Hitler and evolution
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[edit] Introduction
It is sometimes claimed that Adolf Hitler was inspired or motivated by a belief in the theory of evolution.
The facts demonstrate the exact opposite.
[edit] Discussion
While Hitler uses the word "evolution" in Mein Kampf, it is clear that he is not referring to Darwin's theory --- indeed, he never mentions the man. In fact, a look at his writings reveals his sentiments on the subject to be those of an orthodox creationist.
Like a creationist, Hitler asserts fixity of kinds:
- The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. i, ch. xi
Like a creationist, Hitler claims that God made man:
- For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. x
Like a creationist, Hitler affirms that humans existed "from the very beginning", and could not have evolved from apes:
- From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today. - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)
Like a creationist, Hitler believes that man was made in God's image, and in the expulsion from Eden:
- 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. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. i
Like a creationist, Hitler believes that:
- God ... sent [us] into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. xiv
Like a creationist, Hitler claims Jesus as his inspiration:
- My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them. - Adolf Hitler, speech, April 12 1922, published in My New Order
Like a creationist, Hitler despises secular schooling:
- Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. - Adolf Hitler, Speech, April 26, 1933
Like a creationist, Hitler wished to make prayer compulsory in public schools. Unlike American creationists, he succeeded.
Hitler even goes so far as to claim that Creationism is what sets humans apart from the animals:
- The most marvelous proof of the superiority of Man, which puts man ahead of the animals, is the fact that he understands that there must be a Creator. - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)
So why does he mention evolution at all? On examination, he is talking of differences within species --- of the "micro-evolution" that creationists profess to believe in:
- The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. (Mein Kampf, vol. i, ch. xi)
So, like a creationist, there is some evolution he is prepared to concede --- evolution within species, which creationists call "microevolution", and which they have no objection to [1]. So it is on the basis of the one part of evolutionary theory which creationists accept that Hitler tried to find a scientific basis for his racism and his program of eugenics.
It is not surprising that Hitler should have found creationist views so attractive. A man who will not admit people of other races to be his brothers is hardly likely to embrace animals of other species as his cousins.
[edit] A quotation out of context
There is another point in Mein Kampf where Hitler refers to "evolution", in volume IV chapter II. Creationists are fond of quoting a bit of it out of context in order to give the false impression that he is talking about biological evolution. We reproduce the passage below, with the part that creationists quote in bold type:
- The first step which visibly brought mankind away from the animal world was that which led to the first invention. The invention itself was its origin to the ruses and stratagems which man employed to assist him in the struggle with other creatures for his existence and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in the struggle. Those first very crude inventions cannot be attributed to the individual; for the subsequent observer, that is to say the modern observer, recognizes them only as collective phenomena. Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed in use among the animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere; and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena 'instinctive.'
- In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as 'instinct.
- This is more easily understood and more easy to believe in the case of man. His first skilled tactics in the struggle with the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated in his management of creatures which possessed special capabilities.
- There can be no doubt that personality was then the sole factor in all decisions and achievements, which were afterwards taken over by the whole of humanity as a matter of course. An exact exemplification of this may be found in those fundamental military principles which have now become the basis of all strategy in war. Originally they sprang from the brain of a single individual and in the course of many years, maybe even thousands of years, they were accepted all round as a matter of course and this gained universal validity.
Now, creationists would wish us to believe from the highlighted snippet that when Hitler wrote of the "higher evolution of living organisms", he meant macroevolution. But it is clear from the context that he is talking about social evolution, not biological evolution, and about ideas (technical knowledge, military strategies) that are culturally transmitted rather than biological traits transmitted by genetic inheritance.
Hitler's main point seems to be that every good idea has a single origin, an idea that will sound very strange to anyone with a knowledge of the history of science and technology, and which of course has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.
[edit] Nietzsche and Darwin
People who claim Hilter as an evolutionist sometimes claim that he imbibed this enthusiasm from the philosopher Nietzsche.
The flaw in this is that Nietzsche, like Hitler, denied the possibility of evolution:
- Anti Darwin.- What surprises me most on making a general survey of the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of what today Darwin and his school sees or will persist in seeing: selection in favour of the stronger, the better constituted, and the progress of the species ...
- I see all philosophers and the whole of science on their knees before a reality which is the reverse of the struggle for life as Darwin and his school understood it ... The error of the Darwinian school became a problem to me: how can one be so blind as to make this mistake? (Friederich Nietzsche, "Anti-Darwin", The Will to Power)
