Summary of YouTube’s Video:

Darwin, Africa and Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism

Fitriah Islamiah Askhari – 10225008

Darwin claimed that human and other mammals were the product of ‘natural selection’.
Natural selection means a blind struggle for existence where the fittest will survive and
reproduced while the less fit would be die. This statement was increasingly famous among
Germany’s intellectual elite at that time. This theory continues to expand with Darwin’s beliefs
that his idea of natural selection had implications for human society. He fared that
humanitarianism could be destroy the human race. But at the end, Darwin itself sure and bother
at the same time with the implications of his theory.

In Germany, Darwin’s ideas provide new generations of political leader, social thinkers, and
even scientists. They were thinks that Darwin’s theory could be a biological validation in the
world. Well, the belief of these great people on Darwin's theory had a fairly intense impact,
especially in the socialist role. For instance, in the late 19s or 20s, many scientists were
promoting racism, racial extermination, and even the extinction of races and these called
‘Social Darwinism’. Even worse, there is one of the Ethnologist at that time, Friedrich
Hellwald, said that it is the basic assumption of the progress where in the world history the
destruction of the weaker nations should be done by the stronger. In this case, native people of
Africa are considered as the one of the lower races on the evolutionary scale.

Between 1904 and 1908 the German’s military attempted to eradicate the Herero in South-
West Africa. That was considered as a first genocide of the 20th century. 2nd October 1904,
general Lothar Von Trotha, give an order to do an exterminate, which is declaring that the
Herreros had to leave German South-West Africa or face extinction. The extermination’s
system goes where the Herrero man would straight be executed, while Herrero women and
children would be driven into the desert and would due of starvation or dehydration. But, at
that time there was a bad reaction so a new plan emerged. The Herreros move to the
concentration camps, which also could be say as a death camps, where they would be die for
malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion. The worst part is in those camps they were subjected to
be a medical experiments by German doctors. Their skulls were collected and sent back to
Germany to be studied by the scientists.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the military leader prepared for the next conflict on their continent
One of the leader, Bernhardi, he argued that healthy development is a basis of the existence of
the nature, which means he said that war is a biological necessity. Nevertheless, many people
who are justifying the war is a proof of Darwinian struggle for existence. At the end, Germany
and its allies lose the First World War. But the ideology of the Darwinism still continuing for
another day and make new descants. Which Adolf Hitler was the next Darwinism leader.