Severing the link between Darwin and Nazism
To some creationists, Darwin was not only wrong but poisonous - his evolutionary theory, they say, directly influenced Hitler's genocidal ideology.
Severing the link between Darwin and Nazism
To some creationists, Darwin was not only wrong but poisonous - his evolutionary theory, they say, directly influenced Hitler's genocidal ideology.
Historian Richard Weikart appeared in the anti-evolution film Expelled, promoting this alleged Darwin-Hitler link. Weikart has written extensively on this, arguing that Darwinian evolution destroyed Judeo-Christian morality, especially the notion of reverence for life.
Weikart does not try to push the idea that this invalidates evolution as a scientific idea. But he is openly creationist - a fellow at the Intelligent Design-promoting Discovery Institute in Seattle.
His message is that evolution kills morality. "If everything is a product of chance - purposeless - which is widespread in biology textbooks . . . then I don't think you have any grounds to criticize Hitler."
Those are fighting words, and a number of thinkers have challenged them. Most recently University of Chicago historian Robert Richards took Weikart to task in a paper titled "Was Hitler a Darwinian?", to which he answers a definitive no.
Weikart said he began exploring the topic when he wrote his dissertation on the influence of Darwin on German socialism in the 19th century. There, he said, Darwinism was used to justify eugenics - the attempt to influence selection in the human race, usually by killing or sterilizing anyone considered "unfit."
As Weikart learned more, he said, "the connection to Nazism leapt out at me." Darwin's second evolution book, The Descent of Man, is rife with racist statements about "higher" and "lower" races, said Weikart, and Darwin viewed the extermination of native people in Tasmania and Australia as part of natural selection.
Darwin, Weikart admits, didn't advocate such killings, and he abhorred slavery. Darwin also disavowed the more extreme eugenicist views, instead saying that helping those in need exercised the better part of our nature.
But Darwinian thinkers of Hilter's time were trying to use evolution to justify racism, said Weikart, and this influenced Hitler. "Hitler spoke and wrote incessantly about evolution, natural selection and the struggle for existence, especially the struggle between races," he wrote in one of his books.
Richards calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution. Creationism and Intelligent Design don't hold up scientifically, he said, so people like Weikart are trying to show that evolution is somehow morally dangerous.
"There's not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin," he said. Some of the biggest influences on Hitler's anti-Semitism were opposed to evolution, such as British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose racial theory became incorporated into Nazi doctrine. Hitler uses language with "a Darwinian flavor," said Richards, but if you look at the ideas behind it they have nothing to do with Darwin.
Hitler often used the word Entwicklung, Richards said, which can mean evolution but is a much more general term meaning development, and Hitler most often employed it to refer to economic development. "It's quite unfair to translate this as evolution," he said, as Weikart does.
While some of Darwin's writings contain racist notions of a hierarchy of races, Richards said, this was inherited from much earlier work and was part of the then-current mode of thinking.
Daniel Gasman, a historian at City University of New York's John Jay College, has also written that Darwin wasn't a major influence on Hitler but he does see a connection with German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who was one of Darwin's fiercest disciples.
Gasman wrote a book called Scientific Origins of National Socialism connecting Haeckel's influence to Hitler and Nazi ideology. Stephen Jay Gould read it and popularized the idea further in his own writings.
Haeckel was Germany's most famous scientist, said Gasman. He advocated evolution but his conception of it was different from Darwin's - he saw progress and advancement where Darwin noted only change. "Haeckel's Darwinism is a vast transformation of what Darwin wrote and stood for," Gasman said.
Haeckel also created his own religion, called monism, which tried to replace the Judeo-Christian idea of separate spiritual and physical worlds with a more integrated view.
Gasman said examples abound showing that Haeckel was a leader in anti-Semitic thought. Richards said his research shows Haeckel was militantly atheistic but not anti-Semitic - he disliked both Judaism and Christianity in equal measures.
They both agree that any whiff of Darwinism in Hitler's speech or writing was merely window-dressing. The Nazis did try to look scientifically sophisticated, Gasman said. "They took anti-Semitism and gave it a scientific character that propelled them forward," he said. "That's why it was so murderous."
The historians also agree that evolution's validity as a scientific concept is unaffected by this controversy. "Even if Hitler said all his inspiration for persecuting the Jews derived from Darwin, it would say nothing about the validity of evolution," Richards said.
Weikart's view that evolution's proponents lack the moral grounds to criticize Hitler raises this question: Why should we hold evolution responsible for providing a complete moral framework? We don't ask that of Galileo or Newton or Einstein. Weikert replies that evolution is different because various thinkers have applied it to morality.
But there are many ways to spin the moral influence of Darwin. Perhaps instead of creating chaos, it might be helping us construct a more informed and less rigid morality. Darwin himself wrote that violence, selfishness, charity, and goodwill are all part of human nature. He hoped we would choose to act on the better parts.
And the element of chance to which we owe our existence could provide inspiration rather than moral decay. If our lives really did hinge on countless accidents, couldn't that notion make life ever more precious?
Contact staff writer Faye Flam at 215-854-4977 or fflam@phillynews.com. Read her evolution blog at www.philly.com/evolution, or follow her on twitter @darwins_hellcat.
We cannot allow the leader of a country to cover up unlawful behavior going on.
There is a way to make sure the leader of this country can never again cover up unlawful behavior going on.
Civilocity is a form of government where the people watch the ruler entirely amongst their reign.
There is a solution to make sure the leader of every single country in the world can never again cover up unlawful behavior going on.
Civilocity is the one and only solution to make sure the leader of a country cannot cover up unlawful behavior going on.
Are you for that solution or against it, are you exposing that solution or covering it up? Hitler covered up genocide going on. I wrote civilocity.
Are you going to allow the leader of a country to cover up genocide or expose civilocity so from this day forth no leader of a country will ever be able to cover up genocide again?
How to make sure the holocaust doesn't happen ever again might be right under your nose. Evolve, do you smell it or don't you?— NathanielWenger- I am nearly done reading the entire 2 volumes of Hitler's Mein Kampf and have read nothing that directly relates to Darwin or his theory of evolution.It's pretty clear that Weikart is simply advancing his agenda to discredit evolution. As far as his ascertation that Hitler is immmune to criticism if evolution is true is completely without merit and nonsensical.— mjciavola
- Article omits a rather important fact about Darwin AND Haeckel and that's that both their books were banned by the Nazis specifically by name.
Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279: Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism.
It should also be pointed out that antisemitism was a long Christian tradition in Germany dating back hundreds of years. Martin Luther wrote and published "On the Jews and their Lies". The notion that there required a catalyst, or that antisemitism needed encouragement within German Judeao/Christian culture is a fallacy in itself.— CanadianTourist - Thanks for the article, Faye. Your readers might be interested to know that I have published two book-length refutations of Richards' position: _Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress_ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany_ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Richards simply ignores most of my evidence. Whether Hitler ever read Darwin is, of course, irrelevant. Hitler continually used Darwinian terminlogy, not only Entwicklung (evolution), but also struggle for existence (Existenzkampf, Daseinskampf), struggle for life (Lebenskampf), natural selection (natuerliche Auslese), and selection (Auslese). Richards is flat-out wrong about the use of the term "Entwicklung." Even though it can have other meanings, it was used continually by biologists in the 1920s-30s to mean biological evolution, and if one examines carefullly the context of Hitler's statements using the term, he clearly does use it to mean biological evlution in some contexts. In fact, in Hitler's _Second Book_ and in his speeches, translators translate Entwicklung as evolution.
Further, I provide quotations in my _Hitler's Ethic_ that prove conclusively that Hitler believed in human evolution. Richards simply ignores all this.
Concerning one of the comments above about Darwin and Haeckel being banned in Nazi Germany, I should alert you that I have examined the official Nazi biology curriculum. Lo and behold, it contains extensive teaching on evolution, including human evolution (and it is by natural selection, so it is overtly Darwinian). Haeckel was a disputed figure among Nazis (but many Nazis approved of Haeckel, as I will prove in an article I'm working on).
I could go on and on, but since I've already written extensively on this, I will have to refer readers to my books.— Richard Weikart - Sir, your argument is idiotic.
The fact that evolution was included in Nazi school curriculum is meaningless. I'm sure that they also taught the Laws of Physics and Trigonometry. Does that mean that Newton and Pythagoras can be implicated as well?
The link between evolution and antisemitism is rooted in baseless and nonsensical pseudoscience that more closely resembles your "intelligent design" than Darwinism. - It appears that Weikart has more than refuted Richard. Was Faye Flam equally complicit in Richard's deceptions or is it just a case of not doing her homework? If so, then why thank her for writing this article?— mjoc07
- Nonsense. Weikart merely claims that his published work, or some future work has refuted Richard.
In fact, Hitler was clearly a creationist. Note in the following that Hitler asserts that God made man immutably:
"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. x
- Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Couldn't get past paragraph 2 before losing complete interest.— jnic117
- Yet you somehow summoned the energy to post a comment anyway. Thanks for taking one for the team. — brundlefly
- Hitler killed 6 million Jews because of Darwinism. Yeah right.— RufusG
- This is "only-in-America" material. Evolution is no longer conjecture, so these morons need to find a more plausible explanation for aberrant behavior (e.g., poverty, broken families, intellectual deserts from most MSM media, etc.). I can't believe I'm now in my 40s and "Jesus said so" is still reasonable debate for much of this country. Sheesh.— Krilt
Comment removed.- It is amazing the lengths these Libs will go to take shots at religion..albeit hidden in the defense of others who are really only ever attacked by a minority of zealots. Look folks, most Christians do more to help the world than all you Libs combined. Why just this past summer I know of 3 folks in their early 20s, (kids basically spending their whole summer) who drove across the country... 7000 miles to be exact, simply to raise money to feed starving childern in Africa. That is only one of many wonderful deeds which occur on a daily basis. I know you "authors" and "journalists" (LOL!!!) only focus on those few zealots that do exist (FYI-you have them on your side too) but really relax Libs, the real Christian folks aren't out hurt you. What is it?? oh yeah..just "Live and Let Live"!!!— sarah89
- You realize that "these Libs" is defamatory in the same way that you feel Christians are stereotyped?
You also realize you're making an exceptionally indefensible statement by saying, " most Christians do more to help the world than all you Libs combined." How do you know this? Because of what you witness in front of your eyes? This is called Representative Heuristics by psychologist and is not a good way to make judgments or sweeping statements unless no other more accurate data is available.
I am a centrist and I find the lack of tolerance among all sides of the cultural divide to be regrettable. What is just as regrettable is how intellectualism is denigrated or theology is masked in the cloaked intellectualism.— rugbychix - The appropriation of any Darwin's ideas or terminology does not prove, in any sense of the word, that Darwin was the genesis of Nazi race ideology. There is AMPLE evidence that Nazi Germany hijacked the scientific apparatus to condone their racial ideology. You can check out a real scholar's, Alan E. Steinweis, book on the subject: "Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany." University of Iowa most have been real desperate for history PHD candidates in the early 90s....— rugbychix
In pursuit of her stories, writer Faye Flam has weathered storms in Greenland, gotten frost nip at the South Pole, and floated weightless aboard NASA’s zero-g plane. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and started her writing career with the Economist. She later took on the particle physics and cosmology beat at Science Magazine before coming to the Inquirer in 1995. Her previous science column, “Carnal Knowledge,” ran from 2005 to 2008. Her new column and blog, Planet of the Apes, explores the topic of evolution and runs here and in the Inquirer’s health section each Monday. Email Faye at fflam@phillynews.com.
Reach Planet of the at fflam@phillynews.com.
