Driver
Posts: 649
Joined: June 2011
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I haven't read the book, but I have researched this topic.
1. Hitler expressed creationist views.
"The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens."
He saw nature as upholding his view of non-mixing between kinds (and races):
"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. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc."[1]
He believed that man was created by a Creator:
"On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth.
To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its founders and custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who believe that the folk-idea lies at the basis of human existence. Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise."[2]
"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will."[3]
These views of Hitler's are incompatible with Darwin's theory.
2. Other views of Hitler are incompatible with Darwin's theory.
Hitler had a negative view of variety in a species:
"The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following:
Lowering of the level of the higher race;
Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness.
To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator."[1]
Darwin's theory of evolution requires variety in a breeding population so that
"natural selection will then accumulate all profitable variations, however slight, until they become plainly developed and appreciable by us."[4]
Variety within species becomes variety of species:
"As each species tends by its geometrical ratio of reproduction to increase inordinately in number; and as the modified descendants of each species will be enabled to increase by so much the more as they become more diversified in habits and structure, so as to be enabled to seize on many and widely different places in the economy of nature, there will be a constant tendency in natural selection to preserve the most divergent offspring of any one species. Hence during a long-continued course of modification, the slight differences, characteristic of varieties of the same species, tend to be augmented into the greater differences characteristic of species of the same genus."[5]
Hitler wanted the opposite of variety:
"In principle, the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind."[6]
Hitler believed that humanity progressed, "like climbing an endless ladder"[1]
The theory of evolution holds that species only adapt relative to those around them.
"As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates;"
Nature cares nothing for human standards:
"Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness."[7]
3. Hitler never refers to Darwin or Darwin's theory of evolution in Mein Kampf.
Darwin's name is absent from Mein Kampf. Nowhere does Hitler even use the terms Evolutionslehre (Evolution), Abstammungslehre (Evolutionary theory), Deszendenz-Theorie (Theory of Descent), or any word that obviously refers to evolutionary theory.
4. Darwin's works were rejected by Nazi authorities.
In 1935, Die Bcherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, added to their banned list
"Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Hckel)."[8]
5. "Social Darwinism" does not reflect, nor is it a development of, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
I'm sure you could all argue this point yourselves, so I won't paste this bit. I will just point out that Stigler's Law, various misnamed principles (e.g The Matthew Effect), misnamed places (e.g US of A), and Spaghetti Bolognese (not eaten in Bologna) are all apt.
[1] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol 1, Chap XI
[2] Mein Kampf, Vol 2, Chap II
[3] Mein Kampf, Vol 2, Chap X
[4] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (Variorum text, ebook). pp 279
[5] On the Origin of Species. pp734
[6] Mein Kampf, Vol 2, Chap I
[7] On the Origin of Species. pp737
[8] http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/exhibit....nts.htm
The truth is that one can find instances where Hitler seems to be somewhat aware of the theory of evolution, but also plenty of instances where he explicitly rubbishes it. Hitler's views were a hodgepodge. Certainly Darwin's theory was not a great influence upon him.
The issue is a little (but hardly inextricably) clouded by the fact that the original English translation of Tischgesprche was entirely based upon the French but the French translator was fraudulent, wishing to sever any links between Hitler and Christianity.
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Why would I concern myself with evidence, when IMO "evidence" is only the mind arranging thought and matter to support what one already wishes to believe? - William J Murray
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