Nazi Eugenics
Millions of people were executed in the Nazi attempt to establish the Aryan race as the majority of German population. It is believed that war was a cover-up of the mass murder occurring under the noses of the rest of the world. The theory of eugenics began long before the rise of Nazi rule with Darwinism. Applying the theory to society, the Nazis tried to improve German society through the “purification” of race. The ways in which they went about trying to achieve it scarred an unfathomable amount of people. After failing to win the wars, both foreign and domestic, many of those who participated in the mutilation and destruction of so many innocent lives were punished. Others escaped prosecution due to the sheer number of guilty parties involved. Lessons have been learned since the atrocities of the attempted racial cleansing occurred and laws have been created to ensure that no group will ever be able to so easily repeat the mistake.
Eugenics is most commonly known as the biological social movement that advocates the improvement of the genetic composition of a population. The term was coined by British naturalist and mathematician Francis Galton in 1881. Since then the concept has been extremely controversial and still is today. Renowned scientists, doctors, and socialists have provided a variety of arguments for and against the theory of eugenics. Even American eugenicists believed that “foreign and inferior” groups of people hinder human advancement, and must therefore be prohibited from entering the country and contaminating the superior native population’s gene pool.
Eugenics embraces the views of Darwinism. Charles Darwin, half-cousin of Francis Galton, was an evolutionist and proposed the idea of natural selection in his Origin of Species. This theory asserted that through breeding, specific biological traits are adapted and passed down to the offspring to better succeed in future life. Natural selection and evolution...