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Franz Boas
"Eugenics is not a panacea that will cure human ills, it is rather a dangerous sword that may turn its edge against those who rely on its strength."1
-- Franz Boas
Overview
Even as Adolf Hitler was turning Germany into a "racial state," scientific discoveries were undercutting eugenics and racism. In 1913, A.H. Sturtevant showed that genes are not randomly arranged during reproduction as Gregor Mendel believed but have a specific order and place on a chromosome. Another geneticist, Herman Muller, found that X-rays could cause mutations in fruit flies. His discovery undercut the eugenic notion that genes are immune to outside influences.
Geneticists were also learning that breeding within a so-called "pure" line does not lead to better specimens, as eugenicists predicted. Instead, it results in a general decline in health and hardiness. On the other hand, crossing strains leads to what scientists call "hybrid vigor." Such discoveries contradicted eugenic beliefs about "purity" and "superiority."
Logic also undermined eugenics. British geneticist Reginald Punnet questioned the idea that sterilization would reduce feeblemindedness in a population. Even if a recessive gene caused feeblemindedness (and it does not), Punnet noted that a person might carry that gene without being feebleminded. Therefore "even under the unrealistic assumption that all the feebleminded could be prevented from breeding, it would take more than 8,000 years before their numbers were reduced to 1 in 100,000."2
In response to a growing skepticism about eugenics, the Carnegie Foundation, which funded the Eugenics Records Office (ERO), asked independent scholars to evaluate its work. In 1935, they described its research as "unsatisfactory" and recommended that the ERO "cease from engaging in all forms of propaganda."2 Before the report was issued, the Carnegie Foundation persuaded Charles Davenport to retire. At the foundation's request Harry Laughlin resigned in 1939. Soon after, the ERO closed its doors. Other eugenic organizations also disbanded or redefined their mission.
By the time the United States entered World War II in 1941, American eugenicists had broken all ties with the Nazis. Yet the values and beliefs about difference that defined the eugenics movement did not disappear. They continued to appeal to many Americans long after the world confronted the consequences of the Nazis' "racial state."
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"A Dangerous Sword"
Anthropologist Franz Boas, a German immigrant, believed that he and his colleagues had an obligation to speak out against the Nazis' racial theories. Even though many American scientists agreed that Hitler's notions about "race" had no basis in science, few were willing to sign a statement criticizing his racial policies. Disillusioned but persistent, Boas continued to speak out. At one point, he was nearly excluded from a conference because the organizers feared that as a Jew, he might be biased on questions of race. Yet they expressed no similar concerns about the Nazi scientists they invited to the conference.
In 1938, Boas drafted yet another statement challenging the Nazi racial policies. Even as he was gathering signatures, the Nazis were accelerating their campaign against the Jews. On November 9-10 came Kristallnacht. As news of the violence against Jews made headlines around the world, about 1300 scientists signed the statement.
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Facing History Resources
• Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., Brookline, Massachusetts) 2002, Chapter 8, "The Nazi Connection."
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Print and Video Resources
• "Mobilizing Scientists Against Nazi Racism, 1933-1939" in Bones, Bodies, Behavior by Elazar Barkan, edited by George W. Stocking, Jr. (University of Wisconsin Press) 1988.
• By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich by Hugh Gregory Gallagher (Holt Publishing) 1990.
• The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism by Stefan Kühl (Oxford University Press, New York) Chapter 2, 1994.
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1 "The Hidden Science of Eugenics" by Dianne Paul and Hamish Spencer from Nature, vol. 374, March 1995, p. 302.
2 "The Eugenic Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940: An Essay in Institutional History," by Garland Allen from Osiris, 2nd series, 1986, vol. 2, p. 252.
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