Germany: The Role Of Eugenics In The United States

Germany in the twentieth century had great intellectual power and contained some of the greatest physicians, medical scientist and lawyers in the world at the time. The scientist would lead the world in many new studies, such as work on cancer and eugenics, a widely popular topic around the world at the time. While some areas flourished under the Nazi regime others were corrupted by the hate and ideology of the Nazi party. Most of the medical scientist and physicians did not support the Nazi party, but did support Germany, as Germany historically is a very nationalist nation. The Nazi’s led by Adolf Hitler would use their position in the government, to use the work of the physicians and medical scientist in Germany to commit mass murders and
Positive eugenics is described as; encouraging reproduction among those deemed most genetically fit and could increase desirable social traits. While negative eugenics is discouraging or preventing the reproduction of those seen as genetically unfit (Allen, 17). Eugenics was a popular science around the world with the first organized eugenics group started in the United States in 1906. Eugenics would affect policies around the world; immigration in the United State was effected as the Balkans, Poland, Russia and parts of central and southern Europe were seen as inferior to the Anlgo-Saxon and Nordic stocks. Also eugenicist pushed for sterilization laws and an estimated sixty-four thousand people would be sterilized in the United States alone. Hitler and Nazi Party would take the ideas of eugenics and push them further and harsher than anyone
These laws prohibited Aryans from marrying and having intercourse with anyone who was more than one-quarter Jewish. The Nazi would use nations like the United States for justification for their actions against the Jews. The Nazis would focus on eliminating people with disabilities and mental illnesses and the physicians would comply as it followed the eugenics of other nations. They would later move on to targeting the Jewish people as Allen says “the debate over anti-Semitism had ended among most German eugenicists by 1936. By then anti-Semitism was accepted as ‘scientific fact’ ” (Allen 35). This shows how the Nazis used eugenics to target the Jewish people. They disguised the mass murder of millions of people as a science that was improving society. The heavy anti-Semitism around the world made the Jewish people an easy target for the Nazi party and with the interest of eugenics and euthanasia, gave Hitler a solution to the ‘Jewish