Hitler & Eugenics
What led Adolf Hitler to hold such intense animosity towards specific groups of people? Was it linked to his upbringing? Did he encounter such hatred at a young age? While many theories try to explain Hitler’s antisemitism, the exact reasons remain unknown. But we know that two influential figures immensely helped shape his thinking.
The first was an Austro-Hungarian politician, Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who believed Jews could never be fully fledged German citizens. The second was the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, who taught Hitler the inner workings of antisemitism. In his novel Mein Kampf, Hitler praised Lueger as “the greatest mayor of the ages, ” when he took office in 1933, Hitler implemented an ideology similar to Lueger’s. By 1936, Hitler was enacting decrees upon petty offenders, alcoholics, and gay men.
Despite being made aware, through books and movies, of the despicable horrors and atrocities carried out by the Third Reich, there exists a disturbing link between Hitler and the United States, largely unknown or misunderstood. Surprisingly, Hitler found inspiration in a completely unexpected source—the Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Not only did Hitler immerse himself in studying the practices of racism in the American South, but he also developed a disturbing fascination with a more racially homogeneous America. In his pursuit of knowledge, Hitler went so far as to request homemade videos of the lynchings be shipped to him for further study. Drawing from these violent behaviors, he replicated and incorporated them into his actions in countries such as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht left an appalling path of destruction behind.
The Jim Crow laws in the American South enforced racial segregation and identification. Hitler adopted these tactics and used them as a means to segregate Jews in Germany as well as other European countries. Having examined these particular laws, The Third Reich proceeded to enact comparable measures in Yugoslavia by singling out the Jews, Serbs, and Romas, for whom they harbored a deep disdain.
“Surprisingly, Hitler found inspiration in a completely unexpected source—the Jim Crow laws of the American South.”
In an October 2020 presentation of USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research on the Study of the Role of Jews, it was mentioned that “Nazi Germany was influenced by American Racism.” Perplexed, while I was delving into my research, I uncovered several striking similarities between the Jim Crow Laws and the despicable actions taken by the Wehrmacht Army, carrying out countless reprisals against the Serbian people. One example was the hangings in the town squares of Belgrade and Pančevo.
These hangings represented a haunting yet systematic reminder for anyone who dared leave work past their curfew. Minutes made a difference. The Wehrmacht took pleasure in executing any Yugoslavian and publicly stringing them up on a light pole to serve as a painful reminder to other citizens of what not to do. Regrettably, these terrifying scenes had become an unforgettable yet all too familiar sight.
In James Q. Whitman’s book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton), Whitman extensively explores the influence of America’s racism on the Nazis, drawing examples from the late 19th and 20th centuries. During that period in America, lawmakers implemented biased immigration laws that favored immigrants from Northern Europe, essentially barring any admittance to Asians, Jews, Italians, or Eastern Europeans.
By the early 20th century, thirty of the forty-eight United States had implemented the Miscegenation
Law, effectively banning interracial marriage. Scholar Nyla Provost’s California State University San Bernadino Scholar Work Project emphasized the way the U.S. prohibited marriages between whites and nonwhites for over a century. In Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he praised the U.S. for its policy of excluding certain races from naturalization, considering it a step toward a racial concept of citizenship.
“Minutes made a difference. The Wehrmacht took pleasure in executing any Yugoslavian and publicly stringing them up on a light pole to serve as a painful reminder to other citizens of what not to do.”
Eugenics also captured Adolf Hitler’s attention. Founded in Great Britain in the late 19th century by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin’s, eugenics is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘the theory of enhancing humans through selective breeding.’ Some believed that selectively breeding individuals with favorable hereditary traits could eradicate diseases, disabilities, and undesirable characteristics from the population, ultimately alleviating human suffering. In the early stages of eugenics, proponents believed that by prioritizing breeding, they could remove the presence of genes linked to mental illness and possibly poverty from a population aiming for genetic purity. In their quest to eliminate this, eugenicists advocated for the compulsory sterilization of individuals they deemed unsuitable or mentally incapable, including those with disabilities.
Between 1909 and 1979, the alarming practice of forced sterilization plagued California’s mental institutions, with nearly 20,000 individuals falling victim to it. An interesting note was the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, forcing the sterilization of the handicapped, where Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes proclaimed, “It does not violate the U.S. Constitution, and that…three generations of imbeciles are enough.” This ruling was overturned in 1942, but not before thousands had experienced these procedures.
Although the forced sterilization practices in America were horrendous, they paled in comparison to Adolf Hitler’s antics conducted during World War II. Look no further than Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted the most violent experiments on prisoners in various concentration camps with unimaginable cruelty. The sight of blood-stained operating tables and the stench of decay lingered long after. Moreover, the Third Reich introduced measures of obligatory sterilizations, focusing explicitly on individuals categorized as “unfit” for having children. Their actions were eerily reminiscent of the eugenics programs in the U.S. and abroad.
Hitler also kept a keen eye on the women’s associations spreading across the American South, advocating for eugenics reform. Eugenicists saw the power of these organizations and exploited it by effectively promoting their agenda on a large scale. By 1920, these groups were crucial in creating public eugenic institutions aiming to improve genetic quality. In Florida, they implemented measures to establish separate institutions for the “mentally retarded” and enforced segregation of sexes. They aimed to prevent the procreation of “feeble-minded” individuals and to “purify the gene pool.”
Adolf Hitler had not solely conceived the idea of a superior Aryan race; it was present in certain ideologies in Great Britain and the United States years before.
For further exploration, may I suggest:
Mixing: A History of Anti-Miscegenation Laws in the United States by Nyla Provost. CSUSB Scholar Works.2023
National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH)
Nazi Medical Experiments. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v Bell by Paul Lombardo.