The Long Shadow of the Past
On 16 July I published a story entitled “An Act of Mercy” (http://newauthoronline.com/2013/07/16/an-act-of-mercy/). In “An Act of Mercy” the government has introduced a eugenics programme under which those with mental and physical disabilities are eliminated as in the opinion of the authorities they are unproductive and place an unacceptable burden on society.
The view of disabled people as “useless eaters” and “life unworthy of life” lead to the forced sterilisation and (later) murder of many mentally and physically disabled people under the so-called Action T4 Programme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4), however the atrocities of the Third Reich where forshadowed in other countries long before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In the United Kingdom legislation was introduced in 1912 aimed at segregating the “feeble minded” from other “healthy” members of the community. Feble minded could mean anyone a doctor deemed to fall into that category. Thus unmarried mothers became lumped together with people with mild learning disabilities and where segregated from their fellow citizens.
Support for eugenics was not a matter of party politics. The Webbs (both prominent members of the socialist Fabian Society) where strong supporters as was Winston Churchill (in 1912 a Liberal but later a Conservative politician).
In both the USA and the UK eugenics societies played a leading role in arguing for eugenic measures. In the USA legislation went further than the measures introduced in the UK with many sterilisations of the “unfit” being carried out on individuals against their will. Nazi Germany modelled it’s sterilisation law on US legislation and at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals accused of forceably sterilising the disabled the accused pointed to what had been happening in the USA in their defence.
Some supporters of eugenics where no doubt genuinely horrified at the use to which their theories had been put by Nazi doctors and the term eugenics fell out of favour largely as a consequence of the abuses perpetrated by the Third Reich. However some have argued that proponents of eugenics such as Leonard Darwin (the son of Charles Darwin) helped to create the atmosphere in which atrocities could be commited. The leading American eugenicist Charles Davenport openly expressed his admiration for the German’s eugenics programme (see http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/themes/25.html).
Eugenics is a fascinating subject and I will write more on it in future.
