Holocaust: Hitler's Ideology And The Impact

Chapter 2: Hitler and Nazis: Hitler’s ideology and the impacts

“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.” - Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler

January 30th 1933 saw Adolf Hitler become chancellor of Germany. Many think of Hitler as amoral, and when looking at the great evils which he committed it is understandable to see why one would think this. However, Hitler believed that his ideas of war and genocide were morally praiseworthy, (Weikart, (2004)). Hitler promoted the extinction of criminality

Hitler was also influenced by American eugenics “Hitler credited America with helping formulate his ideas on eugenics, and… studied the laws of US states to familiarize himself with selective reproduction,” (Morcan, (2014)). American eugenicists gladly accepted this fact and eugenicist Joseph DeJarnette, complained in 1934 that “Hitler is beating us at our own game” (Black, (2003)) and the Carnegie Institute funded Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele (Bishop and Szobota (2015)). We may never “know the exact source of Hitler’s worldview” (Weikart, (2004) P225) but we can surmise that he was influenced by social Darwinism, eugenics and evolutionary ethics (Weikart, (2004)). Hitler and the supporters of the Nazi regime were all moral people who had based their morality upon radical social Darwinism, rationalising that the unfit people stood in the way of race improvement and were morally wrong. This explains how doctors, could be amongst the most willing to aid Hitler’s eugenic cause by killing those who they deemed unfit, as the doctors believed they were doing great moral good. The morality on which Hitler and his supporters were grounded allowed for the monstrosities that took place during the war. On July 14th 1933 the Nazi party issued the "Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases"(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2015)), though the Weimar republic had made plans for sterilisation one year before (Bishop, Laura and Szobota, Lola (2015)). The new plans for sterilisation were more absolute “It was seen as important for the health of a nation to eradicate feeblemindedness (and) physical deformity” (The Hastings Centre, (2014)). In 1935 Marriage laws were introduced to “enforce a healthy German stock”