![]() ![]() Getting married and having children became a national duty for the “racially fit.” In a speech on September 8, 1934, Hitler proclaimed: “In my state, the mother is the most important citizen.”Įugenicists had expressed concerns about the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and syphilis. The Marital Health Law of October 1935 banned unions between the “hereditarily healthy” and persons deemed genetically unfit. The Battle for BirthsĮchoing ongoing eugenic fears, the Nazis trumpeted population experts’ warnings of “national death” and aimed to reverse the trend of falling birthrates. Persons in high positions who were viewed as politically “unreliable” met a similar fate. Jews, considered “alien,” were purged from universities, scientific research institutes, hospitals, and public health care. ![]() ![]() After all educational and cultural institutions and the media came under Nazi control, racial eugenics permeated German society and institutions. Hitler’s dictatorship, backed by sweeping police powers, silenced critics of Nazi eugenics and supporters of individual rights. Many German physicians and scientists who had supported racial hygiene ideas before 1933 embraced the new regime’s emphasis on biology and heredity, the new career opportunities, and the additional funding for research. Public health measures to control reproduction and marriage aimed at strengthening the “national body” by eliminating biologically threatening genes from the population. Hitler’s regime touted the “Nordic race” as its eugenic ideal and attempted to mold Germany into a cohesive national community that excluded anyone deemed hereditarily “less valuable” or “racially foreign.” During the Third Reich, a politically extreme, antisemitic variation of eugenics determined the course of state policy. Nazism was “applied biology,” stated Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess. ![]()
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