Benjamin Wiker, a senior fellow of the Disco ‘Tute, has made a cottage industry of linking Darwin to Hitler, evolution to Nazi ideology, and that meme is perpetuated by a variety of ID creationist flacks.
Wiker’s view depends in large part on the supposition that German evolutionary thinking about evolution actually followed Darwin. However, as a recent book review in PLoS Biology points out, what reached Germany was not the English version of Origin of Species, it was a translation by German paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn that was a main source of German notions of Darwinian evolution, and those notions were a distortion of Darwin’s views. Bronn had a substantially different conception of evolution than Darwin, and Bronn’s translation apparently incorporated a good bit of his own conception rather than being a straight translation of Darwin. Bronn even added an extra chapter to OoS incorporate his own ideas.
I get no hits searching for Bronn in three of Wiker’s books (10 Books That Screwed Up the Word, Architects of the Culture of Death, and Moral Darwinism: How we became hedonists) in Google books. (The Darwin Myth is unfortunately not searchable.)
Nevertheless, finding no mention of Bronn, particularly in Architects of the Culture of Death and Moral Darwinism, I tentatively infer that Wiker didn’t bother to note the translation and distortion of On the Origin of Species through Bronn’s ‘progressive/perfection evolution’ lens. That’s obvious in some places. For example, in Architects of the Culture of Death, De Marco and Wiker wrote
Contrary to assertions of all too many historians, it is no stretch at all to fo from Darwin to Haeckel’s Darwinist Monism and on to Hitler’s Nazism, as the words of Hitler himself make quite clear: “Providence [i.e., the laws of nature] has endowed living creatures with a limitless fecundity, but she has not put in their reach, without the need for effort on their part, all the food they need. All that is very right and proper, for it is the struggle for existence that produces the selection of the fittest.” Natural selection is the engine of purification, and as with all other species of nature, this purification demans the isolation of particular breeds or races. (p. 115)
That skips right over Bronn’s insertion of progressive perfectionism into Darwin’s non-progressivist evolution. And it’s that progressivism, that notion that evolution somehow is directed at perfection, that infected German biology via Bronn and Haeckel. The authors go on to say
It is no surprise, then, to find that Haeckel’s evolutionary eugenic arguments undergirded the Nazi eugenic program.
Haeckel, not Darwin, via Bronn, since Haeckel was not fluent in English but probably read OoS in Bronn’s translation. I welcome corrections from historians.
Hat tip to The Mermaid’s Tale, where there is more on the topic.
Whose [editorial comment] is that? Who equated Providence with the laws of nature in this specific context?
De Marco and Wiker. That’s in the original.
“Providence [i.e., the laws of nature] … “
That does not compute. Even if cited, the above notion only has value if one already “just knows” that some uberspirit exists since they suppose that what it does is “natural”.
For anyone else the notion certainly posits more questions than answers.
*but it is certainly a respectably ballsy statement to make. points awarded for style only*
Do you think someone could remind my fellow Brunonian, David Klinghoffer, of the Dishonesty Institute? I would, but poor dear David thinks of me as an “obsessed Darwin lover”. And if you do, tell David that I think he needs to be examined by one Josiah S. Carberry, who is known at our undergraduate alma mater as a legendary professor of psycho-ceramics.
Curious that “Providence” means “the laws of nature” when an evilutionist uses it, but when any of America’s founding fathers drops the word, it can only mean “the Holy Trinity.”
Bronn gets no mention in The Darwin Myth even though Wicker spends an odious chapter on “Darwin and Hitler”.
Don’t forget that Hitler was mainly interested in murdering Jews. Himmler was far more concerned with pseudo-scientific eugenics than was Hitler–to the degree Hitler used to make jokes at Himmler’s expense behind his back (you can read about this in Speer’s memoirs).
Also, as a reaction to Stein’s film, many science bloggers jumped on passages from Mein Kampf that seem to be evidence that Hitler was a Christian. It would be truer to say he was trying to create a political image acceptable to the mainstream which naturally had to include an appearance of Christianity. The extensive analysis of Hitler’s personality presented in Fromm’s Anatomy of Human Destructiveness makes it clear that Hitler was no Christian but was self-deluded to the point that he saw himself as the deity of National Socialism and envisioned a future in which he would receive the worship of all mankind, with National Socialism replacing Christianity.
The question is what did Hitler mean. The man was so insane he probably changed the definition every time he used it. Though it’s been pointed out again and again most of his nutjob rambling was religious, not scientific, in nature.
What really gets me is that creationists denounce the “totally random theory of evolution” as being insufficient to explain the diversity and complexity of living things, and then in the very same breath denounce the “teleological theory of evolution” which practically forced the Nazis to try to “help evolution along” with their eugenics program. I guess when you’re a creationist you get to have your cake and eat it too.
None the less if you download a .pdf version of “Mein Kampf” and search (as I have done) for the words “Christ” “Jesus” or “Lord” or cognates thereof, you will find well over 40 hits.
Search Mein Kampt for the word “Darwin”?
Zero hits.
Regardless, as Peter Olofsson so beautifully stated: “…the validity of a scientific theory does not hinge upon how it has been interpreted by German dictators.”
And don’t forget that Hitler did not get that obsession from Darwin, but from Martin Luther, who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the[…]d_their_lies
Creationists tend to gloss over this insignificant trifle, as it puts a kink in their Lies for Jesus.
There is one mention of the word “evolution”, relative to the crime of race-mixing.
And one might do well to consider the debt Hitler owed to the Wright Brothers. After all, if it hadn’t been for them, he wouldn’t have had the Stukas and Heinkels and Messerschmitts to support his conquests.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Reminds me of something I read about Bill Clinton’s wildly popular My Life in China. The book was so popular and the booksellers so overwhelmed with orders that they could not fulfil in time that poorly and wildly imaginatively written Mandarin translations began to flood the market. These were mostly dished out by moonlighting journalists and hacks for hire transcribing notes over the phone with students rapidly translating the book into Mandarin as they read it. This led to some particularly hilarious ad libbing, and one terrible version that had the Old Dog in splits when it was explained had this on the first few pages, “I decided to move from Hope to Hot Springs as the Feng Shui was good over there…”
Actually, it’s quite unlikely that Hitler had read Luther, either. Hitler was a Catholic, and Luther’s works were interdicted to Catholics. It’s likely that he’d heard of it, and would have approved, but in 1900 to 1918, when his warped political outlook was being formed, that Luther pamphlet (it is no more) wasn’t in print.
Hitler’s anti-semitism is difficult to trace to a source, since it was certainly psychopathic, and not accounted for by rational means. The defining event seems to have been the death of his mother on 21 December 1907, from breast cancer. She had been attended - and well cared for, by the standards of the day - by a Jewish physician, Dr Eduard Bloch. Within the year, Hitler tells us, he had turned from “a feeble cosmopolite” into “a fanatical anti-Semite” (Mein Kampf, 18). Somehow Hitler had transferred the blame and guilt that he felt - for he had treated his mother very badly before her final illness - to the man who had attended her.
The intellectual underpinnings of this metamorphosis - if you can call them that - seem to have been the tawdry racist pamphlets that he read in Vienna. Pre-WWI Vienna was awash with them. He also read the bogus “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” about 1920. So did many, but Hitler instantly and uncritically believed every word, taking them as confirmation, not new information. His attitudes had already been formed by then. The only major figure that he seems to have used as inspiration for his antisemitism was not Martin Luther, but Ricard Wagner.
But in a sense, it’s pointless to try to find an actual intellectual cause for a psychopathic event. Hitler’s corrosive, overwhelming hatred of Jews derives not from any source in German history, but from internal psychopathy. It was just that this psychopathy thrived in its environment. It was selected for, notwithstanding the fact that in a saner political environment, it would have soon become extinct.
Which is, you know, an odd affirmation of one of the ideas behind the Theory of Evolution, in a way.
Hitler was a creationist as Alan MacNeill documents. He was also a Catholic and his millions of willing followers were all Catholics and Lutherans.
These Hitler threads are boringly predictable. Someone will show up and claim to be able to read Hitler’s mind and explain what he really meant. Even though he has been dead for 64 years. I don’t believe anyone can read the minds of dead people or even alive ones.
And Table Talk, a book partially forged after the war by xians to make Hitler look a little less xian. Damage control.
In addition to soaking up the antisemitism that was in the air, Hitler’s views and influence were the culmination of the right-wing militaristic nationalism that was a major influence in many European countries in the 1800s and early 1900s. Since the French Revolution there had been a tension between internationalism on the left and nationalism on the right. Antisemitism flourished among the nationalists and was often (but not always) opposed by internationalists (think, for example, of the Dreyfus Affair in France). Stir all that together with the aftermath of World War I (including the Versaille Treaty) and the stage is set for Hitler.
But of course it’s all Charles Darwin’s fault!
(If this is a misleading summary, I would be pleased to be corrected by historians).
Heinrich Bronn had his own pre-Darwinian notions of branching trees, speciation and mechanisms. There is a useful paper by Sander Gliboff:
Gliboff, Sander. 2007. H. G. Bronn and the History of Nature. Journal of the History of Biology 40 (2):259-294.
An older article, in German is:
Junker, T. 1991. Heinrich Georg Bronn und Origin of Species. Sudhoffs Arch Z Wissenschaftsgesch 75 (2):180-208.
The world can be changed by man’s endeavor, and that this endeavor can lead to something new and better .No man can sever the bonds that unite him to his society simply by averting his eyes . He must ever be receptive and sensitive to the new ; and have sufficient courage and skill to novel facts and to deal with them .
I think Hitler acquired his anti-semitism either at the end of WWI or during it. Ian Kershaw noted in his biography of Hitler that when he was attempting to make a living in Vienna before the war painting postcard sized pictures, he sold most of them through Jewish dealers, and he actually spoke well of them. Simon Wiesenthal in his book “Recht nicht Rache” discussed the theory that Hitler got a dose of syphilis from a Jewish prostitute around 1915 (a serious crime in the German army), and he defended himself by saying that he got syphilis before the war. Kershaw thinks that his anti-semitism came as a result of Germany’s loss in 1918, and only subsequently predated it to before the war to make it seem more considered.
If you can read German, the addition Bronn made can be found at:
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Entst[…]_der_Arten/Fünfzehntes_Kapitel
A great find, Raven. Good enough to bookmark the source.
Dave
I suppose it’s worth it to rebut this Hitler stuff. As well as creationists using that illogical linking to justify themselves, it might also cause ill-informed neo-nazis to mistakenly believe that their repulsive ideology is related to “evolution” or “natural selection”.
In addition to what has been pointed out above, let me note that -
1) Even if Hitler had been a trained and talented biologist, that would be totally irrelevant. Hitler was, in fact, a fairly talented painter (his failure to become a professional artist notwithstanding, this is true). The Nazi party did, in fact, include talented artists, musicians, scientists, physicians, etc. (For completeness, I’ll note that it did not contain molecular biologists, nor anyone with a full modern understanding of the theory of evolution, because molecular biology (and most of cell biology) had not been discovered yet.)
However, one thing that painting and the theory of evolution have in common is that neither one of them is a system of ethical philosophy that tells people how they “should” behave.
People who happen to understand the theory of evolution can do what they choose to do (or what they have the illusion of choosing to do, I suppose, if you’re a hard core determinist).
The theory of evolution does have a lot of value in helping me to understand what is likely to happen if I do certain things, but it says nothing whatsoever about whether certain actions or outcomes are “good” or “bad”.
2) And indeed, just as we note that being a painter doesn’t mean that someone is a Nazi, and in fact that many painters were vehemently anti-Nazi, so we can note that many scientists were opposed to Nazism, and that Darwin himself held political views that, while quaint by today’s standards, were very progressive for his time.
I realize that this is obvious, and that anyone who doesn’t accept this obvious logic is either biased beyond the point of honest discussion, suffering from a cognitive disorder, or both, but it’s still worth mentioning it.
On page 115 of ‘Architects of the Culture of Death’ De Marco and Wiker do not give the original source of this Hitler quote.
They reference instead page 21 of a Mike Hawkins book.
Just how many times have we seen creationists not give the orginal source of a quote, but instead quote somebody quoting somebody else?
Sorry that should be page 274 of the Mike Hawkins book.
It is very suspicious that De Marco and Wiker cannot bring themselves to document where Hitler said that ‘quote’
Guess what? Mike Hawkins is not quoting the original German. He is using the Cameron Stevens version of Table Talk.
I have the original German version , by Picker.
I wonder why a scholar like Wiker does not translate Hitler directly but instead cites a work which quotes another work , which then uses an English translation of dubious provenance.
Doesn’t a scholar like Wiker believe in primary sources rather than 4th hand sources?
Or does he want to hide the fact that he is not using primary sources?
The evidence that Hitler’s antisemitism predated WW1 is found in the letters, conversations with Hans Jetzinger, and book “The Young Hitler I Knew” (trans. E V Anderson, Boston, 1955) of Gustl Kubizek, Hitler’s friend and roommate in Vienna in 1908. According to this source, Hitler was a member of the Anti-Semitic League as early as that year, when he was only eighteen. This actually predates the period in 1909-1911 when he sold paintings to Jewish art dealers and framers.
Kubizek is considered a reliable witness. He did actually room with Hitler, but he did not put himself forward either during the Third Reich or afterwards, all his evidence is consistent with what is known from other reliable sources, and it is even consistent with Hitler’s own account. The last, of course, is the least important.
There is no persuasive evidence that Hitler ever had syphilis. The suggestion derives from a note in the diary of Dr. Theo Morell, his physician, speculating on the cause of his patient’s violent mood swings. (But there is no evidence for any formal report written by him.) And Morell was a quack, and the supposed source of the infection is as varied as the authors who speculate about it. There’s some circumstantial evidence, but the possibility is at best very speculative. To assume that Hitler was infected, that it was by a Jewish prostitute, (when Hitler probably never had normal sexual relations with anyone) and then to build Hitler’s antisemitism on that, is to go far, far out on a historical limb.
Because they lied. The translation they used is partially forged. Xians after the war added some anti-xian quotes as damage control. Tim Carrier documents when the additions were made, who made them, and why.
Invariably creationists lie.
I will add here that fundie cultists frequently make up quotes, just flat out lie. Not that we all don’t know that.
Most of us have seen the “xian nation” propaganda effort with quotes from the founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, and so on about how the USA was a god inspired idea or some such.
The truth is, most of those people were Deists or critical of religion.
Some of those quotes are just plain Made Up.
If you see a suspicious quote from a fundie xian without a source, chances are the source is a lie in someone’s warped brain. Once one of them lies, they just repeat it, even after they get caught.
When you see a quote presented by a creationist, it need not be “suspicious”, or without a source. Even quotes which look quite innocent and have a full citation should be checked before proceeding.
This is a bit off topic, but Ben Stein has complained lately about being “persecuted” by Atheists and “Neo - Darwinists”:
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/[…]new-york-tim
Dave F…it
Schizophrenia is a vague diagnosis. Evos are easily impressed by pseudo-Greek words.
The pt is, as a few of you know, that AH didn’t have a chaplain. Read the Wiki article on AH’s religious beliefs. Or is Wik part of some vast conspiracy?
Hasta manyana, you blokes.
I really have no clue why anyone responds to that bonehead at all.
Easy. Some people like to argue. Any place, any time, any reason.
The point left the building long ago. Anyhow…
Firstly, how do you know he didn’t? Did George W. Bush have a singular, identifiable chaplain? He was an avowed Christian leader, if you can’t produce a specific name does that mean he was lying?
Secondly, the pope doesn’t have a chaplain. Is he thusly not a Christian?
Thirdly, why is it incumbent on us to produce this name when you never, under any circumstances, do the slightest bit of research on your own, except for quotemining?
And forthly, for the record, according to Doris L Bergen, author of “Twisted Cross - the German Christian Movement in the Third Reich” Hitler’s chaplain was a man named Ludwig Muller, chaplain of the Koenigsburgh Army Corps District.
Hitler had a personal, pastoral, relationship with the man and liked him so much he tried, unsuccessfully, to appoint him to the position of “First Reichs Bishop of the Evangelical Church”. I’m not so sure what that means, but it sounds pretty big-oompa-loompa to me.
That information actually took longer for me to type up than it took me to find, demonstrating that either a) you do not know how to use Google because you are incompetent, or, more likely, that you choose not to use Google, because you are a liar.
When something itches, people tend to scratch.
Too steep for random chance to explain it!
Hitler and all his goons where wack jobs, and someone is trying to make sense of it? when wack jobs seek to rule its all about what they can say that will work. hmmmm sounds like all of our polititions
Are these the kinds of itches that should be scratched in public? :-)
Uh - no comment. :p
Henry J
@ Stevadroni
Evangelisch is German for Protestant. You just have to type it into Google. Or Bing.
The Pape don’t have a chaplain for the same reason Jebus didn’t (Oh Stanton, once again I invite you to type JEBUS into Google/Bing/Bingle.)
Aha. “Konigsburgh” is not possible in German. You mean Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. It’s quite simple. AH vaguely encouraged a “German (Prod.) Church” and Muller was its Bishop. Head of 600 000 members, according to one source. You just have to use Google.
Wed. 19/8 noon.
If, by “vaguely encouraged” you mean things like “actively sought the mantle of”, “publicity clung to” and “while considering himself divinely mandated”, then you have a point.
Truly, nov, your logic is so fantastically baffling it’s actually entertaining.
Obviously, you spent some time actually researching this. A first, perhaps. It must have surprised you when somebody was actually answer you insipid little change-the-subject question about Hitler’s chaplain.
And you didn’t even find a quote to mine.
Still, What the hell is your point?
Whether or not he really believed it, whether or not he properly interpreted doctrine, whether or not his chaplain was any good, Adolf Hitler appealing to God for moral guidance is on the record, Hitler appealing to Darwin for moral guidance is absent.
Hitler didn’t give a rats ass about Darwin. If he did, coupling Darwin’s authority to his eugenic fantasy would have been a simple, obvious, step for a man who found it easy to misinterpret Jesus for his own ends.
The case is closed. Elvis has left the building and the parrot has been dead for decades.
I suspect that Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have disagreed with the “vaguely” part of this.
…oops, should be… “It must have surprised you when somebody was actually able to answer your insipid little change-the-subject question about Hitler’s chaplain.”
Proofread Steve, proofread.
Holy crap Klinghoffer is nuts.
Why is a Chaplain needed?
Protestantism for example is based on a “priesthood of believers” ?
Gee I don’t have a personal Rabbi. Guess I’m not Jewish.
Stevarooni - what the heil is your point?
Calm down, our foam-flecked friend.
You claimed AH’s last Jesus reference was 23 years before his death. You were wrong.
You claimed AH didn’t have a chaplain. You were wrong.
The point being that the separation you are trying to imply between AH and Christianity is based on falsehoods. I’ve no doubt, however, that your faith in your conclusion will not be affected by something as piffling as all of your premises being shown to be wrong.
Foam flecked? Hardly.
(Although, I will admit that after spending most of the day on a workstation writing VHDL or assembler for hours, I do find it difficult to compose full sentences in real English. A trait, I fear, that my posts tend to betray.
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