Ploetz had helped lay the groundwork for the First International Congress for Eugenics at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911. The 1911 meeting was organized by the International Society for Racial Hygiene, a group dominated by German racial hygienists (Kühl 1994). Ploetz was given an honorary doctorate at the University of Munich in 1930. He welcomed the Nazis’ seizure of power and wrote in 1933 that Hitler would bring racial hygiene from its previous marginality into the mainstream.
