Nazism was born in the chaos of the Germany which emerged defeated from the First World War. The leader of the party was the angry and aggressive Adolf Hitler. Racism formed the basis of Hitler’s world view. Hitler believed that the Aryan race, the fundamental element of the German nation, was superior to all the other races and had to rule them. He dreamed that the Aryan race would found a world empire that would last 1,000 years.
The scientific support Hitler found for these racist theories was Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Hitler’s most important idea-moulder, the racist German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, was strongly affected by Darwin’s theory of evolution and based his racist views on Darwinism. He used to say, “Nations can only develop by violent competition like Darwin’s survival of the fittest,” He thought: “The yellow races have no understanding of artistic ability and political freedom. It is the destiny of the black races to serve the whites and to be the target of the whites’ loathing for all eternityé” [1]
While Hitler was developing his theories he drew inspiration, like Treitschke, from Darwin and particularly Darwin’s idea of the fight for survival. The title of his notorious book Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) was inspired by the idea of this fight for survival. Just like Darwin, Hitler gave non-European races the status of monkeys, and said, “Take away the Nordic Germans and nothing remains but the dance of apes.” [2]
Hitler thought that human beings were highly developed animals and instead of allowing natural forces and chance, in a word coincidence, to control evolution, it was necessary to take the management of it into his own hands to develop the human race. And this was the ultimate aim of the Nazi movement. In order to realise this aim, the first step was to separate, to isolate, the inferior races from the Aryan race.
At this point the Nazis moved to the implementation of Darwinism, and took as their example the “theory of eugenics” which itself had its origins in Darwinism.
The theory of eugenics, which emerged in the first half of the 20th century, meant the weeding out of sick and handicapped people and the “improving” of the human race by increasing the number of healthy individuals. According to the theory of eugenics, in the same way that better kinds of animals can be produced by mating healthy animals with each other, so the human race could be improved in the same way.
As might be expected, those who put forward the eugenics programme were Darwinists. At the head of the eugenics wave in England came Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, and his son Leonard Darwin.
It was clear that the idea of eugenics was a natural result of Darwinism. In fact, this truth was awarded special importance in those publications which supported eugenics, “Eugenics is man’s taking charge of his own evolution,” it was said.
In Germany the first person to be influenced by and to spread eugenics was the famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel was a close friend and supporter of Darwin. He suggested that newly-born handicapped children should be killed forthwith and that this would speed up the evolution of society. He went even further, claiming that lepers and people with cancer and mental illnesses should be painlessly killed, or else these people would be a burden on society and would slow down evolution.
Haeckel died in 1919. But his ideas were inherited by the Nazis. Shortly after Hitler came to power an official eugenics programme was initiated. Hitler summed up the new policy in these sentences:
In the popular state, the education of the mind and the body will play an important role, but human selection is just as important. éThe state has the responsibility of declaring as unfit for reproductive purposes anyone who is obviously ill or genetically unsound. é and must carry through with this responsibility ruthlessly without respect to understanding or lack of understanding on the part of anyone. éStopping reproduction of the bodily degenerate or psychically ill for a period of only 600 years would lead éto an improvement in human health which can hardly be envisaged today. ééé [3]
As a necessity of this policy of Hitler’s, the mentally ill, the disabled, the blind from birth, and those with genetic diseases in German society, were rounded up in special “sterilisation centres.” These people were regarded as parasites harmful to the purity and evolutionary progress of the German race. A while later in fact, these people who were removed from society began to be killed by secret order of Hitler.
These murders were presented as perfectly reasonable and those who were accepted as genetically inferior were described as “unprofitable” and obstacle to the development of the nation. Hitler said. “It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on.” [4]
The author of the book Darwin: Before and After, Robert Clarke, concluded, Adolf Hitler: “éwas captivated by evolutionary teaching é probably since the time he was a boy. Hitler reasoned é that a higher race would always conquer a lower.” [5] The political philosophy of Nazi Germany took shape under the influence of these ideas of Hitler’s.
Hitler’s Hatred of Religion
Another reason for the great importance Hitler attached to the theory of evolution was his seeing the theory as a weapon against religious belief. Hitler had a great hatred of divine religions. Moral virtues such as compassion, mercy, and humility, ordered by divine religions, represented a great obstacle to the ruthless and warrior Aryan type the Nazis wanted to create. For this reason, once the Nazis came to power in 1933 they tried to turn German society back to its old pagan beliefs. The swastika, a symbol from the old pagan cultures, was a sign of this return. The Nazi ceremonies held in every corner of Germany were a return to the ancient pagan rites. The idea of evolution, an inheritance from pagan cultures, fitted in exceedingly well with the ideology of Nazism for this reason.
Actually, the fundamental cause of the countless catastrophes visited upon the world in the 20th century was the character of such people as Hitler and the Nazis who had no religion. These people who denied the existence of God and believed that human beings had evolved to become developed animals, saw themselves as unchecked, with no responsibility to answer to anyone. Because they had no fear of God and the hereafter they knew no limit to their immorality and tyranny, and for that reason they mercilessly killed millions of people. The difficulties and pains there will be in a society without religion are clearly to be seen in the example of Hitler. And not just Hitler: as we shall see later Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Franco, Mussolini and the others who drowned the 20th century in blood were known for being completely devoid of religion. A lesson must of course be drawn from the nightmare which comes from lack of religion.
Whereas those who fear Allah and live by Qur’anic morality always bring peace, calm, security, plenty, and enlightened times to a society. People faithful to the religion of Allah never disturb the peace anywhere in the world, on the contrary they always encourage compassion, pity, friendship, faithfulness, and co-operation. (For further information on the subject, see “Disasters Darwinism Brought to Humanity” by Harun Yahya)
Notes:
[1] Alaeddin Şenel, Irk ve Irkéılık Déşéncesi (The Idea of Race and Racism), Ankara:Bilim ve Sanat Yayınları, 1993, pp.62-6
[2] Carl Cohen, “Communism, Fascism and Democracy”, Random House, New York, 1972
[3] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ménchen: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1993, p. 44, 447-448; cited by A.E. Wilder Smith, “Man’s Origin, Man’s Destiny: A Critical Survey of the Principles of Evolution and Christianity“, The Word For Today Publishing 1993, p. 163, 164
[4] Theodore D. Hall, The Scientific Background of the Nazi “Race Purification” Program, http://www.trufax.org/avoid/nazi.html
[5] Robert Clark, “Darwin: Before and After”, Grand Rapids International Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 1958. p.115
Harun Yahya is a prominent Turkish intellectual.
Buy the relevant / Harun Yahya’s book (s) now:
Communism, Fascism, and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations
– by Carl Cohen
Man’s Origin, Man’s Destiny: A Critical Survey of the Principles of Evolution and Christianity
– by A. E. Wilder-Smith
Darwin, before and after : the story of evolution
– by Robert Edward David Clark
