German science and black racism—roots of the Nazi Holocaust

Abstract

The Nazi's cornerstone precept of "racial hygiene" gave birth to their policy of "racial cleansing" that led to the murders of millions. It was developed by German physicians and scientists in the late 19th century and is rooted in the period's Social Darwinism that placed blacks at the bottom of the racial ladder. This program was first manifested in the near-extermination of the African Herero people during the German colonial period. After WWI, the fear among the German populace that occupying African troops and their Afro-German children would lead to "bastardization" of the German people formed a unifying racial principle that the Nazis exploited. They extended this mind-set to a variety of "unworthy" groups, leading to the physician-administered racial Nuremberg laws, the Sterilization laws, the secret sterilization of Afro-Germans, and the German euthanasia program. This culminated in the extermination camps.

PolishLebensraum: the colonial ambition to expand on racial terms

“…In order to preserve the Volk back in Germany, racial extermination of the native Herero and Namaqua peoples of German South-West Africa (Madley 2005) and the anthropological examination of heads and feet of Toveer-soldiers by German anthropologists in Berlin became imperative (Zimmerman 2001). Scientific examination of chests of Herero and Namaqua peoples at the Pathological Institute in Berlin, and Eugen Fischer's examination of the Basters, the mixed-race offspring of Dutch men and Namaqua women confirmed the German Darwinistic interest in racial segregation and hierarchy (Haas 2008). Although systematic separation was important to German Darwinists, racial hierarchy was crucial to Fischer, as he recommended that Africans, Half-Europeans and Half-Africans should be considered inferior to White-Europeans.…”

“…This process of bio-power is often explored through German Darwinism, which suggests that practices of race science could improve morality in a state (Weikart 2003, 274), and consequently a superior race would be separated from an inferior one. At the top of the racial hierarchy would be the Aryan race (Haas 2008). It was an ideology that soon became a reality in the South-West Africa and the colonial Togo, where the Germans considered the native Herero and Namaqua and Toveers to be inferior race.…”

That was the Worst Day of My Life: Recrafting Family through Memory, Race, and Rejection in Post-WWII Germany

“…Thus, citizenship, and the rights and protections that accompanied such a status, were not extended to the mothers of mixed race children or their offspring. Further, shortly after coming to power, the Nazi regime passed the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health which called for forced sterilization of any person who is medically designated as posing a threat to the 'health' of the social body (Haas 2008). While the Hereditary Health law did not use race explicitly, the sterilization policy and medical surveillance gaze was turned aggressively toward Black German bodies (Haas 2008).…”

“…Further, shortly after coming to power, the Nazi regime passed the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health which called for forced sterilization of any person who is medically designated as posing a threat to the 'health' of the social body (Haas 2008). While the Hereditary Health law did not use race explicitly, the sterilization policy and medical surveillance gaze was turned aggressively toward Black German bodies (Haas 2008). Hitler targeted Black Germans as part of a robust sterilization program that resulted in hundreds of Black German children being sterilized, and hundreds of other Black German youth were moved into concentration camps (Okuefuna 1997).…”

Eugenesia: Un análisis histórico y una posible propuesta

“…Los intereses de la sociedad se encontraban sobre los de los individuos y era la sociedad la que debía prevalecer. La funcionalidad o disfuncionalidad de los individuos afectaba la salud de ese organismo social, de ahí que la higiene racial se volviera tan importante para esta ideología (12). o factores genéticos desencadenantes de ellas.…”