>> Kimberly Bugg:
Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the Library
of Congress. I hope this is no
one's first time. If it is, feel free to look around a little bit
before you leave. My name is Dr. Kimberly Bugg. I'm the Chief of the Researcher
and Reference Services Division. And our division
really prides itself on providing excellent
programing which highlights the
use of our collection. Today, we are excited to
announce Dr. Richard Wetzell to present his research, and
it's most exciting for us because he did some of that
research here at the library. It may surprise you to know
that the Library of Congress has over 8 million German
language items. The scope is vast and wide. We also have at least five
subject matter experts that deal with the German collections
in some way. So, we invite you to come back
again in the future, and check and poke around and
check some of it out. And before you leave,
please take a moment to stop at the table in the back and
look at some of the items from the collection
that we pulled in reference to this talk. So, and now I'm going
to tell you a little bit about Dr. Wetzell. He is a research fellow at the
German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. His research
is situated at the intersection of legal history,
political history, and the history of science. His publications include,
"Beyond the Racist State: Rethinking Nazi Germany,"
"Criminal and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany," "Engineering
Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in
Modern Societies, 1880-1980," and "Investing the
Criminal History: A History of German
Criminology, 1880-1945." He is currently working
on two research projects. A study of racial science,
eugenics, and racial policy in Nazi Germany, and a history of penal reform in
modern Germany. So, without further
ado, please join me in welcoming Dr.
Richard Wetzell. [ Applause ] >> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell:
Thank you very much for that kind introduction. Thank you all for coming. I know there are other things
to do on a beautiful sunny day in Washington at noon time. So, I'm very pleased
that you're here. Very pleased to be at
the Library of Congress, because as we were just
told, I certainly have on many occasions used books
from this wonderful collection, and a lot of this
research in fact, would have been extremely
difficult if it weren't for the collections of
the Library of Congress. So, I'm very, very grateful to
this institution and the fact that it makes its books
available, not just to members of Congress and their staffs,
but also to the rest of us. One of the occasions for
this talk is the publication of an edited volume
that I co-edited called, "Beyond the Racial State:
Rethinking Nazi Germany," which is an attempt to
advance the historical writing on Nazi Germany, and there's
a copy of that book also on that back table, if you want to take a look at
it when you leave. And there's also a
flier, a discount flyer from Cambridge University
Press, should you be interested in acquiring a copy of that. And in that book, I myself have
a chapter on racial science and eugenics in Nazi Germany,
and what I want to talk about today is based on that. I'm going to try to talk no
longer than 35 to 40 minutes so that hopefully we also
have some time to talk. I'm eager to hear your
questions and your comments. So, without further ado, I'll
get right into the topic. So, thank you again for coming. I'm going to be talking about
racial science in Nazi Germany. I'm going to start the
talk with a few remarks on how historical research
on eugenics, medicine, and racial science, under national socialism
has developed, and how this research
has contributed to the interpretation of Nazi
Germany as a racial state. And I'm going to start with
this histo-graphical background because I will be
advancing a critique of this racial state
interpretation. Then in the central
part of my talk, I'm going to present two
controversies in the field of racial science,
during the Nazi era, in order to show
how heterogeneous and contested racial science
actually was in Nazi Germany. And then finally, in
the concluding section, I'm going to address
the question, "How such controversies
might help us arrive at a better understanding
of the role of medicine and racial science in Nazi,
eugenic, and racial policy. For several decades, after
the end of the Nazi regime, the role of the medical
profession in the Third Reich, was mostly cloaked in silence. In the early post-war decade,
German public awareness of Nazi crimes, such as it was, focused on the murder
of the European Jews. Other victim groups of the
Nazis such as Sinti and Roma, the so-called gypsies,
homosexuals, and people who were labeled as
physically or mentally disabled, and forcibly sterilized
or killed in the euthanasia program,
were largely ignored. Since medical doctors had played
a key role in the persecution of these forgotten
victim groups, their role too could be ignored
in the early post-war period. To be sure, right after the way, a number of medical
doctors involved in the euthanasia killings,
and in medical experiments in concentration camps,
were put on trial, and in some cases, convicted. And many of you will know
this, the most important of these trials was the
so-called Nuremburg Doctors Trial, conducted by the
Americans in 1946-47, which tried 20 Nazi doctors
and 3 administrators, and ended in several
death sentences and lifetime prison terms. But the effort to bring medical
professionals to justice, petered out after the mid-1950. After the war, German medical
doctors, human geneticists and physical anthropologists
themselves, mostly advanced the
self-serving apologetic thesis that their science had
been abused by the Nazis. Doctors and biomedical
scientists who had undeniably cooperated
in Nazi crimes, were described as "bad apples," or "marginal
figures who had engaged on so-called pseudo-science,
rather than science." At the same time, the emerging
academic historiography on the question of race in the
Third Reich, focused mostly on the intellectual
history of anti-Semitism, and Nordic racism, as modes
of irrational thought. That's divorcing the history of
Nazi racism, from the history of science, and medicine. It was not until the
1980s that the role of the medical profession
and the human sciences or biological sciences,
especially psychiatry, human genetics, and
physical anthropology, in the Third Reich was
seriously researched. Not surprisingly,
much of this research in the 1980s was initially
conducted from the margins of the German historical
profession, by a younger generation
of German psychiatrists, for instance, who began
to research the history of their own institutions,
under -- in the Third Reich, by young leftist historians
working outside the German universities, by
disability rights activists, by pioneers of women's
history, and by historians in modern Germany working
outside of Germany, mainly the U.S. and
Great Britain. These studies explicitly
challenge the notion that doctors and
scientists complicit in Nazi crimes had been
engaged in pseudo-science, arguing instead that it had been
the mainstream of German science that had collaborated
with the Nazis. The way the research that began in the 80s demonstrated
the pervasive complicity of German Medical
Doctors, human geneticists, and anthropologists, in what
we might call Nazi biopolitics. And I'm using the term
biopolitics here just as a convenient shorthand to
refer to the complex of ideas and practices, concerned with
the regulation of bodies, both at the individual level,
and at the collective level of the National Population. So, in the case of the Nazi's
biopolitics would include everything from public health to
eugenic policy to racial policy, including the Holocaust. The historical evidence of the
complicity of German physicians and biomedical scientists,
in Nazi, Eugenic, and racial policy,
is overwhelming. Let me enumerate just a few
key pieces of evidence for you. Prominent academics
advised the Nazi government on eugenic policy. Most medical doctors were
willing to report patients to the authorities for
compulsive re-sterilization and hundreds of German
physicians, as well as leading academics,
served as medical judges on the so-called
hereditary health courts, which ordered compulsory
sterilizations. Leading anthropologists
including [foreign name] and [foreign name], supplied
racial exert opinions to the Nazi authorities. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
anthropology, human genetics, and eugenics, trained
SS officers in so-called racial science. Furthermore, some academic
anthropologists participated in implementing racial policy in the eastern European
territories occupied by Nazi Germany during the war. Likewise, the racial
classification of gypsies, conducted by the Gypsy
researcher, [foreign name], was closely connected to the
deportation of Sinti and Roma to concentration camps. Psychiatrists working in
mental hospitals, participated in the euthanasia
murders of handicapped and mentally ill patients. Finally, medical doctors
closely associated with leading research
institutes, performed medical experiments
on concentration camp inmates, and a number of researchers
used so-called human material, obtained from murdered
concentration camp inmates. All this evidence of widespread
complicity has definitively refuted the apologetic
accounts of science and medicine under the Nazi regime, that dominated the west German
public's fear, until the 1980s. Today, no serious student
of the subject can deny that a large number of
Germany's physicians, as well as leading academics
in the related fields of anthropology, eugenics, human
genetics, and racial science, [foreign name] in German,
were complicit in the eugenic and racial policies
of the Nazi regime, that culminated in
the Holocaust. The most influential
summary of this first wave of critical research on
the history of medicine and biomedical science under
the Nazis that took place in the 80s, was Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann's
1991 book, "The Racial State." This book proposed a general
interpretation of Nazi Germany as a racial state, by
advancing forming arguments. First Burleigh and Wippermann
argued that the Nazi persecution and murder of the European
Jews, must be seen as part of a larger biopolitical agenda,
targeting a wide spectrum of biologically defined
victim groups, including Sinti and Roma, the so-called
gypsies, persons with mental or physical disabilities,
homosexuals, and so-called a-socials. In other words, Nazi
anti-Semitism must be seen as part of a more wide
ranging biopolitics. Second, the authors
argued that Nazi racial and social policy must be seen
as two sides of the same coin, in the same way that negative
eugenics was complemented by positive eugenics. Third, the book demonstrated
the pervasive complicity of medical doctors and
biomedical scientists in Nazi eugenic and
racial policy. And I would say these
first three arguments that the spectrum of victim
groups is larger, that racial and social policies are
two sides of the same coin, and that the scientists and
the doctors were complicit. Those all made lasting
contributions to the historiography. I would agree with all of them. But Burleigh and Wippermann
also advanced a fourth argument that I think is problematic. Moving beyond the claim of
complicity, they asserted that medical doctors,
racial anthropologists, other bio-scientists, quote, "Created the conceptual
framework for the implementation of Nazi racial policy,"
end of quote. In other words, they argued that Nazi racial policy was
essentially the realization of a blueprint that had been
developed by racial scientists. This claim was advanced in
even more radical formulation by the German historian [foreign
name] who argued that the, Holocaust resulted from
quote, "A fatal racist dynamic in the human sciences." And it is this last
claim that medicine and racial science provided
the conceptual framework for Nazi racial policy,
that I would like to probe and challenge in my talk today. Burleigh and Wippermann's claim,
rested on their understanding of racial science under
the Nazis as a cohesive, coherent, field of science. In reality, I will argue that
field, the field that came to be known as racial science,
was in fact characterized by several different and
competing conceptual frameworks, just as there were competing
visions of Nazi racial policy, at least early in the regime. In fact, competing
conceptions of race and human heredity resulted in a
remarkable number of conflicts, and controversies
in the Nazi era. To demonstrate just how
contested the terrain of eugenics and racial science
was, I will in the central part of my talk now, examine
two such controversies. And then in the concluding
section of my talk, I'm going to address
the larger implications of these case studies. Because if the meaning
of race and the nature of human heredity
is I will argue, remained contested
during the Nazi era, so that racial science could
not have provided one blueprint for policy, then of course,
the question becomes, "What exactly was the
relationship of racial science and Nazi bio-politics?" So, let me turn to the first
of the two controversies that I want to talk
to you about today. The field of German physical
anthropology, which became known as [foreign name], racial
science, in the Nazi period, had long been characterized
by diversity of approaches to the concept of race. At the outset of the Nazi
regime, these approaches ranged from the Nordic racial
theories of Hans Gunther, and we just saw we have
his most famous book on the back table
there, to the dynamic -- and Hans Gunther really was
sort of the most important, most widely read writer
on race in Nazi Germany, from the Nordic racial
theories of Gunther, to the dynamic conceptions
of race propounded by [foreign name] who
argued that races were in fact dynamic and malleable. And I'll say a little bit more about the two of
them in a minute. Ironically, the first
anthropologist who got into trouble with Nazi
authorities, was a scholar who occupied a moderate position
in the middle of this spectrum of racial theories between
the sort of classic theories of Nordic -- superiority of
the Nordic race on one end, and the other end the idea
that races are malleable and dynamic and everchanging. And the person who was in
the middle of the spectrum, was Eugen Fischer, a
professor of anthropology at the University of Berlin,
and the founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and
Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem. And he was probably,
during the Nazi period, the most prominent
physical anthropologist and human geneticist in Germany. Two days after Hitler's
seizure of power, that is on February 1st, 1933, Fischer delivered a previously
scheduled public lecture on racial mixing and mental
aptitude, in which he argued that the mixing of races
generally had a beneficial effect on offspring. High cultures were usually
the product of a mixing of races, not of their purity. The flowering of
culture in central Europe from the Renaissance on, he
explained, too place in a quote, "Mixing zone," in which
the Nordic race had mixed with the Alpine and
Dinaric races. Fischer also explicitly
addressed the question of race mixing between
Nordic races and Jews, making a biological distinction between long-resident
German Jewish families, and recently arrived [inaudible]
Jews from eastern Europe. He argued that the
mixing of Nordic races with German Jewish stock, was
unproblematic, while the mixing with [inaudible] was not. Since Fischer made this argument
in a public lecture attended by journalists, two days after
Hitler had come to power, we may assume that he
intended his comments to have a political
effect namely, to advise the Hitler government
to take a moderate line in discriminating against Jews. So, just to clear. I mean, the lecture was
previously scheduled. When it was scheduled, he couldn't have known Hitler
was going to come to power, but of course, he had time to
think about what he was going to say, and this is not -- you know, this is very much a
public talk he knew was going to be covered in the newspapers. So, what you have is probably
the most important German academic in the field
of racial theories. I mean, Gunther was probably
the most widely read, but he was a popularizer. Fischer was a part of the
academic establishment. He ran the most --
the best-funded, most important research
institute on race, and he was certainly in
many ways what we would call a racist. There's also little doubt
that he was an anti-Semite, but the point is, when
it came to the question of whether racial mixing is good
or not, he took the position, it's generally a positive thing. Now, you're already guessing
why this becomes a controversy, right? So, because the lecture was
widely reported in the press, Fischer did not have to
wait long for reactions. And he soon found out that he
had transgressed the limits of acceptable discourse
on racial policy under the Nazi regime. In fact, he found himself the
target of a sustained campaign of denunciation, that was
orchestrated by [foreign name] who was the Chief of the SS
Office of Race and Settlement, and also the [inaudible]
Minister of Agriculture, and a major proponent
of Nordic racial theory. Several of [foreign name]
associates mounted a series of public attacks
in newspapers and so on that posed a serious
threat to Fischer's career. Fischer was vigorously defended
however, by [foreign name] who was the person in charge
of the section of public health at the Minister of the Interior. He was installed
there by the Nazis. He was a committed Nazi. He's basically the
person who made the -- who directed sterilization
policy and was responsible for the passage of
the sterilization law. So [foreign name] is also
very much a committed Nazi, and very much a believer in
eugenics and racial theory. But, he in this situation,
became a defender of Fischer. And [foreign name] argued in
a letter to [foreign name], that Fischer's international
academic reputation in racial anthropology, made him
indispensable for the regime. And I quote, "A dispute
between Fischer and official authorities would
easily create the impression in Germany and abroad, that
Professor Fischer disapproves of the path that the government
has taken in racial policy, and that the government's
measures contradict the findings of science." End of quote. And I like this quote because
it's rare that you find so explicitly a passage
that basically says, "We need this guy
for our legitimacy, and that's why we
should not fire him." No doubt, in response to
pressure from [foreign name], Fischer decided to
adjust his views. And this also is
interesting how he does that, although Fischer refused
to label the Jewish race as inferior, the German word
would be [foreign name], he described the Jews
as an [foreign name], a race different in kind. So, he refuses to say it's
inferior, but it's different in kind, and therefore
had to be excluded from race mixing
with Nordic races. So, on the substance of
race mixing, he backs down, he refuses to put a
negative label on the Jews. Just a different initial mix. So, he caves. On the central issue,
he does cave, right? Although it took a while for
the campaign against Fischer to subside, I mean this campaign
against him actually went on for several years,
this concession together with Fischer's willingness
to offer training courses at his institute for SS
doctors, allowed Fischer to retain control of
the Dahlem Institute, which then remained the
most important institute in racial science
in Nazi Germany. And to become what one
historian has called, "The undisputed academic
spokesman for racial science under the Nazi regime." Now, my argument would
be that the controversy over this lecture shows
that it would be misleading to characterize Fischer as a
racial scientist who was glad that the Nazi regime
would finally allow him to translate his ideas into
policy, because as we can see, his ideas were a little
different from the ideas of the regime, or those in
the regime that prevailed. His initial clash with the
regime, essentially led to a negotiation in which,
to use Mitchell Ash's terms, a German American historian
of Science, "Science and politics were
resources for one another." I think that's very
useful to think about it. And so, in this negotiation,
Fischer sought the support of the regime in order to
finance his institute's research and defend its own academic
position, while [foreign name] at the Interior Ministry,
as we saw in that quote, defended Fischer, so that
the internationally renowned anthropologist would lend
Nazi racial policies, scientific respectability. Although, Fischer found out
that there were boundaries to acceptable discourse on
race under the new regime, there was some room for him to
negotiate a compromised position on race mixing, precisely
because academic and public discourse on
race during the early years of the regime, remained
surprisingly diverse. And the question of
official racial policy remained unsettled. To be sure, Fischer's case
demonstrates the powerful reach of the Nazi regime, into the
realm of academic research, as well as the willingness
of key scientists to cave into the regime's demands. It also shows however,
that in the case of Germany's preeminent
racial scientist, the claim that racial scientists
had created the conceptual framework for Nazi
policy, does not stand up to empirical scrutiny. For Fischer's views on the
key issue of racial mixing, clearly differed strongly
from those of the Nazis. Let me now go on to
a second controversy. A second no less revealing
controversy concerned the notion of a German race. So, whether there was a
[foreign name] or not, which was put forward by the
anthropologist, [foreign name], and the botanical
geneticist [foreign name]. And I mentioned them
earlier briefly. According to [foreign
name] and [foreign name], races could not be defined as
fixed types, nor did Dinaric, [inaudible] so on, so that -- the stuff that's in
the Gunther book that's on the back table there. According to [foreign
name] and [foreign name], races could not be defined
as fixed types, characterized by specific physiological,
genetic, or psychological traits, because
races were always malleable and in constant transformation. Races, they insisted, were
affected by both genetic and environmental factors, and therefore never something
absolute, but always states of equilibrium reflecting
the influences of heredity and environment. Because races were
malleable, [foreign name] and [foreign name] thought
it made sense to speak of a [foreign name], of a
German race, that was always in the process of being formed. In making the case for their
notion of a German race, they mounted sharp attacks against Hans Gunther's
racial theories which stressed the
superiority of the Nordic race, among the six races of
which the German population, according to Gunther,
was composed. They also dismissed
Gunther's idea that you could undo
racial mixtures, and thereby recreate the
original Nordic race. Let me say a word or
two about [foreign name] and [foreign name]
background, and then I'll talk about what the official
reactions were to their theory. So, [foreign name]
is interesting because after World War
I, he had actually served in a free corps, you know,
right-wing, military units, and then had joined
the Nazi party in 1920, was an active member of
the SA until about 1923. But in '25, he let
his membership in party and SA lapse. He became the head of
the Botanical Laboratory of the Biological [foreign
name] Institute for Agriculture and Forestry, sort of Germany's
premiere research institute in botanics and agriculture
and forestry. So, not an unimportant
position, in 1927. And shortly after that,
he published in 1927, a scathing critique of
Gunther's racial theories. In 1928, he came into contact
with a young anthropologist, [foreign name], who was a
lecturer at the University of [foreign name], and at
the Anatomical Institute, who had written his
1927 [foreign name], a kind of second thesis,
on the topic of the origins of the Nordic race, in which
he came to the same conclusion, that Gunther's theory of
Nordic superiority was [inaudible] bunk. After Hitler comes
to power in 1933, [foreign name] is
the first of this duo that fields the new
regime's wrath. In October 1933, he was fired from his tenured
civil service position at the Biological [foreign
name] Institute under Article 4 of the cynically titled
"Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service,"
which most of you will know is a
law used to remove Jews from civil service, but
you could also be removed for supposed political
and unreliability, and that's how he was fired. Since the institute was part
of the Ministry of Agriculture, the minister in charge
was unfortunately for [foreign name],
now none other than the Nordicist racial
fanatic, [foreign name]. Nevertheless, far from becoming
more conscious, [foreign name] and [foreign name] unfolded
prodigious publishing activities in the first two years
of the Nazi regime. Four books, between
the two of them, in order to popularize
their dynamic conception of a German race,
clearly making a bid to influence Nazi racial policy. The reception of [foreign name]
and [foreign name] concept of a German race among Nazi
officials, was sharply divided. And this is again, I think what
makes the story interesting, is that not all the
Nazi policymakers are on the same side. While Nordicists like [foreign
name] were fiercely opposed to the notion of a German
race, the concept met with considerable
assent in other quarters of the Nazi movement
and Nazi leadership. For at the outset of the
regime, some party members were in fact concerned
that proponents of Nordic racial theory,
might advocate a racial policy that would introduce
distinctions of racial value, among the German population. And that they might even call for racial eugenic
measures of Nordification. They feared in other
words, that if the notion of Nordic superiority
became official policy, then those parts of
the German population that were not primarily Nordic,
you know, would feel threatened and this would threaten
the cohesion of the German national
community. Not an unreasonable fear. Among the major players
in racial policy, the strongest supporters of
the notion of a German race, were the anti-Semite [foreign
name], who was the expert for racial research in
the Interior Ministry, who was actually in charge
of purging of civil service. Also, Fritz [foreign
name] who was the head of the Nazi party's Office of
Public Health, and in addition to the support from
these two key figures, there also were various
Nazi newspapers and reviews that published articles
supportive of the notion of a German race. The Nazi official who
quashed the debate between the Nordicists and the
advocates of a German race, was [foreign name], who was head of the Nazi party's
[foreign name], the Office of Racial Policy. Under [foreign name]
energetic leadership, the Office of Racial
Policy gradually managed to assert control over all
racial propaganda and training, and over relations
between the regime and academic researchers
on race. It also established its right to approve all publications
on racial matters. So, basically, within the
first two years of the regime, there's a lot of wrangling
among different party and state and SS agencies to
control racial policy, and [inaudible] doesn't end
up controlling everything. But he controls the
propaganda, the publications, and the relations with
academic researchers. So, he establishes himself in
a relatively powerful position. So, in an October 1934 circular,
to the so-called [foreign name], Officials in Charge
of Racial Matters of Regional Party Offices, [foreign name] launched a
major attack on [foreign name] and [foreign name]
notion of a German race. The concept of a
German race, he charged, "derived from the Jewish and
Catholic intellectual milieu, and was a camouflaged attempt
to remove the factor of race, and call for harmony among
the German [inaudible]. And I quote, "Whoever speaks of
a German race, [foreign name], is leaving the foundation
of the factual. There is a German language,
a German [foreign name]. Racially, however, Germany
is a racial mixture." End of quote. [Foreign name] also
warned that the notion of a German race might lead
to the inclusion of Jews and gypsies in the German race. His attack was flanked
by critical book reviews in the press, and by an outright
ban on certain publications. But, and this is interesting,
despite [foreign name] effort to declare an official ban on
the notion of a German race, a December 1934 meeting of party
and state officials in Munich, revealed that key party
officials in the area of racial policy, continued to support the notion
of a German race. And these included
[foreign name], who was the so-called
[foreign name], the Head of the Medical
profession if you will, his deputy Fritz [foreign
name], was the Head of the Nazi parties,
Office of Public Health, and [foreign name] who was
at the Interior Ministry. Alarmed that the notion of a German race might be
gaining political support, [foreign name] now decided
to take decisive action against [foreign name], who was
still teaching, you know, -- [foreign name] had
already been fired. Now, they're going
after [foreign name] who was still teaching as a
lecturer in [foreign name]. In January 1935, at
[foreign name] behest, the [inaudible] Minister
of Research and Education, barred [foreign name] from
teaching, based on the charge that he had quote, "Harmed the
reputation of the university." The major Nazi newspaper,
the [foreign name], carried an official denunciation
of [foreign name] research, prepared by [foreign name]. [Foreign name] was driven
out of the university, ended up practicing
homeopathic medicine in a private sanitorium, until
he was drafted into the military as a medic, not a doctor, even though he was a trained
doctor, during the war. [Foreign name] was briefly
interned in a concentration camp for supposed oppositional
activity in 1937. It would be wrong however to
conclude that the silencing of the academic advocates of
the notion of a German race, indicated the unambiguous
triumph of Nordicist racial theory. Although, it may have
seemed that way for a while, [foreign name] and the
[foreign name] eventually turned against Nordicism as well. This development is reflected in a later conflict involving
the founder of [foreign name], Knowledge of the Racial
Soul, [foreign name], who found himself the subject
of a secret trial in front of the Supreme Nazi
Party Court, in 1941-42. Although the case against
[foreign name] included the charge that his primary academic
collaborator was Jewish, it also included the accusation
pressed by [foreign name], that [foreign name]
was scientifically and politically suspect. And once more, [foreign name]
prevailed and the trial ended with [foreign name]
expulsion from the Nazi party, and the loss of his
academic position. So, this was a strike against
the other side on the spectrum of racial theories, which shows
that even into the early 40s, there is movement,
there is disagreement, there is conflict in this field. While [foreign name] and [foreign name] controversies
took place in the early years of the regime, this
trial of [foreign name] and some other conflicts that
are discussed in my chapter, but I don't have time to
discuss today on sterilization, show that conflicts of eugenics
and racial science continued in the regime's later years. In fact, evidence of conflict
over racial policy can be found in wartime occupation policy. And the historian [foreign name]
demonstrated, Nazi racial policy in occupied Poland, also witnessed significant
disagreements over who should count as a
German, and who should count as a Pole, which reflected
competing conceptions of race and [inaudible]. Let me turn to my conclusion,
and to the larger question, "What are the implications then
of controversies such as the two that I've examined here, for
understanding the relationship between racial science and Nazi
racial and eugenic policy?" To be sure, these controversies
demonstrate the power that key Nazi officials could
exert over academic research. Just as importantly
however, they demonstrate that racial science
was characterized by competing conceptions
of race, and therefore could not
have supplied a coherent, conceptual framework for policy. This finding does not diminish
the incontrovertible complicity of racial scientists
and Nazi racial policy, but by [inaudible]
the misleading notion that the regime simply
translated the precepts of science into practice,
we can embark on a more careful
analysis of relationship between racial science and Nazi
biopolitics, and in particular of the question of, "What
exactly the influence of racial science on Nazi
eugenic and racial policy was?" And in answering this
question, I would like to argue that we have to make
careful distinctions between different areas of
Nazi eugenic and racial policy. And in my last section here,
I just want to briefly look at four of these areas and make
the case that the influence of science was quite
different in different areas. So, first, let's briefly
look at eugenic policy, which I didn't really
cover in this paper. I talked about it more in
my chapter in the book. At the beginning of the
Third Reich, the right-wing of the German Eugenics
Movement, saw the Nazi regime as offering a welcome
opportunity. In psychiatric eugenicists such as [foreign name]
played an active role in shaping Nazi eugenic policy. Because they saw eugenics as not just addressing medical
pathologies, but also as a way of solving social
problems, including crime, vagrancy, a-social behavior. Their participation in eugenic
policy making was also a way of expanding the medical
professions influence into the realm of social policy. Key figures in the
German Eugenics Movement, most importantly, [foreign
name], had a direct causal role in shaping and radicalizing,
Nazi eugenic policy, especially in the
regime's early years. So, here's a field where
science clearly had an influence [inaudible] participated in
drafting the sterilization law. Second, racial scientists played
a key role in the persecution and murder of the Roma and
Sinti, the so-called gypsies. Because Roma and Sinti
were perceived as a-social and criminal, they were targeted
by sterilization policy, through diagnoses
of feeblemindedness. There were also discussions about specifically targeting
all gypsies for sterilization, but these were overtaken
by the turn to mass murder. Racial research on gypsies
conducted by [foreign name], and others had a direct
influence on the course of Nazi racial policy,
toward the Sinti and Roma, which culminated in mass murder. So, here's a second field where I think science was
decisive and influential. Third, by contrast however,
the role of racial scientists and Nazi anti-Semitic
policy was more limited. German racial scientists
were deeply complicit in the implementation
of Nazi anti-Semitism, and in the Holocaust, but
there's little evidence that they played any
significant role in the shaping and radicalization of
Nazi anti-Semitic policy. Although many right-wing
eugenicists and anthropologists were
anti-Semites, so [foreign name] who I mentioned and [foreign
name] who I mentioned briefly, I mean they were
clearly anti-Semites. Their role in drawing up specific anti-Semitic
measures seems to have been extremely limited. Neither the passage
of the Nuremburg laws, for which racial
science failed of course, to deliver any biological
criteria, nor the turn to the mass murder of the
Jews, can be attributed to the influence of scientists. The initiative clearly came
from the Nazi leadership. This does not diminish the
complicity of anthropologists, eugenicists, [foreign name],
who lent scientific legitimacy to anti-Semitism, provided
the racial expert opinions, or performed medical experiments
in concentration camps. But in the area of anti-Semitic
policy, their role was that of supporting the
implementation of Nazi policy, not that of shaping
or radicalizing it, which I think also
tells you something about while the targeting of
the European Jews was part of the spectrum of targets
of this Nazi biopolitics, the Jews are a very
special and different case, and their targeting goes right
to the heart of Nazi ideology. And that's, I would argue,
why the influence of science in this area is not
as important. Fourth and finally, the
role of racial scientists in the racial screening
of the populations of Nazi occupied eastern Europe, and the resettlement policies
adopted there, were significant, but not always a
radicalizing one. [Foreign name] recent study
of Nazi Germanization policy in Poland for instance, provides
an example of how Nazi officials who favored a highly inclusive
policy, of Germanization, so counting as many people in
the local Polish population as Germans, or at least
potentially Germans, so that even Nazi officials
who wanted an inclusive policy of Germanization, could
also draw on racial science to defend their position
against more restrictive policy proposals. So, for instance, [foreign
name] who was the [foreign name] of [foreign name], one of
the newly created provinces out of occupied Poland, convinced the Nordicist
racial theorist, Hans Gunther, to visit his [foreign name], his
area, for a ten-day field study in order to obtain
his expert opinion on the racial composition
of the local population. And although Gunther noted that the local population
represented a quote, "inextricable mixture
of races," he argued that the key question was, "Whether their offspring would
represent a welcomed addition to the German population?" And Gunther answered this
question in the affirmative, noting that the majority of the local Polish
population was quote, "racially not too far removed
from the German population of eastern, central Germany." And thus, [foreign name]
obtained the scientific legitimization of his more
inclusive Germanization policy, which stood in stark
contrast to the more radical, that is restrictive
policy promoted by [foreign name] in the SS. So, disagreements continue, and certain scientific views
are solicited to support one or the other position. Let me close with two
final observations. And the first one has to do
with the question of complicity. And I would argue that the
question of the complicity of scientists in the regime, needs to be conceptualized
differently from the way it has been. In the racial state
interpretation, it appeared that medical doctors and racial scientists held
scientific views that were in general alignment with
Nazi racial ideology. And in this view of
course, their complicity in Nazi racial policy, simply
followed logically from the fact that racial science, racial
ideology, and racial policies, supposedly fit hand in glove. Once we understand as I would
argue, that there was no such fit, and that many aspects of racial science during the
Nazi era contradicted Nazi racial policy. That there were at least
some positions on a spectrum that were not in
alignment with Nazi policy. Once we understand that,
the widespread complicity of racial scientists, calls
for a different explanation. In the case of [foreign
name], for instance, it becomes quite clear, I would
argue, that his complicity with the regime was not a
matter of substantive agreement with the regime's
racial policies, but of sheer opportunism. That is, cooperating with the
regime in order to be able to retain his position, and
to get financial support for his institute's research. [Foreign name] complicity
with the regime that pursued racial policies, which he knew lacked
scientific foundation, clearly increases his
moral culpability. In short, an approach that
stresses the heterogeneity and diversity of racial
science under the Third Reich, does not diminish the
moral responsibility of most racial scientists. My final remark addresses the
question of how we might arrive at a better historical
understanding of the relationship
between racial science and the Nazi regime. The course of Nazi
eugenic and racial policy, cannot be explained by
reference to racial science, because the trajectory, I've
argued here, of racial science, does not mirror that
of Nazi racial policy. In other words, the role of
science and the radicalization of Nazi racial policy, culminating in the
Holocaust, has been overstated. Neither racial policy,
nor Nazi racial ideology, nor Nazi racial policy,
were as coherent as the racial [inaudible]
or paradigm has suggested. Instead, all three remained
heterogeneous areas throughout the Third Reich. Mitchell Ash has
written that science and politics are resources for
one another, but of course, neither science nor
politics were monolithic. In the case of Nazi Germany,
I would argue we need to develop an intellectual map of the different
research paradigms, or schools of thought, within
the field of racial science. So, on the one hand,
this intellectual map. While on the other hand, I
think we need a political map of the major parties state
in SS agencies, that competed with another for
controlling racial policy. And then I would argue once
we figured out these two maps and are aware of how
heterogeneous both of these areas were,
then we need to relate them to one another. And then we can begin to ask, "Who sought alliances
with whom?" Which scientists,
which policy makers, for what purpose, at what time? And such an approach should help
us understand the Third Reich better, by elucidating
how both scientists and Nazi officials deployed
competing conceptions of race, for strategic purposes
at different points in the development
of the Nazi regime. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] And I look forward to your
questions and comments. I know some of you may have to
get back to your offices, so -- but those of you who still
have time, look forward to questions and comments. Yes, please? [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> Thanks. And I found it very interesting
to see how these matters of race were contested
throughout the Nazi period. On that intellectual
map that you mentioned, where would you find the sort
of division between Aryan and Semitic, or did
that category of Aryan and the category of
Semitic still play a role, or did it peter out, and would
that have influenced policy? >> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell:
It's an excellent question. Thank you. You'll notice that I think
probably the word Aryan did not even appear in my talk, right? So, what was so strange,
as I began this research, was to find it in the area of
racial science, [inaudible] and the Aryan race simply
plays absolutely no role. And I'm not the first to say it, but I think it has
not been said enough. There's some research that
already indicated this. So, it turns out that in
linguistics in the 20s and 30s, people still worked with this
concept in terms of you know, tracing language groups. But among Germany's physical
anthropologists, and eugenicists and all these people
I've grouped here as racial scientists, it turns
out none of them use this term. Now of course, you ask, "Well,
then how come we always hear about Aryans in Nazi Germany?" And I did to do some more
research on -- to find that out, but what I can say
with certainty, is that in the scientific
discussions, it doesn't play any role. Among the scientists,
it's really either you are with Hans Gunther and you
think there are the Nordic and the [inaudible] and the
[inaudible] and these six races. And then the Jews also are
composed of different races, or you are on the other
extreme with [foreign name] and [foreign name] where races
are always in the making. Or you're somewhere in the
middle with [foreign name] where it's basically a
genetic conceptions of race -- based on genetic factors. And of course, there
are other positions. I would argue the main
reason as far as I can tell, that the term Aryan
is so important in the public discourse
in Nazi Germany, is that it essentially becomes
a synonym for non-Jewish, right? Because very early on,
already in April '33, the Law on the Restoration of
the Civil Service is passed, which I mentioned briefly because that's how they
fire [foreign name], but most of the time, of
course what they're doing, is they're firing people who
are of Jewish descent, right? So, a lot of you will know
this, basically everybody who was a civil servant
in Germany, which in Germany meant
a lot of people, right? Everybody from your postal
carrier to your schoolteacher and so on, had to provide a -- what was at least informally
often called [foreign name], where you had to go back to
your four grandparents and show who they were and what they
were looking for was evidence that they were Jewish. And of course, the evidence
that they were Jewish was just that they were registered
in a Jewish community. So, it all came down to
religion, because of course, it turns out that you know, there were no biological
or racial criteria. And so, in those -- as
that became implemented, the word Aryan, [foreign
name] in German, was just simply a
synonym for not Jewish. So, the [foreign name] really
was just that you're not Jewish. And then in Nuremberg, I would
argue the same things happens. As the Nuremberg laws make
illegal sexual intercourse or marriage between Jewish
Germans and Gentile Germans, then again this term Aryan
comes back into the discussion. So, that's -- I would say, because of these
legal provisions, the term is very prominent
in public discussions in Nazi Germany, and
in our historiography, but it was actually
really surprising to me that in the science, it
really doesn't play any role. So, I thank you for
the question. I'll just say one
more thing about that. I think part of what we
still need in addition to these maps I talk about, is
just a history of the language. You know, when do people
talk about Aryan race? When do they talk
about German race, [inaudible] that
discussion is shut down? When do they talk
about German blood? And I would argue
that increasingly as the regime goes on, people
talk about [foreign name], which they mean metaphorically. I mean, the Nazis are busy. I mean they do research on
blood groups, trying to see if they can find Jewish blood. Well, you won't be
surprised to hear, of course that doesn't
go anywhere, right? So, the term blood is
then used metaphorically, and I would argue
because by '30 -- by '35, [foreign name] has
basically banned the term [foreign name]. You then either are just stuck
talking about [foreign name], but then you're missing
the racial element, and that's why I would say
then, when they occupy Poland and so on, then you
get discussions about [foreign name], even though that's just
a metaphorical term which gives you absolutely
no concrete criteria for deciding who's
German or not. But I think with -- a lot
more work could be done about, "What are the terms that are
used and when are they used?" [Foreign name] You know,
[foreign name] spends a lot of time talking about
the [foreign name]. So, you know, the
ancient Germanic tribes. So, again, he's not -- you
can't talk about [foreign name]. So, you know, the Nordic
race, the German race, the [foreign name], the
Aryans, the [foreign name] and I think there is some
more work to be done about why at certain times they end
up using certain terms. But it's -- your question
is very well taken. Anyone else? Yes? >> [Inaudible] on point. I'll try staying on point. It's been hard for me sometimes. But to try to draw bright lines
between terms like race science, [foreign name] or the
people, a community, or in other theoretical
framework, the imagined communities,
and then finally the tribe, do either of these
earn a bright line? Is racial science anything
more than a construct or are none of them constructs? Constructs that are falling
out of favor, in some cases. And [inaudible] the change in [inaudible] speaking
peoples to [inaudible]. Now, the principle
political organization taking another name. >> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell: Also, a question that's
very well taken. Of course, a very
large question. Let me try to take
it in this direction. Of course, it is
all a construct. And I think you're very right
to draw attention to you know, that beyond the racial
science and race, there are these other terms. The [foreign name], we could
say the [foreign name], the imagined community. And I would say part of the
argument that this edited book, "Beyond the Racial
State," makes, which I didn't highlight here
because it's not a dissenter of what I'm doing, but what I
do connect to it, is also to say that this racial state
interpretation of Nazi Germany, has you know -- of
course race was important in Nazi Germany, right? I mean no one would
argue against that. Just so we're clear, that
I'm not arguing against that. Race was very important. Point 1 would be to say, but
don't take it at face value, you can't use it as
an analytical category and then think that
race explains everything on Nazi Germany. It needs to really be turned
around and one needs to ask, "What do they mean when
they're talking about race? What do they mean when they
talk about these things?" But a point I wanted to make is
that one argument in the book is to say race -- the case for
race has been overstated. Not everything in Nazi
Germany was about race and was about biology. And both the construction of
the [foreign name], by the Nazis and their construction of
the enemy image of the Jews, also had cultural
patterns of argumentation. So, to start with
the Jews, right? I mean, a lot of
what the Nazis said about the Jews is
there's a world -- world Jewish conspiracy, which
has those wonderful two parts on Wall Street and
in the Kremlin, which already shows you it's
kind of contradictory, right? But there are also longstanding
cultural anti-Semitic tropes that continue to play a
major role in Germany. If we just stuck with the race,
the Jews are [foreign name], that they are an inferior race,
then it would all come down to, "Well, the Jews, you know,
[inaudible] so inferior." But of course, that's not at all
-- what most of the rhetoric is about how powerful the Jews are, either because they're
capitalists or because they're Bolshevik, depending on the
argument you want to make. So, they're really
anything but inferior. So, several chapters in
this book make the argument that as we try to
understand Nazi anti-Semitism, we have to remain aware that in
addition to racial arguments, which of course are there, there
are other cultural arguments. And I think the same can be
said for the Nazi creation of the [foreign name],
you know, the community of the German people, which
sometimes is translated in English as racial community, because [foreign name]
is this term of course which can mean nation,
can mean people, you know? But I would say translating it as racial community
is not accurate. The argument would be that
also the [foreign name] is also in sometimes created
by longstanding, nationalistic cultural types of
argumentation, not all racial. And the reason for that is
in part, this is only part of the story of course, it's
not all about the history of science, but part of is
as I've said that early on, people already [inaudible]. I mean, they're basically caught
between a rock and a hard place, because if you go with Gunther, and you say the German nation
is composed of six races, [foreign name], [foreign name],
[foreign name], and so on, and the Nordic one is superior,
then you have basically said, "Certain parts of the German
people are racially more valuable than others. And that certainly could
undermine the racial cohesions." And you know, we have evidence
of discussions for instance in Bavaria, how is this going to
come out, because this is a part of the population with
supposedly less Nordic blood. So, if they go with that, the problem is you're creating
invidious distinctions among the population. And then on the other
hand, as I laid out for you in this one controversy, if
you go with a dynamic notion of a German race in the
making, malleable at all times, then some people were
worried that, "Hell, the Jews might get into it. If we make it too malleable,
you know, then, you know, we're not keeping out the
people we want to keep out." That was [foreign name] fear. Whether that was an accurate
fear, is another question. But you can see that no
matter how they play it, whether Germany is all one
race, or is six different races, either way, it's
potentially highly problematic for what they want to
do, and also in fairness, I think of course
these controversies and conflicts are
strongest in the early years. Certain things become
off-limits, but as I've tried to show, and this is not
the focus of my own work, but if you look at
policy in occupied Poland, you can see that these
conflicts reemerge. But I also want to say
again, there are areas where this doesn't matter. The persecution of the Jews as it escalates towards
mass murder, that is driven by much deeper ideological
factors in the Nazi party, and the racial scientists
are nice for legitimation, but they don't drive
the process. Any other questions or comments? >> Could I just [inaudible]? >> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: Yes, please. [ Inaudible audience comment ] About [foreign name]? [ Inaudible audience comment ] Yes. I'm not going
to talk at length because it's probably some
time beyond the bounds of what my own research
has focused on, but many of you will know
the name [foreign name], was probably the most
prominent German jurist to align himself
with the Nazi regime. I don't know enough about
his work on these issues to say something specific. What I can say is of
course, there were members of the German legal
community that also tried to make the argument that
this is all about race. And there were extreme
positions that essentially said, "We don't even need written
laws, because we know that the purpose
of law is always to protect the German
people, and therefore, whatever harms the German
people is obviously a criminal and needs to be punished and
what doesn't harm it, is good." But you can see that that's of
course a very extreme position. And while some recent
research has sort of stressed these
radical positions, I would say that they
don't really reflect where the mainstream goes. Yes, please? >> Yes, you had earlier talked about two different
kinds of blood. >> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: Blood. >> German blood, [foreign name]
blood, and then [foreign name]. >> Dr. Richard F. Wetzell: Yes. >> I didn't understand the
second one that you said-- . >> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: I'm sorry. I should have translated
that, yes. [Foreign name] means
blood similar in kind. Closely related. So, as they were trying to make
policy in the occupied parts of Poland, and then
also of Russia, right? What they're doing is
they're starting a process of racial screening, where
they're trying to decide, "Who can we bring into
the German people, and who is definitely Slavic
and therefore inferior?" and you know, essentially these
are people that they let starve and if not actively exterminate. For instance, case
of Soviet POWs. But especially in
[inaudible], they're trying to do this racial screening. And there in those processes,
there are different positions that people take,
which I hinted at, some want to be highly
inclusive. These are often the people who
actually run these territories. And they basically want
to say, "Yes, you know, if someone in the family
[inaudible] to speak," because of course,
you have to remember, Poland is a very mixed
population, right? >> Yes. >> Dr. Richard F.
Wetzell: There are areas that are clearly German
speaking and there are some that are not, but
it's a mixture. It's not ethnically homogeneous. And there are some people that
look at the situation and say, "Let's take everybody we can. If they speak German, if
they've seem sympathetic to the German cause, if they're
willing to come on board, let's take them all in." That's sort of the one
side of the spectrum. And I gave you one example was
someone who wants to do that, is clever enough to
actually call in Hans Gunther of all people, and have him
write an expert opinion, saying, "Yes, these people are
basically more or less like the Germans are." So, a strategic use of
scientific legitimation. And on the other end of the
spectrum, you have the SS who comes in and wants
to measure the skulls and really have racial
criteria, for who should count as German and who shouldn't. And only a very small number of
people are subject to these kind of racial examinations, and
then of course, the problem is as you can all guess, I mean,
it's completely made up. I mean, you know, you
can measure the skull, but what's it really
going to tell you. But in this spectrum
of approaches, there are some regulations that
are passed to describe who's in and who's out, who talk
about [foreign name] and [foreign name], so,
those of German blood and of kindred closely related
blood, meaning, "That's good. We can take them in." And again, it's always
clear that the Jews of course, are not it, right? But with other groups, it's
much harder to determine that, not just in eastern Europe, but
if you think about the Japanese, for instance, I mean,
if [inaudible] you deal with people abroad, and
as you know, you know, the Japanese were allied
with Nazi Germany of course at a certain point, and I
was recently at a conference. We had this small seminar
about race in Nazi Germany, and there was a fascinating
paper by someone about the question
of the Japanese. And even before the
Nuremberg laws are passed, all this public talk about,
actually the Aryan race, makes the Japanese nervous. And they want some assurance
that they are going to be on the good side of this, right? And there is actually
a myth this person in her research showed,
there is the myth that the Japanese were
considered honorary Aryans. She shows that that's not true. That's just a myth. She found some documentation where the German Japanese
society petitions various ministries and organizations. She says, "We need
clarification. You know, where the
Japanese stand in this." And one prominent sort
of racial scientist, wrote a long expert
opinion saying, "The Japanese are
also on the good side. They are also kind of basically
equivalent to the Aryans because if you go back to
you know, ancient history and language groups
and whatever." But it doesn't fly,
because once [inaudible] who does occupy this important
position says absolutely not. You know, they're not Aryans. So, there too they
actually have a problem. But as you can see, this
is just a political debate about the Nazis. I mean, there's -- it's
not based on anything. But yes, thank you for
making me clarify that. Yes. But the thing is,
the thing to remember is, I mean this language of
blood is purely metaphorical. They do this research on
blood groups, but you know, it doesn't go anywhere. Any other questions or
comments for that matter? Okay, then I thank you. I'll be around if you want
to ask something one on one. Please take a look at the
table with the great books from the Library of Congress, and the "Beyond the
Racial State" book. And thank you for coming. [ Applause ]
