I think you overrate the influence on science on German nationalism. The idea that blood relationships matter doesn’t come out of science. It’s a much older idea.
The specific ideas behind Nazi eugenics and “racial hygiene” derive — in part — from earlier eugenics and racial-hygiene movements in the US. See, for instance, the Indiana eugenics act of 1907 and, more pointedly, the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which combined legislation against mixed-race marriages with compulsory sterilization of the “feebleminded”.
and new ones like middle-class fear of the poor and rural
What are you talking about? Late 20st century US thought?
No, early-20th-century US thought,. I should have been more clear: by “new” I meant “new at the time”, not “recent as of today”. The idea that poor rural families were inbred hives of criminality, madness, and race-mixing was one of the motivations behind American eugenics of the early 20th century.
Thing is, it’s true that many mental disorders are heritable. In that regard, the early eugenicists were not operating entirely on pseudoscience. But they went wrong in believing that if nations refused to use law and violence to control people’s reproduction (and, ultimately, to kill the “unfit”), that society (or “the race”) would degenerate.
After WWI Germans did try to copy American culture and might have copied scientifically motivated racism. On the other hand that stopped a bit with the Nazis. They didn’t care about copying the US. “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”) was a quite old idea.
“Racial hygiene” isn’t really the same as “scientific racism”. The latter seems to be used more to refer to the anthropological theories of racial superiority, now euphemistically called “human biodiversity” by their advocates.
But “racial hygiene” policies included the elimination of “undesirable” gene lines within the advocates’ favored race — first through forced sterilization, and later through killing.
In 1933 in some sense yes. Hermann Muckermann who was co-author of the law did study in the US.
By 1936 the Nazi however forbid him from speaking publically.
The specific ideas behind Nazi eugenics and “racial hygiene” derive — in part — from earlier eugenics and racial-hygiene movements in the US. See, for instance, the Indiana eugenics act of 1907 and, more pointedly, the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which combined legislation against mixed-race marriages with compulsory sterilization of the “feebleminded”.
No, early-20th-century US thought,. I should have been more clear: by “new” I meant “new at the time”, not “recent as of today”. The idea that poor rural families were inbred hives of criminality, madness, and race-mixing was one of the motivations behind American eugenics of the early 20th century.
Thing is, it’s true that many mental disorders are heritable. In that regard, the early eugenicists were not operating entirely on pseudoscience. But they went wrong in believing that if nations refused to use law and violence to control people’s reproduction (and, ultimately, to kill the “unfit”), that society (or “the race”) would degenerate.
After WWI Germans did try to copy American culture and might have copied scientifically motivated racism. On the other hand that stopped a bit with the Nazis. They didn’t care about copying the US. “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”) was a quite old idea.
“Racial hygiene” isn’t really the same as “scientific racism”. The latter seems to be used more to refer to the anthropological theories of racial superiority, now euphemistically called “human biodiversity” by their advocates.
But “racial hygiene” policies included the elimination of “undesirable” gene lines within the advocates’ favored race — first through forced sterilization, and later through killing.
The German 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring reads like an echo of Harry Laughlin’s 1922 Model Eugenical Sterilization Law, which was the model for the sterilization provisions in Virginia’s 1924 law.
In 1933 in some sense yes. Hermann Muckermann who was co-author of the law did study in the US. By 1936 the Nazi however forbid him from speaking publically.