How did eugenics contribute to the final solution - Essay Example

How Eugenics Contributed to Hitler’s Nazi Final Solution Word Count: 500 (2 pages) Eugenics is not a new concept, but was a movement which cropped up in the early 20th century as a way to control who reproduced and who did not—based upon desirable characteristics of those who were allowed to reproduce. The typical individuals favored by the eugenics movement mainly included healthy people with no defects, deformities, disabilities, or other traits that would have been considered otherwise not fit to live.

Eugenics is a type of selection favored by those in charge—and which the unfit specimens really have no say in being able to stand up for themselves once having been targeted. Eugenics is a movement that was planned before World War II in Germany in 1923 and 1933, which ultimately changed the lives of millions of people. Before World War II ever came along, there was a movement in Germany to rid society of undesirables. Undesirables fell into several categories later on, although initially the report that was issued seemed like a simple plot to rid society of disabilities by not allowing certain sectors of the populace to reproduce due to defects or detriments of some sort.

“In May 1923, [physician Gerhard] Boeters sent a report to the government of Saxony in which he demanded compulsory sterilization for the hereditarily blind and deaf, the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill, sexual ‘perverts,’ and fathers with two or more illegitimate children.”1 Sterilization was the beginning of a regime change which began to discriminate against individuals that were different or “not normal” in some way. Sterilization laws were implemented in Germany in 1933, pre-empting the sterilization of the feebleminded, epileptics, the deformed, the blind, the deaf, and alcoholics—which eventually led to the mercy killings and murders of newborns, toddlers, adolescents, institutionalized children, juvenile delinquents, Jewish children, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and political opponents of the government.

2 This led to the slaughter of 12 million people in total, which not only included Jews, but other societal and ethnic groups as well which were deemed dangerous or unclean in the eyes of Germany’s Nazi regime. Nazi doctors conducted experiments on prisoners within their camps, and people were tortured and murdered at the hands of the Nazis because they were being eliminated in the name of convenience—only because their existence was shunned by virtue of the law and popular opinion. The Nazi use of eugenics should provide a chilling insight into the horrible crimes done by people who can abuse their powers in order to suppress people.

Obviously, what happened in 1923 and 1933 are just examples of the type of thinking that led to Hitler’s “Final Solution,” which called for the extermination of all Jews—as well as anyone who was declared unfit for living in the state of Germany’s eyes. It is a testament to the power of the human spirit that not everyone abided by these unjust laws which favored eugenics research. Eugenics will hopefully never be legitimized nor usurped by a government again. This movement encourages crimes against humanity.

WORKS CITED Cummings, Michael R. Human Heredity: Principles and Issues. USA: Cengage Brain. Pp. 11. Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 23.