Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (37 page)

16
Linda Schmittroth and Mary Kay Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust,
Vol. 1: A-J (Detroit: Gale, 1998), 174.

17
Reuth,
Goebbels
, 11–12.

18
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People of the Holocaust
, 1:174.

19
Reuth,
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, 182.

20
Reuth,
Goebbels
, 182.

21
Reuth,
Goebbels
, 183.

22
Oswald Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
(New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1940), 64.

23
Reimann,
Goebbels
, 2.

24
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
, 1:174.

25
Reimann,
Goebbels
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26
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Dr. Goebbels: His Life and Death
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27
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28
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29
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30
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, 66.

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, 136.

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Joseph Goebbels: A Biography
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37
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38
Schmittroth and Rosteck,
People of the Holocaust
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39
Rudolf Semmler,
Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler
(London: Westhouse, 1947), 98.

40
Martin Gilbert,
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41
Semmler,
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42
Trevor-Roper,
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, 79.

43
Gilbert,
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44
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46
Laurence Rees,
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47
Manvell and Fraenkel,
Dr. Goebbels: His Life and Death
, 24–25.

48
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, 216.

49
Manvell and Fraenkel,
Dr. Goebbels: His Life and Death
, 216.

50
Manvell and Fraenkel,
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, 216.

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Dr. Goebbels: His Life and Death
, 214.

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Dr. Goebbels: His Life and Death
, 214.

53
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, 215.

54
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55
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56
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57
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58
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Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler
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59
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60
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61
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Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler
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62
Manvell and Fraenkel,
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63
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.

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66
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Hermann Göring comes
under the influence of Hitler and Darwinism

INTRODUCTION

H
ermann Wilhelm Göring (1893–1946) is “an example of a decent man who became corrupted by power” and Nazism.
¹
His birth family had once stressed the equality of all persons, and were even willing to risk their careers for these beliefs. For example, Hermann Göring’s father’s career “reached a dead end because he advocated that black people be treated as human beings.”
²

As a young man, Hermann took after his father, Dr. Heinrich Göring in the area of human equality. While an eleven-year-old student in a private boarding school, he was condemned for writing an essay admiring his Jewish godfather, Austrian physician Hermann von Epenstein. That very night, young Göring returned to his hometown, never to return to this school again.
³

GÖRING BECOMES A PILOT

After graduating from high school with honours, Göring went on to become an ace fighter pilot in the First World War, and was awarded Germany’s highest honour,
Pour le Mérite,
also known as “the Blue Max.”
⁴
He also commanded
Jagdgeschwader
1, the fighter wing once led by the most famous German pilot, Manfred von Richthofen, widely known as the Red Baron because he flew a bright red airplane and shot down over eighty enemy planes.

GÖRING’S TRANSFORMATION AND RISE TO POWER

When Nazism swept over Germany, Göring joined the party in 1921. At first he “resisted Hitler’s strong anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic beliefs” and even saved a number of Jewish family friends when the Nazis came to power.
⁵
When he was wounded during the failed 1923 putsch (coup d’état) led by Hitler, a Jewish doctor treated his injuries.
⁶

Nonetheless, Göring eventually “fell completely under Hitler’s spell” and, for Göring, loyalty and faithfulness were the highest of all human virtues.
⁷
Eventually, “Göring totally worshipped Hitler [and]…soon abandoned his own tolerant views and went along with the Nazi leader’s anti-Jewish speeches and writings.”
⁸

It was largely from Hitler and intellectuals such as Haeckel that Göring obtained his Darwinian ideas. Historian James Rhodes reported that at the start of the last century, when Göring was a young follower of Hitler, “Darwinism was the greatest intellectual fad in Europe.” Many intellectuals

applied the catchwords “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” to human affairs, and a loosely defined movement known as “social Darwinism” arose. In Germany, social Darwinism was promoted by an accomplished scientist and
völkisch
ideologue named Ernst Haeckel. The enormously popular Haeckel argued that peoples were involved in the struggle for survival.
⁹

Haeckel also established an organization, called the Monist League that strove to preserve the German
Volk
. The term
Volk
or “folk” is a term Hitler used to refer to the German history, spirit, mythology, language, religious nature and customs—in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. More than just a nationalistic concept, it was used as a reason to reject Jews and other “inferior races” as Germans, and declare the need for the expansion of the German people, an idea called
Lebensraum
. Hitler likely obtained some of his ideas about race from professors such as Haeckel. Rhodes wrote that