Hitler And Social Darwinism Essay, Research Paper

Hitler and Social Darwinism

Though there are still some out there that try to deny it, the fact still remains that the Holocaust of WWII really did happen. How can anyone truthfully deny it? All the evidence is there. The concentration camps, the gash chambers, the documents, and lets not forget the millions of dead Jews, Gypsies, Negroes, and anyone else who opposed the evil known as the Nazis?.

Why did Hitler want so many people dead? Why did the man known as The Fuhrer want to exterminate and entire religious race? How was he able to convince so many millions of his divine status that they were willing to sacrifice both their own lives and the lives of other human beings for his faith?

Hitler said before the outbreak of World War I that if there were another war, he would annihilate the Jews. He said during World War II that he was in the process of annihilating the Jews, and he said in his Testament that he had done exactly what he had said he would do.

The ultimate aim and the primary target never varied. Others were murdered in the course of Hitler?s ?final solution?, e.g. Gypsies, Russian POW?s, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, and so on. But the first and constant target was always the Jews. The ?final solution? was intended for the Jews, was about the Jews, and chiefly affected the Jews. There is no denying that without the Jews, there would have been no ?final solution?

Why did Hitler have such hatred for the Jews? Professionals in the field of psychology state that from a psychological and psychiatric point of view, there can be little doubt that Hitler?s radical anti-Semite attitude must go back to a personal experience with a Jew that either actually was a radical violation of his personality or later was conceived as personal sin in his traumatized mind.

Looking back through history, WW II was not the only time that the Jews were persecuted just for being Jews, nor was it the first time that someone tried to exterminate an entire race just because he did not ?like? them.

What causes a person such as Hitler to have such hatred in himself? Many look at the situation and say that Hitler was just a ?crazy? man who felt the only way to establish power was to kill everyone he didn?t like. But there is also another was of looking at the whole picture that relates all the way back to the evolution of Social Darwinism.

Many Darwin sycophants overwhelmingly express that Darwin?s theory of evolution had nothing whatsoever to do with the first or second world wars, nor the Nazis and the Holocaust, nor the mass sterilization projects carried out in many countries. Their general argument states that ?people have always been bad, racist, and nasty to Jews, have always had it in for the disabled, and that consequently the theory of evolution has had nothing to do with the long list of 20th century horrors?.

But many evolutionists disagree with that statement and in fact say that, ?through an orthodox historical position, the theory of evolution played a part in inspiring people to racism, murder, and war.?

A German historian known as Wehler once wrote that, ?Social Darwinism banished hopes for a more open society and put the fixed laws of an anti-egalitarin system of social aristocracy in its place. Its functional significance laid I the fact that it enabled ruling elites to appear compatible with progress, while providing a justification for the immutability of the status quo. At the same time, it allowed the emancipator aspirations of the workers or colonial peoples to be dismissed as the futile protestations of inferior subjects in the struggle for existence. Vested with a n aura of ?irrefutable? scientific knowledge, it was this versatility of application that gave Social Darwinism its power in its very real connection with the ruling interests.?

Therefore, earlier races were thought ?inferior?, either because they represented an earlier stage of biological evolution and/or of socio-cultural evolution.

Charles Darwin seemed quite upbeat and positive about the elimination of inferior races in the mass acts of genocide and the beneficial effects it could have on the human race. He stated that, ?The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.? and because of that quote, Social Darwinism led to an increase in racism and racist attacks on Blacks, Slavs, Jews, homosexuals, and others.

Of course, under the Nazis, the evil effects of Social Darwinism rose to new institutional heights. Hitler was obsessed by race and the cultural superiority of the Germans. He greatly feared the superior German gene stock being ?watered down? by an inferior race such as the Jews. Hence was the beginning of the Holocaust.

He had tens or thousands of disabled or mixed race Germans murdered and/or sterilized. The invasion of Russia, which led to literally millions of deaths and untold suffering, was launched for similar reasons. Hitler saw the Russians (Slavs) as a competing and inferior race that the superior Germans should eliminate and replace, using the captured territory as living space.

The basic problem with Social Darwinism is that it fan be, and has been used to provide and intellectual support beam for a plethora of cruel and vicious policies; causes such as slavery, imperialism, racism, genocide, the Holocaust, Fascism, Communism, and war. Where previously there was no clear intellectual justification for most of these causes, Darwin provided one, and not only that, his justification had the backing of many reputable scientist of his day.

A quote by Carl Sagan can sum up exactly what Social Darwinism is all about, ?The Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and grotesquely misused. Voracious robber barons may explain their cutthroat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on ?survival of the fittest? to justify genocide, but Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler. Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of the government by the moneyed are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler?s rise to power. Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin; but modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barns and Fuhrers- altruism, general intelligence, compassion- may be the key to survival.?

Evolutionists often talk about the beauty and the elegance of the theory of Social Darwinism. But how can they sit there and back up the words of a racist Anglo-Saxon man after his theory has caused the death of millions and millions of people?

A chilling thought to be left with: Could it be that not only has Darwin inflicted terrible suffering upon millions, but even worst, was he wrong as well?