Adolf Hitler Quotes
Whoever is not physically or mentally fit must not pass on his defects to his children. The state must take care that only the fit produce children. Conversely, it must be regarded as reprehensible to withhold healthy children from the state.
Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, Fuhrer of the Third German Reich, Quoted in E. Rudin, "Aufgaben and Ziele der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene," Archiv Fur Rassen- und Gesellschafts- biologie”, 1934
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
There was a substantial movement to prevent mentally defective and people of low intelligence from being able to reproduce. Over 20 states, with the approval of the then Supreme Court performed forced state sterilizations. Of course the then definition of “degenerates” changed from state to state. A century later, American values changed so much that there is no state that would even consider involuntary sterilization and if they did, the Courts would hold it un-Constitutional.
The Association commissioned a study to develop:
The logic is that communities and areas—even countries have finite resources. Since we have a welfare society in which we will not allow people to starve, society must provide for children whose parents cannot. Therefore, individuals ought not to be allowed to breed beyond their ability to care for the children for if many would do so, the capacity of the community could be overwhelmed. A middle ground is that while the final decision should be left to the individual family, the society ought to educate and persuade members to limit their breeding.
Hitler’s Germany promptly passed the law which was the beginning of their program of human extermination and the Holocaust.
At the time there were some Americans who supported Hitler and Fascism. Even senior military men like Osborne.
Many Leading American supported forced sterilization of mentally handicapped people. Indiana passed the first forced sterilization laws and other states followed. The Supreme Court upheld the practice. See {603680}.
In one of the disgraces of American history, there was then an active Eugenics movement that advocated forced sterilization of people who were “unfit” to bear children. Over 20 states sterilized tens of thousands of American citizens who did not meet the “standards” of the state authorities who set the criteria of fitness. Sanger was one of those who called the implementation of Eugenics into question. However, note that even she accepted the notion of forced sterilization of mentally retarded people. Ironically, while some types of mental defects are heredity determined, others are not. The issue is a slippery slope under any conditions.
The Eugenics Movement, which grew quite popular for a while, tried to improve the race of man, not by improving individual people or even a generation of people, but of selective and restrictive breeding of humans. The coercion and bias associated with it caused one of the worst violations of human rights in American History, and then was picked up by Adolf Hitler who carried the ideas to one of the worst atrocities in human history—the murder of “inferior races” so that they could not breed, thereby in their warped theory developing a super race.
This book was the first popular attempt to spread the eugenics concept. Is was translated into German in 1925 and unfortunately read by Adolf Hitler who sent Grant a complimentary letter. See {603544}
The Eugenics Record Office was an activist organization advocating the forced sterilization of those people who they deemed to be inferior from a hereditary point of view. Most Americans are today shocked to find that this organization and its ideas were so influential that more than 30 states had passed similar laws. Only California and Virginia however were zealous in carrying them out . By 1935, 20,000 forced sterilizations had been carried out in the United States. The Supreme Court at the time even found such laws Constitutional. See {603680}.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming Chancellor in 1933 and then assuming the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about 6 million Jews and millions of other victims.
