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Notes:
Adolf Hitler, et. al. -
The ideas of racial supremacy and the survival of the fittest race reached it's zenith with the National Socialist party of Nazi Germany. The legacy of Haeckel and the Monist league turned many German scientists to monism and atheism. Adolf Hitler himself was a evolutionist probably since he was a boy. His book Mein Kemp (My Struggle) which sold 11 million copies in 1944, has the strong theme of necessity of struggle, a struggle between the races. "The Jews formed a sub-human counter race, predestined by their biological heritage to evil, just as the Nordic race was destined for nobility"..."History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendor, based on a new racial hierarchy ordained by nature herself". [Morris 1989, 78 - quoting Gann]. One could argue that Darwin's "preservation of favored races in the struggle for life" (Origin's subtitle) fueled Nazism and the Jewish holocaust although Darwin would be appalled. One has to ask - would Hitler act the way he did if he were a creationist ?
Others in Nazi Germany were practicing evolutionists as well. The notorious head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler "stated that the law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest" [Morris 1989, 78 - quoting Schaeffer]. Joseph Mengele, the "angel of death", infamous for his gruesome experiments on humans at Auschwitz was indoctrinated in evolutionary racism in school. One biographer notes that Mengele was influenced of the notion that "some human beings afflicted by disorders were unfit to reproduce, even to live" [Morris 1989, 79 - quoting Posner and Ware].
References:
[Morris 1989, 68-75]
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