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138-411: The German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz introduced the term "racial hygiene" ( Rassenhygiene ) in 1895 in his Racial Hygiene Basics ( Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene ). He discussed the importance of avoiding "counterselective forces" such as war, inbreeding, free healthcare for the poor, alcohol and venereal disease. In its earliest incarnation it was more concerned by the declining birthrate of

276-580: A German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa . World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries. Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms . Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory ; opposition to

414-600: A progressive social movement in the 19th century, in contemporary usage in the 21st century, the term is closely associated with scientific racism . New, liberal eugenics seeks to dissociate itself from old, authoritarian eugenics by rejecting coercive state programs and relying on parental choice. Eugenic programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. In other words, positive eugenics

552-439: A Eugenic Philosophy" framed eugenics as a social philosophy —a philosophy with implications for social order . That definition is not universally accepted. Osborn advocated for higher rates of sexual reproduction among people with desired traits ("positive eugenics") or reduced rates of sexual reproduction or sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits ("negative eugenics"). In addition to being practiced in

690-465: A cause of physical and social pathology as much as a defense against it. "When under any kind of noxious influence an organism becomes debilitated, its successors will not resemble the healthy, normal type of the species, with capacities for development, but will form a new sub-species, which, like all others, possesses the capacity of transmitting to its offspring, in a continuously increasing degree, its peculiarities, these being morbid deviations from

828-536: A concentration camp. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps. Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust. Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor. The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish and they were

966-463: A few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits. The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet. In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive . Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards. Executions were public spectacles and

1104-646: A focus on intelligence. Early critics of the philosophy of eugenics included the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward , the English writer G. K. Chesterton , and Scottish tuberculosis pioneer and author Halliday Sutherland . Ward's 1913 article "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics", Chesterton's 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils , and Franz Boas ' 1916 article " Eugenics " (published in The Scientific Monthly ) were all harshly critical of

1242-553: A food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas. Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped, the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad , as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation. By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in

1380-610: A group known as The Famous Five , also pushed for various eugenic policies. Following the Mexican Revolution , the eugenics movement gained prominence in Mexico. Seeking to change the genetic make-up of the country's population, proponents of eugenics in Mexico focused primarily on rebuilding the population, creating healthy citizens, and ameliorating the effects of perceived social ills such as alcoholism, prostitution, and venereal diseases. Mexican eugenics, at its height in

1518-555: A higher chance of survival. Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates. In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system. Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to

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1656-820: A nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union , 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe . Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived

1794-724: A number of countries, eugenics was internationally organized through the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations . Its scientific aspects were carried on through research bodies such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics , the Cold Spring Harbor Carnegie Institution for Experimental Evolution , and the Eugenics Record Office . Politically,

1932-659: A result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close. Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany . On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom . Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed, at least 90 Jews were murdered, and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested , although many were released within weeks. German Jews were levied

2070-525: A significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule. Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from

2208-438: A similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups . The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space" , and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews to emigrate , regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated

2346-551: A slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market . In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor; for

2484-691: A special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM). The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany . By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa. The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai , Mandatory Palestine , and South Africa. Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM, mostly from Jews. The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940. Besides Germany,

2622-456: A symbol of the ultimate human evil. The term Holocaust , derived from a Greek word meaning ' burnt offering ', has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages. The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted, especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular

2760-455: A variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps . The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses. Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life, Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose

2898-587: A view to their ultimate disappearance from the country. Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business. In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy. Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939. Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized. As

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3036-661: Is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged, for example, the eminently intelligent, the healthy, and the successful. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning. Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally "undesirable". This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning. Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive; in Nazi Germany, for example, abortion

3174-423: Is artificially pieced together of bits of mental hygiene, child guidance, nutrition, speech development and correction, family problems, wealth consumption, food preparation, household technology, and horticulture. A nursery school and a school for little children are also included. The institute is actually justified in an official publication by the profound question of a girl student who is reported as asking, “What

3312-731: Is controversial. Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942. Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees. The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews. The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted. The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by

3450-630: Is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence." It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide. Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy. The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being

3588-490: Is the connection of Shakespeare with having a baby?” The Vassar Institute of Euthenics bridges this gap! Eugenicist Charles Benedict Davenport noted in his article "Euthenics and Eugenics," reprinted in Popular Science Monthly : Thus the two schools of euthenics and eugenics stand opposed, each viewing the other unkindly. Against eugenics it is urged that it is a fatalistic doctrine and deprives life of

3726-567: The Aktion T4 campaign, is understood by historians to have paved the way for the Holocaust . "All practices aimed at eugenics, any use of the human body or any of its parts for financial gain, and human cloning shall be prohibited." Hungarian Constitution "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." The first and most fundamental article of German basic law By

3864-702: The Catholic Church was an opponent of state-enforced sterilizations, but accepted isolating people with hereditary diseases so as not to let them reproduce. Attempts by the Eugenics Education Society to persuade the British government to legalize voluntary sterilization were opposed by Catholics and by the Labour Party . The American Eugenics Society initially gained some Catholic supporters, but Catholic support declined following

4002-530: The English Channel . The precursors of this notion were earlier medical experiments which German doctors performed on African prisoners of war in concentration camps in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide . A key aspect of National Socialism was the concept of racial hygiene and it was elevated to the primary philosophy of the German medical community, first by activist physicians within

4140-631: The German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas . Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule . An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in

4278-497: The German–Soviet pact . The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war. Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy. In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including

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4416-627: The Holocaust , the German National Socialist effort to purge Europe of Jews, Romani people , Slavs , Blacks , mixed race people , and physically or intellectually disabled people. In the Aktion T4 program, Hitler ordered the execution of mentally-ill patients by euthanasia under the cover of deaths from strokes and illnesses. The methods and equipment that had been used in the murder of thousands of mentally ill persons were then transferred to concentration camps, because

4554-591: The Industrial Revolution have resulted in an increased propagation of deleterious traits and genetic disorders . Compulsory sterilization , also known as forced or coerced sterilization, refers to any government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done by surgical or chemical means. Purported justifications for compulsory sterilization have included population control , eugenics, limiting

4692-508: The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring , called for the sterilization of any person who had a genetically determined illness. The Sterilization Law was drafted by some of Germany's top racial hygienists, including: Fritz Lenz , Alfred Ploetz , Ernst Rudin , Heinrich Himmler , Gerhard Wagner and Fritz Thyssen . Robert N. Proctor has shown that the list of illnesses which

4830-815: The Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths. Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank , the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews. After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar , but this proved impossible. The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews. In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941. During

4968-492: The Roma and Sinti , as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians . All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons. By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews. The Hebrew word Shoah ('catastrophic destruction') exclusively refers to Jewish victims. The perpetrators used

5106-576: The Soviet threat. Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union , as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany . Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation , the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections , by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery. Hitler

5244-571: The Wola Massacre , or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation. Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to

5382-510: The founding father of Singapore , actively promoted eugenics as late as 1983. In 1984, Singapore began providing financial incentives to highly educated women to encourage them to have more children. For this purpose was introduced the "Graduate Mother Scheme" that incentivized graduate women to get married as much as the rest of their populace. The incentives were extremely unpopular and regarded as eugenic, and were seen as discriminatory towards Singapore's non-Chinese ethnic population. In 1985,

5520-606: The ghettos . Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation, making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews. Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed. About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare , including more than 300,000 in Belarus. From 1942 onwards,

5658-399: The postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum. The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews. The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war, and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust. From the beginning,

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5796-404: The rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them . Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe . The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish

5934-453: The 1930 papal encyclical Casti connubii . In this, Pope Pius XI explicitly condemned sterilization laws: "Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason." In fact, more generally, "[m]uch of

6072-643: The 1930s and 1940s, institutes in Nazi Germany studied genetics, created genetic registries and researched twins. Nazi scientists also studied blood, and developed theories on the supposed racial specificity of blood types, with the goal of distinguishing an "Aryan" from a Jew by examining their blood. In the 1940s, Josef Mengele , a doctor in the Schutzstaffel ( SS ), provided human remains that were taken from Auschwitz  – blood, limbs and other body parts – to be studied at

6210-490: The 1930s, influenced the state's health, education, and welfare policies. The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany . Adolf Hitler had praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf in 1925 and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in

6348-704: The Anglican clergymen William Inge and James Peile both wrote for the Eugenics Education Society. Inge was an invited speaker at the 1921 International Eugenics Conference , which was also endorsed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York Patrick Joseph Hayes . Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists, with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York City. Eugenic policies in

6486-653: The German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans . Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge , with varying rights. The regime also sought to segregate Jews with

6624-587: The German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials , and culture . It has become central to Western historical consciousness as

6762-779: The German state and the increasing number of mentally-ill and disabled people in state-run institutions (and their costs to the state) than it was by the " Jewish question " and the "degeneration of the Nordic race " ( Entnordung ) which would come to dominate its philosophy in Germany from the 1920s to the Second World War . During the last years of the 19th century, the German racial hygienists Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer regarded certain people as inferior, and they opposed their ability to procreate. These theorists believed that all human behaviors, including crime , alcoholism and divorce , were caused by genetics. During

6900-547: The Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants. During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot. By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus. Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported. Although most of those killed were not Jews, anti-partisan warfare often led to

7038-850: The Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically. After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions. Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed. They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had

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7176-432: The Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned. Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable

7314-827: The Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews , whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity ". The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements. The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler , were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization. These ideas appealed to many Germans. The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from

7452-631: The Netherlands , Belgium , Luxembourg , France , and Denmark and Norway . In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece . Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule . The war provided cover for " Aktion T4 ", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas. The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of

7590-528: The Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police. The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries. The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia , which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942. The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps

7728-509: The United Kingdom and France . During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders; there was also a great deal of looting. Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance. Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed . The Auschwitz concentration camp

7866-462: The United States were first implemented by state-level legislators in the early 1900s. Eugenic policies also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries including Belgium, Brazil, Canada , Japan and Sweden . Frederick Osborn 's 1937 journal article "Development of

8004-606: The United States once he took power. Some common early 20th century eugenics methods involved identifying and classifying individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women , homosexuals, and racial groups (such as the Roma and Jews in Nazi Germany ) as "degenerate" or "unfit", and therefore led to segregation, institutionalization, sterilization, and even mass murder . The Nazi policy of identifying German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit and then systematically killing them with poison gas, referred to as

8142-600: The Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators. The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź , were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence. Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left

8280-510: The assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation. The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe. Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out. Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of

8418-554: The beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration. Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk . In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in

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8556-865: The child was deemed incapable of living a Spartan life, the child was usually killed in a chasm near the Taygetus mountain known as the Apothetae . Further trials intended to discern a child's fitness included bathing them in wine and exposing them to the elements to fend for themselves, with the intention of ensuring that only those considered strongest survived and procreated. And so selective infanticide seems to have been as widespread in Ancient Rome as it had already long been in Athens . The term eugenics and its modern field of study were first formulated by Francis Galton in 1883, directly drawing on

8694-409: The country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe. Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws . In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service . After hounding

8832-653: The deaths of Jews. The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941. During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army . Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior , 1.6 million were Jews. Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania , eastern Poland , Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence

8970-491: The decision to switch to other methods of killing. Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe, but there is disagreement as to when. Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews , plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of

9108-694: The deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees. If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps. Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942. In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps. In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation. The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting

9246-610: The disabled at home. Similar concerns had been raised by early eugenicists and social Darwinists during the 19th century, and continued to play a role in scientific and public policy debates throughout the 20th century. More recent concerns about supposed dysgenic effects in human populations were advanced by the controversial psychologist Richard Lynn , notably in his 1996 book Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations , which argued that changes in selection pressures and decreased infant mortality since

9384-426: The doctrines; it comprehends them both. [...] [I]n the generations to come, the teachings and practice of euthenics [...] [may] yield greater result because of the previous practice of the principles of eugenics. The more rational the race becomes, the better roads, ships, tools, machines, foods, medicines and the like it will produce to aid itself, though it will need them less. The more sagacious and just and humane

9522-674: The early geneticists were not themselves Darwinians. Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities and received funding from various sources. Organizations were formed to win public support for and to sway opinion towards responsible eugenic values in parenthood, including the British Eugenics Education Society of 1907 and the American Eugenics Society of 1921. Both sought support from leading clergymen and modified their message to meet religious ideals. In 1909,

9660-440: The early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns , spoke Yiddish , and practiced Orthodox Judaism . Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to

9798-451: The end of World War II , many eugenics laws were abandoned, having become associated with Nazi Germany . H. G. Wells , who had called for "the sterilization of failures" in 1904, stated in his 1940 book The Rights of Man: Or What Are We Fighting For? that among the human rights, which he believed should be available to all people, was "a prohibition on mutilation , sterilization, torture , and any bodily punishment". After World War II,

9936-404: The end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive. By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot and as many as 225,000 Roma. The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced

10074-651: The end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews. In July and August Heinrich Himmler , the leader of the SS ( Schutzstaffel ), made several visits to the death squads ' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews. At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too. Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus . The executions often took place

10212-417: The extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables. The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property. In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during

10350-454: The final decision having been made before December 1941. Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive . On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor . The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials , referring to his 1939 prophecy , "The world war

10488-483: The frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fertility of people and groups they considered inferior, or promoting that of those considered superior. The contemporary history of eugenics began in the late 19th century, when a popular eugenics movement emerged in the United Kingdom, and then spread to many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and most European countries (e.g. Sweden and Germany ). In this period, people from across

10626-470: The ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka. At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to

10764-550: The ghetto to work outside it. Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued. A Jewish community leadership ( Judenrat ) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve. Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property. Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe

10902-604: The ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible. Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto

11040-603: The ghetto, and set it on fire. These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw , Białystok , and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as

11178-483: The importance of German racial purity often served as the theoretical backbone of Nazi policies of racial superiority and later genocide . The policies began in 1935, when the National Socialists enacted the Nuremberg Laws , which legislated racial purity by forbidding sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans as Rassenschande (racial shame). Racial hygienists played key roles in

11316-568: The incentives were partly abandoned as ineffective, while the government matchmaking agency, the Social Development Network , remains active. Developments in genetic , genomic , and reproductive technologies at the beginning of the 21st century have raised numerous questions regarding the ethical status of eugenics, sparking renewed interest in the topic. Holocaust The Holocaust ( / ˈ h ɑː l ə k ɔː ˈ s t / , HAW -lə-kawst )

11454-504: The institutes. Harnessing racial hygiene as a justification, the scientists used prisoners from Auschwitz and other concentration camps as test subjects for their human experiments. Theories on racial hygiene led to an elaborate sterilization program, with the goal of eliminating what the Nazis regarded as diseases harmful to the human race. Sterilized individuals, reasoned the Nazis, would not pass on their diseases to their children. The Sterilization Law, passed on July 14, 1933, also known as

11592-535: The invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone. Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor. In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands. Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings. The first Nazi ghettos were established in

11730-457: The journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments . Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to

11868-431: The killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941. Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war. Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews. Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland. The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in

12006-461: The largest number of Jews . Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943. Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000. Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine . At

12144-481: The law targeted included " feeblemindedness , schizophrenia , manic depression , epilepsy , Huntington's chorea , genetic blindness, and 'severe alcoholism.'" The estimated number of citizens who were sterilized in Nazi Germany ranges from 350,000 to 400,000. As a result of the Sterilization Law, sterilization medicine and research soon became one of the largest medical industries. In Nazi propaganda ,

12282-439: The majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs ), and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia , who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory . Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942. Prior to

12420-467: The materials and resources needed to efficiently murder large numbers of people existed and had been proven successful. The nurses and the staff who had assisted and performed the killings were then moved along with the gas chambers to the concentration camps, which were being built in order to be able to replicate the mass murders repeatedly. The doctors who carried out experiments on the prisoners in concentration camps specialised in racial hygiene and used

12558-458: The medical profession, particularly amongst psychiatrists. That was later codified and institutionalized during and after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933, during the process of Gleichschaltung (literally, "coordination" or "unification"), which streamlined the medical and mental hygiene (mental health) profession into a rigid hierarchy with National Socialist-sanctioned leadership at the top. The blueprint for Nazism's attitude toward other races

12696-454: The mentally ill), compulsory sterilization , forced abortions or forced pregnancies , ultimately culminating in genocide . By 2014, gene selection (rather than "people selection") was made possible through advances in genome editing , leading to what is sometimes called new eugenics , also known as "neo-eugenics", "consumer eugenics", or "liberal eugenics"; which focuses on individual freedom and allegedly pulls away from racism, sexism or

12834-452: The midst of a severe mental epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria, and it is natural that we should ask anxiously on all sides: 'What is to come next?" Max Simon Nordau (1892) The idea of progress was at once a social, political and scientific theory. The theory of evolution, as described in Darwin's The Origin of Species , provided for many social theorists

12972-437: The most part, only those working in armaments production were spared. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust. In order to reduce resistance,

13110-402: The movement advocated measures such as sterilization laws. In its moral dimension, eugenics rejected the doctrine that all human beings are born equal and redefined moral worth purely in terms of genetic fitness. Its racist elements included pursuit of a pure " Nordic race " or " Aryan " genetic pool and the eventual elimination of "unfit" races. Many leading British politicians subscribed to

13248-579: The necessary scientific foundation for the idea of social and political progress. The terms evolution and progress were in fact often used interchangeably in the 19th century. The rapid industrial, political and economic progress in 19th-century Europe and North America was, however, paralleled by a sustained discussion about increasing rates of crime, insanity, vagrancy, prostitution, and so forth. Confronted with this apparent paradox, evolutionary scientists, criminal anthropologists and psychiatrists postulated that civilization and scientific progress could be

13386-457: The new regime. The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament . The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support. Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis. The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of

13524-498: The normal form – gaps in development, malformations and infirmities" Dysgenics refers to any decrease in the prevalence of traits deemed to be either socially desirable or generally adaptive to their environment due to selective pressure disfavouring their reproduction. In 1915 the term was used by David Starr Jordan to describe the supposed deleterious effects of modern warfare on group-level genetic fitness because of its tendency to kill physically healthy men while preserving

13662-488: The number who were deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium , France , and the Netherlands . Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed; most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France. The death rate in

13800-623: The opposition to eugenics during that era, at least in Europe, came from the right." The eugenicists' political successes in Germany and Scandinavia were not at all matched in such countries as Poland and Czechoslovakia , even though measures had been proposed there, largely because of the Catholic church's moderating influence. "Any new set of conditions which renders a species' food and safety very easily obtained, seems to lead to degeneration" Ray Lankester (1880) "We stand now in

13938-442: The organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000. Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans. The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate. Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism. In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by

14076-521: The original nature that is bred into man, the better schools, laws, churches, traditions and customs it will fortify itself by. There is no so certain and economical a way to improve man's environment as to improve his nature. According to Plutarch , in Sparta every proper citizen's child was inspected by the council of elders, the Gerousia , which determined whether or not the child was fit to live. If

14214-426: The peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year. Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp

14352-480: The phrase " Final Solution " as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews. Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology , which blamed them for killing Jesus . In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate . By

14490-425: The political spectrum espoused eugenic ideas. Consequently, many countries adopted eugenic policies, intended to improve the quality of their populations' genetic stock. Historically, the idea of eugenics has been used to argue for a broad array of practices ranging from prenatal care for mothers deemed genetically desirable to the forced sterilization and murder of those deemed unfit. To population geneticists ,

14628-406: The possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism. According to historian Christian Gerlach , non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways. Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide. Corruption was rampant in the SS despite

14766-636: The practice of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group" fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims "the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons". Lee Kuan Yew ,

14904-464: The prevention and removal of contagious disease and parasites . In a New York Times article of May 23, 1926, Rose Field notes of the description, "the simplest [is] efficient living". It is also described as "a right to environment", commonly as dual to a "right of birth" that correspondingly falls under the purview of eugenics. The influential historian of education Abraham Flexner questions its scientific value in stating: [T]he “science”

15042-832: The previous Aktion T4 programme —amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate. In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia , Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941. The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice. The stench caused by mass killing operations

15180-440: The proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property. Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps. Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews. Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses. Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews. Some Poles living near

15318-439: The prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers, which imposed the penalty of imprisonment and death. Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe. Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news. Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding

15456-542: The prospect of material gain and social advancement. German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light. Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen , Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries , Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians. Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards,

15594-437: The racial aspects of their theories. Eugenics Eugenics ( / j uː ˈ dʒ ɛ n ɪ k s / yoo- JEN -iks ; from Ancient Greek εύ̃ (eû)  'good, well' and -γενής (genḗs)  'born, come into being, growing/grown') is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population . Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter

15732-430: The rapidly growing movement. Several biologists were also antagonistic to the eugenics movement, including Lancelot Hogben . Other biologists who were themselves eugenicists, such as J. B. S. Haldane and R. A. Fisher , however, also expressed skepticism in the belief that sterilization of "defectives" (i.e. a purely negative eugenics) would lead to the disappearance of undesirable genetic traits. Among institutions,

15870-700: The recent work delineating natural selection by his half-cousin Charles Darwin . He published his observations and conclusions chiefly in his influential book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development . Galton himself defined it as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations". The first to systematically apply Darwinism theory to human relations, Galton believed that various desirable human qualities were also hereditary ones, although Darwin strongly disagreed with this elaboration of his theory. And it should also be noted that many of

16008-498: The senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews. Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942. After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them. In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews. By

16146-524: The spread of HIV , and ethnic genocide . Eugenic feminism was a current of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics. Originally coined by the Lebanese-British physician and vocal eugenicist Caleb Saleeby , the term has since been applied to summarize views held by prominent feminists of Great Britain and the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, especially

16284-400: The stimulus toward effort. Against euthenics the other side urges that it demands an endless amount of money to patch up conditions in the vain effort to get greater efficiency. Which of the two doctrines is true? The thoughtful mind must concede that, as is so often the case where doctrines are opposed, each view is partial, incomplete and really false. The truth does not exactly lie between

16422-556: The supposed science to back their medical experiments. Some of the experiments were used for general medical research, for example by injecting prisoners with known diseases to test vaccines or possible cures. Other experiments were used to further the Germans' war strategy by putting prisoners in vacuum chambers to see what could happen to pilots' bodies if they were ejected at a high altitude or immerse prisoners in ice water to see how long they would survive and what materials could be used to prolong life if worn by German pilots shot down over

16560-417: The term "race" was often interchangeably used to mean the " Aryan " or Germanic " Übermenschen ", which was said to represent an ideal and pure master race that was biologically superior to all other races. In the 1930s, under eugenicist Ernst Rüdin , National Socialist ideology embraced this latter use of "racial hygiene", which demanded Aryan racial purity and condemned miscegenation . That belief in

16698-478: The term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without altering allele frequencies ; for example, British-Indian scientist J. B. S. Haldane wrote in 1940 that "the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent." Debate as to what exactly counts as eugenics continues today. Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with factors of measured intelligence that often correlated strongly with social class. Although it originated as

16836-753: The theories of eugenics. Winston Churchill supported the British Eugenics Society and was an honorary vice president for the organization. Churchill believed that eugenics could solve "race deterioration" and reduce crime and poverty. As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was practiced around the world and promoted by governments, institutions, and influential individuals. Many countries enacted various eugenics policies, including: genetic screenings , birth control , promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions , segregation (both racial segregation and sequestering

16974-428: The trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims. The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in

17112-401: The victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber. Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes. The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning. At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport

17250-454: The victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants. Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno , Riga , Białystok , and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production. Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere. Besides Germany, Romania killed

17388-683: The west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia , Podolia , and southwestern Belarus. Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews. Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate

17526-576: The worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews. Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died. Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence. Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor. East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka , to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels despite

17664-529: Was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik began work planning Belzec —the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on

17802-540: Was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians. Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media, tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up. The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti , homosexual men , and those perceived as workshy—through

17940-411: Was common . Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons, what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war . A quick victory

18078-606: Was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges. Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe . The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union , which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to

18216-403: Was expected and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers . To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings. The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause

18354-460: Was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful. The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe. Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews. Having money, social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival. Jews in hiding were hunted down with

18492-447: Was illegal for women deemed by the state to be fit. Euthenics ( / j uː ˈ θ ɛ n ɪ k s / ) is the study of improvement of human functioning and well-being by improvement of living conditions . "Improvement" is conducted by altering external factors such as education and the controllable environments , including environmentalism , education regarding employment , home economics , sanitation , and housing , as well as

18630-535: Was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor, although many of these prisoners died later on through starvation, mass shooting, torture, and medical experiments. Belzec, Sobibor , and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of

18768-419: Was noticeable to anyone nearby. Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars . As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar . Many died en route , partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports. Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations. Upon arrival,

18906-496: Was the genocide of European Jews during World War II . Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe , around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps , chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau , Treblinka , Belzec , Sobibor , and Chełmno in occupied Poland . Separate Nazi persecutions killed

19044-541: Was written by Erwin Baur , Fritz Lenz , and Eugen Fischer and published under the title Human Heredity Theory and Racial Hygiene (1936). After World War II, the idea of "racial hygiene" was denounced as unscientific by many, but there continued to be supporters and enforcers of eugenics even after there was widespread awareness of the nature of Nazi eugenics. After 1945, eugenics proponents included Julian Huxley and Marie Stopes , but they typically removed or downplayed

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