Showing posts with label Nazi's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazi's. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Saturday, January 29, 2022
What is Eugenics?
Eugenics, the selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans. The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by British explorer and natural scientist Francis Galton, who, influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, advocated a system that would allow “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” Social Darwinism, the popular theory in the late 19th century that life for humans in society was ruled by “survival of the fittest,” helped advance eugenics into serious scientific study in the early 1900s. By World War I many scientific authorities and political leaders supported eugenics. However, it ultimately failed as a science in the 1930s and ’40s, when the assumptions of eugenicists became heavily criticized and the Nazis used eugenics to support the extermination of entire races.
Early history
Although eugenics as understood today dates from the late 19th century, efforts to select matings in order to secure offspring with desirable traits date from ancient times. Plato’s Republic (c. 378 BCE) depicts a society where efforts are undertaken to improve human beings through selective breeding. Later, Italian philosopher and poet Tommaso Campanella, in City of the Sun (1623), described a utopian community in which only the socially elite are allowed to procreate. Galton, in Hereditary Genius (1869), proposed that a system of arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce a gifted race. In 1865 the basic laws of heredity were discovered by the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel. His experiments with peas demonstrated that each physical trait was the result of a combination of two units (now known as genes) and could be passed from one generation to another. However, his work was largely ignored until its rediscovery in 1900. This fundamental knowledge of heredity provided eugenicists—including Galton, who influenced his cousin Charles Darwin—with scientific evidence to support the improvement of humans through selective breeding.
The advancement of eugenics was concurrent with an increasing appreciation of Darwin’s account for change or evolution within society—what contemporaries referred to as social Darwinism. Darwin had concluded his explanations of evolution by arguing that the greatest step humans could make in their own history would occur when they realized that they were not completely guided by instinct. Rather, humans, through selective reproduction, had the ability to control their own future evolution. A language pertaining to reproduction and eugenics developed, leading to terms such as positive eugenics, defined as promoting the proliferation of “good stock,” and negative eugenics, defined as prohibiting marriage and breeding between “defective stock.” For eugenicists, nature was far more contributory than nurture in shaping humanity.
During the early 1900s eugenics became a serious scientific study pursued by both biologists and social scientists. They sought to determine the extent to which human characteristics of social importance were inherited. Among their greatest concerns were the predictability of intelligence and certain deviant behaviours. Eugenics, however, was not confined to scientific laboratories and academic institutions. It began to pervade cultural thought around the globe, including the Scandinavian countries, most other European countries, North America, Latin America, Japan, China, and Russia. In the United States the eugenics movement began during the Progressive Era and remained active through 1940. It gained considerable support from leading scientific authorities such as zoologist Charles B. Davenport, plant geneticist Edward M. East, and geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate Hermann J. Muller. Political leaders in favour of eugenics included U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall Harlan. Internationally, there were many individuals whose work supported eugenic aims, including British scientists J.B.S. Haldane and Julian Huxley and Russian scientists Nikolay K. Koltsov and Yury A. Filipchenko.
Eugenics organizations and legislation
Galton had endowed a research fellowship in eugenics in 1904 and, in his will, provided funds for a chair of eugenics at University College, London. The fellowship and later the chair were occupied by Karl Pearson, a brilliant mathematician who helped to create the science of biometry, the statistical aspects of biology. Pearson was a controversial figure who believed that environment had little to do with the development of mental or emotional qualities. He felt that the high birth rate of the poor was a threat to civilization and that the “higher” races must supplant the “lower.” His views gave countenance to those who believed in racial and class superiority. Thus, Pearson shares the blame for the discredit later brought on eugenics.
In the United States, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was opened at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, in 1910 with financial support from the legacy of railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman. Whereas ERO efforts were officially overseen by Charles B. Davenport, director of the Station for Experimental Study of Evolution (one of the biology research stations at Cold Spring Harbor), ERO activities were directly superintended by Harry H. Laughlin, a professor from Kirksville, Missouri. The ERO was organized around a series of missions. These missions included serving as the national repository and clearinghouse for eugenics information, compiling an index of traits in American families, training fieldworkers to gather data throughout the United States, supporting investigations into the inheritance patterns of particular human traits and diseases, advising on the eugenic fitness of proposed marriages, and communicating all eugenic findings through a series of publications. To accomplish these goals, further funding was secured from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Battle Creek Race Betterment Foundation, and the Human Betterment Foundation.
Prior to the founding of the ERO, eugenics work in the United States was overseen by a standing committee of the American Breeder’s Association (eugenics section established in 1906), chaired by ichthyologist and Stanford University president David Starr Jordan. Research from around the globe was featured at three international congresses, held in 1912, 1921, and 1932. In addition, eugenics education was monitored in Britain by the English Eugenics Society (founded by Galton in 1907 as the Eugenics Education Society) and in the United States by the American Eugenics Society. Following World War I, the United States gained status as a world power. A concomitant fear arose that if the healthy stock of the American people became diluted with socially undesirable traits, the country’s political and economic strength would begin to crumble. The maintenance of world peace by fostering democracy, capitalism, and, at times, eugenics-based schemes was central to the activities of “the Internationalists,” a group of prominent American leaders in business, education, publishing, and government. One core member of this group, the New York lawyer Madison Grant, aroused considerable pro-eugenic interest through his best-selling book The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Beginning in 1920, a series of congressional hearings was held to identify problems that immigrants were causing the United States. As the country’s “eugenics expert,” Harry Laughlin provided tabulations showing that certain immigrants, particularly those from Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe, were significantly overrepresented in American prisons and institutions for the “feebleminded.” Further data were construed to suggest that these groups were contributing too many genetically and socially inferior people. Laughlin’s classification of these individuals included the feebleminded, the insane, the criminalistic, the epileptic, the inebriate, the diseased—including those with tuberculosis, leprosy, and syphilis—the blind, the deaf, the deformed, the dependent, chronic recipients of charity, paupers, and “ne’er-do-wells.” Racial overtones also pervaded much of the British and American eugenics literature. In 1923 Laughlin was sent by the U.S. secretary of labour as an immigration agent to Europe to investigate the chief emigrant-exporting nations. Laughlin sought to determine the feasibility of a plan whereby every prospective immigrant would be interviewed before embarking to the United States. He provided testimony before Congress that ultimately led to a new immigration law in 1924 that severely restricted the annual immigration of individuals from countries previously claimed to have contributed excessively to the dilution of American “good stock.”
Immigration control was but one method to control eugenically the reproductive stock of a country. Laughlin appeared at the centre of other U.S. efforts to provide eugenicists greater reproductive control over the nation. He approached state legislators with a model law to control the reproduction of institutionalized populations. By 1920, two years before the publication of Laughlin’s influential Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), 3,200 individuals across the country were reported to have been involuntarily sterilized. That number tripled by 1929, and by 1938 more than 30,000 people were claimed to have met this fate. More than half of the states adopted Laughlin’s law, with California, Virginia, and Michigan leading the sterilization campaign. Laughlin’s efforts secured staunch judicial support in 1927. In the precedent-setting case of Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., upheld the Virginia statute and claimed, “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.” Popular support for eugenics
During the 1930s eugenics gained considerable popular support across the United States. Hygiene courses in public schools and eugenics courses in colleges spread eugenic-minded values to many. A eugenics exhibit titled “Pedigree-Study in Man” was featured at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933–34. Consistent with the fair’s “Century of Progress” theme, stations were organized around efforts to show how favourable traits in the human population could best be perpetuated. Contrasts were drawn between the emulative presidential Roosevelt family and the degenerate “Ishmael” family (one of several pseudonymous family names used, the rationale for which was not given). By studying the passage of ancestral traits, fairgoers were urged to adopt the progressive view that responsible individuals should pursue marriage ever mindful of eugenics principles. Booths were set up at county and state fairs promoting “fitter families” contests, and medals were awarded to eugenically sound families. Drawing again upon long-standing eugenic practices in agriculture, popular eugenic advertisements claimed it was about time that humans received the same attention in the breeding of better babies that had been given to livestock and crops for centuries.
Anti-eugenics sentiment
Anti-eugenics sentiment began to appear after 1910 and intensified during the 1930s. Most commonly it was based on religious grounds. For example, the 1930 papal encyclical Casti connubii condemned reproductive sterilization, though it did not specifically prohibit positive eugenic attempts to amplify the inheritance of beneficial traits. Many Protestant writings sought to reconcile age-old Christian warnings about the heritable sins of the father to pro-eugenic ideals. Indeed, most of the religion-based popular writings of the period supported positive means of improving the physical and moral makeup of humanity.
In the early 1930s Nazi Germany adopted American measures to identify and selectively reduce the presence of those deemed to be “socially inferior” through involuntary sterilization. A rhetoric of positive eugenics in the building of a master race pervaded Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene) movements. When Germany extended its practices far beyond sterilization in efforts to eliminate the Jewish and other non-Aryan populations, the United States became increasingly concerned over its own support of eugenics. Many scientists, physicians, and political leaders began to denounce the work of the ERO publicly. After considerable reflection, the Carnegie Institution formally closed the ERO at the end of 1939.
During the aftermath of World War II, eugenics became stigmatized such that many individuals who had once hailed it as a science now spoke disparagingly of it as a failed pseudoscience. Eugenics was dropped from organization and publication names. In 1954 Britain’s Annals of Eugenics was renamed Annals of Human Genetics. In 1972 the American Eugenics Society adopted the less-offensive name Society for the Study of Social Biology. Its publication, once popularly known as the Eugenics Quarterly, had already been renamed Social Biology in 1969.
U.S. Senate hearings in 1973, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy, revealed that thousands of U.S. citizens had been sterilized under federally supported programs. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare proposed guidelines encouraging each state to repeal their respective sterilization laws. Other countries, most notably China, continue to support eugenics-directed programs openly in order to ensure the genetic makeup of their future.
The “new eugenics”
Despite the dropping of the term eugenics, eugenic ideas remained prevalent in many issues surrounding human reproduction. Medical genetics, a post-World War II medical specialty, encompasses a wide range of health concerns, from genetic screening and counseling to fetal gene manipulation and the treatment of adults suffering from hereditary disorders. Because certain diseases (e.g., hemophilia and Tay-Sachs disease) are now known to be genetically transmitted, many couples choose to undergo genetic screening, in which they learn the chances that their offspring have of being affected by some combination of their hereditary backgrounds. Couples at risk of passing on genetic defects may opt to remain childless or to adopt children. Furthermore, it is now possible to diagnose certain genetic defects in the unborn. Many couples choose to terminate a pregnancy that involves a genetically disabled offspring. These developments have reinforced the eugenic aim of identifying and eliminating undesirable genetic material.
Counterbalancing this trend, however, has been medical progress that enables victims of many genetic diseases to live fairly normal lives. Direct manipulation of harmful genes is also being studied. If perfected, it could obviate eugenic arguments for restricting reproduction among those who carry harmful genes. Such conflicting innovations have complicated the controversy surrounding what many call the “new eugenics.” Moreover, suggestions for expanding eugenics programs, which range from the creation of sperm banks for the genetically superior to the potential cloning of human beings, have met with vigorous resistance from the public, which often views such programs as unwarranted interference with nature or as opportunities for abuse by authoritarian regimes.
Applications of the Human Genome Project are often referred to as “Brave New World” genetics or the “new eugenics,” in part because they have helped to dramatically increase knowledge of human genetics. In addition, 21st-century technologies such as gene editing, which can potentially be used to treat disease or to alter traits, have further renewed concerns. However, the ethical, legal, and social implications of such tools are monitored much more closely than were early 20th-century eugenics programs. Applications generally are more focused on the reduction of genetic diseases than on improving intelligence.
Still, with or without the use of the term, many eugenics-related concerns are reemerging as a new group of individuals decide how to regulate the application of genetics science and technology. This gene-directed activity, in attempting to improve upon nature, may not be that distant from what Galton implied in 1909 when he described eugenics as the “study of agencies, under social control, which may improve or impair” future generations.
By; Philip K. Wilson
Source; Britannica.com
Early history
Although eugenics as understood today dates from the late 19th century, efforts to select matings in order to secure offspring with desirable traits date from ancient times. Plato’s Republic (c. 378 BCE) depicts a society where efforts are undertaken to improve human beings through selective breeding. Later, Italian philosopher and poet Tommaso Campanella, in City of the Sun (1623), described a utopian community in which only the socially elite are allowed to procreate. Galton, in Hereditary Genius (1869), proposed that a system of arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce a gifted race. In 1865 the basic laws of heredity were discovered by the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel. His experiments with peas demonstrated that each physical trait was the result of a combination of two units (now known as genes) and could be passed from one generation to another. However, his work was largely ignored until its rediscovery in 1900. This fundamental knowledge of heredity provided eugenicists—including Galton, who influenced his cousin Charles Darwin—with scientific evidence to support the improvement of humans through selective breeding.
The advancement of eugenics was concurrent with an increasing appreciation of Darwin’s account for change or evolution within society—what contemporaries referred to as social Darwinism. Darwin had concluded his explanations of evolution by arguing that the greatest step humans could make in their own history would occur when they realized that they were not completely guided by instinct. Rather, humans, through selective reproduction, had the ability to control their own future evolution. A language pertaining to reproduction and eugenics developed, leading to terms such as positive eugenics, defined as promoting the proliferation of “good stock,” and negative eugenics, defined as prohibiting marriage and breeding between “defective stock.” For eugenicists, nature was far more contributory than nurture in shaping humanity.
During the early 1900s eugenics became a serious scientific study pursued by both biologists and social scientists. They sought to determine the extent to which human characteristics of social importance were inherited. Among their greatest concerns were the predictability of intelligence and certain deviant behaviours. Eugenics, however, was not confined to scientific laboratories and academic institutions. It began to pervade cultural thought around the globe, including the Scandinavian countries, most other European countries, North America, Latin America, Japan, China, and Russia. In the United States the eugenics movement began during the Progressive Era and remained active through 1940. It gained considerable support from leading scientific authorities such as zoologist Charles B. Davenport, plant geneticist Edward M. East, and geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate Hermann J. Muller. Political leaders in favour of eugenics included U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall Harlan. Internationally, there were many individuals whose work supported eugenic aims, including British scientists J.B.S. Haldane and Julian Huxley and Russian scientists Nikolay K. Koltsov and Yury A. Filipchenko.
Eugenics organizations and legislation
Galton had endowed a research fellowship in eugenics in 1904 and, in his will, provided funds for a chair of eugenics at University College, London. The fellowship and later the chair were occupied by Karl Pearson, a brilliant mathematician who helped to create the science of biometry, the statistical aspects of biology. Pearson was a controversial figure who believed that environment had little to do with the development of mental or emotional qualities. He felt that the high birth rate of the poor was a threat to civilization and that the “higher” races must supplant the “lower.” His views gave countenance to those who believed in racial and class superiority. Thus, Pearson shares the blame for the discredit later brought on eugenics.
In the United States, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was opened at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, in 1910 with financial support from the legacy of railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman. Whereas ERO efforts were officially overseen by Charles B. Davenport, director of the Station for Experimental Study of Evolution (one of the biology research stations at Cold Spring Harbor), ERO activities were directly superintended by Harry H. Laughlin, a professor from Kirksville, Missouri. The ERO was organized around a series of missions. These missions included serving as the national repository and clearinghouse for eugenics information, compiling an index of traits in American families, training fieldworkers to gather data throughout the United States, supporting investigations into the inheritance patterns of particular human traits and diseases, advising on the eugenic fitness of proposed marriages, and communicating all eugenic findings through a series of publications. To accomplish these goals, further funding was secured from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Battle Creek Race Betterment Foundation, and the Human Betterment Foundation.
Prior to the founding of the ERO, eugenics work in the United States was overseen by a standing committee of the American Breeder’s Association (eugenics section established in 1906), chaired by ichthyologist and Stanford University president David Starr Jordan. Research from around the globe was featured at three international congresses, held in 1912, 1921, and 1932. In addition, eugenics education was monitored in Britain by the English Eugenics Society (founded by Galton in 1907 as the Eugenics Education Society) and in the United States by the American Eugenics Society. Following World War I, the United States gained status as a world power. A concomitant fear arose that if the healthy stock of the American people became diluted with socially undesirable traits, the country’s political and economic strength would begin to crumble. The maintenance of world peace by fostering democracy, capitalism, and, at times, eugenics-based schemes was central to the activities of “the Internationalists,” a group of prominent American leaders in business, education, publishing, and government. One core member of this group, the New York lawyer Madison Grant, aroused considerable pro-eugenic interest through his best-selling book The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Beginning in 1920, a series of congressional hearings was held to identify problems that immigrants were causing the United States. As the country’s “eugenics expert,” Harry Laughlin provided tabulations showing that certain immigrants, particularly those from Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe, were significantly overrepresented in American prisons and institutions for the “feebleminded.” Further data were construed to suggest that these groups were contributing too many genetically and socially inferior people. Laughlin’s classification of these individuals included the feebleminded, the insane, the criminalistic, the epileptic, the inebriate, the diseased—including those with tuberculosis, leprosy, and syphilis—the blind, the deaf, the deformed, the dependent, chronic recipients of charity, paupers, and “ne’er-do-wells.” Racial overtones also pervaded much of the British and American eugenics literature. In 1923 Laughlin was sent by the U.S. secretary of labour as an immigration agent to Europe to investigate the chief emigrant-exporting nations. Laughlin sought to determine the feasibility of a plan whereby every prospective immigrant would be interviewed before embarking to the United States. He provided testimony before Congress that ultimately led to a new immigration law in 1924 that severely restricted the annual immigration of individuals from countries previously claimed to have contributed excessively to the dilution of American “good stock.”
Immigration control was but one method to control eugenically the reproductive stock of a country. Laughlin appeared at the centre of other U.S. efforts to provide eugenicists greater reproductive control over the nation. He approached state legislators with a model law to control the reproduction of institutionalized populations. By 1920, two years before the publication of Laughlin’s influential Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), 3,200 individuals across the country were reported to have been involuntarily sterilized. That number tripled by 1929, and by 1938 more than 30,000 people were claimed to have met this fate. More than half of the states adopted Laughlin’s law, with California, Virginia, and Michigan leading the sterilization campaign. Laughlin’s efforts secured staunch judicial support in 1927. In the precedent-setting case of Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., upheld the Virginia statute and claimed, “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.” Popular support for eugenics
During the 1930s eugenics gained considerable popular support across the United States. Hygiene courses in public schools and eugenics courses in colleges spread eugenic-minded values to many. A eugenics exhibit titled “Pedigree-Study in Man” was featured at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933–34. Consistent with the fair’s “Century of Progress” theme, stations were organized around efforts to show how favourable traits in the human population could best be perpetuated. Contrasts were drawn between the emulative presidential Roosevelt family and the degenerate “Ishmael” family (one of several pseudonymous family names used, the rationale for which was not given). By studying the passage of ancestral traits, fairgoers were urged to adopt the progressive view that responsible individuals should pursue marriage ever mindful of eugenics principles. Booths were set up at county and state fairs promoting “fitter families” contests, and medals were awarded to eugenically sound families. Drawing again upon long-standing eugenic practices in agriculture, popular eugenic advertisements claimed it was about time that humans received the same attention in the breeding of better babies that had been given to livestock and crops for centuries.
Anti-eugenics sentiment
Anti-eugenics sentiment began to appear after 1910 and intensified during the 1930s. Most commonly it was based on religious grounds. For example, the 1930 papal encyclical Casti connubii condemned reproductive sterilization, though it did not specifically prohibit positive eugenic attempts to amplify the inheritance of beneficial traits. Many Protestant writings sought to reconcile age-old Christian warnings about the heritable sins of the father to pro-eugenic ideals. Indeed, most of the religion-based popular writings of the period supported positive means of improving the physical and moral makeup of humanity.
In the early 1930s Nazi Germany adopted American measures to identify and selectively reduce the presence of those deemed to be “socially inferior” through involuntary sterilization. A rhetoric of positive eugenics in the building of a master race pervaded Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene) movements. When Germany extended its practices far beyond sterilization in efforts to eliminate the Jewish and other non-Aryan populations, the United States became increasingly concerned over its own support of eugenics. Many scientists, physicians, and political leaders began to denounce the work of the ERO publicly. After considerable reflection, the Carnegie Institution formally closed the ERO at the end of 1939.
During the aftermath of World War II, eugenics became stigmatized such that many individuals who had once hailed it as a science now spoke disparagingly of it as a failed pseudoscience. Eugenics was dropped from organization and publication names. In 1954 Britain’s Annals of Eugenics was renamed Annals of Human Genetics. In 1972 the American Eugenics Society adopted the less-offensive name Society for the Study of Social Biology. Its publication, once popularly known as the Eugenics Quarterly, had already been renamed Social Biology in 1969.
U.S. Senate hearings in 1973, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy, revealed that thousands of U.S. citizens had been sterilized under federally supported programs. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare proposed guidelines encouraging each state to repeal their respective sterilization laws. Other countries, most notably China, continue to support eugenics-directed programs openly in order to ensure the genetic makeup of their future.
The “new eugenics”
Despite the dropping of the term eugenics, eugenic ideas remained prevalent in many issues surrounding human reproduction. Medical genetics, a post-World War II medical specialty, encompasses a wide range of health concerns, from genetic screening and counseling to fetal gene manipulation and the treatment of adults suffering from hereditary disorders. Because certain diseases (e.g., hemophilia and Tay-Sachs disease) are now known to be genetically transmitted, many couples choose to undergo genetic screening, in which they learn the chances that their offspring have of being affected by some combination of their hereditary backgrounds. Couples at risk of passing on genetic defects may opt to remain childless or to adopt children. Furthermore, it is now possible to diagnose certain genetic defects in the unborn. Many couples choose to terminate a pregnancy that involves a genetically disabled offspring. These developments have reinforced the eugenic aim of identifying and eliminating undesirable genetic material.
Counterbalancing this trend, however, has been medical progress that enables victims of many genetic diseases to live fairly normal lives. Direct manipulation of harmful genes is also being studied. If perfected, it could obviate eugenic arguments for restricting reproduction among those who carry harmful genes. Such conflicting innovations have complicated the controversy surrounding what many call the “new eugenics.” Moreover, suggestions for expanding eugenics programs, which range from the creation of sperm banks for the genetically superior to the potential cloning of human beings, have met with vigorous resistance from the public, which often views such programs as unwarranted interference with nature or as opportunities for abuse by authoritarian regimes.
Applications of the Human Genome Project are often referred to as “Brave New World” genetics or the “new eugenics,” in part because they have helped to dramatically increase knowledge of human genetics. In addition, 21st-century technologies such as gene editing, which can potentially be used to treat disease or to alter traits, have further renewed concerns. However, the ethical, legal, and social implications of such tools are monitored much more closely than were early 20th-century eugenics programs. Applications generally are more focused on the reduction of genetic diseases than on improving intelligence.
Still, with or without the use of the term, many eugenics-related concerns are reemerging as a new group of individuals decide how to regulate the application of genetics science and technology. This gene-directed activity, in attempting to improve upon nature, may not be that distant from what Galton implied in 1909 when he described eugenics as the “study of agencies, under social control, which may improve or impair” future generations.
By; Philip K. Wilson
Source; Britannica.com
NSDAP - Bernhard, Het verhaal van een Duitser
Watch this video, footage of 1938. Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard took a boat trip with their NSDAP (Nazi) friends on Juliana's ship 'Piet Hein'.
At the end of the video (checkpoint; 0:17 sec.) you will see the royal standard of princess Juliana on top of the mast and right beneath that you can see the Nazi Swastika (flag).
Full documentary can be viewed (soon); HERE
At the end of the video (checkpoint; 0:17 sec.) you will see the royal standard of princess Juliana on top of the mast and right beneath that you can see the Nazi Swastika (flag).
Full documentary can be viewed (soon); HERE
'Bernhard was feitelijk wèl een gewezen nazi'
"Misschien vóélde Bernhard zich later oprecht geen gewezen nazi, feitelijk was hij het natuurlijk wel." Schrijft Annejet van der Zijl in haar vandaag verschenen boek 'Bernhard. Een verborgen geschiedenis'.
Vijf jaar onderzocht ze de jonge jaren van Bernhard. Sprak tijdgenoten, raadpleegde nieuwe bronnen. Zoals het niet-openbare archief van de Humboldt Universität, de voormalige Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität in Berlijn, waar Bernhard studeerde.
NSDAP Daar vond ze zijn lidmaatschapskaart van de Studentenschaft. Met de aantekening dat hij lid is van de NSDAP, de SA en ondermeer de corpsvereniging Borussia die eveneens onder nazi-invloed stond.
Bernhard heeft zijn NSDAP-lidmaatschap en steun aan Hitler altijd ontkend. Eerder ontdekte onderzoeker Gerard Aalders in Amerikaanse archieven al documenten waaruit het NSDAP-lidmaatschap bleek.
Onzin
Vijf jaar onderzocht ze de jonge jaren van Bernhard. Sprak tijdgenoten, raadpleegde nieuwe bronnen. Zoals het niet-openbare archief van de Humboldt Universität, de voormalige Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität in Berlijn, waar Bernhard studeerde.
NSDAP Daar vond ze zijn lidmaatschapskaart van de Studentenschaft. Met de aantekening dat hij lid is van de NSDAP, de SA en ondermeer de corpsvereniging Borussia die eveneens onder nazi-invloed stond.
Bernhard heeft zijn NSDAP-lidmaatschap en steun aan Hitler altijd ontkend. Eerder ontdekte onderzoeker Gerard Aalders in Amerikaanse archieven al documenten waaruit het NSDAP-lidmaatschap bleek.
Onzin
Zijn lidmaatschap, vermoedelijk sinds oktober 1932, van de Motor SA heeft Bernhard overigens nooit ontkend. Hij zei dat lidmaatschap van een nationaal-socialistische organisatie nodig was voor studie en examen. Onzin, vindt Van der Zijl. Pas jaren later was het onderwijs zo genazificeerd dat van bovenaf politieke eisen werden gesteld.
Vlegel
Vlegel
Nogal een vlegel, een Schnösel, was hij. Zegt Erica von Hodenberg een Duitse aristocrate die hem midden jaren dertig meemaakte in Parijs. Waar hij bij IG Farben werkte.
Trouwens niet in die droombaan die zijn biografen er later van maakten. Het simpele kantoorwerk deed hij. En de grote chique jongen uithangen, volgens Von Hodenberg, die hem niet zo mocht. "Zo iemand die over alles meepraatte maar over niets echt iets te zeggen had."
Moeder
Trouwens niet in die droombaan die zijn biografen er later van maakten. Het simpele kantoorwerk deed hij. En de grote chique jongen uithangen, volgens Von Hodenberg, die hem niet zo mocht. "Zo iemand die over alles meepraatte maar over niets echt iets te zeggen had."
Moeder
Het beeld dat de laatste jaren wordt geschetst van Bernhard wijzigt ze niet sterk. Ze scherpt het wel aan, met een aangename soepele schrijfstijl waarmee ze met boeken als Sonny Boy een bestseller-auteur werd.
De pasja van Woynowo, wordt hij genoemd in het boek, naar het vervallen landgoed waar zijn ouders Berni en Armgard vooral oog hadden voor elkaar.
Moederskind
De pasja van Woynowo, wordt hij genoemd in het boek, naar het vervallen landgoed waar zijn ouders Berni en Armgard vooral oog hadden voor elkaar.
Moederskind
De op 29 juni 1911 geboren Bernhard (dus niet op 28 juni zoals recent werd beweerd) was een moederskind die zijn drie jaar jongere broer Aschwin in zijn schaduw liet. Gedrild door zijn moeder. "Bang zijn was simpelweg geen optie, net zo min als verliezen overigens."
Tot aan haar dood droeg Bernhard zijn moeder op handen, belde haar dagelijks. Uiteindelijk was er in zijn leven maar één vrouw: zijn moeder.
Schimmige kolonel
Ook later, toen haar zoon, prins van Oranje, voor Armgard het kasteeltje Warmelo kocht. Voor Van der Zijl staat vast dat de twee wel degelijk een paar waren. In de conventionele zin van het woord. Bernhard heeft altijd gezegd dat de relatie zuiver platonisch was.
Creatieve verteller
De gereformeerde prof Waterink, pedagoog aan de VU, die Bernhard op handen droeg, tot hij na de Greet Hofmans-affaire, teleurgesteld in de prins Soestdijk verliet, was zo'n image-builder. Hij zet de prins neer als overtuigd anti-nazi. Van der Zijl, die Waterink opvallend vaak aanhaalt, citeert: "Een jonge man, die zich in de stilte van de avond bij de ontmoeting met God bedient van het Engels als taal, moet wel verre zijn van de nationaal-socialistische verdwazingen zoals die in het Duitsland van de jaren rondom 1935 al meer naar voren traden."
Mannen-man Bernhard wist feilloos de publiciteit te gebruiken en naar zijn hand te zetten. En werd daar soms financieel beter van. Zijn foto's van de pasgeboren Beatrix verkocht hij aan bevriend journalist Sefton Delmer. Volgens Delmer voor vierduizend pond, oftewel vijftigduizend gulden.
Een mannen-man.
Geld voornaamste drijfveer
De Duitse prins die zich presenteerde op een skiweide.
Wilhelmina, ook dat is eerder beschreven, was aanvankelijk dol op de jonge Duitse prins. Tijdens de Londense jaren, in de oorlog, kwam de verwijdering. En Juliana werd geconfronteerd met zijn ontrouw. Waar Fasseur de driftbuien van Juliana toeschrijft aan haar karakter, gelooft Van der Zijl dat het de jaloerse vrouw is die niets anders bleef dan machteloos stampvoeten.
Oranjefascisten Na de oorlog heeft Bernhard in feite twee huizen. Warmelo, het kasteel dat hij voor zijn moeder koopt. Soestdijk, met zijn vertrouwelingen. Verzetsmensen die jaren na de bevrijding de kater restte.
Stafmedewerkers, zoals Charles van Houten en Gerry van Maasdijk die schrijver A. den Doolaard noemde: "het groepje Oranje fascistische officieren rond Bernhard."
Hebzucht
Tot aan haar dood droeg Bernhard zijn moeder op handen, belde haar dagelijks. Uiteindelijk was er in zijn leven maar één vrouw: zijn moeder.
Schimmige kolonel
Van der Zijl beschrijft Bernhards jonge jaren in de bedding van de tijd. Het Wilhelmisch Keizerrijk, de Eerste Wereldoorlog en de revolutie van 1918. Vader in het leger, moeder vooral bezig met paarden, daarin bijgestaan door de schimmige kolonel Alexei Pantchoulidzew. Hij bleef haar trouw.
Ook later, toen haar zoon, prins van Oranje, voor Armgard het kasteeltje Warmelo kocht. Voor Van der Zijl staat vast dat de twee wel degelijk een paar waren. In de conventionele zin van het woord. Bernhard heeft altijd gezegd dat de relatie zuiver platonisch was.
Creatieve verteller
Door het hele boek heen trekt Van der Zijl het waarheidsgehalte van Bernhards herinneringen en beweringen in twijfel. Een creatieve verteller noemt ze hem. Die zijn eigen mythe creëerde. De publieke opinie uitstekend wist te mobiliseren. Met biografen die van hem de man maakten zoals het volk zich wenste.
De gereformeerde prof Waterink, pedagoog aan de VU, die Bernhard op handen droeg, tot hij na de Greet Hofmans-affaire, teleurgesteld in de prins Soestdijk verliet, was zo'n image-builder. Hij zet de prins neer als overtuigd anti-nazi. Van der Zijl, die Waterink opvallend vaak aanhaalt, citeert: "Een jonge man, die zich in de stilte van de avond bij de ontmoeting met God bedient van het Engels als taal, moet wel verre zijn van de nationaal-socialistische verdwazingen zoals die in het Duitsland van de jaren rondom 1935 al meer naar voren traden."
Mannen-man Bernhard wist feilloos de publiciteit te gebruiken en naar zijn hand te zetten. En werd daar soms financieel beter van. Zijn foto's van de pasgeboren Beatrix verkocht hij aan bevriend journalist Sefton Delmer. Volgens Delmer voor vierduizend pond, oftewel vijftigduizend gulden.
Een mannen-man.
Product van een opvoeding op kostscholen. Mannenvriendschappen die hoog werden gehouden. Waarbij hij geen rekening hield dat de vriend in kwestie ook getrouwd was, kinderen had. Het kostte, suggereert Van der Zijl, boezemvriend Teengs Gerritsen diens eerste huwelijk.
Geld voornaamste drijfveer
De grote tragiek uit Bernhards leven, vindt de schrijfster, is de keuze die hij op zijn vijfentwintigste maakt. Van harte gesteund door zijn moeder, met een tante als koppelaarster weet hij een verpletterende indruk te maken op Juliana. Voor wie wanhopig een man werd gezocht.
Fasseur heeft in zijn biografie van het Oranje-huwelijk het ontstaan beschreven.
Fasseur heeft in zijn biografie van het Oranje-huwelijk het ontstaan beschreven.
De Duitse prins die zich presenteerde op een skiweide.
Van der Zijl schrijft: "Het feit dat geld de voornaamste drijfveer achter zijn huwelijk was geweest, zou later tot een van de meest schaamtevolle en categorisch ontkende aspecten van zijn leven worden."
Ontrouw
Dat er van zijn kant geen sprake was van brandende liefde bleek vlak na de ontmoeting. Hij ging bij twee vriendinnen langs, deed beiden een huwelijksaanzoek en toen hem de deur werd gewezen maakte hij verder werk van Juliana.
Wilhelmina, ook dat is eerder beschreven, was aanvankelijk dol op de jonge Duitse prins. Tijdens de Londense jaren, in de oorlog, kwam de verwijdering. En Juliana werd geconfronteerd met zijn ontrouw. Waar Fasseur de driftbuien van Juliana toeschrijft aan haar karakter, gelooft Van der Zijl dat het de jaloerse vrouw is die niets anders bleef dan machteloos stampvoeten.
Oranjefascisten Na de oorlog heeft Bernhard in feite twee huizen. Warmelo, het kasteel dat hij voor zijn moeder koopt. Soestdijk, met zijn vertrouwelingen. Verzetsmensen die jaren na de bevrijding de kater restte.
Stafmedewerkers, zoals Charles van Houten en Gerry van Maasdijk die schrijver A. den Doolaard noemde: "het groepje Oranje fascistische officieren rond Bernhard."
Hebzucht
In de financiële afwikkeling van de oorlog gedraagt Bernhard zich als "een moderne Faust door hebzucht verblind geraakt". Hij maakt gebruik van voor oorlogsslachtoffers bedoelde regelingen. Ontving in 1960 in het kader van de Wiedergutmachung één miljoen mark. En later nog eens een Poolse uitkering van 134.000 euro. Voor de schade toegebracht aan zijn geboortehuis. Waar hij ooit de pasja was geweest. Middelpunt van het bestaan. Over wie zijn vader enkele dagen na zijn geboorte schreef: "Een kleine hemelbode, die ons uit het paradijs gestuurd is en ons leven zeker met zijn glans zal vervullen."
Bron; NOS.nl
Bron; NOS.nl
Royals told: open archives on family ties to Nazi regime
Historian urges that secret correspondence be made public to reveal the truth after Queen’s Nazi salute footage released
Buckingham Palace has been urged to disclose documents that would finally reveal the truth about the relationship between the royal family and the Nazi regime of the 1930s.
Unlike the National Archives, the royal archives, which are known to contain large volumes of correspondence between members of the royal family and Nazi politicians and aristocrats, are not compelled to release material on a regular basis. Now, as that relationship becomes the subject of global debate, historians and MPs have called for the archives to be opened up so that the correspondence can be put into context.
“The royal family can’t suppress their own history for ever,” said Karina Urbach of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. “This is censorship. Censorship is not a democratic value. They have to face their past. I’m coming from a country, Germany, where we all have to face our past.”
The Sun was subjected to a backlash on social media, after publishing 80-year-old home movie footage from the grounds of Balmoral Castle, in which a laughing Elizabeth, her mother, Prince Edward (later Edward VIII) and Princess Margaret, were shown making Nazi salutes. Barbara Keeley, Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South, retweeted a message that read: “Hey @TheSun, if you want to stir up some moral outrage about a misjudgement in history, look a bit closer to home.”
Many expressed incredulity that the paper had published the actions of a child. But the managing editor, Stig Abell, defended publication. “It is an important and interesting issue, the extent to which the British aristocracy – notably Edward VIII, in this case – in the 1930s, were sympathetic towards fascism,” he said. The paper declined to comment on how it acquired the footage. Legal experts suggested a police investigation was unlikely, especially given the collapse of recent cases in which Sun reporters walked free after being accused of paying public officials for information.
“On the face of it, this information has been obtained legitimately and used in accordance with what the newspaper feels is appropriate interest,” said John Cooper, QC.
“It’s really a question not so much on the law but whether it’s in the public interest for this material to find its way into a newspaper. The public interest in this document being produced is nothing to do with the royal family but how startling it is that in 1933 people were so naive about the evils of Nazism.”
Urbach, author of Go-Betweens for Hitler, a new book about the relationship between the royals and the Nazis, has spent years trying to gain access to documents relating to Nazi Germany held in the royal archives. She described the archives, in Windsor Castle’s Round Tower, as “a beautiful place to work but not if you want to work on 20th-century material … you don’t get any access to anything political after 1918”.
She described seeing shelves of boxes containing material relating to the 1930s that no one is allowed to research. She suggested that much of the archives’ interwar material no longer existed.
“We know that after ’45 there was a big cleanup operation,” Urbach said. “The royals were very worried about correspondence resurfacing and so it was destroyed.”
Helen McCarthy, a historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary University of London, echoed Urbach’s comments, tweeting that “if Royal Archives were more accessible & welcoming to researchers, ‘shock’ discoveries like Sun’s front page could be put in better context”.
Historian Alex von Tunzelmann suggested on Twitter that the lack of access to the royal archives for historians and the public “is profoundly undemocratic. We need much greater access. We need to be grown up about it. The history of this country belongs to the public”.
Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, a member of parliament’s influential political and constitutional reform committee and a prominent supporter of the recent release of Prince Charles’s confidential memos to politicians, said the royal family needed to allow full access to its archives, including those relating to Germany in the 1930s.
“It was a very interesting part of our history, when we had a future king who was flirting with the Nazis and the Blackshirts, and we need to know the truth of it,” Flynn said. “We need more openness. The royals have great influence still. Charles is still the most important lobbyist in the land.”
Sir Oswald Mosley inspecting members of his British Union of Fascists in London, in October 1936
The Sun’s decision to publish the 17 seconds of footage, thought to have been shot in 1933 or 1934, has served as an unwelcome reminder for the royal family of its past links to the Nazis. The Queen, then aged six or seven, joins her mother, then Duchess of York, and her uncle Edward, the Prince of Wales, in raising an arm in salute as she plays alongside her younger sister, Princess Margaret. Her mother then raises her arm in the style of a Nazi salute and, after glancing towards her mother, the Queen copies the gesture. Prince Edward is also seen raising his arm.
Edward, who abdicated to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson, faced numerous accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser. The couple were photographed meeting Hitler in Munich in October 1937.
A palace spokesman said: “It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty’s personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner.”
Source; TheGuardian.com
Buckingham Palace has been urged to disclose documents that would finally reveal the truth about the relationship between the royal family and the Nazi regime of the 1930s.
The Sun’s decision to publish footage of the Queen at six or seven years old performing a Nazi salute, held in the royal archives and hitherto unavailable for public viewing, has triggered concerns that the palace has for years sought to suppress the release of damaging material confirming the links between leading royals and the Third Reich.
Unlike the National Archives, the royal archives, which are known to contain large volumes of correspondence between members of the royal family and Nazi politicians and aristocrats, are not compelled to release material on a regular basis. Now, as that relationship becomes the subject of global debate, historians and MPs have called for the archives to be opened up so that the correspondence can be put into context.
“The royal family can’t suppress their own history for ever,” said Karina Urbach of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. “This is censorship. Censorship is not a democratic value. They have to face their past. I’m coming from a country, Germany, where we all have to face our past.”
The Sun was subjected to a backlash on social media, after publishing 80-year-old home movie footage from the grounds of Balmoral Castle, in which a laughing Elizabeth, her mother, Prince Edward (later Edward VIII) and Princess Margaret, were shown making Nazi salutes. Barbara Keeley, Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South, retweeted a message that read: “Hey @TheSun, if you want to stir up some moral outrage about a misjudgement in history, look a bit closer to home.”
Many expressed incredulity that the paper had published the actions of a child. But the managing editor, Stig Abell, defended publication. “It is an important and interesting issue, the extent to which the British aristocracy – notably Edward VIII, in this case – in the 1930s, were sympathetic towards fascism,” he said. The paper declined to comment on how it acquired the footage. Legal experts suggested a police investigation was unlikely, especially given the collapse of recent cases in which Sun reporters walked free after being accused of paying public officials for information.
“On the face of it, this information has been obtained legitimately and used in accordance with what the newspaper feels is appropriate interest,” said John Cooper, QC.
“It’s really a question not so much on the law but whether it’s in the public interest for this material to find its way into a newspaper. The public interest in this document being produced is nothing to do with the royal family but how startling it is that in 1933 people were so naive about the evils of Nazism.”
Urbach, author of Go-Betweens for Hitler, a new book about the relationship between the royals and the Nazis, has spent years trying to gain access to documents relating to Nazi Germany held in the royal archives. She described the archives, in Windsor Castle’s Round Tower, as “a beautiful place to work but not if you want to work on 20th-century material … you don’t get any access to anything political after 1918”.
She described seeing shelves of boxes containing material relating to the 1930s that no one is allowed to research. She suggested that much of the archives’ interwar material no longer existed.
“We know that after ’45 there was a big cleanup operation,” Urbach said. “The royals were very worried about correspondence resurfacing and so it was destroyed.”
Helen McCarthy, a historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary University of London, echoed Urbach’s comments, tweeting that “if Royal Archives were more accessible & welcoming to researchers, ‘shock’ discoveries like Sun’s front page could be put in better context”.
Historian Alex von Tunzelmann suggested on Twitter that the lack of access to the royal archives for historians and the public “is profoundly undemocratic. We need much greater access. We need to be grown up about it. The history of this country belongs to the public”.
Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, a member of parliament’s influential political and constitutional reform committee and a prominent supporter of the recent release of Prince Charles’s confidential memos to politicians, said the royal family needed to allow full access to its archives, including those relating to Germany in the 1930s.
“It was a very interesting part of our history, when we had a future king who was flirting with the Nazis and the Blackshirts, and we need to know the truth of it,” Flynn said. “We need more openness. The royals have great influence still. Charles is still the most important lobbyist in the land.”
Sir Oswald Mosley inspecting members of his British Union of Fascists in London, in October 1936
The Sun’s decision to publish the 17 seconds of footage, thought to have been shot in 1933 or 1934, has served as an unwelcome reminder for the royal family of its past links to the Nazis. The Queen, then aged six or seven, joins her mother, then Duchess of York, and her uncle Edward, the Prince of Wales, in raising an arm in salute as she plays alongside her younger sister, Princess Margaret. Her mother then raises her arm in the style of a Nazi salute and, after glancing towards her mother, the Queen copies the gesture. Prince Edward is also seen raising his arm.
Edward, who abdicated to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson, faced numerous accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser. The couple were photographed meeting Hitler in Munich in October 1937.
A palace spokesman said: “It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty’s personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner.”
Source; TheGuardian.com
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