Hitler/Darwin

Darwin and the Nazis

“Darwin was a direct and disastrous influence,”  and “Germany [enacted] the Reich Citizenship Law, the Blood Protection Law, the Marital Health Law and the Nuremberg Laws for racial segregation, all based on bogus Victorian science, much of which had started life in the gentle setting of Darwin’s study at Down House.” So writes A.N. Wilson in his recent book on Charles Darwin, a book seemingly geared to provoking.
 

This is a frequent argument, as if the Devil quoting scripture somehow diminishes it.

In 2013, the historian Robert J Richards composed an erudite rebuke to those who have made similar claims. In his essay “Was Hitler a Darwinian?”, Richards explained that many of Hitler’s remarks could be traced back to Darwin, “or to Aristotle, or to Christ” – if we just played a game of “six degrees of Charles Darwin”.