[moderator's note: I really really don't want to post this, but
it's certainly on-topic, and Robert's pretty insistent, so here
goes. Let's not get bogged down in big arguments about the values
of eugenics if possible; those threads are always nasty, and
worse, pointless. - JAH]

Many people have a vague notion that the Nazis used a warped notion of
Darwin's evolution theory in their Eugenic policies.  Here is Adolf Hitler's
own words, from Mein Kampf (translated by Ralph Manheim), first book 'A
Reckoning', Chapter 4 'Munich', page 121 of the aforementioned translation:

"
Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climactic conditions, as
well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of
certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise a sit is
ruthless. She diminishes, not the power of procreation as such, but the
conservation of the procreated, by exposing them to hard trials and
deprivations with the result that all those who are less strong and less
healthy are forced back into the womb of the eternal unknown. Those whom she
permits to survive the inclemency of existence are a thousandfold tested
hardened, and well adapted to procreate-in turn, in order that the process
of thoroughgoing selection may begin again from the beginning. By thus
brutally proceeding against the individual and immediately calling him back
to herself as soon as he shows himself unequal to the storm of life, she
keeps the race and species strong, in fact, raises them to the highest
accomplishments.

At the same time the diminution of number strengthens the individual and
thus in the last analysis fortifies the species.

It is different, however, when man undertakes the limitation of his number.
He is not carved of the same wood, he is 'humane'. He knows better than the
cruel queen of wisdom. He limits not the conservation of the individual, but
procreation itself. This seems to him, who always sees himself and never the
race, more human and more justified than the opposite way. Unfortunately,
however, the consequences are the reverse:
While nature, by making procreation free, yet submitting survival to a hard
trial, chooses from an excess number of individuals the best as worthy of
living, thus preserving them alone and in them conserving their species, man
limits procreation, but is hysterically concerned that once born it should
be preserved at any price.  This correction of the divine will seems to him
as wise as it is humane, and he takes delight in having once again got the
best of Nature and even having proved her inadequacy.  The number, to be
sure, has really been limited, but at the same time the value of the
individual has diminished; this, however, is something the dear little ape
of the Almighty does not want to see or hear about.

For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of births
diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the
strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire
to 'save' even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the
seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more
deplorable the longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues.
"
A translation of this text can also be found at
http://www.stormfront.org/crusader/texts/mk/mkv1ch04.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek.
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