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Within this assignment I will be discussing the impact of Pseudoscientific ideas of RACE on the

Jewish nation by the Nazi German during 22 the period 1 from 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany

carried out a campaign to “cleanse” German society of individuals viewed as biological threats

to the nation’s “health.” Enlisting the help of physicians and medically trained geneticists,

psychiatrists, and anthropologists, the Nazis developed racial health policies that began with the

mass sterilization of “genetically diseased” persons and ended with the near annihilation of

European Jewry. With the patina of legitimacy provided by “racial” science experts, the Nazi

regime carried out a program of approximately 400,000 forced sterilizations and over 275,000

euthanasia deaths that found its most radical manifestation in the death of millions of “racial”

enemies in the Holocaust.

This campaign was based in part on ideas about public health and genetic “fitness” that had

grown out of the inclination of many late nineteenth century scientists and intellectuals to apply

the Darwinian concepts of evolution to the problems of human society. These ideas became

known as eugenics and found a receptive audience in countries as varied as Brazil, France, Great

Britain, and the United States. But in Germany, in the traumatic aftermath of World War I and

the subsequent economic upheavals of the twenties, eugenic ideas found a more virulent

expression when combined with the Nazi worldview that espoused both German racial

superiority and militaristic ultranationalist.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to selected materials on the history

of Nazi racial science. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user

determine the item’s focus, and call numbers for the Museum’s Library are given in parentheses

following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby

public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the “Find in a library near you”

link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open World Cat search screen. The results of

that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local

librarian for assistance.

Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical

evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.

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Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah, Systematic state-sponsored killing of Jews and others by Nazi Germany
and its collaborators during World War II. Fueled by anti-Semitism, the Nazi persecution of Jews
began soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 with a boycott of Jewish
businesses and the dismissal of Jewish civil servants. Under the Nürnberg Laws (1935), Jews lost their
citizenship. About 7,500 Jewish businesses were gutted and some 1,000 synagogues burned or
damaged in the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, and thereafter Jews were imprisoned in concentration
camps or forced into ghettos. German victories early in World War II (1939–45) brought most
European Jews under the control of the Nazis and their satellites. As German armies moved into
Poland, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union, special mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, rounded
up and killed Jews, Roma (Gypsies), communists, political leaders, and intellectuals. Other groups
targeted by the Nazis included homosexuals and the mentally retarded, physically disabled, and
emotionally disturbed. At the Wannsee Conference (1942), a “final solution” was formulated for the
extermination of European Jewry, and thereafter Jews from all over Nazi-occupied Europe were
systematically evacuated to concentration and extermination camps, where they were either killed or
forced into slave labour. Underground resistance movements arose in several countries, and Jewish
risings took place against overwhelming odds in the ghettos of Poland (see Warsaw Ghetto Uprising).
Individuals such as Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by their efforts; whether the Allied
governments and the Vatican could have done more to aid Jews has long been a matter of controversy.
By the end of the war, an estimated six million Jews and millions of others had been killed by Nazi
Germany and its collaborator
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