CHAPTER 19: American Legacy

America's retreat from eugenics was precipitated by the convergence of
two forces: Hitler's ascent in Germany and the climactic exit of the
pseudoscience's founding fathers from Cold Spring Harbor. But it was not
a moment of truth that finally convinced the Carnegie Institution and the
eugenic establishment to turn away from their quest for a superior Nordic
race. Rather, the end was an inexorably slow process devoid of mea culpas,
one that saw the major players withdraw only with great reluctance.

The real father of eugenics was of course Charles Benedict Davenport.
Galton was merely the grandfather. It was Davenport who twisted Galton's
stillborn Victorian vision into self-righteous social-biological action.
Eugenics always risked veering completely out of control. It did in Nazi
Germany.

During the twelve-year Hitler regime, Davenport never wavered in his
scientific solidarity with Nazi race hygiene. Nor did he modify his view
that the racially robust were entitled to rule the earth. But Germany's triumph
in the thirties wielding his principles did not bring Davenport the
personal fulfillment he craved. During all his years at the pinnacle of international
eugenic science, Davenport remained the same sad, embittered,
intellectually defensive man who had first embarked upon a biological crusade
at the turn of the century. As one lifelong friend remembered, Davenport
remained "a lone man, living a life of his own in the midst of others,
feeling out of place in almost any crowd." Davenport could acquire international
celebrity, but never personal happiness.l

Correction. Davenport did find personal joy in one thing: his children,
especially his son Charlie, born January 8, 1911. Little Charlie unlocked
the affectionate quality guarded deep within men like Davenport. Proudly,
Davenport would call out through the neighborhood for Charlie to come
back for dinner after a day's play. A family friend remembers the intense
"pride and devotion" Davenport felt when it came to little Charlie.2

The same year Charlie was born, Davenport published his cornerstone
volume, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, which explained the biological basis
of the superior family. Even as millions were devastated by crippling diseases,
such as tuberculosis and polio, Davenport's answer was to blame their ancestry,
or more precisely, unsound protoplasm. "It is an incomplete statement,"
asserted Davenport's book, "that the tubercle bacillus is the cause of tuberculosis,
or alcohol the cause of delerium tremens or syphilis the cause of paresis.
Experience proves it .... In general, the causes of disease as given in the
pathologies are not the real causes. They are due to inciting conditions acting
on susceptible protoplasm. The real cause of death of any person is his
inability to cope with the disease germ or other untoward conditions." Fatal
epidemics did not kill, preached Davenport, only defective germ plasm.3

On the evening of September 5, 1916, Davenport came face to face
with his own dogma. That night, young Charlie was stricken by polio.
Death entered the Davenport household quickly; within hours of showing
symptoms, Charlie was dead. The next day the boy was interred in the family
plot of a Brooklyn cemetery. Davenport never recovered from the loss.
A close associate recounted a broken man, a man absolutely "prostrated."
After the funeral, both he and his wife retired to a sanitarium for several
weeks. When he emerged, Davenport became even more cloistered and
relentless in his work.4

For years, Davenport uncompromisingly continued to seek out the
imperfect, the inferior, the weak and the susceptible, demanding their
elimination. In 1934, at age sixty-eight, after a three-decade crusade,
Davenport retired from the Carnegie Institution. Officials at the
Washington office allocated a small room at the Eugenics Record Office to
him, along with clerical help. On June 28, he delivered his final official
address, "Reminiscences of Thirty Years." The next day, Davenport began
the remainder of his joyless life. The letter he dictated to his secretary
almost stoically informed the Carnegie Institution: "I am now getting settled
in a corner of the south room, second floor, of the Eugenics Record
Office, and am looking forward to a chance of uninterrupted research."5

Davenport of course continued to be active as the elder statesman of
eugenics into the 1940s, even as the Nazis assumed international leadership
and swept Davenport's principles into a brutal war. As late as 1943,
Davenport was protesting, in Eugenical News, the widespread opposition to
stern racial policies. But during his retirement years, Davenport mostly
busied himself with continuous private investigations of mice, children,
and other organisms.6

In January of 1944, Davenport became fixated on a killer whale that had
beached itself off Long Island. He was determined to have its skull to
exhibit at his new whaling museum at Cold Spring Harbor. Night after
night, in a steam-filled but uninsulated shed, Davenport boiled the whale's
head in a great cauldron. It was a slow process. The enormous orca was
tough and resistant. Even as the weather became more and more brutal,
Davenport would not give up. He fought the elements and the whale skull
for two weeks, determined to beat them both. He became weaker and
weaker.?

Colleagues remembered that one night Davenport appeared at an ERa
staff meeting reeking of blubber. He sat off by himself, seventy-eight years
old and still unshakable. Shortly thereafter, Davenport came down with a
severe case of pneumonia. On February 18, 1944, Davenport died, not of
old age, but of germs.s

***

The Carnegie Institution continued to back eugenics long after its executives
became convinced it was a worthless nonscience based on shabby data,
and years after they concluded that Harry Hamilton Laughlin himself was
a sham.

Laughlin and eugenics in general had become the butt of jokes and the
object of reprehension as far back as 1912, when the world learned that its
proponents planned to sterilize millions in America and millions more in
other nations. Scientists from other disciplines ridiculed the movement as
well. Despite the widespread derision, eugenics persevered as a science
under siege, battling back for years, fortified by its influential patrons, the
power of prejudice and the big money of Carnegie. But the Carnegie
Institution's patience began to erode as early as 1922, when Laughlin
became a public font of racist ideology during the Congressional immigration
restriction hearings.9

Carnegie president John C. Merriam continued to be embarrassed by
Laughlin's immigration rantings throughout the 1920s. But he tolerated
them for the greater agenda of the eugenics movement. However,
Laughlin struck a particular nerve in the spring of 1928, while Merriam
and a U.S. government official were touring Mexican archaeology sites.
During the tour, Mexican newspapers splashed a story that Merriam's
Carnegie Institution was proposing that Congress severely limit immigration
of Mexicans into the United States. It was Laughlin who prompted
the story.IO

Merriam immediately instructed Davenport to muzzle Laughlin. "He
[Merriam] feels especially that you ought not go further," Davenport wrote
Laughlin, "... helping the [House] committee on a definition of who may
be acceptable as immigrants to the United States from Spanish America.
The Spanish Americans are very sensitive on this matter .... It will not do
for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, or its officers, to take sides in
this political question." Anticipating Laughlin's predictable argument,
Davenport continued, "I know you regard it properly as more than a political
question and as a eugenical question-but it is in politics now, and that
means that the institution has to preserve a neutrality.""

Yet Laughlin did nothing to restrict his vocal activities. By the end of
1928, Merriam convened an internal committee to review the value of the
Eugenics Record Office. In early February of 1929, the committee
inspected the Cold Spring Harbor facility and concluded that the accumulation
of index cards, trait records and family trees amounted to little more
than clutter. They "are of value only to the individual compiling them,"
the committee wrote, and even then "in most cases they decrease in
importance in direct proportion to their age." Some of the files were
almost two decades old, and all of them reflected nineteenth-century
record-keeping habits now obsolete. The mass of records yielded much
private information about individuals and their families, but little hard
knowledge on heredity. 12

Nonetheless, with Davenport and Laughlin lobbying to continue their
work, the panel rejected any "radical move, such as relegating them [the
files] to dead storage." Instead, Carnegie officials decided a closer affiliation
with the Eugenics Research Association would help the ERO achieve
some approximation of genuine science. Hence the Carnegie Institution
would continue to operate the ERO under Carnegie's Department of
Genetics. 13

Genetics, however, was not the emphasis at Cold Spring Harbor.
Laughlin and his ERO continued their race-based political agitation
unabated. Moreover, once Hitler rose to power in 1933, Laughlin forged
the ERO, the ERA and Eugenical News into a triumvirate of pro-Nazi agitation.
But things changed when Davenport retired in June of 1934.
Laughlin lost his greatest internal sponsor, and with Davenport out of
power, Carnegie officials in Washington quickly began to move against
LaugWin. They pointedly questioned his race science and indeed the whole
concept of eugenics in a world where the genuine science of genetics was
now emergmg.

Carnegie officials first focused on Eugenical News, which had become a
compendium of American raceology and Nazi propaganda. Although
Eugenical News was published out of the Carnegie facilities at the ERO, by a
Carnegie scientist, and functioned as the official voice of Carnegie's
eugenic operations, the Carnegie Institution did not legally own or control
Eugenical News. It was Laughlin's enterprise. Carnegie wanted an immediate
change and made this clear to Laughlin. 14

Laughlin became very protective. He had always chosen what would
and would not run in Eugenical News, and he even authored much of the
text. In a September 11, 1934, letter to Davenport's replacement, Albert F.
Blakeslee, Laughlin rebuffed attempts to corral Eugenical News, defensively
insisting, "In this formative period of making eugenics into a science, the
ideals of the Eugenics Record Office, of the Eugenics Research
Association, of the International Congresses and Exhibits of Eugenics, and
of the Eugenical News are identical. I feel that the position of the Eugenical
News as a scientific journal is quite unique, in that eugenics is a new science,
and that the trend and rate of its development, and its ultimate character,
will be influenced substantially by the Eugenical News."15

Laughlin made clear to Carnegie officials that they simply could not
control Eugenical News, because it was legally the property of the Eugenics
Research Association-and Laughlin was the secretary of the ERA. To
drive home his point, a Laughlin memo defiantly included typed-in
excerpts from committee reports and letters to the printer, plus sample
issues going back to 1916-all demonstrating the ERA's legal authority
over Eugenical News. "I feel that the Institution should go into the matter
thoroughly," insisted Laughlin, "and make a clean-cut and definite ruling
concerning the relationship of the Carnegie Institution (represented by the
Eugenics Record Office) to the Eugenical News."16

By now, Carnegie felt it was again time to formally revisit the worth of
Laughlin and eugenics. A new advisory committee was assembled, spearheaded
by archaeologist A.v. Kidder. He began assembling information on
Laughlin's activities, and Laughlin was only too happy to cooperate, almost
boastfully inundating Kidder with folder after folder of material. With
Davenport in retirement, Laughlin undoubtedly felt he was heir to Cold
Spring Harbor's throne. He sent Washington a passel of demands about
revamping Cold Spring Harbor's administrative structure, renovations of
its property and new budget requests for 1935.17

Kidder was not encouraging. He wrote back, "I think I ought to tell you
that I feel quite certain that the administrative and financial changes which
you advocate are extremely unlikely, in my opinion, to be carried into effect
in 1935." Kidder was virtually besieged with Laughlin's written and printed
submissions to support his requests for a sweeping expansion of the ERa.
On November 1, 1934, Kidder acknowledged, "I am at present reviewing
all the correspondence and notes in my possession relative to the whole
Cold Spring Harbor situation and in the course of a few days I shall prepare
a memorandum for Dr. Merriam." But within two days, Kidder conceded
that he was overwhelmed. "I have read all the material you sent me with
close attention," he wrote Laughlin. "I have also read all the Year Book
reports of the Eugenics Record Office .... I am now trying to correlate all
this information in what passes for my brain."18

On Sunday,]une 16 and Monday,]une 17, 1935, the advisory committee
led by Kidder visited Cold Spring Harbor, touring both the ERa and the
adjacent Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution. Laughlin's residence,
provided by the Carnegie Institution, was one of the buildings in the
compound, and Mrs. Laughlin graciously prepared Sunday lunch and
Monday dinner for the delegation. The men found her hospitality delightful,
and Laughlin's presentations exhaustive. But after a thorough examination,
the advisory committee concluded that the Eugenics Record Office
was a worthless endeavor from top to bottom, yielding no real data, and that
eugenics itselfwas not science but rather a social propaganda campaign with
no discernible value to the science of either genetics or human heredity. 19

Almost a million ERa records assembled on individuals and families
were "unsatisfactory for the scientific study of human genetics," the advisory
committee explained, "because so large a percentage of the questions concern
... traits, such as 'self-respect,' 'holding a grudge,' 'loyalty,' [and] 'sense
of humor,' which can seldom truly be known to anyone outside an individual's
close associates; and which will hardly ever be honestly recorded, even
were they measurable, by an associate or by the individual concerned."20

While much ERa attention was devoted to meaningless personality
traits, key physical traits were being recorded so sloppily by "untrained
persons" and "casually interested individuals" that the advisory committee
concluded this data was also "relatively worthless for genetic study." The
bottom line: a million index cards, some 35,000 files, and innumerable
other records merely occupied "a great amount of the small space available
... and, worst of all, they do not appear to us really to permit satisfactory
use of the data. "21

The advisory committee recommended that all genealogical and
eugenic tracking activities cease, and that the cards be placed in storage
until whatever bits of legitimate heredity data they contained could be
properly extracted and analyzed using an IBM punch card system. A million
index cards had accumulated during some two decades, but because of
the project's starting date in 1910 and Laughlin's unscientific methodology,
the data had never been analyzed by IBM's data processing system. This
fact only solidified the advisory committee's conclusion that the Eugenics
Record Office was engaged in mere biological gossip backed up by reams
of worthless documents. The advisory committee doubted that the demographic
muddle would "ever be of value," and added its hope that "never
again ... should records be allowed to bank up to such an extent that they
cannot be kept currently analyzed."22

The advisory committee vigorously urged that "The Eugenics Record
Office should engage in no new undertaking; and that all current activities
should be discontinued save for Dr. Laughlin's work in preparation of his
final report upon the Race Horse investigation." Moreover, the advisory
committee emphasized, "The Eugenics Record Office should devote its
entire energies to pure research divorced from all forms of propaganda and
the urging or sponsoring of programs for social reform or race betterment
such as sterilization, birth-control, inculcation of race or national consciousness,
restriction of immigration, etc. Hence it might be well for the
personnel of the Office to discontinue connection with the Eugenical
News." Committee members concluded, "Eugenics is by generally accepted
definition and understanding not a science." They insisted that any further
involvement with Cold Spring Harbor be devoid of the word eugenics and
instead gravitate to the word genetics.23

Geneticist L. C. Dunn, a member of the advisory committee traveling
in Europe at the time, added his opinion in a July 3, 1935, letter, openly
copied to Laughlin. Dunn was part of a growing school of geneticists
demanding a clean break between eugenics and genetics. "With genetics,"
advised Dunn, "its relations have always been close, although there
have been distinct signs of cleavage in recent years, chiefly due to the
feeling on the part of many geneticists that eugenical research was not
always activated by purely disinterested scientific motives, but was influenced
by social and political considerations tending to bring about too
rapid application of incompletely proved theses. In the United States its
[the eugenics movement's] relations with medicine have never been close,
the applications having more often been made through sociology than
through medicine, although the basic problems involved are biological
and medical ones."24

Dunn wondered if it wasn't time to shut down Cold Spring Harbor
altogether and move the operation to a university where such an operation
could collaborate with other disciplines. "There would seem to me to be no
peculiar advantages in the Cold Spring Harbor location." As it stood,
'''Eugenics' has come to mean an effort to foster a program of social
improvement rather than an effort to discover facts." In that regard, Dunn
made a clear comparison to Nazi excesses. "I have just observed in
Germany," he wrote, "some of the consequences of reversing the order as
between program and discovery. The incomplete knowledge of today,
much of it based on a theory of the state, which has been influenced by the
racial, class and religious prejudices of the group in power, has been
embalmed in law, and the avenues to improvement in the techniques of
improving the population have been completely closed."25

Dunn's July 3 letter continued with even more pointed comparisons to
Nazi Germany. "The genealogical record offices have become powerful
agencies of the [German] state," he wrote, "and medical judgments even
when possible, appear to be subservient to political purposes. Apart from
the injustices in individual cases, and the loss of personal liberty, the solution
of the whole eugenic problem by fiat eliminates any rational solution
by free competition of ideas and evidence. Scientific progress in general
seems to have a very dark future. Although much of this is due to the dictatorship,
it seems to illustrate the dangers which all programs run which
are not continually responsive to new knowledge, and should certainly
strengthen the resolve which we generally have in the U.S. to keep all
agencies which contribute to such questions as free as possible from commitment
to fixed programs."26 .

Carnegie's advisory committee could not have been more clear: eugenics
was a dangerous sham, the ERO was a worthless and expensive undertaking
devoid of scientific value, and Laughlin was purely political. But as
Hitler rose and the situation of the Jews in Ellrope worsened, and the
plight of refugees seeking entry into the United 'States became ever more
desperate, the Carnegie Institution elected to ignore its own findings about
Cold Spring Harbor and continue its economic and political support for
Laughlin and his enterprises. Shortly after Merriam reviewed the advisory
committee's conclusions, the Reich passed the Nuremberg Laws in
September of 1935. Those of Jewish ancestry were stripped of their civil
rights. Laughlin, Eugenical News and the Cold Spring Harbor eugenics
establishment propagandized that the laws were merely sound science.
Eugenical News even gave senior Nazi leaders- a platform to justify their
decrees. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold
Spring Harbor enterprise.

In 1936, the brutal Nazi concentration camps multiplied. Systematic
Jewish pauperization accelerated. Jews continued fleeing Germany in terror,
seeking entry anywhere. But American consulates refused them visas.
In the face of the humanitarian crisis, Laughlin continued to advise the
State Department and Congress to enforce stiff eugenic immigration barriers
against Jews and other desperate refugees. The Carnegie Institution
still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.27

In 1937, Nazi street violence escalated and Germany increasingly
vowed to extend its master race to all of Europe-and to completely cleanse
the continent ofJews. Laughlin, Eugenical News and the eugenics establishment
continued to agitate in support of the Reich's goals and methods, and
even distributed the anti-Semitic Nazi film, Erbkrank. The Carnegie
Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.28

In 1938, as hundreds of thousands of new refugees appeared, an emergency
intergovernmental conference was convened at Evian, France. It was
fruitless. Germany then decreed that all Jewish property was to be registered,
a prelude to comprehensive liquidation and seizure. In November,
Kristallnacht shocked the world. Nazi agitation was now spreading into
every country in Europe. Austria had been absorbed into the Reich. Hitler
threatened to devour other neighboring countries as well. Laughlin,
Eugenical News and the eugenics establishment still applauded the Hitler
campaign. By the end of 1938, however, the Carnegie Institution realized it
could not delay action much longer.29

On January 4, 1939, newly installed Carnegie president Vannevar Bush
put Laughlin on notice that while his salary for the year was assured, Bush
was not sure how much funding the ERa would receive-if any. At the
same time, Jews from across Europe continued to flee the Continent, many
begging to enter America because no other nation would take them. In
March of 1939, the Senate Immigration Committee asked Bush if Laughlin
could appear for another round of testimony to support restrictive "remedial
legislation." Bush permitted Laughlin to appear, and only asked him to
limit his unsupportable scientific assertions. But Laughlin was not prohibited
from again promoting eugenic and racial barriers as the best basis for
immigration policy. Indeed, the Carnegie president reminded him, "One
has to express opinions when he appears in this sort of inquiry, and I believe
that yours will be found to be a conservative and well-founded estimate of
the situation facing the Committee." Bush added that he had personally
reviewed Laughlin's prior testimony and felt it was "certainly well handled
and valuable."30

After testifying, Laughlin received a postcard at the Carnegie
Institution in Washington from an irate citizen in Los Angeles. "As an
An1erican descendant of An1ericans for over 300 years, I'd like to learn
what prompted you to supply [the Senate Immigration Committee] ... with
so much material straight from Hitler's original edition of Mein Kampf"3'

At about this time, Laughlin was also permitted to testify before the
Special Committee on Immigration and aturalization of the ew York
State Chamber of Commerce. In May of 1939, Laughlin's report, Immigration
and Conquest, was published under the imprimatur of the New York
State Chamber of Commerce and "Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution
of Washington." The 267-page document, filled with raceological
tenets, claimed that America would soon suffer "conquest by settlement
and reproduction" through an infestation of defective immigrants. As a
prime illustration, Laughlin offered "The Parallel Case of the House Rat,"
in which he traced rodent infestation from Europe to the rats' ability "to
travel in sailing ShipS."32

Laughlin then explained, in a section entitled "The Jew as an
Immigrant Into the United States," thatJews were being afforded too large
a quota altogether because they were being improperly considered by their
nationality instead of as a distinct racial type. By Laughlin's calculations, no
more than six thousand Jews per year ought to be able to enter the United
States under the existing national quota system-the system he helped
organize a half-decade earlier-but many more were coming in because
they were classified as German or Russian or Polish instead of Jewish. He
asked that Jews in the United States "assimilate" properly and prove their
"loyalty to the American institutions" was "greater than their loyalty to
Jews scattered through other nations." Immigration and Conquest's precepts
were in many ways identical to Nazi principles. Laughlin and the ERO
proudly sent a copy to Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, as well as to
other leading Nazis, including Verschuer, Lenz, Ploetz and even Rudin at a
special address care of a university in occupied Czechoslovakia.33

In late 1938, the Carnegie Institution finally disengaged from Eugenical
News. The publication became a quarterly completely under the aegis of the
American Eugenics Society, published out of AES offices in Manhattan, with
a new editorial committee that did not include Laughlin or any other
Carnegie scientist. The first issue of the reorganized publication was circulated
in March of 1939. Shortly thereafter, the Carnegie Institution formal
ized Laughlin's retirement, effective at the end of the year. On September 1,
1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, igniting World War II. Highly publicized
atrocities against Polish Jews began at once, shocking the world. Efforts by
Laughlin in the final months of 1939 to find a new sponsor for the ERa were
unsuccessful. On December 31, 1939, Laughlin officially retired. The
Eugenics Record Office was permanently closed the same day.H

Laughlin and his wife immediately moved back to Kirksville, Missouri.
The last years of his life were uneventful, and he died in Kirksville on
January 26, 1943. Davenport eulogized him in Eugenical News as a great
man whose views were opposed by those of "a different social philosophy
which is founded more on sentiment and less on a thorough analysis of the
facts." Davenport saluted his protege, predicting that within a generation
Laughlin's work would be "widely appreciated" for what it really was:
"preservation ... from the clash of opposing ideals and instincts found in
the more diverse racial or geographical groups."35

Strangely enough, Laughlin, the staunch defender of strong germ plasm
and warrior against the feebleminded and the hereditarily defective, left no
children. The family kept it a secret, but the rumor was that Laughlin himself
suffered from an inherited disease that made him subject to uncontrollable
seizures. These seizures had occasionally occurred in front of his
colleagues at the ERa. Laughlin's condition had been discovered in the
1920s upon his return from Europe. During one episode, Laughlin reportedly
drove off the road near Cold Spring Harbor and almost ran into the
water. An obstruction stopped his vehicle. Laughlin nearly died that night,
and his wife reportedly never allowed him to drive a car again.36

Among his many crusades, Laughlin may best be remembered for his
antagonism toward epileptics. He claimed that epilepsy was synonymous
with feeblemindedness, and that people with epilepsy did not belong in
society. He fought to keep such people out of America and demanded their
sterilization and even their imprisonment in segregated camps. No wonder
the family kept his condition a secret. Childless and frustrated, Harry
Hamilton Laughlin reportedly suffered his genetic disease in silence and
died under its grip. The disease: epilepsy.37

***

Once Laughlin retired on December 31, 1939, Carnegie began the immediate
and systematic dismantling of the ERa, abandoning three decades of
support for racial eugenics. Mail addressed to the ERa, and even letters
specifically addressed to Laughlin or Davenport, were not forwarded to
either man. Instead, a series of standard responses were typed up for clerical
staff to utilize in replying to all correspondents. The message: work at the
office had been suddenly discontinued and no questions could be answered.38

Personal correspondents were told to contact Laughlin or Davenport
directly at their home addresses. But if a letter involved even the slightest
reference to eugenics or the Cold Spring Harbor installation, it was
answered with a vague customized form letter. For example, on February
19, 1940, the widow of Lucien Howe sent a handwritten personal note to
Davenport lamenting the news that the ERO had been discontinued. An
officer of the Carnegie Institution replied for him, writing back to the
aging Mrs. Howe, "Your letter of the 19th to Dr. Davenport has been
turned over to me for reply" and so on.39

When eugenic enthusiasts earnestly mailed in their family trees or
genealogical trait records, or requested copies of their files or pertinent
information from them, they were deftly answered with noncommittal
form letters. When a Texas man offered family information, he received a
curt note, "Doctor Laughlin has resigned, and for the time being at least,
the Genetics Record Office is not in a position to file and index family
records." The same type of reply was mailed out time and time again. The
ERO had operated under the name "Eugenics Record Office" until 1939,
when Carnegie officials insisted on a cosmetic name change to "Genetics
Record Office." From 1939 on, Carnegie Officials consistently referred
to the ERO as the "Genetics Record Office" or sometimes simply the
"Record Office," avoiding any use of the word eugenics.40

Letters came in for years. Carnegie officials generally acted as though
they had no access to Laughlin's files and therefore could not answer specific
questions. But in fact Carnegie administrators kept the files close at
hand and quietly checked them in some cases. For example, when Jane
Betts in Wichita asked about record #51323 on February 29, 1944, a
Carnegie official quickly plucked her record out of a million files and
replied about its status. With few exceptions, however, questions addressed
to the Eugenics Record Office were generally answered with no real information
except that the office was closed and no data was available.41

After World War II, when the magnitude of Hitler's eugenicide
became apparent, the Carnegie Institution decided to get rid of its
records. It sold the ERO building at Cold Spring Harbor but retained the
rest of the facilities. Officials destroyed many of Laughlin's years-old
unpublished worksheets on horse racing and breeding (an adjunct to his
investigations in human heredity), but finding recipients for the rest of
the ERO's enormous and controversial collection was not easy. In May of
1947, a leading heredity clinic at the University of Michigan was offered
the files but wondered whether Carnegie would provide a stipend to
house the materials. Carnegie would not. So Carnegie kept searching for
someone to take the files:u

In September of 1947, a Carnegie administrator overseeing the dismantled
Cold Spring Harbor operation wrote to the Dight Institute, an
independent eugenic research organization at the University of Minnesota.
"If any institution is interested in the records of the Genetics Record
Office, I am confident that arrangements could be made ... to transfer
them." But, the note added, "there is very little chance that those funds
[formerly used to run the ERO] would be transferred with the records."43

Dight director Sheldon Reed, an ardent eugenicist, replied, "It seems a
great pity to me that the work must be abandoned." As for transferring the
voluminous files to Dight, Reed posed a number of questions about the size
and breadth of the collection and the cost of the transfer. Dight did not
want to pay any of the moving expenses. As Dight officials pondered the
usefulness of a collection they termed "colossal," Reed was frank with the
Carnegie Institution. "I am sorry to take up your time with this business
[the many logistical questions]," he wrote, "but it may be that you are even
more interested in getting rid of records than I am in obtaining them."44

Eventually, Carnegie officials decided the best idea was to disperse the
ERO records. In January of 1948, the Dight Institute agreed to house the
ERO's extensive individual trait and family documents if Carnegie would
defray the expected $1,000 shipping costs. Some six months later the
Minnesota Historical Society agreed to take a half-ton of biographical
jubilee books, family genealogical volumes and related materials. At the
same time, the New York Public Library received a thousand ERO volumes
of family genealogical books and local histories. Horse racing and
stud breeding publications were handed over to the family that had originally
sponsored the research. Carnegie donated Davenport's voluminous
papers and Laughlin's ERO operational papers to the American Philosophical
Society in Philadelphia, while maintaining some documents at a
Cold Spring Harbor archive and retaining some others in Washington.
When the Dight Institute closed its doors in the 1990s, its ERO papers
were also sent to the American Philosophical Society, which now holds the
largest consolidated eugenic collection anywhere:"

The dispersal of the records of the Cold Spring Harbor enterprise did
not end the flow of letters to the ERO. For decades, people continued to
send requests for eugenic information, updates of their pedigrees, and
proof of their family's biological worth. In 1952, a dozen years after the
ERO's closure, Clifford Frazier, an attorney in Greensboro, North
Carolina, wrote offering to "bring my family data heretofore furnished up
to date." In 1953, James Brunn, a realtor in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote
requesting information to help trace his lineage back to the Revolutionary
War. In 1959, Minnie Williams of Harrison, Ohio, wrote to say that she
had finally assembled as much information as she could about her family
pedigree; she had been working at it for years. In 1966, Elsie Van Guilder
addressed a letter to "American Breeders Association, Eugenics Section,
Cold Spring Harbor" seeking to trace her family. In 1976, E. Taylor
Campbell of St. Joseph, Missouri, explained that he had been working on
his family tree for fifty-one years, and he still needed nine more forms.46

Indeed, eugenic enthusiasts continued remitting family traits and proffering
inquiries for decades. Letters continued into the 1980s, forty years
after the ERO was dismantled. They probably never stopped. In February
of 2003, a North Carolina attorney told this reporter than he had just discovered
old ERO forms from his father's day; the attorney said his daughter
was working with them to advance the family genealogy. Laughlin's
work was that en grained in America. It persevered-not only in the mindsets
of generations of Americans, but also in America's laws.47

Although the ERO stopped functioning in 1939, America's eugenic
laws did not. Tens of thousands of Americans continued to be forcibly sterilized,
institutionalized and legally prevented from marriage on the basis of
racial and eugenic laws. During the 1940s, some 15,000 Americans were
coercively sterilized, almost a third of them in California. In the fifties,
about ten thousand were sterilized. In the sixties, thousands more were
sterilized. All told, an estimated 70,000 were eugenically sterilized in the
first seven decades of the twentieth century; the majority were women.
California consistently outdistanced every other state.48

Victims, especially those who only discovered their sterilizations years
after the fact, eventually began to initiate litigation. One such victim was
JosephJuhan, a Tennessee war veteran with little formal education but with
a pointed message for the Carnegie Institution. In late 1976, he penned a
letter filled with poorly formed characters and numerous misspellings, randomly
employing parentheses for emphasis, that nevertheless poignantly
asserted his legal rights. The letter was addressed to "Dr. Charles
Davenport, Dept of Experimental Evolution" at Cold Spring Harbor.

Dear Sir: I write to "request" your help. In the year of" 1954" while a
patient at the (State Hospital), at Milledgeville, Ga, a visectomy or sterilization
operation was performed upon me, by orders of a state (eugenics
board). A mental (deficiency dygnoses was made of my case. At the time I
was only 18 years old.

I was wondering as the (Carnegie Instutions Dep. of experimental evolution
or (eugenics studies) have have been ingaged in the study of (state
mental inistutions records of (certain mental deficiency cases, if to your
"knowledge" there has been in (eugenic's studys connected with the
(Carnegie Inistutions at the (Milledgeville State Hosp in the State of Ga,
in 1954.

The purpose of this "inquirey" is to obtain records for the American
Civil Liberty's Union, in order to present be for a (U.S. Court of Law the
(circumstances of my case, in 1954, whereby a (State Hospital acting under
orders of a (Eugenics) Board did cause a (vocectomy) or sterlization operation,
upon me at the age of 18.

I feel this was (uncessary, in violation of the (Fundimental, or basic freedoms
guaranteed under the (U.S, Contitution) as no (mental deficiency of a
genetic nature has ever exzisted in my case.

Your help in this matter will be greately appriecated.

I am Sincerely
Joseph Juhan
c/o U.S., VA Hospital
Murfreesboro, Tenn 37130 [49]

A response came from Agnes Fisher, the Record Office's secretary.

Dear Mr. Juhan,

I am writing in reply to your letter addressed to Dr. Charles Davenport.
(Dr. Davenport retired from the Carnegie Institution in 1934, and died in
1944.)

You inquired about the possibility that eugenic studies were made by
the Carnegie Institution at the Milledgeville State Hospital in 1954.

The Eugenics Record Office, formerly connected with the Department
of Genetics in Cold Spring Harbor, was closed in 1939 upon the retirement
of its director, Dr. H. H. Laughlin. At that time all studies and activities
carried on by the Record Office or its staff were discontinued. Therefore
no such studies could have been made in 1954.50

The American Civil Liberties Union never filed a sterilization suit in
Georgia. But a few years later, in 1980, the ACLU in Richmond did file a
historic suit against the state of Virginia on behalf of the victims of the
Lynchburg Training School where Carrie Buck was sterilized. The ACLU
ultimately forced Virginia to confront its history. In May of 2002, the governor
of Virginia formally apologized to victims living and dead for decades
of eugenic sterilizations. The governors of California, Oregon, North
Carolina and South Carolina have followed suit.51

Nonetheless many of the laws are still on the books. For example,
orth Carolina's eugenic sterilization law, although not used for years,
remains in force and was even updated in 1973 and 1981. Chapter 35,
Article 7 still allows for court ordered sterilization for moral as well as medical
improvement. While most states stopped enforcing sterilization
statutes in the sixties and seventies, the practice did not stop everywhere.
Across the country, additional thousands of poor urban dwellers, Puerto
Rican women and Native Americans on reservations continued to be sterilized-
not under state laws, but under special federal provisions.52

In the seventies, for example, a group of Indian Health Service physicians
implemented an aggressive program of ative American sterilization.
According to a U.S. General Accounting Office study, hospitals in just four
cities sterilized 3,406 women and 142 men between 1972 and 1976. The
women widely reported being threatened with the loss of welfare benefits
or custody of their children unless they submitted to sterilization. A federal
court ordered that all future Indian Health Service sterilizations employ
the proper safeguards of legitimate therapeutic procedures, and that "individuals
seeking sterilization be orally informed at the outset that no Federal
benefits can be withdrawn because of failure to accept sterilization."
During the same four-year period, one Oklahoma hospital alone sterilized
nearly 8 percent of its fertile female patients. 0 one will ever know the full
scope of Indian sterilization in the postwar period because medical records
were either not kept or were incomplete.53

Eugenics left behind more than sterilization laws. Marriage prohibitions
remained in force. For example, Walter Plecker's Racial Integrity
Act and numerous similar state statutes endured long after the ERO and
Plecker disappeared. These laws potentially affected millions in ways that
society can never measure. In 1958, two Virginians, a black woman
named Mildred Jeter and a white man named Richard Loving, were married
in Washington, D.C., to avoid violating Plecker's law. Upon their
return to Virginia, they were arrested and indicted by the Caroline
County grand jury. The trial judge suspended their one-year jail sentence
on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for
twenty-five years.54

From their new residence across the river in Washington, D.C., the
Lovings appealed the infringement of their civil rights. Appellate courts,
one after another, affirmed Virginia's law and the couple's conviction.
Finally, almost nine years later in 1967, the United States Supreme Court
considered the case.55

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared: "There
can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of
racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection
Clause .... The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the
vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men. Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our
very existence and survival. ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so
unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these
(Virginia] statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of
equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all
the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.... These convictions
must be reversed. It is so ordered."56

After the Lovings' victory in 1967, other states' racial integrity laws
became unenforceable. In 2000, Alabama became the last state in the union
to repeal its antimiscegenation statute. 57

With the science stripped away, all that remained to justify eugenic legislation
was bigotry. Late in the twentieth century, in an enlightened postwar
era, the eugenic notions that gripped a nation and then a world were
finally understood. It had all just been colossal academic hubris masquerading
as erudition.

***

By the late 1920s, the Carnegie Institution had confirmed by its own investigations
what many in the scientific world and society at large had long
been saying: that the eugenic science it helped create was a fraud.58
Nevertheless, Carnegie allowed its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise to supply
the specious information needed to validate Virginia's legal crusade to
sterilize Carrie Buck. Relying on Laughlin's pseudoscience and his own
prejudices, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had established
the law of the land. In 1927, Holmes' famous opinion decreed:

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring
for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent
those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind .... Three
generations of imbeciles are enough. 59

With Holmes' decision in hand, Carnegie's Cold Spring Harbor enterprise
had unleashed a national campaign to reinforce long dormant state
laws, enact new ones and dramatically increase the number of sterilizations
across America. Sterilizations multiplied, marriage restrictions were broadened.
Hundreds of thousands were never born. Untold numbers never
married. The intent had been to stop the reproduction of targeted non-
Nordic groups and others considered unfit. It continued into the 1970s,
probably even later. It was all said to be legal, based on science, sanctioned
by the highest courts. But what was it really?

As early as December of 1942, the Nazi plan was obvious. In a highlypublicized
warning simultaneously broadcast in more than twenty-three
languages the world over, the Allies announced that the Nazis were exterminating
five million Jews and murdering millions of other national peoples
in a plan to perpetrate a master race. The Allies vowed to hold war
crimes trials to punish the Nazis and all those who abetted them.60
Ultimately, the trials would bring to justice more than just the executioners,
but those who ordered them, financed them, inspired them, facilitated
their crimes and gave them scientific and medical support. These war
crimes trials would ultimately include bankers, industrialists, philosophers,
a newspaper editor, a radio propagandist, and many doctors and scientists.

By 1943, humanity needed a new word for the Third Reich's collective
atrocities. The enormity of Nazi butchery of whole peoples by physical
extermination, cultural obliteration, biological deracination and negative
eugenics defied all previous human language. Nothing like it on so sweeping
a scale had ever occurred in history.

Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish refugee at Duke University, formerly a prosecutor
from Warsaw and an expert on international law, was commissioned
by human rights organizations to study the crime. After a few months
fighting as a partisan, Lemkin had fled Poland for Sweden and ultimately
settled in the United States. His new word describing the overall Nazi
campaign in Europe sprang from the same Greek root Galton had used.
Eugenics was the study of "well-born life." Lemkin's new word, contemplated
by him since 1940, encompassed the systematic destruction of an
entire group's life. His new word was genocide.6\

On October 30, 1943, as Lemkin was finalizing his study, the Allies met
in Moscow and issued a joint declaration reconfirming that there would be
war crimes trials for Nazi perpetrators, to be conducted in both the victimized
countries and in Germany. The Allies demanded that all such crimes
cease during the final turbulent days of Europe's liberation. "Let those who
have hitherto not imbrued their hands with innocent blood beware lest they
join the ranks of the guilty, for most assuredly the three Allied powers will
pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their
accusors in order that justice may be done." The declaration was signed by
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and]osefStalin.62

Days later, on November 15,1943, Lemkin completed his study, Axis
Rule in Occupied Em'ope, which was published a year later. In a chapter entitled
"Genocide," Lemkin listed the several physical and administrative
"techniques of genocide." Among the techniques was a section labeled
"Biological." Lemkin later explained the principle: "The genocidal policy
[of the Nazis] was far-sighted as well as immediate in its objectives. On the
one hand an increase in the birth rate, legitimate or illegitimate, was
encouraged within Germany and among Volksdeutsche in the occupied
countries .... On the other hand, every means to decrease the birth rate
among 'racial inferiors' was used. Millions of war prisoners and forced
laborers from all the conquered countries of Europe were kept from contact
with their wives. Poles in incorporated Poland met obstacles in trying
to marry among themselves. Chronic undernourishment, deliberately created
by the occupant, tended not only to discourage the birth rate but also
to an increase in infant mortality. Coming generations in Europe were
thus planned to be predominantly of German blood, capable of overwhelming
all other races by sheer nunlbers."63

Axis Rule in Occupied Europe even quoted a relevant Hitler speech: "We
are obliged to depopulate as part of our mission of preserving the German
population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation. If you
ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the removal of entire racial
units. And that is what I intend to carry out .... Nature is cruel, therefore
we, too, may be cruel. ... I have the right to remove millions of an inferior
race that breeds like vermin! And by 'remove,' I don't necessarily mean
destroy; I shall simply take the systematic measures to dam their great natural
fertility .... There are many ways, systematical and comparatively painless,
or at any rate bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out."64

Some five months later, Lemkin's chapter on genocide was popularized
in an article entitled "Genocide-A Modern Crime," appearing in Free
World, a new United Nations multilingual magazine. In F1'ee World,
Lemkin again cited "Biological" techniques as a means of genocide. By this
time Lemkin had become an advisor to the Judge Advocate General of the
u.s. Army, and military tribunal planners were working with him and his
concepts as they prepared to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.65

Within a month of the publication of "Genocide-A Modern Crime,"
the Third Reich fell. Lemkin's codified principles of genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity became pivotal. In August of 1945, the victorious
Allies met in London and chartered an international military tribunal to
bring the highest-ranking Nazi war criminals to justice. The so-called
Nuremberg Trials began just three months later. The dock was hardly limited
to those Nazis who pulled triggers and ordered murders-such as
Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and Governor-General of Poland Hans
Frank-but also included key propagandists and facilitators, such as newspaper
editor Julius Streicher and radio director Hans Fritzche. At the same
time, international justice groups continued to further define the prior acts of
genocide in anticipation of more war crimes tribunals, these for individuals
oflesser stature who were nonetheless instrumental in Nazi genocide. These
additional trials would prosecute doctors, scientists and industrialists. Many
of these tribunals would be conducted exclusively by the United States.66

On December 11, 1946, as the United States was readying its own prosecutions,
the United Nations approved Resolution 96 (I), which embedded
the concept of "genocide" into international law. It proclaimed: "Genocide
is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is
the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the
right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses
to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by
these human groups, and is contrary to moral law and the spirit and aims of
the United Nations."67

Shortly thereafter, the articles of a forthcoming Treaty Against
Genocide were formulated and later adopted through a succession of resolutions,
conventions and treaties to become settled international law. The
international convention enumerated crimes against humanity and crimes
of genocide in five categories; the last two categories-in subsections (d)
and (e)-squarely confronted eugenic policies: sterilization and the kidnapping
of eugenically qualified children to be raised as Aryans. Article II
stated: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions oflife calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."68

Article III assigned equal guilt to those who were responsible for
"direct and public incitement" to commit the crimes described as genocide,
and those who in other ways become complicit. Article IV declared that the
law could punish anyone in any country, "whether they are constitutionally
responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals." American prosecutors
at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials took their cue from the treaty.69

In early July of 1947, the Allies indicted the leaders of the Reich's militarized
eugenics umbrella organization, the SS Race and Settlement Office,
which forcibly sterilized thousands, kidnapped Polish children with Nordic
racial features, organized the Nordic breeding program known as Lebensb01'
n, developed extensive genealogy files on millions and conducted
eugenic examinations of prisoners before deciding if they should be saved
or exterminated. For these activities, SS Race and Settlement Office leader
General Otto Hofmann stood among those in the dock. 70

The indictment clearly enumerated the various aspects of Nazi eugenics
as genocide: "Kidnapping the children of foreign nationals in order to
select for Germanization those who were considered of 'racial value.' ...
Encouraging and compelling abortions on Eastern workers .... Preventing
marriages and hampering reproduction of enemy nationals."7!

A week after the indictment was served on the accused, the military
occupation's semiofficial newspaper, Die Neue Zeitung, drove home the
point to the German people, publishing extracts of the U.N. Treaty on
Genocide. The newspaper announced: "On 10 June the Secretary's Office
of the United Nations completed the first draft of an international convention
for the punishment of government officials who attempted to exterminate
racial, religious, national, or political groups .... Three distinct types
of 'genocide' are listed." The paper then itemized actions that qualified as
genocide, including "open mass murder" and housing people in conditions
calculated to kill. Die Neue Zeitung explained that the other of the three
most significant forms of genocide was "sterilization of large groups and
forcible separation of families as 'biological genocide.'" The article itself
was entered into the Nuremberg Trial record.72

During the long trial, which lasted almost a year, prosecutors outlined
a lengthy bill of eugenic particulars, including the murder of those who
did not pass eugenic tests. "The SS Race and Settlement Main Office
(RuSHA) was responsible," prosecutors declared, "among other things, for
racial examinations. These racial examinations were carried out by
RuSHA leaders or their staff members, called racial examiners." Prosecutors
charged that as part of the Reich's genocidal campaign, RuSHA was
continually engaged in "classification of people of German descent." It
added, "RuSHA, in carrying out racial investigations and examinations,
took a leading part in the accomplishment of the [extermination] program.
Since negative results of racial investigations and examinations led to the
extermination or imprisonment in concentration camps of the individuals
concerned, the Staff Main Office ... acted in close cooperation with the SS
Reich Security Main Office [the chief SS agency overseeing physical extermination].
The Reich Security Main Office imposed capital punishment
and imprisonment in concentration camps upon individuals designated by
RuSHA."73

An entire portion of the prosecutors' case, "Section 4: Sterilization,"
presented documents and evidence concerning the mass sterilization of
unfit individuals by Nazis throughout Europe during the Reich's twelveyear
reign of terror. Leaving no doubt, prosecutors declared, "The fundamental
purpose ... was to proclaim and safeguard the supposed superiority
of 'Nordic' blood, and to exterminate and suppress all sources which might
'dilute' or 'taint' it. The underlying objective was to assure azi dominance
over Germany and German domination over Europe in perpetuity."74

Eugenics was also pivotal to a gamut of other war crimes. Often before
burning a town or murdering an entire community, Nazis identified and
kidnapped the eugenically fit Nordic children so they could be raised in
Aryan institutions. This was done, prosecutors stated, "in accordance with
standards ... [of] Nazi racial and biological theories." What had occurred
in Lidice, Czechoslovakia, was read into the record as an example. Mter
Lidice was selected for obliteration, every adult man in the village was executed
and most of the village's women were deported to Ravensbriick concentration
camp. But the village's children were dispatched to Poland for a
thorough "medical, eugenic, and racial examination carried out by the
physicians of the health offices." Those deemed sufficiently Nordic were
sent to live with Aryan families where they would undergo Germanization.
Those deemed unfit were "deported." The prosecutor stated, "Here ends
all traces of these 82 children of Lidice."75

"And so," prosecutors solemnly explained, "the final balance gives us
these terrible facts: 192 men and 7 women shot; 196 women taken into
concentration camps, of whom 43 died from torture and maltreatment; 105
children kidnapped .... The village was burned, buildings leveled, streets
taken up and all other signs of habitation completely erased." To protest
the utter eugenic extermination of Lidice, many small towns later adopted
the name of the village. Hence the people are gone, but the memory of
Lidice lives on.76

Count after count recited the fact that "racial value" following a
eugenic analysis made all the difference between life and death, genocide
and survival.77 Prosecutors sorted Germany's many eugenic atrocities into
specific categories of war crimes. Point 15, entitled "Hampering Reproduction
of Enemy Nationals," specified sterilization and marriage restriction:
"To further weaken enemy nations, both restrictive and prohibitive
measures were taken to discourage marriages and reproduction of enemy
nationals. The ultimate aim and natural result of these measures was to
impede procreation among nationals of Eastern countries." Point 18, entitled
"Slave Labor," explained that through the racial examinations of
RuSHA, "foreign nationals without any German ancestry were sent to
Germany as slave labor," where they were worked to death.78

Point 21, "Persecution and Extermination of Jews," explained how
genealogy offices were critical to Hitler's war against the Jews across
Europe. "RuSHA also participated extensively in the persecution and extermination
ofJews. The Genealogy Office (Ahnentafelamt) of RuSHA prepared
and retained in its files the names of all Jewish families in the Reich
and persons having any Jewish ancestry. This office also participated in
preparing similar files in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark,
Danzig, and France where it worked together with the SS Reich Security
Main Office. These files were used for enforcing discriminatory measures
againstJ ews and preparing transport lists of] ews to be taken from Germany
and the occupied countries to the extermination camps in the East."79

On January 20,1942, SS Race and Settlement Office leader Hofmann
had attended the infamous Wannsee Conference, the planning session
associated with the Final Solution. The Wannsee Protocol produced after
the conference made the eugenic guidelines clear. Mixed Jews of the "first
degree," that is, Jews with substantial German blood in their ancestry,
could be exempted from "evacuation," the code word for extermination,
but only if they were sterilized. The Wannsee Protocol recorded:
"Hofmann is of the opinion that extensive use must be made of steriliza
tion." The protocol also recorded that "[Persons of mixed blood] exempted
from evacuation will be sterilized in order to obviate progeny and to settle
the [mixed blood] problem for good. Sterilization is voluntary, but it is the
condition for remaining in the Reich."80

Confronted by prosecutors at his trial with charges of eugenic extermination,
Hofmann said little in his own defense, and openly admitted he was
a Nazi eugenicist.

PROSECUTOR: When did you become chief of the Eugenics Office in
RuSHA?

HOFMANN: At the beginning of 1939 I was appointed to this task ....

Q: What were your duties there?

A: The Eugenics Office was responsible for carrying out the betrothal and
marriage order which Himmler had issued on 31 December 1931 to the
SS.... The RuSHA leader had to look after the eugenics research offices of
the SS, regiments, and, according to his qualifications and talents, he influenced
cultural life within the areas of the main district.81

Hofmann could not understand why the United States thought his
actions were crimes against humanity. He placed into evidence a special
report on America produced by the Nazi Party's Race-Political Office years
before on July 30, 1937. "The United States," asserted the report, "however,
also provides an example for the racial legislation of the world in
another respect. Although it is clearly established in the Declaration of
Independence that everyone born in the United States is a citizen of the
United States and so acquires all the rights which an American citizen can
acquire, impassable lines are drawn between the individual races, especially
in the Southern States. Thus in certain States Japanese are excluded from
the ownership ofland or real estate and they are prevented from cultivating
arable land. Marriages between colored persons and whites are forbidden
in no less than thirty of the Federal States. Marriages contracted in spite of
this ban are declared invalid." Typical laws were recited from Alabama,
Arizona, Arkansas, California and Florida.82

The special report added, "Since 1907, sterilization laws have been
passed in twenty-nine States of the United States of America."83

Hofmann's document made one other point. It offered the following
justification, originally translated from English into German and then back
into English for the trial:

In a judgment of the [U.S.] Supreme Court ... it says, among other things:

"It is better for everybody if society, instead of waiting until it has to execute
degenerate offspring or leave them to starve because of feeble-mindedness,
can prevent obviously inferior individuals from propagating their kind."84

Hofmann was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment.85

For three-perhaps four-decades after the Treaty Against Genocide
was adopted, the United States continued to sterilize targeted groups
because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed; continued to
prevent marriages because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed;
and continued to hamper reproduction, interfere with procreation,
and prevent births in targeted groups. Mter the Hitler regime, after the
Nuremberg Trials, some twenty thousand Americans were eugenically
sterilized by states and untold others by federal programs on Indian reservations
and in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico.

They said it was legal. They said it was science. What was it really?

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