Trans-Atlantic Connection: The Link Between American and Nazi Eugenics

Shaun Williamson

doi:10.29173/mruhr228

Abstract

This essay details some of the intellectual and financial links that were present between the eugenics movement found in the United States and the movement in Germany.

Highlights

Nazi eugenics programs of the 1930s and 1940s led to one of the most horri:ic events in human history, the Holocaust
British academic Francis Galton :irst coined the term “eugenics” in his 1883 book Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development1, he had been been writing about the idea as early as 1869 with the publication of his book Hereditary Genius
In the years following Galton’s Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development, scientists and activists continued to focus on the new :ield of eugenics, and the movement grew increasingly popular and accepted

Summary

Shaun Williamson

Nazi eugenics programs of the 1930s and 1940s led to one of the most horri:ic events in human history, the Holocaust. They were not, formed in an international vacuum. There were many connections between the American eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the Nazi Government of Germany’s eugenics policies that culminated in the Holocaust. In the years following Galton’s Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development, scientists and activists continued to focus on the new :ield of eugenics, and the movement grew increasingly popular and accepted. The development and popularization of negative eugenics during this period eventually led to the American state of Indiana passing the :irst compulsory sterilization law in the world in 1907. The eugenics movement gained widespread international support in the early 20th century

Both American and European eugenicists gathered together at the First

Laughlin believed that immigrants to the United

Findings

At this point it was clear to many