The Darwinian Foundations of Hitler's Racism - Excerpt from Mein Kampf

"Nation and Race" 

In this chapter from Mein Kampf, one can clearly see the Darwinian foundation to Hitler's thinking. He views humanity as one other animal in the evolutionary struggle for survival and reproduction. Only in having reduced man to such a state, having stripped any notion of the divine in human beings, does such a thinking make sense. But in his [demented] mind, all culture, ideals, and ethics has been generated by the Aryan higher race through the process of survival of the fittest. Therefore, the strong have a right and duty to purify itself. This is the law of nature which man cannot transcend. You can either take your place in the inevitable struggle or be conquered. 

Nature Rejects the Weak by its Eternal Law

Hitler begins this chapter by invoking the Darwinian laws of Nature, the "principles of Nature's rule." He says that while most all men know such fundamental truths about the laws of nature, only a very few are brave enough to live by them. More specifically, the law that nature segregates species from one another. Except in the most extreme cases of necessity, higher species and races do no breed with lower, as this only waters down the push towards perfection. If it does happen, nature fights back with its own consequences such as the loss of fertility. 1 "Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge." 2 

Rather, the higher species must continue to become stronger and dominate. 3 "Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable." 4 Yes there may be diversities in the particular characteristics of different species, but it is not the case that differing species care about one another in some type of "humanitarian" way. Rather, there is always a struggle for resources, and this struggle is the means and motive of the higher development of species. Nature, herself, approves of this struggle, allowing the weak and unfit to die out. 5 "In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest." 6 

Nature also regulates this by providing harsh living conditions. If all of their living conditions and resources were plentiful then the inferior species would multiply rapidly and overtake the more fit and strong's development. Thus Nature must choose to limit and prevent this by killing off many of the inferior and allowing the strong to rise to the top. Thus to allow human races to intermingle is to undue the work that Nature has been doing for thousands of years of evolution. 7 "Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people." 8 Again, Hitler says that this is the "iron logic of nature." 

Hitler then attacks the "Jewish" idea that "we must overcome the proclivities of nature." He rejects this idea that man has mastered nature and can overcome its laws. Rather, all that has happened, according to Hitler, is that we have learned more about nature and how to live more successfully within it in this struggle for dominance. To claim that we have transcended nature is only simply an idea invented by men, it doesn't exist in nature. And, having been invented by men, has nothing to do with the laws of nature. 9 "This applies most of all to those ideas whose content originates, not in an exact scientific truth, but in the world of emotion, or, as it is so beautifully and clearly expressed today, reflects an 'inner experience.' All these ideas, which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent only pure expressions of feeling, ethical conceptions, etc., are chained to the existence of men, to whose intellectual imagination and creative power they owe their existence." 10 

Culture Depends on the Strong Surviving

Hitler claims that even the idea of pacifism is a Germany idea and depends on the survival of the German people, an evolutionary process, and thus even these new ideas are dependent on evolution and violence. Possibly this idea could have worked if the higher race had dominated the earth and eliminated all others, preventing the interbreeding and the lowering of their perfection. Then maybe pacifism could have been a good thing. But this is not the case, and so violence is necessary. 11 "...this planet once moved through the ether for millions of years without human beings and it can do so again some day if men forget that they owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of a few crazy ideologists, but to the knowledge and ruthless application of Nature's stern and rigid laws." 12 

All art and culture, anyway according to Hitler, originated from one race and if that one race disappeared then so would all of higher culture. 13 In the past of cultures foregone, the mistake was made to interbreed, lessening the blood of the original higher and creative culture which generated the sophistication. Thus, the higher races are right in fending off the lower for their own preservation. 13 "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." 14

----------------------

1 - Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. (Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 1971). Pg. 284

2 - 284

3 - 285

4 - 285

5 - 285

6 - 285

7 - 286

8 - 286

9 - 287

10 - 287

11 - 288

12 - 288

13 - 288

14 - 289

15 - 289