War Against the Weak: The Chilling Story of America’s Dark Dalliance with Eugenics

Nazi Germany wasn’t the first nation to be enamored with racial purity and a master race.

Proponents of eugenics gained immense influence here in the early 20th century. They hoped to incarcerate millions of “unfit” Americans in colonies, forbid them from marrying, or forcibly sterilize them so that, within several generations, only white Nordics would remain. For them, this was ultimately a global enterprise.

Historian and prolific author Edwin Black chronicles this dark phase of American history in his extensively researched book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. He charts how dubious scientific studies gained support and led to forced sterilizations, segregation, marriage prohibitions, and immigration restrictions for targeted populations.

The book was published in 2003; an expanded version emerged in 2012. Black writes that the material he gathered could have resulted in a standalone book for each chapter. Indeed, his detailing of the American programs alone – the first chapter describes a sheriff sweeping up Appalachian hillbillies for sterilization – makes one shudder at the casual cruelty. And his presentation of the eugenicists behind the programs and the billionaires who supported them makes one wonder if they were any different from the Nazis.

The idea of improving humans by weeding out the worst and the science underpinning it were of British origin. Indeed, 19th-century British scientist Sir Francis Galton coined the term ‘eugenics,’ in which the EU (Greek for good) later acquired a dystopian dimension. But it was in the U.S. that its practice began, backed by the fortunes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Harrimans, and other billionaires. It also enjoyed support from the Department of Agriculture.

What a load. (not criticizing the posting)

The concept of racial/hereditary purity, which is the same motivation as tracing bloodlines and the idea of genetic/hereditary purity - originated in the far older European civilization, not the new American continent.

The author of the book contends that it was the American eugenics movement that informed and influenced Nazi Germany’s eugenics program. What nonsense.

Black shows it was America that established the values of race and blood, which by the 1920s and 1930s were embraced throughout Europe.

He has it backwards on purpose. It was imported from European intellectuals. The tracing of Euoropean bloodlines goes back millennia.

The Nazis clearly drew on these values and methods. But it might also be said that America literally took those ideas to Germany in the 1920s. The efforts of German “race hygienists” received funding and support from America, particularly from the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Harrimans. As Black puts it, “by the late twenties, Davenport and other Americans had created a whirlwind of joint projects and entanglements with German eugenics.”

The eugenics movement in America may have funded German “race hygienists” - but the concept of an elite race, similar to elite bloodlines - is an entirely EUROPEAN construct.

Charles Davenport, a devotee of Galton and Gregor Mendel

An American "devotee" of two Europeans..

Charles Davenport - American
Sir Francis Galton - British
Gregor Mendel - Austrian-Czech

Rewriting history for the newer generations. The concepts behind social engineering and social CONTROL - all originate in European philosophical and social movements, which inevitably found their way into American social movements.

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