We know Hitler was evil, writes historian Richard
Weikart in From Darwin to Hitler, but how do we explain why
Hitler's diabolical genocide was widely accepted by the Germans,
including intellectuals, scientists, and other cultural leaders?
What allowed this evil to flourish and why was there so little
outcry against it?
To most Germans, Hitler never appeared to
be an evildoer, and thus subsequent attempts to portray him as a
fanatical madman betray a misunderstanding of the epoch in which he
ruled, Weikart argues. Instead, Hitler was very much a man of his
age. The moral justifications for the evil he unleashed were
developed long before he rose to power.
Weikart writes that
the moral antecedents of Nazi genocide rest in the Darwinism that
swept the German academies nearly a century before the Nazi period.
The road from Darwin to Hitler, however, is crooked with many twists
and turns. Many early Darwinists would have recoiled at Nazi
brutality, and there were many political, social, and economic
factors unrelated to Darwinian thinking that contributed to Hitler's
rise. Even so, Weikart notes:
"...while remaining ever
cognizant of the multiple potentialities of Darwinian, eugenic, and
racist discourse in the pre-Nazi period, we should not close our
eyes to the many similarities and parallels with later Nazi thinking
either."
These "similarities and parallels" were the ideas
about social progress that were derived from Darwin's theory of
evolution that would later be appropriated by the
Nazis.
Early Darwinists were intoxicated by the scientific
character of evolutionary theory and accepted it at face value.
Weikart chronicles in considerable detail how Darwinism grew from a
theory about biological evolution to become the dominant
interpretive paradigm of history, sociology, and anthropology in
German intellectual life.
Darwinists believed that natural
selection was the force that governed everything in creation -
including human society. Their naturalism could not be reconciled to
the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, since precepts like the Golden
Rule or care for the weak violated the way that the natural order
functioned. According to their philosophy, any defense or care of
the weak represented human regress since only the strong were
preordained to survive:
"Darwinists insisted that morality
was not fixed, but historically changing, and though many emphasized
the relativism of morality, one factor remained constant: the
evolutionary process itself. Thus many writers on evolutionary
ethics exalted evolutionary progress. This emerging moral relativism redefined the
value of life and death:
"Darwinism...offered a secular
answer to the problem of evil and death... The Darwinian idea of
death as the natural engine of evolutionary progress represented a
radical shift from the Christian conception of death as an
unnatural, evil foe to be conquered. This shift would bring in its
train a whole complex of ideas that would alter ways of thinking
about killing and 'the right to life'."
Weikart provides an
exhaustive account of how this secularized morality took root in
German thinking. It began by applying natural selection to the study
of heredity, spawning the pseudoscience of eugenics. The killing of
the defenseless, weak, and infirmed through abortion, infanticide,
and euthanasia was touted as a social good since it conformed to the
principles of nature:
"By the early twentieth century
Darwinian inegalitarianism was becoming manifest through the
increasing use of the German term 'minderweltig'; (properly
translated as 'inferior,' but literally meaning 'having
less value') to describe certain categories of people. Aside from
non-European races, two overlapping categories of people were
generally targeted as 'inferior' or 'unfit': the disabled
(especially the mentally ill) and those who were economically
unproductive."
Once the moral barriers fell against killing
the defenseless and weak, Darwinists expanded their thinking to
include non-European people. If natural selection governed human
history, then nations with the highest culture (primarily Germanic)
were ordained by nature to prevail over the weaker and less
developed ones. The Malthusian doctrine - that as populations grow,
resources become scarce - provided strong justification for this
emerging racism. The seeds of Hitler's Lebensraum were sown
here.
By the time Hitler rose to power, the Darwinian ethic
penetrated German culture so deeply that the received
Judeo-Christian moral tradition was effectively overthrown. Hitler
was not an "immoral opportunist" or an "amoral nihilist," Weikart
argues, but a principled utopian visionary for whom "war and
genocide were not only morally justifiable but morally
praiseworthy." He writes:
"One cannot comprehend Hitler's
immense popularity in Germany without understanding the ethical
dimension to his worldview and his political policies...Hitler
embraced an evolutionary ethic that made Darwinian fitness and
health...and the Darwinian struggle for existence...the only
criteria for moral standards."
Why were the Jews the target
of Nazi genocide? Weikart says the historical evidence is
inconclusive, although it appears that Hitler drew more from a
popularized street Darwinism than from the scholarly tracts of
intellectuals. Although anti-Semitism was always a feature of
Darwinian social dogma, Hitler made it the centerpiece of Nazi
social policy.
Weikart concludes by reiterating that
Darwinism alone does not explain the German descent into Nazi
darkness. Political and social factors come into play, as well as
the nihilism of Nietzsche and others. Nevertheless, the dependence
of the Nazi social vision upon Darwinian ethics is so great that
Hitler cannot be properly understood apart from it.
From
Darwin to Hitler is a valuable work of intellectual history. It is
well written, cogently argued, and thoroughly engaging.
Read it to understand how the Nazi darkness penetrated the heart of
Europe. But be forewarned: many of the arguments that devalued human
life in pre-war Germany are the same that we hear in America
today.
[2005/02/02] Review of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany
