Science and Nazi attitudes to race - Essay Example

? What Role Did Science Play In Nazi Attitudes To Race? By of [Word Count] Introduction When Nazi Germanyis mentioned, what comes to one’s mind are the Second World War and the Holocaust. The Holocaust brings to mind the murder of six million Jews and people of other races. What many fail to understand is how the Nazi’s comfortably massacred millions of people, merely because they belonged to a different human race. This question among other issues, led to the emergence of s discipline referred to as scientific racism. This discipline refers to the use of purported scientific principles, techniques, methods, knowledge, and theories to justify atrocities related to racism, racial inferiority or superiority and phenotype-based classification of human beings (Spiro, 2009: 45). This science exists and could still be believed and used by many racists despite the worldwide stance that racial superiority, inferiority, and differentiation are scientifically wrong (Jahoda, 1992: 23). In addition, such racial differentiation is immoral, socially unacceptable and unjust, dangerous, and unjustifiable not only in practice but also in theory (Shultz & Shultz, 2008: 18). Of all the wars fought in the first half of the 20th century, none was characterized by technological and scientific knowledge, equipment, and weapons than the Second World War (1939-1945). The war affected science, science, and technology just as these disciplines affected the war. Besides the V-1 or buzz-bomb and the V-2, the ballistic missile, there are numerous other scientific principles, innovations and knowledge that emerged during the WWII. For instance, Nazi Germany pioneered several advances in rocketry during this war. It is during the same period that the British developed the electronic computers, which were used to break the Nazi “Enigma” codes. Similarly, the U.S. used the electronic computers to calculate battlefield equations such as those of ballistics. Other scientific gadgets that emerged during WWII include hand-held calculating tables, mechanical trajectory calculators, and control centers aboard ships and aircraft (Tucker, 2007). Different branches of science recorded considerable level of growth, development, and application in this period. Although the use of science in the war and other spheres of life in this period was largely welcome, science usage in other perspectives were rather controversial and were condemned across the globe (Richards, 1997: 41). The most notorious of these controversial and condemned cases was the Nazi Germany’s use of science and scientists to kills innocent civilians. Worse still, the Nazi use of science to justify its killing of six million Jews and millions of people from other inferior or desirable races has been condemned since the Holocaust occurred (Hoffman, 2005: 23). This paper explores the role played by science in Nazi’s attitudes to race with particular reference to the Nazi Holocaust in which millions of Jews were massacred. The Role of Science in the Nazi Attitudes to Race The Nazi Germany used different disciplines to further their scientific racist agendas. These disciplines include but are not limited to anthropometry, craniometry, and physical anthropology (Jackson & Weidman, 2005: 19). Using these sciences, they proposed typologies that promoted their tendencies to categorize human beings into physically distinct segments or races as inferior or inferior (Tucker, 1994: 18). Although more rampant during the WWII era, scientific racism was also experience in the New Imperial period, which ran from 1880s to 1914. In this era, scientific racism was applied by imperialist White Europeans (Furedi, 1998: 29). These practices would culminate in the 1920’s and WWII’s racial segregations and massacres respectively. After this era of heightened use of scientific racism to segregate and kill people from other races, scientific racism was entirely discredited (Furedi, 1998: 27). Since then, the discipline has been rendered obsolete and cannot be used to justify, support, or validate racial views of other human beings with regards to racial superiority or inferiority (Jackson & McCarthy, 2005: 57). In particular, the theories of scientific racism were denounced after WWII and the Holocaust. One agency that has been at the forefront in discrediting and denouncing scientific racism is the UNESCO. Through its antiracist statement entitled "The Race Question" (1950)” In this statement UNESCO highlights the need to distinguish between biological facts and other myths about race. According to this UNESCO statement, race should be treated as a social event rather than a biological phenomenon. In the Second World War, quite a lot was observed with regards to the disturbing use of science, especially in the Nazi Holocaust in which about six million Jews and millions of other people were massacred. Those targeted and murdered were of races considered inferior to or undesirable by Germans. As a matter of fact, the Nazi Holocaust is considered among the worst crimes in the history of human kind (Rosefielde, 2009: 102). Despite their actions, the masterminds and the persecutors of the Nazi Holocaust did not see their actions as barbaric in any way. The foundation of the Nazi’s belief in their superiority as a race lay in the ‘Nazi Science,’ which they used to justify their actions. According to the Nazi science, Germans were superior to other races (Friedlander, 2007: 1945). This science was characterized by Nazi-defined classifications, definitions, measurements, scientists, and funny but false scientific theories. It is this Nazi Science, which formed the basis of the 1942 Wannsee Conference’s declaration in which the Nazi Germany made the decision to massacre the entire Jewish population in Europe. Among the ideas applied in this science included industry-based methods and theories such as the ‘assembly-line organization approach of killing factories’ and the ‘IBM-punch-card machines’ to keep track of every detail. Unfortunately, in their science, the Nazi converted the business methods of mass production to that of mass destruction. The Nazi even corrupted medicine, the most revered and compassionate science that the victims could turn to, and used it to conduct horrid experiments to show their superiority over other races. These experiments were done not only on prisoners of war but also on innocent civilians, not to suggest that it would be ethical and morally acceptable to conduct them on the prisoners of war. The Nazi also used science by using their hi-tech weapons such as rockets and bombs on innocent civilians to coerce them into submitting to Nazi doctrines (Steinweis, 2001: 296). There is a school of thought, which believes that had the Nazi used their vast and modern scientific knowledge and equipment in fighting the real war rather than on spreading racial propaganda and committing other acts of terror, it might have become a rather strong opponent to the U.S. and her allies. How Nazi Race Holocaust Used Darwinism Darwinism is one of the scientific theories used by Nazi Germany to propagate falsehood during the Holocaust (Palmer, 2006: 19). German biologists of the early 20th century revealed how Nazi Germany used Darwin’s theory of evolution to influence and justify its racial policies. For an illustration, Adolph Hitler felt that controlled and selective breeding was an effective tool for breeding superior cattle varieties (Arvidsson, 2006: 22). With the help of scientists such as Spencer and Haeckel, Hitler managed to formulate and implement policies that would protect the superior races in Germany. In essence, Hitler’s administration sought to protect the so called superior races from mixing with and being contaminated by the inferior races (Arvidsson, 2006: 71). Particularly instrumental in the reaching of the final solution by the German administration to exterminate six million Jews and four million people of other races was the theory of group inequality, proposed by Darwin in his studies on evolution. According to Darwin, evolution occurs as weaker species and individuals are eliminated in the race to survive (Palmeri, 2006: 49). It did not only play a critical role in the Holocaust, Darwinism also encouraged and justified Nazi perceptions on war and race (Arvidsson, 2006: 73). The idealistic objective of preventing the contamination of the supposedly superior races played a more crucial role in the Holocaust than the hatred that the Nazi policies had against the Jews and other people. Besides stating that the killing of the Jews by Nazi Germans was like a cat killing a mouse, Hitler added that these ‘inferior’ races had to be eliminated but if not, ‘nature would eliminate the ‘inferior’ races in the long run (Boxill, 2006: 33). Hitler also encouraged other governments to appreciate and follow the laws of nature, especially that on the ‘survival of the fittest.’ This law, he said, created the human race and continues to improve it. In other words, Hitler felt that governments should assist nature in eliminating or quarantining the supposedly ‘inferior’ races (Lewis et al., 2011: 9). By eliminating the inferior races, Hitler felt he was obeying the divine commandment of ‘thou shall preserve the species’ and there was not need to preserve or spare a species that nature itself had not taken care of. Hitler considered the Germans the superior race, which deserved preservation and other races inferior and worth eliminating. Hence, he did not want the German Aryans to breed with non-Aryans, lest they get contaminated. Thus, by eliminating these inferior races, he would improve the status of the superior races, which would be forever grateful to him for the improvement effects of his actions. That evolution was largely used to justify the rampant racism in German depended on the Darwinism notions on struggle for survival (Gould, 1991: 7). This idea particularly justified and legitimized by the latest scientific views and racist conceptions of superior and inferior peoples and nations. Darwinism thus appeared to validate the conflicts among different peoples in the WWII period (Genoves, 1991: 1928). With the help of scientists such as Professor Haeckel, who was the spokesman for scientists in Nazi Germany, Darwinism, the Nazi racists became more confident on the verification of their racial beliefs. Consequently, the racist views of the Nazi spread faster and established wider and stronger base and circulation than hitherto expected (Price, 2006: 19). Purporting that their racial prejudices were actual scientific truths and armed with the scientific authority as propagated by Haeckel and his colleagues, the Nazi administration went on a killing spree that targeted Jews and other races considered ‘inferior.’ Nazi Medicine and Holocaust Medical Experiments Medicine and experiments are the other perspectives from which the use of science by Nazi Germany may be viewed. Once looked at in this perspective, one is only left to treat the entire Holocaust a disgrace and an insult to humanity (Schaffer, 2007: 253). In addition to being huge in number, the lives lost in the Holocaust offers the living human race quite a lot to deliberate, especially what the world would have been had the lost lives been spared (Kurtz, 2004: 112). The role of medical practitioners, especially doctors in whose hands the lives of people are placed with unquestioning trust cannot be ignored (Samuels, 2001: 24). In normal circumstances, health care producers such as doctors and nurses are regarded as preservers of life and saviours of mankind (Proctor, 1988: 13). However, in the Holocaust, medical personnel stopped being caretakers and healers and could no longer be revered as used to be, due to their role in worsening the suffering and causing the deaths of millions of Jews and people of other ‘inferior’ races (Hannaford, 1996: 98). Because of the egregious, deplorable, shocking and outrageous medical practices of the Third Reich health care providers, the hitherto scared trust they commanded fast disappeared (Strous, 2007: 8). The avenues by which Nazi physicians and nurses violated this sacred trust may be viewed in terms of freezing of patients or hypothermia, high altitude exposure, killing and genocide, genetics, infectious diseases, interrogation, traumatic injuries, torture, pharmacological measures, sterilization and surgical procedures (Das Gupta, 2007: 54). First, regarding freezing or hypothermia, a fate mainly suffered by German soldiers of high ranks, they were treated to freezing conditions to which soldiers were exposed at battlefields (Bodek, 1996: 11). This process was undertaken for acclimatization purposes. Unfortunately, it resulted in the deaths of quite a good number of high-ranking commanders as well as civilian leaders. Hence, some of the Nazi ranks and file members suffered at the hand of science during the Holocaust. Among those who conducted these freezing experiments were doctors Sigmund Rascherat Birkenau, Dachau and Auschwitz. In some of these experiments, soldiers were strapped and left outside, naked. To achieve their core goals related to the Aryan race, the Nazis had to undertake certain genetic experiments to ensure theirs was the only race. According to them, the Jews, Hispanics, Gypsies and Blacks among other races, did not qualify as human beings and required cleansing. To cleanse these races by genocide, all Aryans had to undergo a rigorous but general testing to ensure they were racially pure to marry. Conclusion Perhaps the darkest period in the recent history of mankind, the Holocaust was marked by the death of more than six million Jews and about 3 million other people of races considered by the Nazi Germans as inferior to the Aryan race. According to the Nazi administration, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Aryans were a pure people whose race did not need to be contaminated by people from inferior race. Although war weaponry was the main tool used to massacre millions of people, there was a propaganda machine that worked overdrive to confuse people about the rightness of the Nazi course. Science is one tool by which Hitler and his Nazi party sought to justify their killing of people from other races. From Darwinism to medical experiments, no scientific explanation and theory was spared in the attempt to scientifically justify the massacre of millions of people References Arvidsson, S. (2006) Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Bodek, R. (1996) "Review of John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors & Race Science in Fin-de-Siecle Europe", H-SAE, H-Net Reviews. Boxill, B. (2006) Race and racism. Oxford Readings in Philosophy (O. R. P.). Das Gupta, T. (2007) Race and racialization. Essential Readings. Friedlander, S. (2007) The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939–1945. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Furedi, F. (1998). The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. Genoves, S. (1991) "Racism and "The Mankind Quarterly"". Science, 134(3493): 1928–32. Gould, S. J. (1991) The Mis-measure of Man. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Co. Hannaford, I. (1996) Race: the history of an idea in the west. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Hoffman, M. (2005) "From Pintele Yid to Racenjude: Chaim Zhitlovsky and Racial Conceptions of Jewishness". Jewish History, 19(1): 23. Jackson, J. P., and Weidman, N. M. (2005) Race, racism, and science: social impact and interaction. Rutgers University Press. Jackson, J., McCarthy, J.P. (2005) Science for segregation: race, law, and the case against Brown v. board of education. New York: New York University Press. Jahoda, G. (1992) Images of savages: ancients roots of modern prejudice in western culture. Oxford University Press. Kurtz, P. (2004) "Can the sciences help us to make wise ethical judgments?” Skeptical Inquirer Magazine (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). Lewis, J., Degusta, D., Meyer, M. R., Janet M., Mann, A. E., Holloway, R. L. (2011) "The Mis-measure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias". PLoS Biol 9. Palmer, D. (2006) Prehistoric past revealed: the four billion year history of life on earth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Palmeri, F. (2006) Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Culture: Representation, Hybridity and Ethics, 2(5); 49–67. Price, R. G. (2006) "The Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist". Retrieved on October 24, 2013 from www.rationalrevolution.net. Proctor, R. (1988) Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richards, G. (1997) Race, Racism, and Psychology: Towards a Reflexive history. New York: Routledge. Rosefielde, S. (2009) Red holocaust. Oxford: Routledge Samuels, S. (2001) Applying the Lessons of the Holocaust. In Alan S. Rosenbaum. Is the Holocaust Unique? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schaffer, G. (2007) "'Scientific Racism Again: Reginald Gates, the Mankind Quarterly and the Question of 'Race' in Science after the Second World War". Journal of American Studies 41: 253–278. Shultz, D. P., and Shultz, S. E. (2008) A History of modern psychology, ninth edition. Belmont CA: Thomson Higher Education. Spiro, J. P. (2009) Defending the master race: conservation, eugenics, and the legacy of Madison Grant. University of Vermont Press. Steinweis, A. E. (2001) "The Holocaust and American Culture: An Assessment of Recent Scholarship". Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 15(2): 296–310. Strous, R. D. (2007) "Psychiatry during the Nazi Era: Ethical Lessons for the Modern Professional". Annals of General Psychiatry, 6(8): 8. Tucker, W. H. (1994). The science and politics of racial research. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tucker, W. H. (2007) The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the pioneer fund. University of Illinois Press. Read More