazis continued right up through the beginning of World War II in certain scientific journals. After that eugenics became genetics, and the author explores at the end the implications of all this as we enter the age of the genome under the banner of genetic fundamentalism.
I would get this book under your belt asap, and it is also an indirect contribution to the legacy of historical Mendelism/Darwinism/Social Darwinism as these generated the milieu for this phase of Americana Goes Haywire. It can happen here. So watch it.