hello my name is dr patricia haber-rice and i'm the director of the division of the senior historian at the mandel center for advanced holocaust studies at the united states holocaust memorial museum in washington i'm lutz cowboy associate professor of sociology at the university of vermont today dr kelburn and i are going to look at eugenics also called racial hygiene in nazi germany and in the united states two countries deeply invested in implementing eugenic public health policies to improve the genetic makeup of their populations we're going to look at how the two countries borrowed from each other when it came to implementing some of these eugenic strategies specifically antenatal strategies compulsory sterilization and anti-miscegenation laws which kept unvaluable members of society from reproducing before we begin i want to point out that you're going to hear terms in this lecture today that are not appropriate to use in modern discourse today words like imbecile and idiot are decidedly pejorative in the early decades of the 20th century however these were actually medical terms in those days they represented a range of psychological classification associated with hereditary people-mindedness something today we would call an intellectual disability the term described the degree of intellectual empowerment with idiocy signifying the highest degree of impairment and morality the least although these terms were meant to classify in the end they became the means to isolate those with intellectual disabilities from the rest of society we need to be aware that our language constantly changes over time and that these terms which once had scientific meaning eventually acquired offensive connotations so what is eugenics eugenics of the idea of good birth was the scientific movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries at the core of the movement's belief system was the conviction that human heredity was fixed and immutable that it's nature not nurture that makes you the human being that you are the idea in a nutshell is this that if you can breed a better dog or horse as humankind has been doing for centuries we can breed a better person and a better national body eugenics was an international movement and in its heyday right before the first world war great britain united states and germany were leaders in the movement each might have had their own agenda but most eugenesis everywhere had some ideas in common first they want to define who in their society is valuable to pick out the good stock and encourage them to reproduce second they want to define the bad stock those who are seen as a burden on society and discourage them from reproducing and third they want to keep the races from intermarrying and we'll see the results of these efforts today first in compulsory sterilization laws both the united states and nazi germany imposed in the first half of the 20th century indiana enacted the world's first eugenic sterilization law in 1907. it targeted confirmed criminals idiots imbeciles and rapists housed in state institutions policies such as eugenic sterilization or the establishment of state institutions to separate undesirable individuals from the public are examples of what sociologists call oppressive othering deviant characteristics such as being inferior or dangerous are ascribed unto others and oppressive measures employed against them in a book published in 1922 the american eugenicist harry laughlin proposed a model sterilization law he was the director of the eugenic records office at the time it was a research institute that gathered information on what were believed to be hereditary qualities in the population laughlin intended his model law to be a possible blueprint for a federal law this never materialized but it did influence the creation of state eugenic sterilization laws laughlin's model sterilization law targeted a heterogeneous group of people those with mental illnesses developmental disabilities and physical disabilities it included even the homeless the poor and alcoholics actually sterilized were two main groups people with developmental or intellectual disabilities and people with psychiatric illnesses when one compares laughlin's model law to the nazi sterilization law about a decade later one finds an almost one-to-one correspondence between them in terms of the groups they targeted this is indicated by the corresponding numbers on the left and on the right this was no coincidence the nazis paid close attention to the us as the world leader in eugenic sterilizations before 1933. until 1927 those american states that had eugenic sterilization laws did generally not want to implement them full scale concerns existed about legal liability of sterilization providers and whether the laws were constitutional in 1927 the us supreme court decided buck versus spell it was a review of the constitutionality of the 1924 virginia sterilization law that drew on laughlin's model law in an 8-1 decision the court decided that it was constitutional for u.s states to sterilize those who were thought to endanger the health of the state and the general wealth of the public the justices found undesirable characteristics in three generations of the buck family the mother emma an alleged prostitute the allegation was false and her daughter carrie here they are shown in a picture together kerry was committed to a virginia institution after she had been raped at age 17 by a member of her foster family for that she was labeled promiscuous by the court carey started vivian the product of the rape represented the third generation of the family she was presumed feeble-minded in his opinion writing for the majority justice oliver wendell holmes wrote quote it is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute a general offspring for crime or to let them starve for the imbecility society can prevent those who are manifestly unfed from continuing their kind three generations of imbeciles are enough end of quote kerry was subsequently sterilized so was her sister doris who was never told about the procedure after buck versus spell states felt affirmed that eugenic sterilization laws passed constitutional muster about two-thirds of american states at one point or another had a eugenic sterilization law eugenic thought also influenced the 1924 immigration act the act reduced the overall number of immigrants allowed to come into the united states each year it also limited immigration from precisely those countries that were thought to have higher portions of the unfit through a quota system inspired by american eugenicists and their sterilization laws nazi officials made compulsory sterilization a priority in their own eugenic legislation on the 14th of july 1933 just six months after the nazis came to power the hitler cabinet promulgated the law for the prevention of progeny with hereditary diseases also called the hereditary health law which ordered the compulsory sterilization of persons with certain disorders or disabilities the law was patterned on the california state sterilization law a fact that american eugenesis were very proud of now you're seeing a poster which says we are not alone in german and showing uh with the many flags uh demonstrating that many other countries had some similar kind of policy five of the diseases specifically designated in the legislation represented psychiatric or neurological disorders including schizophrenia manic depressive or what is today bipolar disorder hereditary epilepsy huddington's korea and hereditary people-mindedness physical conditions which warranted sterilization under the new law were hereditary deafness hereditary blindness severe hereditary physical deformities and severe alcoholism which some physicians felt then as now had a genetic component medical professionals were now duty-bound to report patients with these disorders in the exercise of their practice proposals for sterilization were adjudicated by hereditary health courts a nazi legal invention by 1936 more than 250 hereditary health courts had been established throughout germany with each tribunal comprised of two physicians and one jurist if the decision of the court were for sterilization the 1933 law demanded execution of the sterilization procedure within two weeks time at the designated local hospital or clinic mentioned in the verdict paragraph 12 of the law sanctioned the use of force on unwilling victims those who attempted to circumvent the procedure were delivered under police guard to the hospital in question the new law took effect in january of 1934. from that first day of january 1934 until the end of war in may 1945 some 400 000 germans were forcibly sterilized under the terms of the nazi sterilization law who are the victims of nazi sterilization policy the vast majority of sterilized germans suffered from mental rather than physical disabilities or disorders nowhere was this more true than in the case of hereditary feeble-mindedness whose ambiguous diagnosis permitted physicians and psychiatrists to include not only those diagnosed with an actual intellectual disability but also the socially apparent are those whom nazi medical authorities deemed socially aberrant vagrants prostitutes mothers of illegitimate children especially if they were on welfare petty criminals juvenile delinquents and in large numbers relative to the german population roma and sinti so-called gypsies anti-miscegenation laws were racist laws enacted by american states to prohibit interracial marriage and interracial sex such laws stayed far back in american history but in the 20th century anti-miscegenation as a policy was also adopted by eugenicists who believed that race mixing would lead to the racial deterioration of the white race in 1900 sociologists and eugenicist edward ross used the term race suicide to disapprove of mixed-race relationships as did president theodore roosevelt in 1902 eugenic sterilization law of 1924 which targeted those with insanity idiocy imbecility feeble-mindedness or epilepsy became law with another act on the same day that act was called the racial integrity act it made unlawful for any white person to marry anyone but another white person the law was enforced infractions constitute felonies punishable with up to five years in prison if an interracial couple lived together without being married they could also be charged with what was called fornication the intended outcome of both acts was the same to prevent an alleged deterioration of america's racial stock the law against miscegenation was not divorced from use held by many whites in the 1950s a public opinion poll found that the vast majority of white americans still disapproved of interracial marriage virginia's anti-miscegenation law remained in effect until 1967 when the u.s supreme court in lovingly virginia found such laws unconstitutional the loving case refers to an interracial couple that had married in another state and subsequently been sentenced in virginia to a one-year prison term while the anti-miscegenation laws dr kelber describes have appeared in american law since the colonial period there were no similar laws in germany before the nazi period we've just seen that these laws were buttressed by eugenic laws in the nineteen teens and twenties in the united states many not nazi officials were also keen to apply these kinds of laws to german jews in september 1935 in the midst of the seventh annual nuremberg party rally nazi leaders promulgated the so-called nuremberg racial laws and you're seeing a chart from the times which tried to demonstrate how the nuremberg laws applied to jews these nuremberg laws are significant because they laid the foundation for all future anti-jewish legislation in nazi germany the second of these laws was the law for the protection of german blood and german honor this law banned marriage between jews and non-jewish germans and criminalized sexual relations between them implementing decrees for the law defined who was a jew and extended the law to ban marriage between german aryans and roman and sinti so-called gypsies as well as blacks or african germans plainly one can see that this is an anti-semitic law there's no question about it but in the larger sense it can also be seen as eugenic measure and it's precisely this mix of the virulent racial anti-semitism the nazis bring with them when they come to power and eugenic theories that makes nazi racial policy such a potent and lethal cocktail and what's very interesting is that a month after the promulgation of the nuremberg laws another very similar kind of eugenic legislation was initiated one that aimed at the so-called hereditarily ill the same individuals targeted for sterilization just as the blood protection law banned marriage between german aryans and jews this marital hygiene law bad marriage between consenting adults if either partner suffered from mental illness or in hereditary disease such as hereditary epilepsy or hereditary deafness or blindness or if one of the partners stood under legal guardianship on medical grounds before marriage german couples had to prove that no such impediment existed by obtaining a certificate of marital fitness and here you see in the diagram two couples one who has succeeded in showing their marital fitness and the other who walk away from each other dejected because they've been denied the right to marry now individuals who refuse such a certificate could appeal to their local hereditary health courts but those who violated the final decision of health authorities by marrying without a certificate could be sentenced to prison when world war ii ended and knowledge emerged about nazi practices in medicine american eugenic sterilizations did not cease california and virginia continued to sterilize individuals at a fairly constant pace well into the 1950s this two states alone accounted for almost half of the estimated total of about 60 000 eugenic sterilizations in u.s in states such as georgia north carolina and iowa the number of sterilizations actually went up after world war ii this development occurred after modern biology and genetics have thoroughly discredited earlier types of eugenic thought which had argued that deviance was biologically transmitted a more individualistic type of reform eugenics emerged which stressed the supposedly voluntary prevention of offspring who would not it was argued be properly cared for by their parents and would become a burden to society reform eugenicists thought that undesirable characteristics would be passed on socially in families in practice sterilizations continued in many states policy shifted toward prohibiting the procreation of minority populations particularly african americans in the late 1950s and in the 1960s the racial factor became noticeably pronounced in states such as north carolina with better access to state services and institutions minorities came in closer reach of the state for sterilization in fact north carolina's eugenic sterilization law extended to those who were not institutionalized a prominent case is elaine rick a social worker noticed her when she was pregnant at age 13 as the result of a sexual assault miss riddick lived with her grandmother authorities threatened the grandmother if she did not consent to her granddaughter sterilization with rescinding the public benefits she received and placing her grandchildren in foster care so she signed a consent form with an ex because she could not read or write misreading herself did not about her sterilization when it occurred after she had given birth she only found out that she could not bear children when she was married her attempts to seek legal redress from the state of north carolina were unsuccessful civilizations under eugenics laws declined in the 1960s as the result of a greater recognition of privacy rights and the growing scientific consensus of all forms of eugenics being pseudoscientific still medical service providers ignored consent laws in order to provide what were called mississippi appendectomies this term refers to the removal of the reproductive organs of poor women right after they had abdominal surgeries such practices were typically not covered under eugenic sterilization laws but were allegedly therapeutic in nature this procedure was also extended on a large scale to native american women in the 1970s eugenics ran a similar course in america and in nazi germany in terms of sterilization and anti-miscegenation laws but of course nazi germany went on to institute much more radical eugenic strategies to cleanse their race of unwanted elements in germany the eugenic strategies first initiated in compulsory sterilization led ultimately to the euthanasia program the so-called euthanasia campaign was the regime's first program of mass murder targeting for killing mentally and physically disabled patients housed in institutions throughout germany and in german annexed territories using gas and overdoses of medication the euthanasia program claimed the lives of at least 250 000 patients including 10 000 children the overwhelming number of victims were german aryans with mental and physical disabilities even the final solution can be seen in this light by calling out the jews the so-called unwanted disease population in german occupied europe the genocide of european jewry may be seen as the ultimate eugenic measure even as the crimes of the nazify medical community largely work to discredit eugenics among the scientific community the practice of eugenics continued particularly in north america where sterilization policy continued against african-american and native american minorities you