A quick history of Eugenics; Eugenics came about in the Victorian age of 1863 to the curiosity of Sir Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin). It is the pseudoscience of improving a human population through controlled breeding. It is now seen in a dark light only after the perverse experiments of the Nazi doctors conducted onto their victims in the name of this so-called science. In its most extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype.
So how are the unspeakable horrors committed in the Nazi death camps relevant to beauty? And how is any of this linked to the sunny state of California?
Because beauty is basic pleasure. It is nothing more than a radar for a fertile, healthy body. It's only purpose meant for composition of the next generation a.k.a survival of the genes. Since we are looking at eugenics, we are also looking at forms of ethnic cleansing, and when considering any kind of ethnic cleansing the holocaust is bound to come to mind.
Hitler strongly believed that a person's characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her racial make-up. We are all familiar with his plan in creating one superior Aryan race and eliminating all those "contaminating" his ideal society. These contaminators included people with physical and mental disabilities, immigrants, criminals, people of a so-called "inferior" race, homeless people, promiscuous women, the unemployed, and alcoholics.
But the twisted illusion of the Nordic blond-haired, blue-eyed master race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, particularly the state of California, many years before Hitler and the Holocaust. California's eugenicists played a vital, little-known, role in the American campaign for ethnic cleansing. The philosophy was enforced by national policy with both forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions.
Eugenics in the United States would have been no more convincing than the 2000 end of the world conspiracy theory if not for extensive financing by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. Such examples include that Harriman railroad fortune which paid some local charities, to find "unwanted" immigrants crowded cities such as New York and subject them to cleansing process through deportation, confinement or forced sterilization
Eugenic breeders in America did not believe the country was ready for a "final solution" but many mental institutions and doctors practiced passive medical lethality on their own. One example was an intuition that fed its patients milk from tubercular cows holding a belief that a "eugenically strong" individual would be immune. The result was 30-40% annual death rates. Some doctors at mental institutions were responsible with lethal neglect, while others quietly practiced passive eugenicide one newborn at a time. There were also cases of doctors sterilizing women without their consent by deceiving them to believe the procedures were just common routine after giving birth.
However, the end goals for many eugenicists were made for much quicker results through processes such as the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, and more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, in performing nearly all sterilization procedures. Most of which were with little or no due process.
"In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia. In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals." ( Article by Edwin Black of San Francisco Chronicle)
The most shocking part was the close relationship between American Eugenics and Hitler. In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology in open appraise. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant, calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of the Great Race," his "bible."
Now governor of California, and four other states, have presented public apologies to their citizens, for sterilization and abuse that came of the eugenics movement. Still, the most interesting feature remains as most shocking, considering all that we are taught of American values and Hitler's fascist Germany, Hitler's race hatred may have sprung from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
In an attempt to share interesting information with busy readers and save time by highlight the main points of this topic, much of what I'v written here is my summarized version of; Edwin Blacks's "Eugenics and the Nazis- The California Connection."
The full article is at; http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html
