Darwinian Scientists Produced the Holocaust
How Scientists and University Professors Produced the Holocaust:
The Shadow of the Professor Change Laura Tan Case
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
The case of Professor Change Laura Tan (see 11 Jan 2023) has numerous parallels with academia in Europe, especially in Germany during the WWII era. I will let the reader draw the many obvious parallels between academe’s response in Europe during the last century and university culture today. I have relied heavily on Professor Steven Hick’s work because, as an academic, he has managed to effectively relate the heart of the European situation. This allows me to outline the comparison without cluttering the paper with scores of footnotes and references.
Scientist Collaborators with the Nazis
The “list of intellectuals who supported the Nazis long before they came to power…. represents a ‘Who’s Who’ list of powerful minds and cultural leaders.”[1] Some examples include Heidelberg University professor of theoretical physics, Philipp Lenard, who was the 1905 Nobel laureate in Physics for his important discoveries on cathode rays. Lenard was an anti-Semite and an active proponent of the Nazi ideology for his entire life. He supported Adolf Hitler in the 1920s and was a role model for the “Deutsche Physik” movement during the Nazi period. He dismissed Albert Einstein’s scientific contributions by calling them “Jewish physics,” thus unsupported.[2]
University of Munich professor Johannes Stark was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 1919 for his discovery of the Doppler effect and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields.[3] He joined the Nazi party in 1930 and was so prominent that after Germany lost the war he was sentenced to four years in a labor camp by a post-war de-Nazification court.
Gerhart Hauptmann, dramatist and novelist, was a 1912 Nobel prize winner in literature. When he met Hitler he described the meeting as the “greatest moment of my life.”[4] He had earlier been a founding member of the eugenics organization named the German Society for Racial Hygiene.
Other Nazi intellectuals include Dr. Oswald Spengler, German historian and philosopher of history, whose interests included mathematics, science, and art. He was the author of the bestselling two-volume set titled The Decline of the West, which was widely read and endorsed by leading German intellectuals.
Nazi Moeller van den Bruck was a leading German intellectual, cultural historian, philosopher, and writer best known for his 1923 book Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) which promoted German nationalism.
University of Greifswald professor Dr. Carl Schmitt was one of the most respected legal minds in Europe and the author of many important books. He was a German jurist and political theorist who provided much intellectual support for, and was actively involved in, Nazism. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933. Within days he supported the burning of books by Jewish authors and “un-German” and “anti-German” material, calling for a much more extensive purge to include works by authors influenced by Jewish ideas.
University of Freiburg professor Martin Heidegger is “widely considered one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.”[5] He joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1933 after Hitler seized the government. Heidegger organized and supervised militaristic organizations of university students and faculty for Nazism.
University of Munich professor Karl Ernst Haushofer (1869 –1946) was one of the most important originators of the ideas that culminated in WWII.[6] In 1919, Haushofer met a university student named Rudolf Hess, one of the original founders of the Nazi Party. Both Haushofer and Hess naively accepted Darwin’s worldview and successfully implemented it into a paramount position in German Nazi policy.
The Fit of Darwinism and Nazism
These and many other intellectuals believed that Nazism was based in scientific fact because it was supported by leading philosophers and scientists. They concluded that Nazism was also a noble idea and the ultimate hope of the world. Furthermore, in harmony with Darwinism, they believed that peace makes people soft and, in contrast, war makes people vigorous and strong. Strong people are also willing to fight for their ideals and even die for them.
Intellectual Gottfried Feder was the founder of the German Workers’ Party, which changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, abbreviated as the “Nazi party”. The name change was to more accurately express its core values. When Hitler heard the ideas of Feder it changed his life.[7]
Feder made important contributions which influenced Hitler’s later strident opposition to Jews. This opposition was based on Hitler’s belief that many of society’s problems were due to Jews and that Jews were a real threat to society.[8] German author, nationalist and socialist political leader Anton Drexler gave Hitler a copy of his 40-page anti-Semitic, socialist, anti-capitalist pamphlet titled My Political Awakening which he enthusiastically read.[9] It gave Hitler further support for ideas that he picked up when he lived in Vienna.
It is difficult to determine the exact contributions of these different men, but it appears that Hitler came up with few original ideas. Rather, he assimilated the ideas of others and ran with them.[10] Of note is that the Nazi party platform was written by Feder, Hitler, and the politician Anton Drexler. They followed this platform until their defeat in April of 1946.
Hitler Becomes a Darwinist
Not only did Haushofer influence Hitler, but among those who “read Haeckel was the young Adolf Hitler, who would select precisely what he wanted from Social Darwinist thought” found in Ernst Haeckel’s works.[11] Around 1907, while living in Vienna, Hitler embraced “a crude hackneyed Darwinism.” Darwinism would form the foundation of his thought, especially his views on Lebensraum (“living space” or settler colonialism deemed as an undeniable right) which were central to his invasion of Russia.[12] In 1923 Professor Haushofer visited his student Rudolf Hess in Landsberg Prison where both Hitler and Hess were serving time for the November 8, 1923, failed coup. During the summer and fall of 1924, Haushofer spent many Wednesdays holding seminar-style lectures with the two inmates. As a result, Hitler later claimed that “Landsberg was my university [education] at state expense.”[13]
Joseph Goebbels
One man whose ideas were clearly crucial to Hitler was Dr. Joseph Goebbels. He was
the most brilliant and educated of all the Nazi politicians…. he was one of the most powerful of the very top Nazis—perhaps number two or three after Hitler… He received a wide-ranging classical education by attending five universities in Germany, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in literature and philosophy from Heidelberg University in 1921. During his graduate days he absorbed and agreed with much of the writings of communists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially their searing condemnation of capitalism.[14]
Economics was only a minor part of the Nazi platform. As true Darwinists, they recognized that “The major battle is between different racial and cultural groups with different biological histories… between Germans—with their particular biological inheritance and cultural history—[and] against all other racial cultures.”[15] Point 23 of the Nazi party platform calls for strict censorship of all newspapers and point 24 puts limits on religions that do not agree with Nazi goals.
Nazism: The Party of the Well-Educated
When the Nazi party came to power in 1933, fully 51 percent of the party members were from the professional classes, especially teachers. Teachers were required to take an oath of “absolute fidelity to Adolf Hitler.” This amounts to indoctrinating their students into Nazism. This is not unlike the requirement that teachers today are required by law to teach only Darwinism, and are not allowed to present information against Darwinism, which amounts to indoctrinating their students into Darwinism. Furthermore, Professor Stephen Hicks has concluded that “The Nazis had also achieved great success with older students, those of university age. Well before Hitler came to power, Nazi student groups existed at universities all over Germany.”
Furthermore, even before the Nazis took control of the government in 1933, “it was common for students to come to classes wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands, and in many cases it was the most intelligent and idealistic university students who were the most activist and outspoken supporters of National Socialism. The students also had many [Nazi] supporters among their professors.” [16]
When the Nazis took power, they prohibited all Jews and other persons deemed “objectionable” from holding academic positions. This policy resulted in the firing of hundreds of tenured Jewish professors, including several Nobel laureates.[17] The next step was book burning. Dr. Goebbels explained that any book which was deemed subversive to “our future or strikes at the root of German thought” should be destroyed. The result was that, only a few months after the Nazis assumed power on 10 May 1933, massive book burnings began.[18]
Book Burnings Begin at Universities
In an open square across from the University of Berlin, roughly 20,000 books were burned in a huge bonfire. Goebbels spoke at the event to 40,000 cheering student and professor spectators.[19] Professor Hicks added that the book burnings “were not instigated by the Nazi Government. Nor were they instigated by non-intellectual thugs. The book burning rampage was instigated by university students. The Nazi Party’s student organization conceived and carried out book burning all across the country—book bonfires burned brightly that night in every German university city. The professors had taught their students well.”[20]
Darwinian Eugenics
The Darwinian eugenics movement was the soil in which Nazi ideology grew. Even before the
Nazis came to power, German intellectuals were among the world leaders in eugenics research. In 1916 Dr. Ernst Rudin, the director of the Genealogical-Demographic Department of the German Institute for Psychiatric Research, established a field of psychiatric hereditary biology based on eugenics theory. Rudin became the president of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, the world’s leader of the eugenics movement.… By the time the Nazis came to power, eugenics was an established part of German intellectual life. One striking indication of this is that German Universities had twenty-three official professors of Racial Hygiene. National Socialism held that the state should take over where natural selection left off.”[21]
Thus, the core of Nazism was Social Darwinism and, in the end, the main reason why Nazism failed was due to this Darwinian core which was also the main driving force behind Lebensraum.[22] The Darwinian core is also one of the main drivers of intolerance in universities today.[23] The case of Professor Change Laura Tan is only one of the latest examples of intolerance within academia that was taken over by the Left, as was also true during the Nazi era. The pressing need now is to stand up against this movement of intolerance in academia.
References
[1] Hicks, Stephen. Nietzsche and the Nazis. Ockham’s Razor Publishers, Rockford College, Illinois, 2010, p. 9
[2] Wheaton, Bruce R. Philipp Lenard and the Photoelectric Effect, 1889-1911. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 9: 299–322. 1978.
[3] “JOHANNES STARK, GERMAN PHYSICIST; Nobel Prize-Winner in 1919 Dies–Was Sentenced to 4 Years as a ‘Leading Nazi’.” The New York Times, 22 June 1957, p. 15.
[4] Hicks, Stephen. 2010. p. 9.
[5] Palmer, Tom. Martin Heidegger: Philosopher of Nazism and Other Collectivist Cults; https://fee.org/articles/martin-heidegger-philosopher-of-nazism-and-other-collectivist-cults, 2016.
[6] Low, Alford. The Men Around Hitler: The Nazi Elite and Its Collaborators. Monograph. Columbia University Press, New York, New York, 1996.
[7] Dornberg, John Munich 1923. Harper & Row, New York, New York, 1982, p. 344.
[8] Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Profiles in Power. Routledge, Oxfordshire, England, 2001.
[9] Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, New York, p. 75.
[10] Bergman, Jerry. 2020. Darwinian Eugenics and The Holocaust: American Industrial Involvement. Involgo Press. Peterborough, Ontario, CANADA.
[11]Remak, Joachim H. 1990. The Nazi Years: A Documentary History. Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois, p. 3.
[12]Low, 1996, p. 3.
[13] Herwig, Holger H. 2016. The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer ”Educated” Hitler and Hess. New York, New York: Roman & Littlefield. 2016. p. xiv.
[14] Hicks, 2010, p. 18.
[15] Hicks, 2010, p. 19.
[16] Hicks, 2010, p. 32.
[17] Hicks, 2010, pp. 29, 31-32.
[18] Bergman, Jerry. 2012. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview: How the Nazi Eugenic Crusade for a Superior Race Caused the Greatest Holocaust in World History. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press.
[19] Hicks, 2010, p. 33.
[20] Hicks, 2010, pp. 33-34.
[21] Hicks, 2010, pp. 36-37.
[22] Murphy, David. The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918-1933. The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1997.
[23] Bergman, Jerry. 2022. Censoring the Darwin Skeptics. How Belief in Evolution is Enforced by Eliminating Dissidents. Southworth, WA: Leafcutter Press. Revised edition.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,300 publications in 12 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.