Are we all Nazis now?
Dear Reader,
To call someone a Nazi, a fascist or a racist has been a common term of abuse for many years now. Hitler and Nazism have been recognised as the epitome of evil in western culture since the 1939 - 45 war and the discovery of their death camps for the extermination of Jews and others they considered as sub-human or enemies of the German Reich. Nazi totalitarianism and its race-based, pseudo-scientific ideology was undoubtedly the most evil regime to have gripped European culture for centuries. Today to call someone a Nazi or fascist is a quick method of expressing your complete rejection of their views - and not only of their views but of their humanity as well. It is also a quick method of closing down debate by demonising the other party. We should regularly ask ourselves, how did such an evil group and ideology as Nazism take grip and come to power? It is important to recognise that for many in the 1930s it was hard to foresee the evil that was to come; Hitler was popular, his stated aims largely uncontroversial and his policies successful. He had many supporters internationally, many who would accommodate themselves to his demands (British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for example), and few who consistently warned against his rise in power. Winston Churchill, a maverick British MP not highly regarded in some quarters, was the great exception, he did regularly and consistently counsel against Hitler. How easy it is to be blind to the rise to power of evil, could it happen to us today? Let us look at one of Hitler’s policies and consider it in today’s light.
In 1929 at a Nazi Party conference in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler laid out a policy of ‘racial hygiene’, a eugenics programme for the elimination of those with hereditary illnesses and mental and physical handicaps that made their lives ‘unworthy.’ Eugenics is a programme of selective breeding to eliminate unwanted inherited illnesses or characteristics from the human gene pool. Hitler’s policy was inspired by Charles Darwin’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’, as developed in his book ‘The Descent of Man’ and applied to different human ethnic groups and developed in a German context by Alfred Ploetz in the late 1800s. Hitler applied Darwin’s theory to a belief that the Germans were part of an Aryan / Nordic human race that was inherently superior to other human ethnicities; to maintain that superiority all weaknesses must be removed, the breeding of pure stock encouraged and ‘miscegenation’ with other inferior races such as Jew, Slavs and black Africans forbidden. In his speech Hitler proposed that ‘that an average annual removal of 700,000-800,000 of the weakest of a million babies meant an increase in the power of the nation and not a weakening.’ He was proposing a rigorous cull of up to 80% of all babies born, a massive pruning of the German people. The policy was termed Kinder-Euthanasia and the first babies identified for destruction were those with the following diagnoses:
● Idiocy and Mongolism (now known as Down’s Syndrome)
● Microcephaly
● Hydrocephalus
● Malformations of all kinds, particularly the absence of limbs, severe midline defects of the head and spine, etc.
● Paralysis
● Cerebral palsy
The policy was put into effect two years after Hitler took control of Germany. In 1935 the categories of those deemed unworthy of life were extended to include the mentally ill. A baby or child who was suspected of suffering from any of the proscribed conditions was sent for examination by three medical examiners, if he or she was found to have one of the conditions they would be sent for ‘treatment.’ In the years between 1935 and the start of the Second World War 5,000 children were killed in approximately 30 children’s wards set up around the country. Some of the children were sent to special medical centres for research prior to their deaths, the remains of some were used for research after death. Parents who refused to submit their children for examination were subjected to pressure to do so, extending to the loss of parental rights and the forcible removal of the child from their care. With the expansion of the concentration camp system in 1937/38, the outbreak of war in 1939 and the development of mass extermination programmes for undesirable elements, the Kinder-Euthanasia programme was rolled into larger programmes for the advancement of ‘racial purity.’
Here in the UK the same fashion for eugenics that had gripped Germany was also evident among the progressives and scientists of the time, though fortunately not adopted into the policies of a party of national government. The idea of cleaning up the human gene pool by selective breeding and abortion was popular among the elites of the ‘civilised’ world. In the UK one of the foremost voices of the day was birth control activist Marie Stopes, who lobbied Parliament (and gained the support of 150 MPs) to reduce the reproductive rates of the lower classes, cut her own son from her Will for marrying a woman with short sight and wrote letters of admiration to Hitler. In the USA the charge was led by Margaret Sanger who advocated a eugenics programme to weed out ‘defective stock’ from humanity and suppress the birth rate among black Americans via a ‘Negro Project;’ again done in the name of birth control. The legacy of these two women have been the Marie Stopes clinics in the UK and Planned Parenthood in the USA, between them they have killed many more than Hitler did in his extermination camps.
The term ‘birth control’, which covers everything from abstinence to contraception to abortion, has been replaced by the term ‘Reproductive Rights’ and the justification for abortion has been shifted from family planning to feminism and Women’s Rights. The concept of family planning was deemed to be too entrenched in the family and ‘the Patriarchy.’ Reproductive Rights places abortion within feminism, Women’s Rights and therefore Human Rights. In feminist thinking it is now a woman’s human right to kill the child she carries if she so wishes. Within this framework of thinking the right of the child to life has no weight, abortion by choice up to birth (and even beyond as some activists desire) is a woman’s right. The wishes of the father have less than no value, ‘No womb, no say’ is the slogan used to shut down the conversation. In the USA the Guttmacher Institute estimates that about 18.5% of all pregnancies end in abortion, a total of approximately 875,000 per annum. In the UK that figure is approximately 24% or over 200,000 per year, a figure that will only rise now that legislation permitting abortion has been forced upon Northern Ireland. In the years since legalisation some 62 million babies have been aborted in the USA and almost 9 million in the UK.
Comparing the position of the Nazis with that of modern ‘pro-choice’ activists you can see clear differences. The policy of the Nazis was limited to the elimination of the severely handicapped and was based upon a (mis-guided) belief that it would strengthen the community as a whole. It was backed by a policy to encourage and support motherhood as an ideal. Today abortion is encouraged for all manner of reasons, not only severe and life-limiting disabilities but wholly curable conditions as minor as cleft lips. The feelings and attitude of the mother are paramount and whether or not to give birth to the child conceived is a matter of choice. The justification has moved from a notion of communal good to personal desire.
There is of course a different way entirely of treating unwanted babies, a way which has had its practitioners for 2000 years and is still in common use outside of the western world – the way of the Christians. In the ancient Greco-Roman world the abortion of unwanted pregnancies or the killing or exposure of unwanted infants was taken for granted. Oftentimes the decision was that of the father but sometimes, as in the case of Sparta, the decision was made by community elders. Any deformity, sign of weakness or simply because the child was excess to requirements or female, was reason enough to dispose of the child. Writings from authors such as Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca all affirm such practices. In contrast to the society in which they lived, the first Christians affirmed the right to life of children, born and pre-born. Recognising within the baby the image of God that is common to all mankind they placed ultimate value on that life, and they believed that as they received that baby they also received Christ into their lives. The Epistle of Barnabas (written sometime between AD70 and AD132) specifically forbade abortion, in the second century Justin Martyr wrote against child abandonment, as did other Church Fathers in following centuries. The early church quickly gained a reputation for rescuing abandoned children and raising them in dignity. This and similar practices of caring for abandoned or orphaned children in orphanages, nunneries and monasteries has continued down the centuries. One contemporary Pastor in South Korea, who developed a temperature controlled ‘baby-box’ to receive unwanted new-borns, has rescued over 1500 babies during the period of his ministry.
The contrast between the Christian way and the practices of Nazis or modern day ‘pro-choice’ feminists is stark. The Christian values all children, healthy or not, as being made in the image of God and a channel of the grace of God to them. The Nazi attributed value only to those who they believed would build up the collective strength of the nation. The modern advocate of ‘Reproductive Rights’ sees no inherent value in the baby but places ultimate value and power in the will of the mother.
Our society has for the most part moved far away from the practices of the Christians. Though the reasons given for abortion may now be couched in non-racial terms, ‘miscegenation’ an almost forgotten word and the selective breeding programmes of eugenicists abandoned, the disposal of the undesired continues. The disabled and the unwanted are terminated, those deemed to have lives not worth living are taken to clinics and quietly done away before they take their first beath. The altar of Racial Hygiene has been replaced by the altar of Reproductive Rights but the same bloody sacrifice of the weak is still made daily. Are we blind to the evil among us, are we all Nazis now?
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