Still, before the First World War there seems little evidence that Ploetz himself considered the ‘Aryan’ race superior to others, although one of his closest collaborators, Fritz Lenz, certainly did. Ploetz took a ruthlessly meritocratic line on eugenic planning, arguing, for example, that a panel of doctors should attend all births and determine whether the baby was fit to survive or should be killed as weak and inadequate. The Darwinist Alexander Tille openly advocated the killing of the mentally and physically unfit, and agreed with Ploetz and Schallmayer that children’s illnesses should be
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