Re: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 7:15 pmPART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER 17: Auschwitz
After two or three days of terror in a sealed train, the Jews of Europe arrived at their eugenic apocalypse: Auschwitz.
Suddenly the wooden boxcar doors would growl open. The stifling stench inside from the sick and dying and the overflowing bucket of defecation would be replaced by the throat-stinging pungency of burning flesh as the victims glimpsed Hitler's sprawling extermination center. SS troops, backed up by barking German shepherds, would begin shouting for the eighty or ninety people in each boxcar to jump down from the train and onto the ramp.
Quick! Schnell! Terrified, the helpless Jews massed into orderly groups, unaware they were being assembled for eugenic selection. Teams of doctors swarmed everywhere, organizing people into lines. Two groups would be selected: those strong enough to be worked to death, and those to be gassed immediately. Women and children under fourteen to one side. Men to the other. [1]
Then camp doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, would review the frantic lines: one by one, Jew by Jew. Then with the power of his thumb, he pointed to the left, to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right, to the left. As he condemned and spared, moment-to-moment, he whistled, as though conducting a Devil's orchestra. [2]
Jews sent to the left were hustled to the showers for gassing, a procedure completely administered and supervised by doctors from start to finish. Once doctors gave the all-clear signal, groups of prisoners called Sonderkommandos were compelled to scavenge piles of corpses for gold teeth and rings. Only then were bodies carted off for cremation to destroy the evidence. [3]
Those sent to the right could live another day and in the process endure their own brutalities and degradation. The living were registered and tattooed. The exterminated required no registration. [4] Subject to this selection, many survived and perhaps 1.5 million at this camp complex alone were murdered -- some quickly, and some very slowly. [5]
Among those selected for death at Auschwitz, several hundred, mostly children, were briefly exempted. Some even lived to tell their stories. These lucky albeit misfortunate few were chosen for cruel medical experiments conducted by Mengele. First these children were coddled and fed well to keep them in pristine shape. Then they were subjected to painful procedures. Often they were murdered as soon as the tests were completed, so they could be fastidiously dissected. [6]
After the war Mengele's sadistic experiments were considered by many to be the inexplicable actions of a scientist gone utterly mad. But in fact Mengele was following a fascinating research topic that was continuously discussed among eugenicists going back to Galton. This topic was as important to the researchers at Cold Spring Harbor and the funders at the Rockefeller Foundation as it was to Nazi medical murderers in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt.
No words will ever capture the inhumanity of Auschwitz. But one word does explain why Auschwitz was the last fanatic stand of the eugenic crusade to create a super race, a superior race -- and finally a master race. As the cattle cars emptied their human cargo onto the ramp, as the helpless millions lined up for selection, they all heard one word, shouted twice. One word shouted twice could help them live as those next to them were sent to the gas chambers. One word shouted twice would link the crimes of Mengele to the war against the weak waged by the eugenics movement.
***
Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was crucial to the work at Auschwitz.
Verschuer lived the Nazi ideal long before Hitler emerged. A virulent anti-Semite and a violent German nationalist, he was among the student Freikorps militia that staged the Kapp Putsch in March of 1920. Two years later, Verschuer articulated his eugenic nationalist stance in a student article entitled "Genetics and Race Science as the basis for Volkische [People's Nationalist] Politics." "The first and most important task of our internal politics is the population problem .... This is a biological problem which can only be solved by biological-political measures." [7]
In 1924, at about the time Hitler staged his Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Verschuer lectured that fighting the Jews was integral to Germany's eugenic battle. He was speaking on race hygiene to a nationalist student training camp when the question of Jewish inferiority came up. "The German, Volkische struggle," he told the students, "is primarily directed against the Jews, because alien Jewish penetration is a special threat to the German race." The next year, he helped found the Tubingen branch of Ploetz's Society for Racial Hygiene and became its secretary. In 192 7, Verschuer distinguished himself among German race hygienists when he was appointed one of three department heads at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Verschuer chaired its Human Heredity department. [8]
In 1933, Verschuer published numerous tables setting forth the exact ratios of environmental influences to human heredity. Later that year, when the State Medical Academy in Berlin offered its initial course on genetics and racial hygiene, Verschuer was one of the featured lecturers. He joined other eminent Nazi eugenicists in the program, such as Eugen Fischer and Leonardo Conti, who was a chief Nazi Party health officer and would later become Hitler's main demographic consultant when the 1935 Nuremberg Laws were being formulated. Later, Conti was put in charge of the 1939 euthanasia program. [9]
In June of 1934, Verschuer launched Der Erbarzt (The Genetic Doctor) as a regular supplement to one of Germany's leading physicians' publications, Deutsches Arzteblatt, published by the German Medical Association. In it, Verschuer asked all physicians to become genetic doctors, which is why his eugenic publication was a supplement to the German Medical Association's official organ. Sterilization of the unfit was of course a leading topic in Der Erbarzt. Eugenic questions from German physicians were answered in a regular "Genetic Advice and Expertise" feature. In the first issue, Verschuer editorialized that Der Erbarzt would "forge a link between the ministries of public health, the genetic health courts, and the German medical community." Henceforth, he insisted, doctors must react to their patients not as individuals, but as parts of a racial whole. A new era had arrived, in Verschuer's view: medical treatment was no longer a matter of doctor and patient, but of doctor and state. [10]
After the Nazi sterilization law took effect in 1934, German eugenicists were busy creating national card files, automated by IBM, to cross-index people declared unfit. A plethora of eugenic research institutes were established at various German universities to advance the effort. Their researchers scoured the records of the National Health Service, hospitals and hereditary courts, and then correlated health files on millions of Germans. In this process, Verschuer considered himself nothing less than a eugenic warrior. In 1935, he left the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics to found Frankfurt University's impressive new Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Boasting more than sixty rooms, including labs, lecture halls, libraries, photography sections, ethnic archives and clinical rooms, the new institute was the largest of its kind in Germany. The institute's mission, according to Verschuer, was to be "responsible for ensuring that the care of genes and race, which Germany is leading worldwide, has such a strong basis that it will withstand any attacks from the outside." More than just a research institute, Verschuer's institution held courses and lectures for the SS, Nazi Party members, public health and welfare officials, as well as medical instructors and doctors in general to indoctrinate them with scientific anti-Semitism and eugenic theory. [11]
Soon the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene had surpassed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in race biology and race politics, becoming the new model for German eugenic centers. Verschuer was doing his part to ensure that racial eugenics, the fulcrum of which was rabid Jew-hatred, became the standard for all medical training in Germany. He would soon boast that eugenics had become completely integrated into "the normal course of studies of medical students.'; In a report to the Nazi Party, he advocated registering all Jews and half-Jews. Hitler, said Verschuer, was "the first statesman to recognize hereditary biology and race hygiene." [12]
By 1937, Verschuer had gained the trust of the highest Nazi authorities and was beginning to eclipse his colleagues, and by 1939 he was describing his personal role as pivotal to Nazi supremacy. "Our responsibility has thereby become enormous," said Verschuer. "We continue quietly with our research, confident that here also, battles will be fought which will be of greatest consequence for the survival of our people." In an article for a series called Research into the Jewish Question (Forschungen zur Judenfrage), Verschuer wrote, "We therefore say no to another race mixing with Jews just as we say no to mixing with Negroes and Gypsies, but also Mongolians and people from the South Sea. Our volkisch attitude to the biological problem of the Jewish Question ... is therefore completely independent of all knowledge of advantages or disadvantages, positive or negative qualities of the Jews .... Our position in the race question has its foundation in genetics." In another article he insisted, "The complete racial separation between Germans and Jews is therefore an absolute necessity." [13]
Quickly, Verschuer became a star in American eugenic circles as well. His career and his writings fascinated the U.S. movement. When he became secretary of the Tubingen branch of the Society for Race Hygiene in 1925, Eugenical News announced it. His 1926 article on environmental influences for Archiv fur Rassen- und Gesellschaftbiologie (Archives of Race Science and Social Biology) was promptly summarized in Eugenical News. The publication also noted Verschuer's 1927 appointment as one of three department heads at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. In 1928, Verschuer's presence as a guest at an International Federation of Eugenic Organizations meeting was mentioned in Eugenical News. In the years leading up to the ascent of Hitler, his articles continued to be cited in Eugenical News. [14]
Even after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, the American eugenic and medical media kept Verschuer in the spotlight. In January of 1934, the Journal of the American Medical Association cited a paper he presented at the German Congress of Gynecology. That same month, Journal of Heredity reviewed his book on the relationship between eugenics and tuberculosis. In the spring of that year, both Eugenical News and American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology highlighted him as a leader for his work in developing more than a thousand Nazi marriage screening centers. In September of 1934, JAMA questioned Verschuer's estimate that the frequency of hereditary blindness in vulnerable populations was a full third, but this only confirmed his status as a major voice in genetic science. That same month, Eugenical News published an article entitled "New German Etymology for Eugenics" and cited two definitions for Rassenhygiene; Verschuer's definition ran first, and Ploetz's second. In Eugenical News's next issue, November-December, Verschuer was listed in a feature titled "Names of Eminent Eugenicists in Germany." [15]
By 1935, Verschuer was so admired by American eugenicists that Eugenical News heralded the opening of his Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene with the simple headline "Verschuer's Institute." The publication's ecstatic article asserted that Verschuer's new facility was the culmination of decades of preliminary research by Mendel, race theorist Count Gobineau, Ploetz and even Galton himself. Suggesting the far-reaching nature of his enterprise, Eugenical News made clear that Verschuer's mission was not merely the "individual man" but "mankind" itself. Among the new institute's several dozen rooms, the paper reported, were a number for "special investigators." Eugenical News was so enamored that it departed from its usual text-only format and included two photographs: a picture of the building's exterior plus one of an empty, nondescript corridor. The article closed, "Eugenical News extends best wishes to Dr. O. Freiherr von Verschuer for the success of his work in his new and favorable environment." [16]
Goodwill among American eugenicists toward Verschuer was ceaseless. On April 15, 1936, Stanford University anatomist C. H. Danforth wrote to Verschuer offering to translate abstracts of one of Verschuer's journals. On July 7, 1936, Goddard, now located at Ohio State University, sent Verschuer several of his publications hoping that they might be useful to experiments at the new institute. On July 16, 1936, Popenoe wrote from the Human Betterment Foundation asking for statistics to rebut negative publicity about German sterilizations, saying, "We are always anxious to see that the conditions in Germany are not misunderstood or misrepresented." E. S. Gosney, Popenoe's partner at the Human Betterment Foundation, sent Verschuer three letters and two pamphlets in two months with the latest information on California's sterilization program. [17]
Laughlin himself sent two letters, one in German offering reprints of his own articles and a second in English conveying salutations from America on Germany's accomplishment. Writing on Carnegie Institution ERO letterhead, Laughlin stated, "The Eugenics Record Office and the Eugenics Research Association congratulate the German people on the establishment of their new Institute for the Biology of Heredity and Race Hygiene .... We shall be glad indeed to keep in touch with you in the development of eugenics in our respective countries." [18]
Verschuer sent back an effusive letter of appreciation. He congratulated Laughlin on his recent honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg, adding, "You have not only given me pleasure, but have also provided valuable support and stimulus for our work here. I place the greatest value on incorporating the results of all countries into the scientific research that takes place here at my Institute, since this is the only way of furthering the construction of the edifice of science. The friendly interest that you take in our work gives me particular pleasure. May I also be allowed to express my pleasure that you have been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg and congratulate you on this honor? You have surely concluded from this that we German hereditarians and race hygienists value the pioneering work done by our American colleagues and hope that our joint project will continue to progress in friendly cooperation." [19]
Verschuer and his institute remained prominent in the American medical and eugenic press. When in mid-1935, Verschuer's new institute began deploying a force of young women as field workers to assemble family trees, Eugenical News reported it. JAMA covered the new institute in-depth in its September 1935 issue, specifying that cards on individuals arising from the investigations were being sent to other Reich health bureaus. JAMA reported on Verschuer's work again a few months later in 1936, focusing on his desire to engage in mass research on heredity and illness. [20]
Verschuer's well-received book, Genetic Pathology (Erbpathologie), claimed that Jews disproportionately suffered from conditions such as diabetes, flat feet, deafness, nervous disorders and blood taint. In its January-February 1936 edition, Eugenical News enthusiastically reviewed Genetic Pathology and parroted Verschuer's view that a physician now owed his first duty to the "nation," adding, "The word 'nation' no longer means a number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological entity." Verschuer's language on citizenship was a clear precursor to the Reich's soon-to-be-issued decree declaring that Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany, even if they resided there. Stripping German Jews of their citizenship was the next major step toward mass ghettoization, deportation and incarceration. Eugenical News closed its review of Genetic Pathology with this observation: "Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between medical science and theoretical scientific research." [21]
Verschuer's popularity with American eugenicists had soared by 1937. Senior U.S. eugenicists were clamoring for his attention. Anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer Charles M. Goethe sent a letter introducing himself. "I am National President of the Eugenics Research Association of the United States," Goethe wrote. "I have heard much of your work at Frankfurt .... May I ask whether I could visit your Institution? I feel, because of the violent anti-German propaganda in the United States, our people know almost nothing of what is happening in Germany." [22]
Later that year, Goethe sent an equally fawning correspondence, apologizing for not visiting Germany but appealing to Verschuer's anti-Jewish sentiment. "It was with deep regret that I was unable to come to Frankfurt this year," he wrote. "Dr. Davenport and Dr. Laughlin of the Carnegie Institute have told me so much about your marvelous work .... I feel passionately that you are leading all mankind herein. One must exercise herein the greatest tact. America is flooded with anti-German propaganda. It is abundantly financed and originates from a quarter which you know only too well [Jews] .... However, this ought to not blind us to the fact that Germany is advancing more rapidly in Erbbiologie than all the rest of mankind." [23]
By 1938, the plight of the Jews in Germany and thousands of refugees had become a world crisis, prompting the Evian Conference. Hitler's Reich had become identified in the media with brutal concentration camps. Germany was again menacing its neighbors' territory. Yet Goethe continued his zealous propagandizing for Nazism. "Again and again," Goethe wrote Verschuer in early 1938, "I am telling our people here, who are only too often poisoned by anti-German propaganda, of the marvelous progress you and your German associates are making." In November of 1938, less than two weeks after the Kristallnacht riots, Goethe again wrote Verschuer, this time to lament, "I regret that my fellow countrymen are so blinded by propaganda just at present that they are not reasoning out regarding the very fine work which the splendid eugenists of Germany are doing .... I am a loyal American in every way. This does not, however, lessen my respect for the great scientists of Germany." [24]
Clyde Keeler, a Harvard Medical School researcher at Lucien Howe's laboratory, visited Verschuer's swastika-bedecked institute at the end of 1938. There he was able to see the center's anti-Jewish program and its devotion to Aryan purity. Upon his return to the United States, Keeler gave fellow eugenicists a glowing report. On February 28, 1939, Danforth of Stanford wrote Verschuer to applaud him, adding that Keeler "thinks that you have by all means the best equipped and most effective establishment of the sort that he has seen anywhere. May I extend my congratulations and express the hope that your group will long continue to put out the same excellent work that has already lent it distinction." [25]
Davenport was equally inspired by Verschuer. On December 15, 1937, he asked Verschuer to prepare a special summary of his institute's work for Eugenical News, "to keep our readers informed." Davenport also asked Verschuer to join three other prominent Nazi eugenicists on Eugenical News's advisory committee. Falk Ruttke, Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rudin were already members. With a letter of gratitude, Verschuer agreed to become the fourth. [26] Verschuer was now an essential link between American eugenics and Nazi Germany.
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer had an assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.
***
Mengele began his career as a doctrinaire Nazi eugenicist. He attended Rudin's early lectures and embraced eugenic principles as part of his fanatic Nazism. Mengele became a member of the SA, also known as the Storm Troopers, in 1934. His first academic mentor was the anti-Semitic eugenicist Theodor Mollison, a professor at Munich University. Just as Goddard claimed he could identify a feebleminded individual by a mere glance, Mollison boasted that he could identify Jewish ancestry by simply examining a person's photograph. Under Mollison, Mengele earned his Ph.D. in 1935. His dissertation on the facial biometrics of four racial groups -- ancient Egyptians, Melanesians and two European types -- asserted that specific racial identification was possible through an anthropometric examination of an individual's jawline. Medical certification in hand, Mengele became a practicing doctor in the Leipzig University clinic. But this was only temporary. Mengele's dream was research, not practice. In 1937, on Mollison's recommendation, Mengele became Verschuer's research assistant at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. Here Mengele's eugenic knowledge could be applied. Some of Mengele's work involved tracing cranial features through family trees. [27]
Verschuer and his new assistant quickly bonded. Mengele had applied for Nazi Party membership as soon as the three-year ban was lifted in 1937. He and Verschuer made a good professional team. Together the two wrote opinions for the Eugenic Courts enforcing anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws. In one case, a man suspected of having a Jewish father was prosecuted for engaging in sexual relations with an Aryan woman. Under the Nuremberg Laws, this was a serious criminal offense calling for prison time. As the prosecution's eugenic consultants, Mengele and Verschuer undertook a detailed examination of the suspect's family tree and carefully measured his facial features. Their eugenic report declared the man to be fully of Jewish descent. [28]
However, the accused man provided convincing evidence that he was in fact the illicit offspring of Christians. His father was indeed Jewish, but his mother was not. The man claimed to be the product of his non-Jewish mother's illicit affair with a Christian; hence he was no Jew. Illegitimacy was a common refrain of Jews seeking safe harbor from the Nuremberg statutes. The court believed the man's story and freed him. The decision outraged Mengele and Verschuer, who wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice complaining that their eugenic assessment had been overlooked. Approximately 448 racial opinions were ultimately offered by Verschuer's institute; these were so doctrinaire that Verschuer frequently appealed when the opinions were not accepted. [29]
Mengele's relationship with Verschuer was more than collegial. Staff doctors at the institute recalled that Mengele was Verschuer's "favorite." Verschuer's secretaries enjoyed Mengele's constant visits to the office, and nicknamed him "Papa Mengele." He would drop by the Verschuer home for tea, sometimes bringing his family. Mengele even made an impression on Verschuer's children, who years later remembered him in friendly terms. [30]
In 1938, Mengele joined the SS and received his medical degree, yet continued his close association with Verschuer. In fact his SS personnel file, number 317885, listed his employment in 1938 as an assistant doctor at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. In the fall of that year, preparing for field assignment with an SS unit, Mengele underwent three months of rigorous basic training. Afterwards, he returned to Verschuer's institute in Frankfurt to resume eugenic research. For example, he examined the inheritance of ear fistulas and chin dimples, and then published the results. In a summary of 1938 projects for the German Research Society, Verschuer listed Mengele's work on inherited deformities and cited two of Mengele's papers, including one he completed for another doctor. [31]
In December of 1938, Mengele and Verschuer, as well as two other Nazi doctors associated with the institute, requested a grant from the Ministry of Science and Education to attend the International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, scheduled for the last week of August 1939. All four men secured initial authorization to attend as part of a large Nazi delegation, approved by the Party. Train and ferry schedules were researched. But after further review, the ministry lacked the funds to send them all. Ministry officials decided Mengele could not go. Germany began World War II on September 1, 1939. England and Germany were now enemies, so Nazi conferees returned in the nick of time. [32]
Mengele wanted to get into the war, but a kidney condition prevented him from joining a combat unit. He continued working with Verschuer and in early 1940 was still listed on Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene rosters as being on Verschuer's staff. An internal list of publications and papers, dated January 1939, listed two papers written by Verschuer with the help of assistants including Mengele. One was entitled "Determination of Paternity," recalling their days providing genealogical testimony for the Eugenic Courts. Mengele authored a third paper on the list with two of Verschuer's other assistants. [33]
Mengele also contributed several book reviews to Verschuer's publication, Del• Erbarzt, in 1940. One review covered a book called Fundamentals in Genetics and Race Care, in which Mengele criticized the author for failing to adequately describe "the relationship between the principal races that are to be found in Germany and the cultural achievements of the German people." In another review critiquing a book about congenital heart defects, Mengele complained, "Unfortunately the author did not use subjects where the diagnosis could be verified by an autopsy." [34]
By June of 1940, when Germany was advancing on Western Europe, Mengele could no longer wait to enter the battle. He joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to the Genealogical Section of the SS Race and Settlement Office in occupied Poland. He undoubtedly benefited from Verschuer's March 1940 letter of recommendation averring that Mengele was accomplished, reliable and trustworthy. At the SS Race and Settlement Office, his mission was to seek out Polish candidates for Germanization. He would perform the racial and eugenic examinations. Eventually, in 1941, he was transferred to the Medical Corps of the Waffen SS, and then to the elite Viking unit operating in the Ukraine, where he rendered medical assistance under intense battlefield conditions. He was awarded two Iron Crosses and two combat medic awards. The next year, 1942, as the Final Solution was taking shape, Verschuer arranged for Mengele to transfer back to the SS Race and Settlement Office, this time to its Main Office in Berlin. [35]
By 1942, an aging Fischer was preparing to retire from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. His replacement was a major source of debate within eugenic and Nazi Party circles. By this time, Hitler's war against the Jews had escalated from oppressive disenfranchisement to systematic slaughter. [36]
Fischer had emerged as a major advocate of "a total solution to the Jewish question." His view was that "Bolshevist Jews" constituted a dangerous and inferior subspecies. At a key March 1941 conference on the solution to the Jewish problem held in Frankfurt, Fischer had been the honored guest. It was at this meeting that Nazi science extremists set forth ideas on eliminating Jews en masse. A leading idea that emerged was the gradual extinction (Volkstod) of the Jewish people by systematically concentrating them in large labor camps to be located in Poland. Later, Fischer specified that such labor must be unpaid slave labor lest any "improvement in living standards ... lead to an increase in the birth rate." [37]
Given Fischer's high profile in Nazi Party extermination policies, his successor would have to be selected carefully. Lenz was considered for the job, but Fischer worked behind the scenes with the Nazi Party to have Lenz passed over. Fischer thought Lenz was too tutorial, and not bold enough for the challenges ahead. Instead, Fischer's hand-picked successor would be Verschuer -- something Fischer had actually planned on for years. [38]
In 1942, Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem." He wrote a friend, "Many important events have occurred in my life. I received an invitation, which I accepted, to succeed Eugen Fischer as director of the Dahlem Institute [Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics at Berlin-Dahlem]. Great trust was shown toward me, and all my requests were granted with respect to the importance and authority of the institute .... I will take almost all my coworkers with me, first Schade and Grebe, and later Mengele and Fromme." Even though Mengele was still technically attached to the Race and Settlement Office, he was still Verschuer's assistant. Mengele's name was even added to the special birthday list for the institute's leading staff scientists. [39]
In January 25, 1943, with Hitler's extermination campaign in full swing, Verschuer wrote to Fischer, "My assistant Mengele ... has been transferred to work in an office in Berlin [at the SS Race and Settlement Office] so that he can do some work at the Institute on the side." [40]
On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.
***
Eugenics craved one type of human being above all others to answer its biological questions and to achieve its ultimate biological goal. The quest to locate this type of human being arose at the dawn of eugenics, and continued ceaselessly for four decades, throughout the voluminous discourse, research and publishing of the worldwide eugenic mainstream. To the eugenic scientist, no subject was of greater value. Young or old, healthy or diseased, living or dead, they all wanted one form of human -- twins.
Twins were the perfect control group for experimentation. How people developed, how they resisted or succumbed to disease, how they reacted to physical or environmental change -- all these questions could be best answered by twins precisely because they were simultaneous siblings. While fraternal twins sprang from two separate eggs fertilized at the same time, identical twins were, in fact, one egg split in two. Identical twins were essentially Nature's clones. [41]
Twins were valued for a second eugenic reason: Nature itself could be outmaneuvered if desirable individuals could be biologically enabled to spawn twins -- or even better, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets. In other words, a world of never-ending multiple births was the best assurance that the planned super race would remain super.
About a decade before Galton coined the term eugenics, he was convinced he could divine the secret of human breeding by studying twins. In 1874 and 1875, he published various versions of a scientific essay entitled "The History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture." In analyzing whether environment or heredity was responsible for an individual's success, Galton complained that his investigations were always hampered by the unending variables -- that is, until he located biological comparables. "The life history of twins supplies what I wanted," he wrote. Galton had closely studied some eighty sets of twin children by the time he wrote that essay. These included twins of the same and different gender as well as identical and non-identical twins. [42]
Cold Spring Harbor's handwritten outlines for key Mendelian traits listed twinning as one of the ten salient physical characteristics to explore. Davenport's 1911 textbook, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, included a section on twins with the introduction, "It is well known that twin production may be an hereditary quality." Three years later, Heinrich Poll, Rockefeller's first fund administrator in Germany, published a major volume on twin research; Poll's interest in the topic dovetailed with the Rockefeller Foundation's years-long support of the subject. [43]
American eugenic publications constantly dotted their pages with the latest twin theory and research. Identifying the mechanism governing the creation and development of twins quickly became a major pursuit for eugenics. In 1916, Eugenical News published three articles on the subject, including one that examined a recent article in Biological Bulletin on armadillo quadruplets, hoping to apply the principle to multiple births in humans. One of the 1917 articles on twins in Eugenical News indicated that in about a quarter of same sex twins, "there is some factor that definitely forces the two children to be of the same sex." A second article in 1917 announced that a doctor in a Michigan institution for the feebleminded was searching the nation for mongolism in twins, especially cases in which only one of the siblings manifested the condition. [44]
The problem with studying twins was that in adulthood most twins lived separate lives, often in separate cities and even in different countries. It was hard to locate them, let alone bring them together for examination. In 1918, the American Genetic Association, the renamed American Breeders Association, announced that it desired to "communicate with twins living in any part of the world." The AGA explained, "It has been discovered that twins are in a peculiar position to help in the elucidation of certain problems of heredity .... 'Duplicate' twins have a nearly (though never an absolutely) identical germ plasm .... It is fortunate for our knowledge ... on account of the chance it gives [us] to study the relative importance of heredity and of environment." Within a year of its announcement, the AGA had identified some six hundred twins, and by soliciting photos it had assembled a photo archive of several hundred. [45]
The ERO initiated its own twin study with a detailed four-page questionnaire. Among its numerous questions: "What is your favorite fruit?" and "Do you prefer eggs boiled soft or hard?" It also provided a place for each twin's fingerprints and the names and addresses of family members. ERO investigators located one especially fertile family in Cleveland that had repeatedly produced multiple births. When Davenport wrote up the case for Journal of Heredity in 1919, he explained that it had taken more than six visits by field workers to determine the full scope of the original couple's fecundity. Later, Eugenical News announced that Columbia, Missouri, was home to more twins than any other city in the nation -- one pair for every 477 people. [46]
Hereditarians sought twins of all ages -- not just children -- for proper study. The family tree of a New England family of twins, including one pair ninety-one years of age, fascinated eugenicists. Geneticists excavated old journals to discover even earlier examples, such as a seventeenth-century Russian woman who gave birth twenty-seven times, each time producing twins, triplets or quadruplets, yielding a total of sixty-nine children. [47]
Race and twins quickly became an issue for American eugenicists. In a 1920 lecture series, Davenport raised the issue of "racial difference in twin frequency" in the same geographic area. He pointed out that from 1896 to 1917, in Washington, D.C., the "negro rate [of twins] is 20 percent higher than the white rate." For whites in the nation's capital, it was 1.82 pairs of twins per hundred births, while blacks had 2.27 per hundred. At about the same time, Eugenical News, analyzing recent census data, claimed that twin births overall still occurred at a frequency of approximately 1 percent nationwide; but the percentage of multiple births among Blacks was almost one-fifth greater than among whites. Davenport followed up such observations in his Jamaica race-crossing study, which featured in-depth studies of three sets of twins. [48]
Diagnostic and physiological developments in twin studies from any sector of the medical sciences were of constant interest to eugenic readers. So Eugenical News regularly summarized articles from the general medical literature to feed eugenicists' unending fascination with the topic. In 1922, when a state medical journal reported using stethoscopes to monitor a twin pregnancy, it was reported in Eugenical News. When a German clinical journal published a study of tumors in twins, this too was reported in Eugenical News. [49]
With each passing issue, Eugenical News dedicated more and more space to the topic. The list of such reports became long. By the early 1920s, articles on twins became increasingly instructive. One typical article explained how to more precisely verify the presence of identical twins using a capillary microscope. Journal of Heredity also made twins a frequent subject in its pages. For example, it published Popenoe's article entitled "Twins Reared Apart," and Hermann Muller's article "The Determination of Twin Heredity," and regularly reviewed books about twins. [50]
Every leading eugenic textbook included a section on twins. Popenoe's Applied Eugenics explained that identical twins "start lives as halves of the same whole" but "become more unlike if they were brought up apart." Baur-Fischer-Lenz's Foundation of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene cited several studies including those written by Popenoe in Journal of Heredity. The German eugenicists wrote, "Of late years, the study of twins has been a favorite branch of genetic research" and thanked Galton for his "flash of genius" in "[recognizing] this a long while ago." [51]
In a similar vein, most international eugenic and genetic conferences included presentations or exhibits on twins-their disparity or similarity, their susceptibility to tuberculosis, their likes and dislikes. R. A. Fisher opened one of his lectures to the Second International Congress of Eugenics with the phrase: "The subject of the genesis of human twins ... has a special importance for eugenicists." The third congress offered an exhibit on mental disorders in twins, an exhibit illustrating fingerprint comparisons, a third juxtaposing identical and fraternal twins, and a fourth offering an array of fifty-nine anthropometric photos. [52]
The quest for a superior race continued to intersect with the availability of twins. In the July-August 1935 edition of Eugenical News, Dr. Alfred Gordon published a lengthy article entitled "The Problems of Heredity and Eugenics." His first sentence read: "Regulation of reproduction of a superior race (eugenics) is fundamentally based on the principles of heredity." Gordon went on to explain, "The role of heredity finds its strongest corroboration in cases of psychoses in twins." He then gave an example of just two case studies of twins. Such enthusiastic coverage in the biological and eugenic media was prompted a few months before by the extensive examination of just a single pair of twins undertaken at New York University's College of Dentistry, this to identify pathological dentition. [53]
There were so few twins to study that surgeons in the eugenics community passed along their latest discoveries, one by one, to advance the field's common knowledge. In one case, Dr. John Draper of Manhattan wrote to Davenport, "Last Thursday, I opened the abdomen of twin girls, fourteen years old. They presented very similar physical characteristics and the psychoses so far as could be determined were identical." Davenport replied, "Your observations upon the internal anatomy of the twin girls is exceedingly important, as very few observations of this type have been made upon twins." He offered to dispatch a field worker to make facial measurements. Such random reports were precious to eugenicists because physical experimentation on large groups was essentially impossible. [54]
All that changed when Hitler came to power in 1933. Germany surged ahead in its study of twins. The German word for twins is Zwillinge. There were tens of thousands of twins in the Reich. In 1921 alone, 19,573 pairs were born, plus 231 sets of triplets. In 192 5, 15,741 pairs of twins were born, as well as 161 sets of triplets. Twins were now increasingly sought to help combat hereditary diseases and conditions, real and imagined. Verschuer's book, Twins and Tuberculosis, was published in 1933 and received a favorable review in Journal of Heredity. In 1934, a Norwegian physician working with Verschuer and Fischer published in a German anthropology journal his analysis of 116 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins for their inheritance of an ear characteristic known as Darwin's tubercle. [55]
But many more twins would be needed to accomplish the sweeping research envisioned by the architects of Hitler's master race. In early December of 1935, Verschuer told a correspondent for the Journal of the American Medical Association that eugenics had moved into a new phase. Once Mendelian principles of human heredity were established, the correspondent wrote, "Further progress was achieved with the beginning of research on twins, by means of which it is possible to measure hereditary influence even though the hereditary processes are complicated .... Many of these researches, however, as Freiherr von Verschuer recently pointed out, are of questionable value .... What is absolutely needed is research on series of families and twins selected at random ... examined under the same conditions, a fixed minimum of examinations being made in all cases." The article went on to cite Verschuer's view that meaningful research would require entire families -- from children to grandparents. [56] In plain words, this meant gathering larger numbers of twins in one place for simultaneous investigation.
To attract more twins, the Nazi Party and the National Socialist Welfare League promoted "twin camps" for the holidays. Verschuer circulated handy text references for all German physicians who might encounter twins. When Verschuer opened his Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in 1936, the event created such fanfare in Eugenical News partially because, "Dr. Verschuer states that the object of his investigation is mankind, not the individual man, but families and twins; and in this work there will not [only] be investigated ... interesting twins, but all twins and families of definite geographical origin." [57]
At about that time, German neuropsychiatrist Heinrich Kranz of the University of Breslau published extensive genealogical details about seventy- five pairs of twin brothers and fifty pairs of opposite gender twins, seeking correlations on criminal behavior. In a Journal of Heredity essay, Popenoe lauded Kranz's investigation and predicted that such efforts would help identify "born criminals." Popenoe welcomed more such German research because "it has become one of the most dependable methods of studying human heredity." [58]
Indeed, a plethora of Nazi scientific journals were brimming with regular coverage of eugenic investigations of twins. Several publications were devoted solely to the subject, such as Zwillingsforschungen (Twin Research) and Zwillings- und Familienfonchungen (Twin and Family Research). Verschuer frequently wrote for these journals. In some cases Mengele coauthored the articles, including an article on systemic problems and cleft palate deformation published in Zwillings- und Familienforschungen. Some published twin research credited Mengele as the principal investigator, such as an article on congenital heart disease, also for Zwillings- und Familienforschungen. [59]
Verschuer's preoccupation with twin studies expanded feverishly. He required more and more twins. In a September 1938 application for funds from the German Research Society, Verschuer explained his plans. "Large-scale research on twins is necessary to explore the question of the hereditary aspects of human characteristics, especially illnesses. This research can take two paths: 1. Testing of all twins in a specific geographic area, done at our institute by Miss Liebmann. All twins in the Frankfurt district back to 1898 have been listed and almost all have been examined; she discussed some interesting cases in several articles and a comprehensive summary is being done. 2. Listing of series of twins. Based on cases in over 100 hospitals in west and southwest Germany, the number of twins among them were determined and the cases were examined according to illnesses." He listed rheumatism, stomach ulcers, cancer, heart defects, anemia and leukemia as the conditions he was focusing on. Verschuer assured, "A good deal of material has been collected." [60]
CHAPTER 17: Auschwitz
After two or three days of terror in a sealed train, the Jews of Europe arrived at their eugenic apocalypse: Auschwitz.
Suddenly the wooden boxcar doors would growl open. The stifling stench inside from the sick and dying and the overflowing bucket of defecation would be replaced by the throat-stinging pungency of burning flesh as the victims glimpsed Hitler's sprawling extermination center. SS troops, backed up by barking German shepherds, would begin shouting for the eighty or ninety people in each boxcar to jump down from the train and onto the ramp.
Quick! Schnell! Terrified, the helpless Jews massed into orderly groups, unaware they were being assembled for eugenic selection. Teams of doctors swarmed everywhere, organizing people into lines. Two groups would be selected: those strong enough to be worked to death, and those to be gassed immediately. Women and children under fourteen to one side. Men to the other. [1]
Then camp doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, would review the frantic lines: one by one, Jew by Jew. Then with the power of his thumb, he pointed to the left, to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right, to the left. As he condemned and spared, moment-to-moment, he whistled, as though conducting a Devil's orchestra. [2]
Jews sent to the left were hustled to the showers for gassing, a procedure completely administered and supervised by doctors from start to finish. Once doctors gave the all-clear signal, groups of prisoners called Sonderkommandos were compelled to scavenge piles of corpses for gold teeth and rings. Only then were bodies carted off for cremation to destroy the evidence. [3]
Those sent to the right could live another day and in the process endure their own brutalities and degradation. The living were registered and tattooed. The exterminated required no registration. [4] Subject to this selection, many survived and perhaps 1.5 million at this camp complex alone were murdered -- some quickly, and some very slowly. [5]
Among those selected for death at Auschwitz, several hundred, mostly children, were briefly exempted. Some even lived to tell their stories. These lucky albeit misfortunate few were chosen for cruel medical experiments conducted by Mengele. First these children were coddled and fed well to keep them in pristine shape. Then they were subjected to painful procedures. Often they were murdered as soon as the tests were completed, so they could be fastidiously dissected. [6]
After the war Mengele's sadistic experiments were considered by many to be the inexplicable actions of a scientist gone utterly mad. But in fact Mengele was following a fascinating research topic that was continuously discussed among eugenicists going back to Galton. This topic was as important to the researchers at Cold Spring Harbor and the funders at the Rockefeller Foundation as it was to Nazi medical murderers in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt.
No words will ever capture the inhumanity of Auschwitz. But one word does explain why Auschwitz was the last fanatic stand of the eugenic crusade to create a super race, a superior race -- and finally a master race. As the cattle cars emptied their human cargo onto the ramp, as the helpless millions lined up for selection, they all heard one word, shouted twice. One word shouted twice could help them live as those next to them were sent to the gas chambers. One word shouted twice would link the crimes of Mengele to the war against the weak waged by the eugenics movement.
***
Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was crucial to the work at Auschwitz.
Verschuer lived the Nazi ideal long before Hitler emerged. A virulent anti-Semite and a violent German nationalist, he was among the student Freikorps militia that staged the Kapp Putsch in March of 1920. Two years later, Verschuer articulated his eugenic nationalist stance in a student article entitled "Genetics and Race Science as the basis for Volkische [People's Nationalist] Politics." "The first and most important task of our internal politics is the population problem .... This is a biological problem which can only be solved by biological-political measures." [7]
In 1924, at about the time Hitler staged his Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Verschuer lectured that fighting the Jews was integral to Germany's eugenic battle. He was speaking on race hygiene to a nationalist student training camp when the question of Jewish inferiority came up. "The German, Volkische struggle," he told the students, "is primarily directed against the Jews, because alien Jewish penetration is a special threat to the German race." The next year, he helped found the Tubingen branch of Ploetz's Society for Racial Hygiene and became its secretary. In 192 7, Verschuer distinguished himself among German race hygienists when he was appointed one of three department heads at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Verschuer chaired its Human Heredity department. [8]
In 1933, Verschuer published numerous tables setting forth the exact ratios of environmental influences to human heredity. Later that year, when the State Medical Academy in Berlin offered its initial course on genetics and racial hygiene, Verschuer was one of the featured lecturers. He joined other eminent Nazi eugenicists in the program, such as Eugen Fischer and Leonardo Conti, who was a chief Nazi Party health officer and would later become Hitler's main demographic consultant when the 1935 Nuremberg Laws were being formulated. Later, Conti was put in charge of the 1939 euthanasia program. [9]
In June of 1934, Verschuer launched Der Erbarzt (The Genetic Doctor) as a regular supplement to one of Germany's leading physicians' publications, Deutsches Arzteblatt, published by the German Medical Association. In it, Verschuer asked all physicians to become genetic doctors, which is why his eugenic publication was a supplement to the German Medical Association's official organ. Sterilization of the unfit was of course a leading topic in Der Erbarzt. Eugenic questions from German physicians were answered in a regular "Genetic Advice and Expertise" feature. In the first issue, Verschuer editorialized that Der Erbarzt would "forge a link between the ministries of public health, the genetic health courts, and the German medical community." Henceforth, he insisted, doctors must react to their patients not as individuals, but as parts of a racial whole. A new era had arrived, in Verschuer's view: medical treatment was no longer a matter of doctor and patient, but of doctor and state. [10]
After the Nazi sterilization law took effect in 1934, German eugenicists were busy creating national card files, automated by IBM, to cross-index people declared unfit. A plethora of eugenic research institutes were established at various German universities to advance the effort. Their researchers scoured the records of the National Health Service, hospitals and hereditary courts, and then correlated health files on millions of Germans. In this process, Verschuer considered himself nothing less than a eugenic warrior. In 1935, he left the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics to found Frankfurt University's impressive new Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Boasting more than sixty rooms, including labs, lecture halls, libraries, photography sections, ethnic archives and clinical rooms, the new institute was the largest of its kind in Germany. The institute's mission, according to Verschuer, was to be "responsible for ensuring that the care of genes and race, which Germany is leading worldwide, has such a strong basis that it will withstand any attacks from the outside." More than just a research institute, Verschuer's institution held courses and lectures for the SS, Nazi Party members, public health and welfare officials, as well as medical instructors and doctors in general to indoctrinate them with scientific anti-Semitism and eugenic theory. [11]
Soon the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene had surpassed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in race biology and race politics, becoming the new model for German eugenic centers. Verschuer was doing his part to ensure that racial eugenics, the fulcrum of which was rabid Jew-hatred, became the standard for all medical training in Germany. He would soon boast that eugenics had become completely integrated into "the normal course of studies of medical students.'; In a report to the Nazi Party, he advocated registering all Jews and half-Jews. Hitler, said Verschuer, was "the first statesman to recognize hereditary biology and race hygiene." [12]
By 1937, Verschuer had gained the trust of the highest Nazi authorities and was beginning to eclipse his colleagues, and by 1939 he was describing his personal role as pivotal to Nazi supremacy. "Our responsibility has thereby become enormous," said Verschuer. "We continue quietly with our research, confident that here also, battles will be fought which will be of greatest consequence for the survival of our people." In an article for a series called Research into the Jewish Question (Forschungen zur Judenfrage), Verschuer wrote, "We therefore say no to another race mixing with Jews just as we say no to mixing with Negroes and Gypsies, but also Mongolians and people from the South Sea. Our volkisch attitude to the biological problem of the Jewish Question ... is therefore completely independent of all knowledge of advantages or disadvantages, positive or negative qualities of the Jews .... Our position in the race question has its foundation in genetics." In another article he insisted, "The complete racial separation between Germans and Jews is therefore an absolute necessity." [13]
Quickly, Verschuer became a star in American eugenic circles as well. His career and his writings fascinated the U.S. movement. When he became secretary of the Tubingen branch of the Society for Race Hygiene in 1925, Eugenical News announced it. His 1926 article on environmental influences for Archiv fur Rassen- und Gesellschaftbiologie (Archives of Race Science and Social Biology) was promptly summarized in Eugenical News. The publication also noted Verschuer's 1927 appointment as one of three department heads at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. In 1928, Verschuer's presence as a guest at an International Federation of Eugenic Organizations meeting was mentioned in Eugenical News. In the years leading up to the ascent of Hitler, his articles continued to be cited in Eugenical News. [14]
Even after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, the American eugenic and medical media kept Verschuer in the spotlight. In January of 1934, the Journal of the American Medical Association cited a paper he presented at the German Congress of Gynecology. That same month, Journal of Heredity reviewed his book on the relationship between eugenics and tuberculosis. In the spring of that year, both Eugenical News and American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology highlighted him as a leader for his work in developing more than a thousand Nazi marriage screening centers. In September of 1934, JAMA questioned Verschuer's estimate that the frequency of hereditary blindness in vulnerable populations was a full third, but this only confirmed his status as a major voice in genetic science. That same month, Eugenical News published an article entitled "New German Etymology for Eugenics" and cited two definitions for Rassenhygiene; Verschuer's definition ran first, and Ploetz's second. In Eugenical News's next issue, November-December, Verschuer was listed in a feature titled "Names of Eminent Eugenicists in Germany." [15]
By 1935, Verschuer was so admired by American eugenicists that Eugenical News heralded the opening of his Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene with the simple headline "Verschuer's Institute." The publication's ecstatic article asserted that Verschuer's new facility was the culmination of decades of preliminary research by Mendel, race theorist Count Gobineau, Ploetz and even Galton himself. Suggesting the far-reaching nature of his enterprise, Eugenical News made clear that Verschuer's mission was not merely the "individual man" but "mankind" itself. Among the new institute's several dozen rooms, the paper reported, were a number for "special investigators." Eugenical News was so enamored that it departed from its usual text-only format and included two photographs: a picture of the building's exterior plus one of an empty, nondescript corridor. The article closed, "Eugenical News extends best wishes to Dr. O. Freiherr von Verschuer for the success of his work in his new and favorable environment." [16]
Goodwill among American eugenicists toward Verschuer was ceaseless. On April 15, 1936, Stanford University anatomist C. H. Danforth wrote to Verschuer offering to translate abstracts of one of Verschuer's journals. On July 7, 1936, Goddard, now located at Ohio State University, sent Verschuer several of his publications hoping that they might be useful to experiments at the new institute. On July 16, 1936, Popenoe wrote from the Human Betterment Foundation asking for statistics to rebut negative publicity about German sterilizations, saying, "We are always anxious to see that the conditions in Germany are not misunderstood or misrepresented." E. S. Gosney, Popenoe's partner at the Human Betterment Foundation, sent Verschuer three letters and two pamphlets in two months with the latest information on California's sterilization program. [17]
Laughlin himself sent two letters, one in German offering reprints of his own articles and a second in English conveying salutations from America on Germany's accomplishment. Writing on Carnegie Institution ERO letterhead, Laughlin stated, "The Eugenics Record Office and the Eugenics Research Association congratulate the German people on the establishment of their new Institute for the Biology of Heredity and Race Hygiene .... We shall be glad indeed to keep in touch with you in the development of eugenics in our respective countries." [18]
Verschuer sent back an effusive letter of appreciation. He congratulated Laughlin on his recent honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg, adding, "You have not only given me pleasure, but have also provided valuable support and stimulus for our work here. I place the greatest value on incorporating the results of all countries into the scientific research that takes place here at my Institute, since this is the only way of furthering the construction of the edifice of science. The friendly interest that you take in our work gives me particular pleasure. May I also be allowed to express my pleasure that you have been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg and congratulate you on this honor? You have surely concluded from this that we German hereditarians and race hygienists value the pioneering work done by our American colleagues and hope that our joint project will continue to progress in friendly cooperation." [19]
Verschuer and his institute remained prominent in the American medical and eugenic press. When in mid-1935, Verschuer's new institute began deploying a force of young women as field workers to assemble family trees, Eugenical News reported it. JAMA covered the new institute in-depth in its September 1935 issue, specifying that cards on individuals arising from the investigations were being sent to other Reich health bureaus. JAMA reported on Verschuer's work again a few months later in 1936, focusing on his desire to engage in mass research on heredity and illness. [20]
Verschuer's well-received book, Genetic Pathology (Erbpathologie), claimed that Jews disproportionately suffered from conditions such as diabetes, flat feet, deafness, nervous disorders and blood taint. In its January-February 1936 edition, Eugenical News enthusiastically reviewed Genetic Pathology and parroted Verschuer's view that a physician now owed his first duty to the "nation," adding, "The word 'nation' no longer means a number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological entity." Verschuer's language on citizenship was a clear precursor to the Reich's soon-to-be-issued decree declaring that Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany, even if they resided there. Stripping German Jews of their citizenship was the next major step toward mass ghettoization, deportation and incarceration. Eugenical News closed its review of Genetic Pathology with this observation: "Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between medical science and theoretical scientific research." [21]
Verschuer's popularity with American eugenicists had soared by 1937. Senior U.S. eugenicists were clamoring for his attention. Anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer Charles M. Goethe sent a letter introducing himself. "I am National President of the Eugenics Research Association of the United States," Goethe wrote. "I have heard much of your work at Frankfurt .... May I ask whether I could visit your Institution? I feel, because of the violent anti-German propaganda in the United States, our people know almost nothing of what is happening in Germany." [22]
Later that year, Goethe sent an equally fawning correspondence, apologizing for not visiting Germany but appealing to Verschuer's anti-Jewish sentiment. "It was with deep regret that I was unable to come to Frankfurt this year," he wrote. "Dr. Davenport and Dr. Laughlin of the Carnegie Institute have told me so much about your marvelous work .... I feel passionately that you are leading all mankind herein. One must exercise herein the greatest tact. America is flooded with anti-German propaganda. It is abundantly financed and originates from a quarter which you know only too well [Jews] .... However, this ought to not blind us to the fact that Germany is advancing more rapidly in Erbbiologie than all the rest of mankind." [23]
By 1938, the plight of the Jews in Germany and thousands of refugees had become a world crisis, prompting the Evian Conference. Hitler's Reich had become identified in the media with brutal concentration camps. Germany was again menacing its neighbors' territory. Yet Goethe continued his zealous propagandizing for Nazism. "Again and again," Goethe wrote Verschuer in early 1938, "I am telling our people here, who are only too often poisoned by anti-German propaganda, of the marvelous progress you and your German associates are making." In November of 1938, less than two weeks after the Kristallnacht riots, Goethe again wrote Verschuer, this time to lament, "I regret that my fellow countrymen are so blinded by propaganda just at present that they are not reasoning out regarding the very fine work which the splendid eugenists of Germany are doing .... I am a loyal American in every way. This does not, however, lessen my respect for the great scientists of Germany." [24]
Clyde Keeler, a Harvard Medical School researcher at Lucien Howe's laboratory, visited Verschuer's swastika-bedecked institute at the end of 1938. There he was able to see the center's anti-Jewish program and its devotion to Aryan purity. Upon his return to the United States, Keeler gave fellow eugenicists a glowing report. On February 28, 1939, Danforth of Stanford wrote Verschuer to applaud him, adding that Keeler "thinks that you have by all means the best equipped and most effective establishment of the sort that he has seen anywhere. May I extend my congratulations and express the hope that your group will long continue to put out the same excellent work that has already lent it distinction." [25]
Davenport was equally inspired by Verschuer. On December 15, 1937, he asked Verschuer to prepare a special summary of his institute's work for Eugenical News, "to keep our readers informed." Davenport also asked Verschuer to join three other prominent Nazi eugenicists on Eugenical News's advisory committee. Falk Ruttke, Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rudin were already members. With a letter of gratitude, Verschuer agreed to become the fourth. [26] Verschuer was now an essential link between American eugenics and Nazi Germany.
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer had an assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.
***
Mengele began his career as a doctrinaire Nazi eugenicist. He attended Rudin's early lectures and embraced eugenic principles as part of his fanatic Nazism. Mengele became a member of the SA, also known as the Storm Troopers, in 1934. His first academic mentor was the anti-Semitic eugenicist Theodor Mollison, a professor at Munich University. Just as Goddard claimed he could identify a feebleminded individual by a mere glance, Mollison boasted that he could identify Jewish ancestry by simply examining a person's photograph. Under Mollison, Mengele earned his Ph.D. in 1935. His dissertation on the facial biometrics of four racial groups -- ancient Egyptians, Melanesians and two European types -- asserted that specific racial identification was possible through an anthropometric examination of an individual's jawline. Medical certification in hand, Mengele became a practicing doctor in the Leipzig University clinic. But this was only temporary. Mengele's dream was research, not practice. In 1937, on Mollison's recommendation, Mengele became Verschuer's research assistant at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. Here Mengele's eugenic knowledge could be applied. Some of Mengele's work involved tracing cranial features through family trees. [27]
Verschuer and his new assistant quickly bonded. Mengele had applied for Nazi Party membership as soon as the three-year ban was lifted in 1937. He and Verschuer made a good professional team. Together the two wrote opinions for the Eugenic Courts enforcing anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws. In one case, a man suspected of having a Jewish father was prosecuted for engaging in sexual relations with an Aryan woman. Under the Nuremberg Laws, this was a serious criminal offense calling for prison time. As the prosecution's eugenic consultants, Mengele and Verschuer undertook a detailed examination of the suspect's family tree and carefully measured his facial features. Their eugenic report declared the man to be fully of Jewish descent. [28]
However, the accused man provided convincing evidence that he was in fact the illicit offspring of Christians. His father was indeed Jewish, but his mother was not. The man claimed to be the product of his non-Jewish mother's illicit affair with a Christian; hence he was no Jew. Illegitimacy was a common refrain of Jews seeking safe harbor from the Nuremberg statutes. The court believed the man's story and freed him. The decision outraged Mengele and Verschuer, who wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice complaining that their eugenic assessment had been overlooked. Approximately 448 racial opinions were ultimately offered by Verschuer's institute; these were so doctrinaire that Verschuer frequently appealed when the opinions were not accepted. [29]
Mengele's relationship with Verschuer was more than collegial. Staff doctors at the institute recalled that Mengele was Verschuer's "favorite." Verschuer's secretaries enjoyed Mengele's constant visits to the office, and nicknamed him "Papa Mengele." He would drop by the Verschuer home for tea, sometimes bringing his family. Mengele even made an impression on Verschuer's children, who years later remembered him in friendly terms. [30]
In 1938, Mengele joined the SS and received his medical degree, yet continued his close association with Verschuer. In fact his SS personnel file, number 317885, listed his employment in 1938 as an assistant doctor at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. In the fall of that year, preparing for field assignment with an SS unit, Mengele underwent three months of rigorous basic training. Afterwards, he returned to Verschuer's institute in Frankfurt to resume eugenic research. For example, he examined the inheritance of ear fistulas and chin dimples, and then published the results. In a summary of 1938 projects for the German Research Society, Verschuer listed Mengele's work on inherited deformities and cited two of Mengele's papers, including one he completed for another doctor. [31]
In December of 1938, Mengele and Verschuer, as well as two other Nazi doctors associated with the institute, requested a grant from the Ministry of Science and Education to attend the International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, scheduled for the last week of August 1939. All four men secured initial authorization to attend as part of a large Nazi delegation, approved by the Party. Train and ferry schedules were researched. But after further review, the ministry lacked the funds to send them all. Ministry officials decided Mengele could not go. Germany began World War II on September 1, 1939. England and Germany were now enemies, so Nazi conferees returned in the nick of time. [32]
Mengele wanted to get into the war, but a kidney condition prevented him from joining a combat unit. He continued working with Verschuer and in early 1940 was still listed on Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene rosters as being on Verschuer's staff. An internal list of publications and papers, dated January 1939, listed two papers written by Verschuer with the help of assistants including Mengele. One was entitled "Determination of Paternity," recalling their days providing genealogical testimony for the Eugenic Courts. Mengele authored a third paper on the list with two of Verschuer's other assistants. [33]
Mengele also contributed several book reviews to Verschuer's publication, Del• Erbarzt, in 1940. One review covered a book called Fundamentals in Genetics and Race Care, in which Mengele criticized the author for failing to adequately describe "the relationship between the principal races that are to be found in Germany and the cultural achievements of the German people." In another review critiquing a book about congenital heart defects, Mengele complained, "Unfortunately the author did not use subjects where the diagnosis could be verified by an autopsy." [34]
By June of 1940, when Germany was advancing on Western Europe, Mengele could no longer wait to enter the battle. He joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to the Genealogical Section of the SS Race and Settlement Office in occupied Poland. He undoubtedly benefited from Verschuer's March 1940 letter of recommendation averring that Mengele was accomplished, reliable and trustworthy. At the SS Race and Settlement Office, his mission was to seek out Polish candidates for Germanization. He would perform the racial and eugenic examinations. Eventually, in 1941, he was transferred to the Medical Corps of the Waffen SS, and then to the elite Viking unit operating in the Ukraine, where he rendered medical assistance under intense battlefield conditions. He was awarded two Iron Crosses and two combat medic awards. The next year, 1942, as the Final Solution was taking shape, Verschuer arranged for Mengele to transfer back to the SS Race and Settlement Office, this time to its Main Office in Berlin. [35]
By 1942, an aging Fischer was preparing to retire from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. His replacement was a major source of debate within eugenic and Nazi Party circles. By this time, Hitler's war against the Jews had escalated from oppressive disenfranchisement to systematic slaughter. [36]
Fischer had emerged as a major advocate of "a total solution to the Jewish question." His view was that "Bolshevist Jews" constituted a dangerous and inferior subspecies. At a key March 1941 conference on the solution to the Jewish problem held in Frankfurt, Fischer had been the honored guest. It was at this meeting that Nazi science extremists set forth ideas on eliminating Jews en masse. A leading idea that emerged was the gradual extinction (Volkstod) of the Jewish people by systematically concentrating them in large labor camps to be located in Poland. Later, Fischer specified that such labor must be unpaid slave labor lest any "improvement in living standards ... lead to an increase in the birth rate." [37]
Given Fischer's high profile in Nazi Party extermination policies, his successor would have to be selected carefully. Lenz was considered for the job, but Fischer worked behind the scenes with the Nazi Party to have Lenz passed over. Fischer thought Lenz was too tutorial, and not bold enough for the challenges ahead. Instead, Fischer's hand-picked successor would be Verschuer -- something Fischer had actually planned on for years. [38]
In 1942, Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem." He wrote a friend, "Many important events have occurred in my life. I received an invitation, which I accepted, to succeed Eugen Fischer as director of the Dahlem Institute [Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics at Berlin-Dahlem]. Great trust was shown toward me, and all my requests were granted with respect to the importance and authority of the institute .... I will take almost all my coworkers with me, first Schade and Grebe, and later Mengele and Fromme." Even though Mengele was still technically attached to the Race and Settlement Office, he was still Verschuer's assistant. Mengele's name was even added to the special birthday list for the institute's leading staff scientists. [39]
In January 25, 1943, with Hitler's extermination campaign in full swing, Verschuer wrote to Fischer, "My assistant Mengele ... has been transferred to work in an office in Berlin [at the SS Race and Settlement Office] so that he can do some work at the Institute on the side." [40]
On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.
***
Eugenics craved one type of human being above all others to answer its biological questions and to achieve its ultimate biological goal. The quest to locate this type of human being arose at the dawn of eugenics, and continued ceaselessly for four decades, throughout the voluminous discourse, research and publishing of the worldwide eugenic mainstream. To the eugenic scientist, no subject was of greater value. Young or old, healthy or diseased, living or dead, they all wanted one form of human -- twins.
Twins were the perfect control group for experimentation. How people developed, how they resisted or succumbed to disease, how they reacted to physical or environmental change -- all these questions could be best answered by twins precisely because they were simultaneous siblings. While fraternal twins sprang from two separate eggs fertilized at the same time, identical twins were, in fact, one egg split in two. Identical twins were essentially Nature's clones. [41]
Twins were valued for a second eugenic reason: Nature itself could be outmaneuvered if desirable individuals could be biologically enabled to spawn twins -- or even better, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets. In other words, a world of never-ending multiple births was the best assurance that the planned super race would remain super.
About a decade before Galton coined the term eugenics, he was convinced he could divine the secret of human breeding by studying twins. In 1874 and 1875, he published various versions of a scientific essay entitled "The History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture." In analyzing whether environment or heredity was responsible for an individual's success, Galton complained that his investigations were always hampered by the unending variables -- that is, until he located biological comparables. "The life history of twins supplies what I wanted," he wrote. Galton had closely studied some eighty sets of twin children by the time he wrote that essay. These included twins of the same and different gender as well as identical and non-identical twins. [42]
Cold Spring Harbor's handwritten outlines for key Mendelian traits listed twinning as one of the ten salient physical characteristics to explore. Davenport's 1911 textbook, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, included a section on twins with the introduction, "It is well known that twin production may be an hereditary quality." Three years later, Heinrich Poll, Rockefeller's first fund administrator in Germany, published a major volume on twin research; Poll's interest in the topic dovetailed with the Rockefeller Foundation's years-long support of the subject. [43]
American eugenic publications constantly dotted their pages with the latest twin theory and research. Identifying the mechanism governing the creation and development of twins quickly became a major pursuit for eugenics. In 1916, Eugenical News published three articles on the subject, including one that examined a recent article in Biological Bulletin on armadillo quadruplets, hoping to apply the principle to multiple births in humans. One of the 1917 articles on twins in Eugenical News indicated that in about a quarter of same sex twins, "there is some factor that definitely forces the two children to be of the same sex." A second article in 1917 announced that a doctor in a Michigan institution for the feebleminded was searching the nation for mongolism in twins, especially cases in which only one of the siblings manifested the condition. [44]
The problem with studying twins was that in adulthood most twins lived separate lives, often in separate cities and even in different countries. It was hard to locate them, let alone bring them together for examination. In 1918, the American Genetic Association, the renamed American Breeders Association, announced that it desired to "communicate with twins living in any part of the world." The AGA explained, "It has been discovered that twins are in a peculiar position to help in the elucidation of certain problems of heredity .... 'Duplicate' twins have a nearly (though never an absolutely) identical germ plasm .... It is fortunate for our knowledge ... on account of the chance it gives [us] to study the relative importance of heredity and of environment." Within a year of its announcement, the AGA had identified some six hundred twins, and by soliciting photos it had assembled a photo archive of several hundred. [45]
The ERO initiated its own twin study with a detailed four-page questionnaire. Among its numerous questions: "What is your favorite fruit?" and "Do you prefer eggs boiled soft or hard?" It also provided a place for each twin's fingerprints and the names and addresses of family members. ERO investigators located one especially fertile family in Cleveland that had repeatedly produced multiple births. When Davenport wrote up the case for Journal of Heredity in 1919, he explained that it had taken more than six visits by field workers to determine the full scope of the original couple's fecundity. Later, Eugenical News announced that Columbia, Missouri, was home to more twins than any other city in the nation -- one pair for every 477 people. [46]
Hereditarians sought twins of all ages -- not just children -- for proper study. The family tree of a New England family of twins, including one pair ninety-one years of age, fascinated eugenicists. Geneticists excavated old journals to discover even earlier examples, such as a seventeenth-century Russian woman who gave birth twenty-seven times, each time producing twins, triplets or quadruplets, yielding a total of sixty-nine children. [47]
Race and twins quickly became an issue for American eugenicists. In a 1920 lecture series, Davenport raised the issue of "racial difference in twin frequency" in the same geographic area. He pointed out that from 1896 to 1917, in Washington, D.C., the "negro rate [of twins] is 20 percent higher than the white rate." For whites in the nation's capital, it was 1.82 pairs of twins per hundred births, while blacks had 2.27 per hundred. At about the same time, Eugenical News, analyzing recent census data, claimed that twin births overall still occurred at a frequency of approximately 1 percent nationwide; but the percentage of multiple births among Blacks was almost one-fifth greater than among whites. Davenport followed up such observations in his Jamaica race-crossing study, which featured in-depth studies of three sets of twins. [48]
Diagnostic and physiological developments in twin studies from any sector of the medical sciences were of constant interest to eugenic readers. So Eugenical News regularly summarized articles from the general medical literature to feed eugenicists' unending fascination with the topic. In 1922, when a state medical journal reported using stethoscopes to monitor a twin pregnancy, it was reported in Eugenical News. When a German clinical journal published a study of tumors in twins, this too was reported in Eugenical News. [49]
With each passing issue, Eugenical News dedicated more and more space to the topic. The list of such reports became long. By the early 1920s, articles on twins became increasingly instructive. One typical article explained how to more precisely verify the presence of identical twins using a capillary microscope. Journal of Heredity also made twins a frequent subject in its pages. For example, it published Popenoe's article entitled "Twins Reared Apart," and Hermann Muller's article "The Determination of Twin Heredity," and regularly reviewed books about twins. [50]
Every leading eugenic textbook included a section on twins. Popenoe's Applied Eugenics explained that identical twins "start lives as halves of the same whole" but "become more unlike if they were brought up apart." Baur-Fischer-Lenz's Foundation of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene cited several studies including those written by Popenoe in Journal of Heredity. The German eugenicists wrote, "Of late years, the study of twins has been a favorite branch of genetic research" and thanked Galton for his "flash of genius" in "[recognizing] this a long while ago." [51]
In a similar vein, most international eugenic and genetic conferences included presentations or exhibits on twins-their disparity or similarity, their susceptibility to tuberculosis, their likes and dislikes. R. A. Fisher opened one of his lectures to the Second International Congress of Eugenics with the phrase: "The subject of the genesis of human twins ... has a special importance for eugenicists." The third congress offered an exhibit on mental disorders in twins, an exhibit illustrating fingerprint comparisons, a third juxtaposing identical and fraternal twins, and a fourth offering an array of fifty-nine anthropometric photos. [52]
The quest for a superior race continued to intersect with the availability of twins. In the July-August 1935 edition of Eugenical News, Dr. Alfred Gordon published a lengthy article entitled "The Problems of Heredity and Eugenics." His first sentence read: "Regulation of reproduction of a superior race (eugenics) is fundamentally based on the principles of heredity." Gordon went on to explain, "The role of heredity finds its strongest corroboration in cases of psychoses in twins." He then gave an example of just two case studies of twins. Such enthusiastic coverage in the biological and eugenic media was prompted a few months before by the extensive examination of just a single pair of twins undertaken at New York University's College of Dentistry, this to identify pathological dentition. [53]
There were so few twins to study that surgeons in the eugenics community passed along their latest discoveries, one by one, to advance the field's common knowledge. In one case, Dr. John Draper of Manhattan wrote to Davenport, "Last Thursday, I opened the abdomen of twin girls, fourteen years old. They presented very similar physical characteristics and the psychoses so far as could be determined were identical." Davenport replied, "Your observations upon the internal anatomy of the twin girls is exceedingly important, as very few observations of this type have been made upon twins." He offered to dispatch a field worker to make facial measurements. Such random reports were precious to eugenicists because physical experimentation on large groups was essentially impossible. [54]
All that changed when Hitler came to power in 1933. Germany surged ahead in its study of twins. The German word for twins is Zwillinge. There were tens of thousands of twins in the Reich. In 1921 alone, 19,573 pairs were born, plus 231 sets of triplets. In 192 5, 15,741 pairs of twins were born, as well as 161 sets of triplets. Twins were now increasingly sought to help combat hereditary diseases and conditions, real and imagined. Verschuer's book, Twins and Tuberculosis, was published in 1933 and received a favorable review in Journal of Heredity. In 1934, a Norwegian physician working with Verschuer and Fischer published in a German anthropology journal his analysis of 116 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins for their inheritance of an ear characteristic known as Darwin's tubercle. [55]
But many more twins would be needed to accomplish the sweeping research envisioned by the architects of Hitler's master race. In early December of 1935, Verschuer told a correspondent for the Journal of the American Medical Association that eugenics had moved into a new phase. Once Mendelian principles of human heredity were established, the correspondent wrote, "Further progress was achieved with the beginning of research on twins, by means of which it is possible to measure hereditary influence even though the hereditary processes are complicated .... Many of these researches, however, as Freiherr von Verschuer recently pointed out, are of questionable value .... What is absolutely needed is research on series of families and twins selected at random ... examined under the same conditions, a fixed minimum of examinations being made in all cases." The article went on to cite Verschuer's view that meaningful research would require entire families -- from children to grandparents. [56] In plain words, this meant gathering larger numbers of twins in one place for simultaneous investigation.
To attract more twins, the Nazi Party and the National Socialist Welfare League promoted "twin camps" for the holidays. Verschuer circulated handy text references for all German physicians who might encounter twins. When Verschuer opened his Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in 1936, the event created such fanfare in Eugenical News partially because, "Dr. Verschuer states that the object of his investigation is mankind, not the individual man, but families and twins; and in this work there will not [only] be investigated ... interesting twins, but all twins and families of definite geographical origin." [57]
At about that time, German neuropsychiatrist Heinrich Kranz of the University of Breslau published extensive genealogical details about seventy- five pairs of twin brothers and fifty pairs of opposite gender twins, seeking correlations on criminal behavior. In a Journal of Heredity essay, Popenoe lauded Kranz's investigation and predicted that such efforts would help identify "born criminals." Popenoe welcomed more such German research because "it has become one of the most dependable methods of studying human heredity." [58]
Indeed, a plethora of Nazi scientific journals were brimming with regular coverage of eugenic investigations of twins. Several publications were devoted solely to the subject, such as Zwillingsforschungen (Twin Research) and Zwillings- und Familienfonchungen (Twin and Family Research). Verschuer frequently wrote for these journals. In some cases Mengele coauthored the articles, including an article on systemic problems and cleft palate deformation published in Zwillings- und Familienforschungen. Some published twin research credited Mengele as the principal investigator, such as an article on congenital heart disease, also for Zwillings- und Familienforschungen. [59]
Verschuer's preoccupation with twin studies expanded feverishly. He required more and more twins. In a September 1938 application for funds from the German Research Society, Verschuer explained his plans. "Large-scale research on twins is necessary to explore the question of the hereditary aspects of human characteristics, especially illnesses. This research can take two paths: 1. Testing of all twins in a specific geographic area, done at our institute by Miss Liebmann. All twins in the Frankfurt district back to 1898 have been listed and almost all have been examined; she discussed some interesting cases in several articles and a comprehensive summary is being done. 2. Listing of series of twins. Based on cases in over 100 hospitals in west and southwest Germany, the number of twins among them were determined and the cases were examined according to illnesses." He listed rheumatism, stomach ulcers, cancer, heart defects, anemia and leukemia as the conditions he was focusing on. Verschuer assured, "A good deal of material has been collected." [60]