It was in Germany that eugenics took its most horrific form. Galton’s creed had aimed at the uplift of humanity as a whole; although he shared the racial prejudices that were common in the Victorian era, the concept of race did not play much of a role in his theorizing. German eugenics, by contrast, quickly morphed into Rassenhygiene—“race hygiene.” The Aryan race was in a struggle for domination with inferior races, German race hygienists believed, and its genetic material must not be allowed to deteriorate through the unfettered reproduction of the unfit. Under Hitler, nearly 400,000 people
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