Darwin and Germany

Darwin, Social Darwinism, and the Third Reich

When the name “Darwin” comes up in discussions in Germany, it still happens that people mention Social Darwinism and Darwin's influence on Hitler and the Third Reich. Therefore, there is the necessity of making two brief remarks about this issue.

First, it has to be said that Hitler, like Darwin, saw himself as a defender of the “will of nature.” However, Hitler linked the concept of the “will of nature” with a particular people and infers from this the necessity of aggressive behavior toward inferior races (“Aryans” versus “Jews”). Such an element cannot be found within Darwin's theory.

Second, it needs to be said that Darwin does not promote measures against contraselection. Contraselection takes place within a civilization when the struggle for existence cannot be active in an appropriate manner, as inferior, weak, and lazy people are supported and are taken care of, and such circumstances are supposed to lead to the transmission of weak hereditary dispositions. Of course, it is a matter of dispute whether there is such a phenomenon as contraselection or not. Measures against contraselection were demanded by Ernst Haeckel, further promoted from some race hygienists (Rassenhygieniker) and later on carried out by Hitler and the national socialists. I say more about this in the section on Haeckel. At this point, it has to be stressed that first, contraselection cannot follow from Darwin's theory of selection, as the individuals who win the struggle for existence within his theory are by definition the most suitable whatever the cultural conditions are; and second, Darwin never demanded that one should refrain from helping the weaker.

Given the above comparison between Darwin's and Hitler's ideas, we must conclude that Darwin should not be seen as an intellectual precursor of the German national socialist movement.

Darwin and Two Major German Zoologists

The first zoologist I deal with here is August Weismann(1834–1914). At the 100th anniversary of Darwin's birthday, Weismann pointed out the importance of Darwin by stressing that before Darwin zoology, botany, and anthropology existed as separate sciences, but with Darwin's theory of evolution, a connection between these various sciences was established. Weismann is regarded as the first proper Darwinist and as the founder of neo-Darwinism, although originally he believed in Lamarck's theory of the transmission of acquired traits. What is significant for neo-Darwinism is that it combines our knowledge of genetics with Darwin's theory of selection. Weismann combines the theory of cells, embryology, and genetics with another, and interprets the result by means of the theory of selection. He transfers the principle of natural selection from the macroscopic to the cellular perspective, which implies that the cellular plasma (Zellplasma) is transmitted from generation to generation and thereby becomes potentially immortal. The cellular plasma is also the basis for the soma or bodily plasma. Today, we would use the expressions genotype and phenotype. To clarify this position a bit further, we could say that for the neo-Darwinists, the genotype is the basis for transmission and the phenotype follows from it, whereas for a Lamarckian, the phenotype is the basis and the genotype develops from this. In addition, I wish to make clear that it was important for Weismann to stress that given the theory of selection, it does not follow that the beastly tendencies should govern human [Page 678]beings, but that for human beings it is particularly the mind or spirit that matters, rather than the body.

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