Americans in the early and mid 20th century, believed very strongly in Eugenics. Eugenics is the pseudoscience supporting the forced sterilization and eradication of those who have been deemed inferior; everyone who isn’t from Notic decent. Throughout the United States there was relatively strong support for eugenics, however the strongest support came from California. Before the start of WWII, almost half of the forced sterilizations occurred in California. Even after the war almost a third of such surgeries were from California. The pseudoscience of eugenics, although receiving plenty of support had very little true scientific evidence. The majority of its support came from the the little science that did exist, however even this little evidence was potent enough to convince people that it was truly a legitimate science.
Eugenics and the ideals of social darwinism were two ideas that at this time fit hand in hand. The supporters of social darwinism such as Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune all gave avid support to the research of eugenics. Even professors and scientists from universities across the nation gave support, such as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. Eugenics was such a supported idea that data was commonly twisted and altered to support its racist goals.
America was obsessed with eugenics and proving that it was a legitimate science. Eugenics in America was born out of the thoughts of the Victorian age. The supporters in America concluded that according to Mendel's concepts that the size and shape of plants and quality of cattle can be selected through selective breeding the same thing could be done with humans and their traits. This conversion from legitimate science to racist believes was left unchecked due to the troubles that tore at america, from reconstruction, to the massive flux of immigration, racism had become an almost natural thing in America. America held strongly onto the idea of eugenics, pioneering much of the technology that was later used in WWII by the Nazis. It was only once America began to see the horrors that was being created by their pseudoscience, that the thoughts and followings of eugenics began to lose popularity.
Sources:
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/
Do you think the popularity of the Eugenics movement contributed at all to the Anti-Semitism of the era? I really appreciate that you wrote an article about Eugenics, especially considering the recent move to rename Jordan middle school (David Starr Jordan was a eugenist). I think the study of this history is extremely relevant considering that our area was deeply involved in the study of eugenics.
ReplyDeleteIf Eugenics did not become popular in the time before WWII do you think Hitler would have acted differently? Would he have been a different leader than he was if eugenics was not a thing? If eugenics was not popular do you think Hitler would have gotten as much support as he did, stating that science was on his side in many of his speeches. ?
ReplyDeletesource-http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
It would seem that even if Eugenics was not as popular as it was before WWII, at least in the US, Hitler would probably have acted very similarly to how he did. His whole campaign was about finding someone to blame for Germany's problems, and that the Germans, and Germany itself was the master race, with no faults. Eugenics simply worked as a support to this, but was not a necessity. As well as, even if it was not as popular as it was to start, he would have made it more popular.
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