by Christoph Jensen (RSA)
(see also R. Steiner Oct. 7th 1916: ‘Goethe and the Crisis of the 19th Century’)
This is essentially an abbreviated version of the book: ‘The Men behind Hitler’, a German warning to the world. I found this book in a 2nd hand book-shop in Cape Town. Inside the cover it bears an endorsement by the Metropolitan Institute for the Investigation of Anti-Semitism in London. The author urges anyone to freely quote from and distribute the content of the book. Bernhard Schreiber was born in 1942 in Stuttgart after his father died in action as an officer in the German Luftwaffe. He studied journalism in America and travelled extensively as a free-lance journalist. He researched the content of the book for five years. I took the liberty to add where I felt I could contribute.
It was in a second hand bookshop that I came across a humble book with “Geheime Reichssache” written across its cover. It tells the story of the systematic destruction of ‘surplus-people’ which ultimately ended in the attempted destruction of a whole people, the Jews. The author, Bernhard Schreiber, expressly pleads for a wide distribution of the book and not only gives his consent but ‘urges the distribution, translation, publication and reprinting by whoever wishes to do so’.
Far from portraying the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity as irrational and wild beasts he explores and traces the horrific and cruel selective killings to their origin: in a thinking and conceptualising of certain assumptions that have their origin in the 19th century. The KZ’s (Konzentrationslager – Concentration Camps) were the result of a ‘diabolic logic’ of a mindset that to this very day has not been overcome, but dare I say is still at work wherever we speak of ‘surplus-people’: be it when death-squadrons attempt to ‘clean up’ the streets of Rio de Janeiro, ‘give up’ on ‘solving’ African wars, ‘give up’ on an equitable distribution of resources, refuse to examine the economic and financial parameters that ‘determine’ our social intercourse, attempt to ‘improve’ the human race by biological means.
I take the liberty to quote from the material in the book and expound on it. Bernhard Schreiber believes the source of this diabolic logic is to be found in the writing of an essay by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an English economist, politician and historian: ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798). It is a reactionary document against the principles of enlightenment and emancipation which ensued after the French Revolution. In this essay he proposes that poverty and thereby misery and vice are unavoidable ‘because population growth will always exceed food-production’. The checks on population growth were ‘wars, famine and diseases’. Malthus proposed ‘sexual abstinence’ for the working classes as a means by which the population-excess could be diminished. In this way the ‘lower’ social classes were made ‘totally responsible’ for their own social misery. The basis of Malthus’ assumption was that population increased in geometric progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc.) whilst food-production increased in arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc.). With that assumption Malthus was one of the earliest who turned away from any social-economic solution from the problems of that period. Instead he proposed to ‘solve’ these by ‘biological’ means. One of his fiercest opponents was Robert Owen, entrepreneur and social reformer. But Malthus’ presentations had an effect on people that can only be described as ‘hypnotic’. They had an air of ‘science’ around them. Yet very few asked what the basis of his assumptions were.
One of the consequences of Malthus’ assumptions was a law passed in 1834 that established the first ‘workhouse’ for the poor. Sexes were strictly separated to curb ‘over-breeding’. The thinking behind this is of course a classifying of human life into ‘better’ and ‘lower’. It devalues the ‘lower’ classes fearing that they might ‘crowd out’ the ‘better’ people. Malthus’ theory turned into ‘belief’ and philosophy resulting in the ‘birth-control-movement’ and receives momentum today with the campaigns to curb the ‘population-explosion’.
Darwin who lived from 1809 until 1882 published in 1859 his book on the ‘the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’. It should be noted that in this writing there is no mention of the study of mankind but rather he tried to explain the development of life-forms in terms of a struggle for existence. When Darwin came across Malthus’ essay he took over that doctrine and made it the cornerstone of his next work: ‘The Descent of Man’. It was left to Francis Galton (1822-1911), a half-cousin of Darwin to expound the subject of ‘Eugenics’. Galton was so fascinated by Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection that he spent years trying to prove that mental abilities were hereditary. This resulted in a book, published in 1869: ‘Hereditary Genius’ and another one in 1883: ‘Enquiries into Human Faculty’, in which he transferred his hereditary theories from the individual to the ‘whole race’. With that in mind he extended Darwin’s theory of natural selection into a concept of deliberate social intervention, which he held to be the logical application of evolution to the human race. ‘Eugenics’ then is the underlying philosophy of encouraging a better human stock and discouraging the reproduction of less desirable stock.
Enter Arthur Count de Gobineau (1816-1882): if we want to trace and ‘understand’ the modern version of racism – here we find it: ‘Essay on the Inequality of Human Races’. In romantic fashion he wrote of a ‘fair-haired Aryan race’ that was superior to all others. He maintained that remains of that race could be found in various countries in Europe constituting a tiny racial aristocracy decaying under the overwhelming weight of inferior races. Hardly noticed in his home-country, France, he enjoyed great popularity in Germany.
Just before the turn of the century a diabolic amalgamation of ideas occurred: Darwinism, united with social theories, became Social Darwinism, which in turn included Eugenics. In 1894 the ‘Gobineau Association’ was founded in Germany; his writings were popularised by an extremely nationalistic and anti-Jewish group, the Pan-Germans. It was small in numbers but very vociferous, their members including a high proportion of teachers.
In 1899, a Gobineau-disciple, Houston Steward Chamberlain (1855-1927), an Englishman holding German citizenship, published his book: ‘The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century’ in German. In this he upheld that the German race is the purest form of Aryanism, damning the inferior races, the Jews and the ‘Negroes’, as degenerate.
Eugenics, Social Darwinism and Racial Hygiene now join hands. It was only Eugenics that managed to call itself a ‘science’. It resulted in a movement, which attracted many medical men. These have given the scientific means of assisting Social Darwinism in its endeavours to favour the fittest, and Racial Hygienists in their effort to 'improve the human race'. From this point on, Eugenics, Social Darwinism and Racial Hygiene fused so strongly that it would prove a useless endeavour to try to differentiate them.
In 1900 the founder of ‘racial hygiene’ in Germany, Dr. Alfred Ploetz, participated in an essay contest. It was sponsored by the industrialist Alfred Krupp. He would give a prize for the best essay on the subject: ‘What can we learn from the Principles of Darwinism for Application to Inner Political Development and the Laws of the State?’ Wilhelm Schallmeyer, who won first prize, interpreted culture, society, morality, even ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in terms of struggle for survival. He wanted all laws brought into line with these concepts to prevent the white races from degenerating to the level of the Australian Aborigines. Such degeneration would be inevitable if society would pander to the physically or mentally weak. His colleague, Dr. Alexander Ploetz, endorsed the whole essay and supported the superiority of the Caucasian race from which, of course, he excepted the Jews. He suggested for instance that in times of war only racially inferior persons should be sent to the front in order to preserve the ‘better’ segment of the population. As the soldiers in the frontline are the ones who are killed first, it would prevent the purer part of the race from being unnecessarily weakened. He also suggested that a panel of doctors be present at the birth of each child to judge whether the child would be fit enough to live, if not, to kill it.
In 1901 Galton delivered a lecture to the English Royal Anthropological Society stressing the various possibilities of improving human breeding under the then present social, legal and moral conditions. Then in 1904 the first chair in Eugenics was instituted at University College, London, which led to the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics in 1907. Soon after this eugenic groups would spring up all over the world.
In 1908 the Eugenics Education Society (renamed the Eugenic Society in the ’20) was founded in England and in 1910 the Eugenic Record Office in the United States.
Dr. Ploetz, who assisted Schallmeyer in his essay, in 1905 founded the ‘Gesellschaft fuer Rassenhygiene’, Society for Racial Hygiene, which was later changed to ‘Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics)’. This change of name took place after Galton announced that eugenics and racial hygiene were in fact synonymous terms. A co-founder of this society was the later world-famous psychiatrist and racial hygienist Professor Dr. Ernst Ruedin. As racial hygiene was closely connected with political anthropology – a pseudo-science developed by Gobineau – eugenics was used as the ‘scientific’ basis upon which racialist and political ideas, especially those of the Nazis could flourish.
Eugenics had been formulated and made known by Galton in 1883. During the following years the subject was popularised and shortly after the turn of the century eugenic organisations were set up all over the world. They had increasing support particularly in America and Germany. To the extent that these organisations grew they enlarged their sphere of political influence. This had an effect on legislation, which oriented itself on eugenic principles. Although they varied in form and execution they all had the same objective in mind: the mentally deficient and the mentally ill. It resulted in laws making it mandatory for persons of unsound minds, criminals, alcoholics and the handicapped to be sterilised or castrated. Dr. Alexis Carrel, a French-American Nobel Prize winner who had been on the staff of the Rockefeller Institute from its inception, published a book ‘Man, the Unknown’ in 1935. Within three years it was published into nine other languages. He looked at Eugenics to solve all ills of society:
‘There remains the unsolved problem of the immense number of defectives and criminals. They are an enormous burden on the part of the population that has remained normal. Gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and to protect the public against gangsters and the lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? … Those who have murdered, robbed, while armed with an automatic pistol, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public on important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could advantageously be applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts. Philosophical systems and sentimental prejudices must give way before such a necessity. The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilisation.’
Whilst these were recommendations that led to laws on sterilisation in a number of states in the U.S. and some European countries already in 1922 some of Ploetz’ disciples pleaded for the ‘Elimination of Life without Value’. Karl Binding, a jurist, and Alfred Hoch, a psychiatrist put forward a proposal that the physically and mentally defective be eliminated painlessly as they are a burden to themselves and society and that the cost of keeping these useless people was excessive to the State. These proposals were formally tabled at a psychiatric congress in Dresden in 1922 and at the Reichstag where it was rejected. But it became a subject to remain in the public domain until today.
1933
The German magazine for ‘Eugenic and Racial Hygiene’ welcomed Hitler’s accession to power as a major gain for them, as he was so much in accord with their own thinking. In June of that year, at a scientific gathering dealing with eugenic problems, Wilhelm Frick (Minister of the Interior) described the number of feeble-minded and defective children born to German parents as being huge. According to him some authorities regarded one in five of the German population as biologically unsound. These should be prevented from reproducing because their offspring were no longer desirable.
On July 14th, 1933 only four months after the March elections that brought the Nazis to power a law was passed for the ‘compulsory sterilisation for eugenic purposes’. It was to be known as the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease in Posterity’ or simply the Sterilisation Law. The chief architect was Professor Ernst Ruedin, Professor of Psychiatry at Munich University, Director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography and of the Research Institute for Psychiatry. Ruedin was also among the German delegates to the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene in Washington in 1930 and at which he urged that mental hygiene and eugenics be integrated.
A whole legal system was set up to comply with carrying out the law: courts for the prevention of hereditary illnesses were set up. At the same time the German people were systematically propagandised for the upbuilding of what may be described as racial and eugenic consciousness. The eight categories for compulsory sterilisation included schizophrenia, manic depressive insanity, hereditary epilepsy, Huntingtons, hereditary blindness and deafness and persons suffering from severe alcoholism. This was later changed to include ‘habitual offenders against public morals’, which in terms of Nazi-ideology meant also ‘racial pollution’.
With that the way was open for the infamous ‘Nuremberg Laws’. These provided the legal frame-work for action against the Jewish population. Hermann Goering proclaimed these laws during the Nuremberg Party Day celebrations on September 15th 1935. It goes without saying that the ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’ was in no small measure the responsibility of Ernst Ruedin of the German Racial Hygiene and Eugenic Movement. The aim of racial hygiene was to create a fictitious ‘Aryan’ race. In accordance with this all non-Aryan elements had to be rooted out. Apart from having a wrong combination of chromosomes it also seems to have been a non-Aryan trait to be of a different opinion. Consequently all minorities fell into this category. The killings of minorities started with the smallest groups and worked up from there. Because of this the larger minorities were left with the belief that it would never be their turn. If the Nazis would have started from the other end, everyone would have known it was to be everyone’s neck and they could have united themselves against this procedure when the Nazis were not yet firmly established. These minorities were the insane, habitual criminals, Gypsies, Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews and Christians.
Far from wanting to table a comprehensive account of the death-machine of the Nazis, this essay attempts to portray the beginnings and origin of the holocaust in theory and practise. It did not ‘just’ happen. And by giving account of the beginnings we might be able to point out the links to the present when we examine the motivation behind certain practises in gene-technology, embryo-research etc.. Wherever there is a process of selection we allow ourselves to ‘play God’. The 19th century thinking that led to the practise of the Nazis is still prevalent albeit disguised under a ‘humane’ cover. But where the debate is conducted only on a financial-economic level (useless bread-gobblers, expensive prisons etc.) the dams start to crack – with the inevitable flood to follow.
What the history of this kind of sociology and psychiatry, leading to an attempt of ‘improving’ the human race, shows is an inability to dare the question of what a human life is all about.
The death-machine that was employed on the Jewish people was ‘rehearsed’ on the mentally handicapped, the weakest and most unsuspecting of minorities. The programme bore the name: mercy-death, to disguise the cruelty of it all. We have read the reasons given by the ‘experts’, some might even agree with it – the euthanasia-debate is not over yet. Also the debate of whether we have to ‘believe’ Darwin or some other authority is not over. How free are we if we deny others the right to live? Project mercy-death or T4 met with enough ‘popular’ support to encourage the Nazis to expand their death-machine. The total number of victims of the euthanasia-programmes is difficult to determine. But as there were 300 000 to 320 000 mental patients in 1939 in Germany alone and only 40 000 in 1946 it would seem that the figure of 275 000 deaths mentioned in the Nuremberg Trials was reasonably accurate.
The institutions where the murders of the ‘insane’ took place were not just places for the disposal of unwanted mental patients but also provided the scientific testing grounds for the perfection of murder-techniques to be employed later in the KZs. The deaths of the victims were clinically studied, photographed and perfected.
Then there was the training of the staff who conducted the killings. This proceeded in an orderly progression of familiarisation. At first they watched the killings as observers, as their training progressed they participated in the actual murders by conducting the ‘patients’ into the chambers, releasing the gases, watching the death-struggle, and finally ventilating the chambers and removing the bodies. The selection of the students was conducted by high-ranking Nazi-officials who were personally and directly responsible to the Fuehrer Chancellery. The trainees had to be hardened and desensitised to become insensible to the pleas and cries of the victims. Students who did not complete their course because they cracked, couldn’t go on with it or were unsuitable were sent to the war-front where the Commander in charge would assign them to a suicide squad. This accounts for the lack of people with conscience willing to testify to what they had been involved in. But it also shows that these were human beings that carried out these atrocities – but they had to be conditioned.
I did not become involved in my work with the intellectually challenged ‘because’ of the history preceding my birth, the Nazi atrocities. No, I made choices along the path of my biography that made me ‘enjoy’ the company of those with disability. I have lived with them as children and I have been present when some of them died. Each one of them has their own distinct biography – and sometimes as an after-image I receive glimpses of the meaning of their destiny. I spent more than 30 years living and working with persons with various disabilities in a movement that begun in 1938 in Scotland with Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Austria. The original ‘staff’ as well as the handicapped children would have been on the ‘death-list’ of the Nazis had the Battle of Britain taken a different turn. These ‘outcasts’ in every sense of the word formed community to experience a depth of life rarely possible under ‘normal’ circumstances. Far from the ‘blind leading the blind’ it was the ones ‘deficient’ of human capabilities who led the ones with ‘intelligence’ to question their own set boundaries – what is a human life? I experienced that a human being is more than his/her physical body; no, this body is ‘home’ to a unique soul and spirit that is inviolable. The quintessential answer has not been found. That answer is as unique as each per-sona facing us. But what is clear is that where we become selective we cut out part of our own humanity. Beware of the beginnings …