NP? book review: The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism

[Doug Millison]

Book Review

The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism 
by Stefan Kühl
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002

Reviewed by Nigel Hunt, Senior Lecturer, Psychology Division, Nottingham
Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, United Kingdom.



This book is concerned with exploring the relationship between the eugenics
movement in pre-war USA and the German National Socialist policies and
experiments between 1933-1945. It has been widely known that the USA,
particularly some states, had racist policies in place long before the
Nazis came to power in Germany. The Nazi policy of mass sterilisation of
mentally handicapped people followed very similar policies that were
applied across the USA from the early years of the Twentieth Century.
Bodies such as the International Eugenics Movement had a great influence in
the USA and also on the policies of the Nazis that eventually led to the
extermination programme carried out in Germany.

The book is a detailed study of the relationship between the USA and German
scientists during the first half of the Twentieth Century. It considers
German-American relations within the International Eugenics movement before
1933, the support of Nazi race policy through the International Eugenics
Movement, sterilisation in Germany and the USA, American Eugenicists in
Nazi Germany, concepts of race and science, the influence of Nazi race
policies on Eugenics in the USA, American support in Nazi Germany, and the
temporary end of relations between German and American Eugenicists with the
advent of the Second World War. [,,,[

continues at:
Human Nature Review  2002 Volume 2: 382-383 ( 17 September )
URL of this document http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/hunt.html