The fostering of heredity for racial integrity

From the Handbook for Schooling the Hitler Youth

Chapter Four: Heredity and Race Fostering (Handbook online is here)

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The following has been edited for greater brevity -cy

From the teaching of genetics we learn that the individual is only a connecting link in the long chain of generations. All families and branches of a people have a common origin, a unified heritage which is continued into the future by means of the heredity stream.

The fostering of heredity aims to combat injuries which appear within the heredity stream of the folk. The most serious of the inheritable diseases are: congenital weak-mindedness, schizophrenia (mental lapses), lunacy (mental sickness), hereditary epilepsy, hereditary St. Vitus dance, hereditary blindness and deafness, and the serious hereditary malformations of the body, to which, among others, belong: congenital dislocation of the hips, clubfoot, harelip, wolf's mouth, diseases of the blood, and the like. We can also cite: abnormal number and shortness of fingers, flat and weak feet, so-called birthmarks, near and far-sightedness, squinting, cataract, as well as the factors causing: jaundice, obesity, cancer, and tuberculosis.

On the other hand, the external evidences of many of them can be removed by the skill of the physician, although they do not lose their hereditary character thereby. If, therefore, maladies such as dislocations of the hips, harelip, and wolf's mouth, are remedied by surgical operations, they nevertheless continue to appear in succeeding generations. While acquired maladies need not be obstacles to marriage, it is strongly recommended that men afflicted with hereditary maladies abstain from having children.

At this point, we wish to add a word regarding inbreeding and the marriage of relatives. Many hereditary characteristics have a concealed hereditary course. They are, in contrast to the dominant characteristics of the one parent, recessive. The recessive characteristic is retained in the blood of the generations that follow but is not apparent. Only when both parents possess such a recessive, inheritable characteristic does this particular hereditary characteristic reveal itself in the children. For this reason, inbreeding and inter-marrying are not advisable. There is only one possibility of making sure about them: through careful study of kindred and through family fostering.

Other germinal injuries can occur by misuse of alcohol and nicotine, by industrial poisons, radium and X-rays, and by sexual diseases. The more serious of the hereditary diseases rob those so afflicted of the capacity to reason and the feeling of responsibility so that they become of little value to the community. They multiply without restraint—in Germany, we see that the average number of children amounts to 2.2 in the case of sound families, 3.5 in the case of weak-minded families, .9 in the case of criminal families. While the increase of the total population from 1880 to 1930 ran to about 50 per cent, the less worthy increased by about 300 per cent, six times faster than the whole population!

Laws passed

Most of these less worthy persons are completely unsuited for living. They cannot take care of themselves and must be cared for in institutions. This costs the state enormous sums! How many sport places, baths, homesteads, kindergartens could have been built with this money? Plus, whoever has once visited an institution for incurable diseases feels a deep sense of guilt for these unfortunate creatures who were called into life in defiance of all true humanitarianism. Out of responsibility for our people as a whole, the National Socialist government has passed laws dealing with this problem. They are:

The law for preventing the increase of incurable diseases of July 14, 1933;

The law against dangerous and habitual criminals of Nov. 24, 1933;

The law for preserving the hereditary soundness of the German people (healthy marriage law) of Oct. 26, 1935.

The law for preventing the increase of hereditary diseases prescribes the voluntary and also compulsory sterilization of those persons who, in consequence of serious hereditary diseases, may “according to the experiences of the medical profession, cause their descendants to suffer serious bodily and mental harm.”

The law against dangerous criminals provides for the castration of serious moral offenders in the interest of security and progress. It is to be regarded as a health measure which aims to free the criminal from his perverted inclinations and to prevent many serious crimes in the future.

Everywhere in nature there are safety measures of this kind, established in the interest of the superior whole. The hereditary welfare measures heretofore explained are for the purpose of preventing the further spread of existing hereditary defects and gradually doing away with them altogether. The marked expansion of health activities, the fostering of bodily exercises, well planned homesteading activities show us how much emphasis is being laid upon the fostering of sound blood. The Winter Help Work with its division Mother and Child, the Labour Front with its bureaux Beauty of Work and Strength through Joy function in the same direction.

The appeal to the race pride of our people has led Germans into our movement as fighters and is continuing to be decisive for the recruiting of the future. Not money and possessions, not name and parentage are the things most esteemed, but only attainment and readiness to take an active part. These latter qualities are to be found in all ranks and classes of the people. A new nobility, the nobility of accomplishment and work, will guarantee the future of folk and Reich.

[I think this very idea that Germans were called to excellence and high service no matter their station in life made Germany's neighbors very afraid. They didn't want to install that type of regime themselves as they wanted to keep their privilege based on wealth and family; but rightfully feared they could not compete with such a Germany. -cy]

Laws concerning Jews

The Germans have direct contact only with one type of foreign people: with the Jews. The first opposition measures of the National Socialists must aim to remove the Jews from the cultural and economic life of our folk. The most important of the laws are:

The Law for the restoration of the civil service of April 7, 1933 contains the Aryan clause and excludes the Jews from the German civil service.

Special mention should be made of the Law regarding the acquisition and loss of citizenship by naturalisation of July 14, 1933. It gives the Reich the possibility of declaring invalid undesirable naturalisation which occurred during the period of the great immigration of eastern Jews between Nov. 9, 1918 and Jan. 20, 1933.

The inheritance law of Sept. 29, 1933 excludes the Jews from German soil by stipulating that a peasant can only be one who is of German blood. It's self-evident that the Military Defence law of May 21, 1935 and the Labour Service law of October 15, 1935 exclude the Jews from active service to the nation. Finally, the Citizenship law of Oct. 15, 1935 deprives the Jews of their citizenship. While remaining members of the German Reich, they are not citizens, which separates them as a group from the German people.The number of Jews of the Mosaic faith in the German Reich is given as 500,000, but real Jews not of the Mosaic faith is about 300,000, with hybrids numbering about 775,000. That amounts to almost 1,555,000, a figure that reveals the extent of the Jewish invasion into our folk. At the same time the large number of hybrids is a sad indication of the absence of racial instincts in the past. Racial pride and a feeling of racial shame were first re-awakened by National Socialism. The Law for the protection of German blood of Oct. 15, 1935 imposes very severe punishments upon those of German blood who unite with foreign races, and states precisely what proportion of non-German blood causes a person to lose his status as a German.

The racial outlook on life of National Socialism is frequently misunderstood. People insist on finding in this racial outlook haughtiness and intolerance. This is fundamentally false. We reject the idea of race mixing first because the hybrid produced is in disregard of nature, for:

During his life he is a split personality in his racial makeup. He stands between two peoples and does not know in his soul whether he belongs to the one or to the other.

In the second place, we believe that races receive their different natures in order to develop them, not to mix them. The constructive tasks of race fostering now consist of injecting the racial character of our folk into all spheres of life.