Watching the ‘Eugenic Experiment’ Unfold: The Mixed Views of British Eugenicists Toward Nazi Germany in the Early 1930s

Historians of the eugenics movement have long been ambivalent in their examination of the links between British hereditary researchers and Nazi Germany. While there is now a clear consensus that American eugenics provided significant material and ideological support for the Germans, the evidence remains less clear in the British case where comparatively few figures openly supported the Nazi regime and the left-wing critique of eugenics remained particularly strong. After the Second World War British eugenicists had to push back against the accusation that their science was intrinsically dictatorial or totalitarian and, as a result, many of their early perceptions of the Nazis were ignored or rationalised away. Further, historians in recent years have focused more directly on the social reformist elements of eugenics, discussing the links between hereditary science and the birth control and feminist movements in addition to others. While undoubtedly making valuable contributions to the scholarly understanding of the eugenic milieu in the interwar years, these studies have neglected to recontextualize the sentiments of British eugenicists who did indeed view the Nazi government positively in the early years of the 1930s. This article argues that there was a significant, though not numerically sizable, faction in the British eugenics movement, though mostly outside the Eugenics Society itself, in the early 1930s that viewed the Nazi Germany as an admirable state for its implementation of eugenic principles. One of these figures was later interned by his own government for being too closely aligned with the German regime, though he argued that this affinity was driven by the quest for scientific truth rather than politics. Eugenics in Britain thus contained a greater diversity of views toward Germany than scholars have previously assumed, warranting more research into the individuals and organizations harbouring these views.     

Human Genetics and Politics as Mutually Beneficial Resources: The Case of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics During the Third Reich

This essay analyzes one of Germany’s former premier research institutions for biomedical research, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA) as a test case for the way in which politics and human heredity served as resources for each other during the Third Reich. Examining the KWIA from this perspective brings us a step closer to answering the questions at the heart of most recent scholarship concerning the biomedical community under the swastika: (1) How do we explain why the vast majority of German human geneticists and eugenicists were willing to work for the National Socialist state and, at the very least, legitimized its exterminationist racial policy; and (2) what accounts for at least some of Germany’s most renowned medically trained professionals’ involvement in forms of morally compromised science that wholly transcend the bounds of normal scientific practice? Although a complete answer to this question must await an examination of other German biological research centers, the present study suggests that during the Nazi period the symbiotic relationship between human genetics and politics served to radicalize both. The dynamic between the science of human heredity and Nazi politics changed the research practice of some of the biomedical sciences housed at the KWIA. It also simultaneously made it easier for the Nazi state to carry out its barbaric racial program leading, finally, to the extermination of millions of so-called racial undesirables.     

Commercializing medical technology

As medicine moves into the 21st century, life saving therapies will move from inception into medical products faster if there is a better synergy between science and business. Medicine appears to have 50-year innovative cycles of education and scientific discoveries. In the 1880’s, the chemical industry in Germany was faced with the dilemma of modernization to exploit the new scientific discoveries. The solution was the spawning of novel technical colleges for training in these new chemical industries. The impact of those new employees and their groundbreaking compounds had a profound influence on medicine and medical education in Germany between 1880 and 1930. Germany dominated international science during this period and was a training center for scientists worldwide. This model of synergy between education and business was envied and admired in Europe, Asia and America. British science soon after evolved to dominate the field of science during the prewar and post World War (1930’s–1970’s) because the German scientists fled Hitler’s government. These expatriated scientists had a profound influence on the teaching and training of British scientists, which lead to advances in medicine such as antibiotics. After the Second World War, the US government wisely funded the development of the medical infrastructure that we see today. British and German scientists in medicine moved to America because of this bountiful funding for their research. These expatriated scientists helped drive these medical advances into commercialized products by the 1980’s. America has been the center of medical education and advances of biotechnology but will it continue? International scientists trained in America have started to return to Europe and Asia. These American-trained scientists and their governments are very aware of the commercial potential of biotechnology. Those governments are now more prepared to play an active role this new science. Germany, Ireland, Britain, Singapore, Taiwan and Israel are such examples of this government support for biotechnology in the 21st century. Will the US continue to maintain its domination of biotechnology in this century? Will the US education system adjust to the new dynamic of synergistic relationships between the education system, industry and government? This article will try to address these questions but also will help the reader understand who will emerge by 2015 as the leader in science and education.     

Genetics of susceptibility to tuberculosis: Mengele's experiments in Auschwitz

Great experiments will always be remembered. I highlight an experiment that was conducted during the Nazi regime in Germany. Not only did the experiment fail, it was also linked to fraud and crimes against humanity. This failed experiment will never be forgotten.     

From molecules to the biosphere: Nikolai V. Timoféeff-Ressovsky’s (1900–1981) research program within a totalitarian landscape

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timoféeff-Ressovsky was one of the key figures in the Synthetic Theory of Evolution. Living and researching under what was arguably the two most powerful and cruel totalitarian regimes in human history, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, Timoféeff-Ressovsky succeeded in developing an ambitious research program aiming to explain evolution on all major levels, from the molecular-genetic, the populational, and the biogeocenotic to the level of the entire Biosphere. Yet his scientific biography remains largely unwritten and his role under totalitarianism, especially in Nazi Germany, remains highly controversial. Here we approach the problem of his hypothetical cooperation with Nazi authorities examining both the crucial episodes of his biography and summarizing the development of his research program. We conclude that the key decisions he made reflected the specificity of his research program that was focused on the fundamental questions of evolutionary biology.     

Scientific contributions of A. V. Hill: exercise physiology pioneer.

Beginning in 1910, A. V. Hill performed careful experiments on the time course of heat production in isolated frog muscle. His research paralleled that of the German biochemist Otto Meyerhof, who measured the changes in muscle glycogen and lactate during contractions and recovery. For their work in discovering the distinction between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism, Hill and Meyerhof were jointly awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Because of Hill's interest in athletics, he sought to apply the concepts discovered in isolated frog muscle to the exercising human. Hill and his colleagues made measurements of O(2) consumption on themselves and other subjects running around an 85-m grass track. In the process of this work, they defined the terms "maximum O(2) intake," "O(2) requirement," and "steady state of exercise." Other contributions of Hill include his discoveries of heat production in nerve, the series elastic component, and the force-velocity equation in muscle. Around the time of World War II, Hill was a leading figure in the Academic Assistance Council, which helped Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Germany to relocate in the West. He served as a member of the British Parliament from 1940 to 1945 and as a scientific advisor to India. Hill's vision and enthusiasm attracted many scientists to the field of exercise physiology, and he pointed the way toward many of the physiological adaptations that occur with physical training.     

Evolutionary fallacies of Nazi psychiatry. Implications for current research

Evolutionary theory has had a major impact on psychiatry since the middle of the 19th century. During the Nazi regime psychiatry supported compulsory sterilization and euthanasia of physically and mentally ill and subsequently the killing of "inferior" races by borrowing scientifically invalid conclusions from evolutionary biology. The present paper deals with some of the flaws and shortcomings of the scientific paradigms of evolutionary theory adopted by psychiatry during the Nazi regime and discusses possible implications for modern research in evolutionary psychology and psychiatry.     

The construction of a scientific model: Otto Warburg and the building block strategy

In the years 1919 to 1923, Otto Warburg published four papers that were to revolutionise the field of photosynthesis. In these articles, he introduced a number of new techniques to measure the rate of photosynthesis, put forward a new model of the mechanism and added a completely new perspective to the topic by attempting to establish the process’s efficiency in terms of the light quantum requirement. In this paper I trace the roots of Warburg’s series of contributions to photosynthesis research by exploring three different contexts of inspiration: Warburg’s own research into cell respiration, his father’s work on the quantum yield of photochemical reactions in general and the photosynthesis work carried out by Richard Willstätter and Arthur Stoll. When these influences are considered together, it becomes clear that Warburg implemented a Building Block Strategy in his research: rather than inventing his photosynthesis model from scratch, he availed himself of fragments from other contexts, which he then recombined in a new and innovative way. This way of working is considered to be standard practice in scientific research.     

Autarchy, market disintegration, and health: the mortality and nutritional crisis in Nazi Germany, 1933-1937.

Trends in mortality, nutritional status and food supply are compared to other living standard indicators for the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and for the early years of the Nazi regime (1933-1937). The results imply that Germany experienced a substantial increase in mortality rates in most age groups in the mid-1930s, even relative to those of 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression. Moreover, children's heights--an indicator of the quality of nutrition and health--were generally stagnating between 1933 and 1938, but had increased significantly during the 1920s. Persecution, by itself, does not explain such an adverse development in biological welfare; the non-persecuted segments of the German population were affected as well. The reason for this adverse development was caused by the fact that military expenditures increased at the expense of public health measures. In addition, food imports were curtailed, and prices of many agricultural products were controlled. There is ample evidence that this set of economic policies had an adverse effect on the health and nutritional status of the population. The highly developed areas of Germany with large urban sectors and the coastal regions of the Northwest were affected most from the policy of restricting imports of protein-rich agricultural products.     

Ernst Rüdin: Hitler’s Racial Hygiene Mastermind

Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952) was the founder of psychiatric genetics and was also a founder of the German racial hygiene movement. Throughout his long career he played a major role in promoting eugenic ideas and policies in Germany, including helping formulate the 1933 Nazi eugenic sterilization law and other governmental policies directed against the alleged carriers of genetic defects. In the 1940s Rüdin supported the killing of children and mental patients under a Nazi program euphemistically called “Euthanasia.” The authors document these crimes and discuss their implications, and also present translations of two publications Rüdin co-authored in 1938 showing his strong support for Hitler and his policies. The authors also document what they see as revisionist historical accounts by leading psychiatric genetic authors. They outline three categories of contemporary psychiatric genetic accounts of Rüdin and his work: (A) those who write about German psychiatric genetics in the Nazi period, but either fail to mention Rüdin at all, or cast him in a favorable light; (B) those who acknowledge that Rüdin helped promote eugenic sterilization and/or may have worked with the Nazis, but generally paint a positive picture of Rüdin’s research and fail to mention his participation in the “euthanasia” killing program; and (C) those who have written that Rüdin committed and supported unspeakable atrocities. The authors conclude by calling on the leaders of psychiatric genetics to produce a detailed and complete account of their field’s history, including all of the documented crimes committed by Rüdin and his associates.     

Recollections of my friendship with Klaus Ruckpaul

Klaus Ruckpaul was the leader of cytochrome P450 research in the "East" Germany when the world was politically divided into "East" and "West". Under strong political pressure during the "Cold War", the communication between the scientists in the "East" countries with those in the "West" countries was badly restricted. He wanted to improve the situation, and organized an international gathering of the biochemists studying cytochrome P450. The first meeting was held in 1976, and it developed later into a big international conference named "International Conference on Cytochrome P450, Biochemistry and Biophysics". He and his colleagues also contributed greatly to the elucidation of the mechanism of P450-catalyzed reactions. I respect him for his great contribution to the advancement of biochemical study on cytochrome P450, and feel happy that I have enjoyed a long friendship with him.     

Dieter Eckstein – A cornerstone of European dendrochronology

On November 10th 2021, Dieter Eckstein passed away at age 82. Born and raised as a forester’s child, his entire life was connected to trees and wood. He grew up to become a dedicated scientist and teacher. His legacy includes both his own considerable research accomplishments as well as his founding of a growing network of tree biologists and wood scientists. From his doctoral degree onwards, the concepts and applications of dendrochronology were his passion, motivated by great curiosity in environmental influences on tree growth. He proved that dendroarchaeology can be accurate and precise, even for timber grown in the mild European maritime climate. He pioneered both techniques and concepts of xylogenesis and quantitative wood anatomy and advanced the potential for tropical dendrochronology. In all of these accomplishments, Dieter collaborated with students and colleagues from all over the world. His Dendrochronological Laboratory at the University of Hamburg hosted both young and experienced scientists from many countries. The European Working Group on Dendrochronology, which he founded in the early 1990s, was his natural habitat and playground to invent and present new research activities. We and the entire dendrochronology community have lost an inspiring colleague and visionary.     

A clash of traditions: the history of comparative and experimental embryology in Sweden as exemplified by the research of Gösta Jägersten and Sven Hörstadius

Until the 1940s research traditions were often imported from Germany to Sweden, and young scientists went to German universities to learn new techniques and get in touch with the latest ideas. In developmental biology, the comparative, phylogenetic embryology advocated most forcefully by Ernst Haeckel co-existed with the “Entwickelungsmechanik” tradition developed by Wilhelm His, Wilheln Roux and others partly as a reaction to Haeckel’s ideas. I use the zoology department at Uppsala University as a microcosmos to reflect the tensions between these traditions: Gösta Jägersten (1903–1993) and Sven Hörstadius (1898–1996) are used as exemples. Jägersten was a marine biologist who worked on the morphology and evolution of invertebrates, especiallly their larval forms. He developed a comprehensive theory describing the evolution of the life cycle in early metazoans. Recapitulation was an important ingredient, and Jägersten explicitly based his reasoning on Ernst Haeckel’s “biogenetic law”. Jägersten developed Haeckel’s “Gastraea” theory into another hypothetical animal—Bilaterogastraea—that came into being when the holopelagic Blastaea settled on the ground as an adult and kept a pelagic, planktonic larval form. This was the birth of the pelago-benthic life cycle, which plays such an important role in Jägersten’s speculations on the deep phylogeny of metazoans. Sven Hörstadius was a leading experimental embryologist in the mid-twentieth century. His most important work was on the determination and differentiation of the sea urchin embryo. Early work inspired by his teacher John Runnström’s double gradient theory showed that gradients of animalness (ectodermal determination) and vegetalness (endodermal determination) existed in the 16- and 32- cell embryos. Hörstadius became famous for his elegant extirpation and transplantation experiments using glass needles, and for his microsugical skills. He also made important contributions to the study of cranial neural crest development in the Mexican axolotl, in collaboration with his student Sven Sellman. Hörstadius was the great experimentalist, but did not develop speculative hypotheses the way Jägersten did. The very different styles of scientific research might have played a role also in the development of the personal difficulties that existed for a long time between the two professors.     

Better prepared than synthesized: Adolf Butenandt, Schering Ag and the transformation of sex steroids into drugs (1930-1946)

This paper follows the trajectory of sex steroids in 1930s Germany as a way to investigate the system of research which characterized the development of these drugs. Analyzing the changing relationship between the pharmaceutical company Schering and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute für Biochemie headed by Nobel Prize winner Adolf Butenandt, the paper highlights the circulation of materials, information and money as much as the role of patents in shaping the study of sex steroids. Semi-synthetic analogs and metabolic pathways thus emerged as shared bio-industrial assets. This collaborative work participated in a more general 'internalization' of biology, which took place in pharmaceutical firms during the 1920s and 1930s as a strategy to standardize and develop biologicals. The construction of the hormone market was also based on Schering's collaboration with a selected group of clinicians who worked out the wide-range of indications associated with these 'natural' drugs. The paper finally shows how the wartime scientific and industrial mobilization in Nazi Germany marginalized the study of sex steroids and led to the dismantling of the KWIB-Schering network.     

Philip R. White (1901–1968)—a tribute

The groundbreaking research carried out by Philip R. White in the 1930s and 1940s played a critical early role in the development of modern plant biotechnology and the production of biotech crops. He gained instant fame and became a historical figure early in his career by becoming the first person to attain unlimited growth of cultured plant tissues. White was one of the best known and most influential figures of his generation in plant cell culture research. His tireless and lifelong efforts to promote the use of plant cell culture systems inspired a generation of scientists and stimulated much scientific activity. White was not only a brilliant and visionary scientist but also a highly principled man who spoke courageously about the great moral and political issues of his day. He was admired as much for his science as for his humanity. His belief that plant cell culture research was not well represented at national and international meetings, and his deeply held conviction that science had to be international and without borders in order to be of service to humankind led to the founding of the International Association for Plant Biotechnology in 1963, currently the largest forum for the international plant biotechnology community. This tribute honors and celebrates Philip R. White for his inspiring science, for his kind and generous mentoring of young scientists, for his advocacy of plant cell culture research and its applications, for his promotion of international scientific exchange and cooperation, and for his leadership in the founding of the International Association for Plant Biotechnology.     

Better prepared than synthesized: Adolf Butenandt, Schering Ag and the transformation of sex steroids into drugs (1930–1946)

This paper follows the trajectory of sex steroids in 1930s Germany as a way to investigate the system of research which characterized the development of these drugs. Analyzing the changing relationship between the pharmaceutical company Schering and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute für Biochemie headed by Nobel Prize winner Adolf Butenandt, the paper highlights the circulation of materials, information and money as much as the role of patents in shaping the study of sex steroids. Semi-synthetic analogs and metabolic pathways thus emerged as shared bio-industrial assets. This collaborative work participated in a more general ‘internalization’ of biology, which took place in pharmaceutical firms during the 1920s and 1930s as a strategy to standardize and develop biologicals. The construction of the hormone market was also based on Schering’s collaboration with a selected group of clinicians who worked out the wide-range of indications associated with these ‘natural’ drugs. The paper finally shows how the wartime scientific and industrial mobilization in Nazi Germany marginalized the study of sex steroids and led to the dismantling of the KWIB–Schering network.     

Politics of heredity--Germany 1900-1940, a brief overview

The paper gives a brief overview of the main stages of development of eugenics and race hygiene in Germany between 1900 and 1940. Two main stages can be differentiated: one, the formation of the eugenics movement and its development parallel to quantitative population policy before and after World War I, and the second beginning toward the end of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) when the financial crisis of the public health system favored eugenic schemes implemented by an authoritarian government, such as the Nazi regime.     

Warburg,me and Hexokinase 2: Multiple discoveries of key molecular events underlying one of cancers’ most common phenotypes,the “Warburg Effect”, i.e., elevated glycolysis in the presence of oxygen

As a new faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, the author began research on cancer in 1969 because this frequently fatal disease touched many whom he knew. He was intrigued with its viscous nature, the failure of all who studied it to find a cure, and also fascinated by the pioneering work of Otto Warburg, a biochemical legend and Nobel laureate. Warburg who died 1 year later in 1970 had shown in the 1920s that the most striking biochemical phenotype of cancers is their aberrant energy metabolism. Unlike normal tissues that derive most of their energy (ATP) by metabolizing the sugar glucose to carbon dioxide and water, a process that involves oxygen-dependent organelles called “mitochondria”, Warburg showed that cancers frequently rely less on mitochondria and obtain as much as 50% of their ATP by metabolizing glucose directly to lactic acid, even in the presence of oxygen. This frequent phenotype of cancers became known as the “Warburg effect”, and the author of this review strongly believed its understanding would facilitate the discovery of a cure. Following in the final footsteps of Warburg and caught in the midst of an unpleasant anti-Warburg, anti-metabolic era, the author and his students/collaborators began quietly to identify the key molecular events involved in the “Warburg effect”. Here, the author describes via a series of sequential discoveries touching five decades how despite some impairment in the respiratory capacity of malignant tumors, that hexokinase 2 (HK-2), its mitochondrial receptor (VDAC), and the gene that encodes HK-2 (HK-2 gene) play the most pivotal and direct roles in the “Warburg effect”. They discovered also that like a “Trojan horse” the simple lactic acid analog 3-bromopyruvate selectively enters the cells of cancerous animal tumors that exhibit the “Warburg effect” and quickly dissipates their energy (ATP) production factories (i.e., glycolysis and mitochondria) resulting in tumor destruction without harm to the animals.     

Charles Stacy French: A tribute

Charles Stacy French, one of the great men of photosynthesis research, died on 13 October 1995. He received his PhD at Harvard University where he associated with William Arnold, Caryl Haskins, later president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Pei-Sung Tang. He did early work on the photosynthesis of photosynthetic bacteria with Robert Emerson and later with Otto Warburg. French worked for three years with James Franck in Chicago. His associates there included Hans Gaffron, Robert Livingston, Warren Butler and Roderick Clayton. After spending three years at the University of Minnesota he became the director of the Department of Plant Biology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and remained there until he retired in 1973. French's research career at the Carnegie Institution was marked by the development of novel and ingenious pieces of equipment such as the French pressure cell used to prepare chloroplast particles to measure partial reactions of photosynthesis. He developed the first recording fluorescence spectrophotometer and demonstrated efficient energy transfer between certain photosynthetically-active pigments, a spectrophotometer that measured the first derivative of absorbance, as well as a novel analog computer to show that complex absorption curves in living plants are produced by a number of distinct forms of chlorophyll occurring in vivo. French used the Blinks rate-measuring oxygen electrode to measure action spectra of oxygen evolution by photosynthesis automatically. He and Jack Myers did some of the pioneering work on the Emerson effect showing the necessary cooperation of two photosystems in photosynthesis. French used the Carnegie Institution's fellowship program to bring large numbers of scientists from around the world to his laboratory. When Stacy French died in 1995, the field of photosynthesis lost one of its great and early pioneers.This is CIW/DPB publication No. 1314.     

Racism as social policy: The Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme, 1939–1945

This article is concerned with the successive stages of the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme between 1933 and 1945. The ‘euthanasia’ programme was ordered by Hitler, and implemented by an ad hoc bureaucracy which bypassed the normative institutions of the state. It also relied upon the active complicity of academic psychiatrists and some directors of mental institutions. This article traces the successive stages of the programme and demonstrates the several links between the murder of the mentally handicapped and the subsequent extermination of the Jews. It then examines the ideological, scientific and social context of these policies, particularly emphasizing the role of cost‐cutting considerations in welfare policy during and after the Depression. It also stresses developments in psychiatric medicine which led otherwise ‘progressive’ psychiatrists to contemplate killing ‘incurable’ patients. The article then examines the impact of Nazi policy on specific institutions and individuals, sometimes with the aid of interviews and material from relatives of the victims concerned. The article also considers sources of individual opposition to these policies, and attempts by the regime to overcome mass distaste for its policies by skilful use of film propaganda. These passages in the article are based upon analysis of the films themselves. The article offers no theoretical, philosophical, or psychological, general explanations or conclusions, regarding the policies it analyses and describes.