Science & Intellectuals Fueled Nazism

Eugenics of old and its modern face

Erik Brown
9 min readAug 12, 2019

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Second International Exhibition of Eugenics September 22 to October 22, 1921 — Wikipedia Creative Commons

“Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.”

Sir Francis Galton, 1904

Humanity is no stranger to selective breeding. The modern dog you walk to the park every day is a creation of man. Its ancestors still exist to this day, hunting in the wild and howling at the moon. Your current puppy will show these ancient traits when it howls when a fire engine passes or chews on your sneakers.

Humans have also engaged in selective breeding intentionally with their own species. It’s common knowledge that the Romans and Spartans would leave children to die of exposure who weren’t seen of as fit. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs only married within the royal family to keep the bloodline pure.

However, this practice gained a new acceptance by the modern scientific community with the findings of natural selection by Charles Darwin. After his release of the “Origin Of Species” in 1859, his cousin, polymath Sir Francis Galton, would create a theory that would take natural selection to the next logical step — applying it to the human race.

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