Would the human race be better off in the long run if the Nazis won?

The Manganese Overlord

Would future people be healthier and possibly happier? If they implemented their eugenics program with the aim of eliminating hereditary diseases, 'weak' people and others they considered unfit for reproduction?
Also, would the fact that they had no qualms about human experimentation have lead to more advances in the field of medical science?

Gary L

Don't feed the trolls

The Corinthian

Gary L wrote: »

Don't feed the trolls

It's only a troll if people lack the maturity to discuss the topic objectively and dispassionately, otherwise it's a perfectly valid hypotheses to present for discussion.

Joe10000

The term "better off" is highly subjective and the very nature of your question suggests our definitions to be quite different so I will leave it there.

Outkast_IRE

I think the extent of the eugenics program would of been questionable with regards to who it applied to etc.

Also with regards to human experimentation, the conditions and the cruelty attached to many of these experiments might of helped accelerate certain advances in science/medical fields but I think it would of set up a dangerous system, which would basically amount to torturing other humans for many years in the pursuit of science, surely that in itself is unacceptable and the world seems to be getting along just fine in the areas of science and medicine without such experimentation.

seamus

Given the rudimentary understanding of genetics which we now have, which was exponentially smaller back then, it stands to reason that the completion of any eugenic programme would likely have led to widescale problems with health, etc, not to mention the creation of subclasses of humans born "defective" to "pure parents".
To take one example, homosexuality in men has been linked with a specific genetic trait which has in men tends towards homosexuality, but in women tends to make them more attractive to the opposite sex; they have more children on average than women without this genetic trait.

Let's say this holds true, and the Nazis dispose of everyone carrying this gene without actually understanding it. You've then "degraded" the quality of the genome.

That's just an example. The problem with eugenics is that it's based on a much simpler model of genetics, where genes are simple, have one effect/purpose, and are easily traceable through genetic lines. The reality is the opposite, on all counts.

Would human experimentation without ethics improve our medicine? In some areas. A lot of medicinal knowledge is ethically-driven; so for example, we perform cancer research to try and defeat cancer, to save lives. If we had removed that ethical "to save lives" goal and instead focus on pure knowledge, experimenting at will, then it's likely that our understanding of cancer and ability to fight it would be much poorer than it is.

Gary L

The Corinthian wrote: »

It's only a troll if people lack the maturity to discuss the topic objectively and dispassionately, otherwise it's a perfectly valid hypotheses to present for discussion.

Ok I'll roll with it but I would have thought that your still a troll if you try and fail to annoy people with an obviously outrageous hypothesis.

No, I imagine a genocide on a hitherto unimagined scale carried out by the most evil organization to grace Europe since the Spanish inquisition would not leave the human race healthier or happier. The Nazi war plan in Russia was to feed the Wehrmacht entirely off the land. The fact that this would starve millions was considered not just acceptable but convenient.

I don't think they considered anyone to the east to be worthy of survival. Add to that the entire population of Africa, Iberia, South America and the majority of that 'mongrel' nation the USA. The eugenics movement would have had some potential despite been horrible if it wasn't centered around crude and simplistic notions of racial superiority.

As was said above the benefits of unrestricted human experimentation( medical progress certainly there) would be outweighed by the cultural downside of having no respect for human life.

poundapunnet

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

I think the extent of the eugenics program would of been questionable with regards to who it applied to etc.

Also with regards to human experimentation, the conditions and the cruelty attached to many of these experiments might of helped accelerate certain advances in science/medical fields but I think it would of set up a dangerous system, which would basically amount to torturing other humans for many years in the pursuit of science, surely that in itself is unacceptable and the world seems to be getting along just fine in the areas of science and medicine without such experimentation.

To be fair, a lot of Nazi scientists were actually poached and pardoned by the Americans after the war and contributed pretty heavily to advances in the technology required for space travel. I'm not sure about how much, if any, of the medical experiments carried out by the Nazis (Japanese were pretty atrocious ethics wise too iirc) yielded any lasting results but before eugenics fell out of favour there were some ethically questionable medical research practice in the states as well, using the mentally disabled or the African-American population as guinea pigs, which also yielded results that proved valuable to modern medicine.

I don't know to what extent the Nazis could have "won" though. That degree of control over the population would have become harder and harder to maintain the further they expanded, maybe it just would have gone the way of the Roman Empire eventually anyway.

And I think it's an interesting question OP but it does very much depend on your criteria for "better off", materially or morally etc. Plus there'd be no woody Allen!

The Corinthian

It's actually a huge topic when you think about it.

To begin with you we have to agree on what 'better off' means; is it purely economic or would 'freedom of expression' be a determinant in what makes us 'better off' and if so to what level (even our 'democratic' freedom of expression is limited) and how important is it?

Then you have to ask whether the Nazis would have successfully eradicated genetic illnesses. They may have employed eugenics programmes, but they also employed a lot of pseudo-science too, so it's arguable that they would have been at all effective as the OP postulates.

And you also have to speculate as to what a World with the Axis as victors would look like? Just because the Nazis may have survived World War II doesn't mean that their system would have survived in the long run; it didn't save Franco's Fascist system nor Stalin's Communist, one in the end, as society continued to evolve and change despite the existence of such totalitarian ideologies - the Beatles may well have happened regardless.

And then there's the wider discussion on Eugenics; it's not all simply like the Nazi Action T4 programme, or Swedish forced sterilization programmes (that continued until 1975) - today eugenics can include gene therapies and corrections, such as whereby defective portions of DNA can be replaced with third party DNA.

Big topic, and I can't imagine we'll be able to cover it all, so what are we going to cover?

The Corinthian

Gary L wrote: »

Ok I'll roll with it but I would have thought that your still a troll if you try and fail to annoy people with an obviously outrageous hypothesis.

Why is it 'outrageous'?

No, I imagine a genocide on a hitherto unimagined scale carried out by the most evil organization to grace Europe since the Spanish inquisition would not leave the human race healthier or happier.

So things are good and evil. I see...

As was said above the benefits of unrestricted human experimentation( medical progress certainly there) would be outweighed by the cultural downside of having no respect for human life.

They just redefined 'human' and the rights ascribed to certain 'humans', just as people did prior to them and as we continue to do today.

If you think we respect human life any more today than we did at any stage in history, you're deluding yourself.

KyussBishop

It's not unreasonable to assume, that given the enormously anti-intellectual stance of the Nazi's (mass-murder of dissenters, bookburning etc.), it would have dumped Europe/Africa/Middle-East and much of Asia (their next area of conquest after Russia) into a new dark age.

Remember, it would be much of the world living under a Fascist dictatorship (forget even a pretence of democracy or democratic accountability), with mass murder/genocide of entire populations of 'undesirable' people, and zero tolerance to dissent against power, literal slave labour and probably the initiation of a heavily propagandized neo-feudal society, serving a privileged elite.

Gary L

The Corinthian wrote: »

Why is it 'outrageous'?

So the Nazi's were evil. I see...

They just redefined 'human' and the rights ascribed to certain 'humans', just as people did prior to them and as various hate filled bigots continue to do today.

If you think we don't respect human life any more today than the Nazis did at that stage in history, you're deluding yourself.

FYP

poundapunnet

Speaking of anti-intellectualism though, I'd shudder to think what would have happened if the Nazi policies towards art had been implemented. Some of the finest modernist artists operated in Germany during the interwar years, their work was rounded up and displayed to show examples of "degenerate" and anti-German art. In fact I think a few of the artists were incarcerated. Dictatorships tend to favour traditionalism and realism, the Soviets briefly flirted with a more radical style but reverted to form soon enough.

Interestingly though the degenerate exhibition was twinned with, and vastly more popular than, an exhibition of state-approved art.

Another thing to bear in mind was the Nazi's tendency to plunder the art collections of any territories they took over, praise Jesus they didn't get their hands on the collections in British museums. (Of course, those collections are also the fruits of conquest and plunder, but anyways)

Manach

Given how easily societies and their neighbours have ignored similar genocidal policies - eg Tudor England, Bolshevik USSR the human race would continue on much as is, cocooned in its own self-regard.

poundapunnet

KyussBishop wrote: »

Remember, it would be much of the world living under a Fascist dictatorship (forget even a pretence of democracy or democratic accountability), with mass murder/genocide of entire populations of 'undesirable' people, and zero tolerance to dissent against power, literal slave labour and probably the initiation of a heavily propagandized neo-feudal society, serving a privileged elite.

You could apply all of this to an awful lot of the world today anyway. Maybe we should rephrase the question as "would the western world be any better off if the Nazis won". Or have the discussion "would Africa and Asia have been better off if the European race for colonial power had never taken off", but for some reason I doubt that would rub people up the wrong way quite as much. The Nazis are held up as some yard stick of evil, as if genocide, slave labour and violent suppression of dissent don't happen the world over to this day.

Boskowski

I don't think so. You might be living in a world with healthier people and fewer what the Nazis would have considered to be undesirables, but at what price? We're talking about people here and then there's who's next and all that? It would be a horrible place to be and not worth living in I'm sure.

The Manganese Overlord

The Corinthian wrote: »

It's actually a huge topic when you think about it.

To begin with you we have to agree on what 'better off' means; is it purely economic or would 'freedom of expression' be a determinant in what makes us 'better off' and if so to what level (even our 'democratic' freedom of expression is limited) and how important is it?

Then you have to ask whether the Nazis would have successfully eradicated genetic illnesses. They may have employed eugenics programmes, but they also employed a lot of pseudo-science too, so it's arguable that they would have been at all effective as the OP postulates.

And you also have to speculate as to what a World with the Axis as victors would look like? Just because the Nazis may have survived World War II doesn't mean that their system would have survived in the long run; it didn't save Franco's Fascist system nor Stalin's Communist, one in the end, as society continued to evolve and change despite the existence of such totalitarian ideologies - the Beatles may well have happened regardless.

And then there's the wider discussion on Eugenics; it's not all simply like the Nazi Action T4 programme, or Swedish forced sterilization programmes (that continued until 1975) - today eugenics can include gene therapies and corrections, such as whereby defective portions of DNA can be replaced with third party DNA.

Big topic, and I can't imagine we'll be able to cover it all, so what are we going to cover?

Good points. I think had they dominated, there wouldn't have been such a massive drive in society in favour of democracy and freedom. Given the support they had in Germany, the grip they held on the country and power of their propaganda machine, the liberal shift could at least have been slowed if not stopped.

KyussBishop wrote: »

It's not unreasonable to assume, that given the enormously anti-intellectual stance of the Nazi's (mass-murder of dissenters, bookburning etc.), it would have dumped Europe/Africa/Middle-East and much of Asia (their next area of conquest after Russia) into a new dark age.

Remember, it would be much of the world living under a Fascist dictatorship (forget even a pretence of democracy or democratic accountability), with mass murder/genocide of entire populations of 'undesirable' people, and zero tolerance to dissent against power, literal slave labour and probably the initiation of a heavily propagandized neo-feudal society, serving a privileged elite.

Hadn't thought of their anti-intellectualism, which would have be factored.

seamus wrote: »

Given the rudimentary understanding of genetics which we now have, which was exponentially smaller back then, it stands to reason that the completion of any eugenic programme would likely have led to widescale problems with health, etc, not to mention the creation of subclasses of humans born "defective" to "pure parents".
To take one example, homosexuality in men has been linked with a specific genetic trait which has in men tends towards homosexuality, but in women tends to make them more attractive to the opposite sex; they have more children on average than women without this genetic trait.

Let's say this holds true, and the Nazis dispose of everyone carrying this gene without actually understanding it. You've then "degraded" the quality of the genome.

That's just an example. The problem with eugenics is that it's based on a much simpler model of genetics, where genes are simple, have one effect/purpose, and are easily traceable through genetic lines. The reality is the opposite, on all counts.

Would human experimentation without ethics improve our medicine? In some areas. A lot of medicinal knowledge is ethically-driven; so for example, we perform cancer research to try and defeat cancer, to save lives. If we had removed that ethical "to save lives" goal and instead focus on pure knowledge, experimenting at will, then it's likely that our understanding of cancer and ability to fight it would be much poorer than it is.

Hadn't heard of that before, interesting stuff.

poundapunnet wrote: »

To be fair, a lot of Nazi scientists were actually poached and pardoned by the Americans after the war and contributed pretty heavily to advances in the technology required for space travel. I'm not sure about how much, if any, of the medical experiments carried out by the Nazis (Japanese were pretty atrocious ethics wise too iirc) yielded any lasting results but before eugenics fell out of favour there were some ethically questionable medical research practice in the states as well, using the mentally disabled or the African-American population as guinea pigs, which also yielded results that proved valuable to modern medicine.

I don't know to what extent the Nazis could have "won" though. That degree of control over the population would have become harder and harder to maintain the further they expanded, maybe it just would have gone the way of the Roman Empire eventually anyway.

And I think it's an interesting question OP but it does very much depend on your criteria for "better off", materially or morally etc. Plus there'd be no woody Allen!

Some of the Japanese doctors of Unit 731 were pardoned by the US government in return for the knowledge and work they carried out.

I think morally there's no doubt we'd be much worse off, how much of a factor morality is in judgement of the species as a whole I don't know.

Would the species as a whole be better off, if you were an outsider looking in. Or would an average person born into this system have a better life (assuming the eugenics program was progressive and not regressive as a user above suggests). Physical fitness was one of the Nazis beliefs, would this have lead to a much fitter and healthier society rather than the problems we're seeing with overweight and obese people today, and how would this impact on quality of life? Freedom and choice would no doubt be incomparable to what we enjoy now, at least in the west, how much does this contribute to happiness and wellbeing?

KyussBishop

poundapunnet wrote: »

You could apply all of this to an awful lot of the world today anyway. Maybe we should rephrase the question as "would the western world be any better off if the Nazis won". Or have the discussion "would Africa and Asia have been better off if the European race for colonial power had never taken off", but for some reason I doubt that would rub people up the wrong way quite as much. The Nazis are held up as some yard stick of evil, as if genocide, slave labour and violent suppression of dissent don't happen the world over to this day.

Hehe, yes was thinking of making such a point in my post; worth noting that fascism in Germany, was heavily intertwined with Corporatism, and it's no coincidence that when you take the extreme end of pro-corporate economic theory today, and take implementation of it to its logical conclusion (massive consolidation of power into the hands of a few), then it doesn't look all that different (similar result, achieved with a lot less violence).

Just another way of creating a privileged class wielding massive power, with the rest of society serving them in a neo-feudal fashion; the Nazi's were trying to achieve massive power overtly in a short amount of time, whereas today it's being slowly achieved over a much longer period, using economics.

clairefontaine

KyussBishop wrote: »

Hehe, yes was thinking of making such a point in my post; worth noting that fascism in Germany, was heavily intertwined with Corporatism, and it's no coincidence that when you take the extreme end of pro-corporate economic theory today, and take implementation of it to its logical conclusion (massive consolidation of power into the hands of a few), then it doesn't look all that different (similar result, achieved with a lot less violence).

Just another way of creating a privileged class wielding massive power, with the rest of society serving them in a neo-feudal fashion; the Nazi's were trying to achieve massive power overtly in a short amount of time, whereas today it's being slowly achieved over a much longer period, using economics.

Do you mean by Germany specifically here?

Does culture matter?:pac::pac:

KyussBishop

clairefontaine wrote: »

Do you mean by Germany specifically here?

Does culture matter?:pac::pac:

Heh, I actually meant consolidation of power among a small class of people (as neoliberalism and current mainstream economics seems to be doing now), but then (even though this is not what I meant) I suppose it's also true that Germany is today using similar economic tools to gain massive power within Europe

clairefontaine

KyussBishop wrote: »

Heh, I actually meant consolidation of power among a small class of people (as neoliberalism and current mainstream economics seems to be doing now), but then (even though this is not what I meant) I suppose it's also true that Germany is today using similar economic tools to gain massive power within Europe

I was thinking starting two world wars in the first half of the same century.

Now the EU.

Is it something in the personality that wants to dominate?

Time will tell. :pac:

Gary L

The Manganese Overlord wrote: »

I think morally there's no doubt we'd be much worse off, how much of a factor morality is in judgement of the species as a whole I don't know.

Ok looking at the OP now in the light of that sentence I can see that you weren't trolling sorry. Although for the record I think trolling is pretty funny so I meant nothing bad by it anyway.
Yeah on the technological front they just had an awesomely ambitious and open minded culture going. From jet engines to rocket science its not hard to imagine them doing more with what they started, had they carried on, than the Americans and Russians did with what they captured.

clairefontaine wrote: »

I was thinking starting two world wars in the first half of the same century.

Now the EU.

Is it something in the personality that wants to dominate?

Time will tell. :pac:

I think in all three cases its immense economic power trying to expand beyond its current political limits. Like the french revolution only much bloodier and lacking any promise of progress.

The Corinthian

Gary L wrote: »

FYP

No you didn't, you just missed the point of it. Completely. Never mind.

poundapunnet wrote: »

The Nazis are held up as some yard stick of evil, as if genocide, slave labour and violent suppression of dissent don't happen the world over to this day.

And there's the point...

The Manganese Overlord wrote: »

Or would an average person born into this system have a better life (assuming the eugenics program was progressive and not regressive as a user above suggests).

From what I've read of the Nazis there would probably be little difference. Many of their eugenics and racial policies were driven by pseudo-science, which resulted in inefficient results, so chances are what you'd get is largely superficial; that is you'd see fewer obviously handicapped people, but any underlying genetic problems would not really be addressed.

So no real difference to most Western nations today anyway as pre-natal screening is routine - why do you think you almost never see people with Down Syndrome in France, for example?

Nazism, or more correctly National Socialism, simply would not have survived Hitler, IMHO. The entire ideology was too dependant on him and his cult of personality and it would have likely collapsed shortly after his death (as essentially happened with Franco). I think it was far more dependant on a charismatic leader than, say, communism was and would not have been able to make the transition from charismatic dictatorship to uncharismatic oligarchy as happened with the USSR after Stalin.

Gary L wrote: »

Like the french revolution only much bloodier and lacking any promise of progress.

Bloodier only because they had the technological means to do so. Between the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, there were between 5.5 and 8 million casualties - a figure that we did not get anywhere close to until World War I a century later.

As for lacking any promise of progress, both were heavily ideologically driven conflicts and both certainly included the promise of progress, although neither succeeded in fulfilling this progress. So I'm a bit unsure as to what you mean.

GideonMcGrane

Thought this documentary was interesting, about women in Nazi ideology: enforced sterilisation, death penalty for abortion and loans to encourage women to leave the workforce, marry and have children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BL0T61XD-js

The Corinthian

GideonMcGrane wrote: »

enforced sterilisation

That was applied to both genders on the basis of any hereditary conditions they carried, it was not gender specific.

death penalty for abortion

Unless the child was diagnosed as deformed or to have been the product of a match with a non-Aryan, in which case no problem having an abortion.

TBH, Nazi Germany was hardly the only country to have the death penalty or life imprisonment for abortion (or infanticide) - after all, murder was punishable by the death sentence and abortion was legally considered murder in most counties at the time.

loans to encourage women to leave the workforce, marry and have children.

Nazi ideology was highly chauvinistic, on top of which it was obsessed (often to ridiculous lengths) with the idea that the Aryan race was under threat of going extinct as a result of racial dysgenics. As such, while you would have found women served alongside men in the SS, they were never afforded full SS status and were seen as Helferinnenkorps or 'helper' corps, the idea being that their role was a temporary one and that once completed they'd return to more appropriate duties (making babies).

While extreme, Germany hardly had a monopoly on chauvinism - people tend to forget that even liberal democracies had moral values that we would find horrific today; for example, racial segregation laws in fascist Italian African colonies were ironically far less extreme than in democratic British African colonies.

Of course, there was an advantage to all this chauvinism too, for women. For example, of those Jews who perished as a result of the Holocaust, approximately three million were men and two million were women - as such you were more likely to survive if you were a woman.

GideonMcGrane

The Corinthian wrote: »

That was applied to both genders on the basis of any hereditary conditions they carried, it was not gender specific.

Unless the child was diagnosed as deformed or to have been the product of a match with a non-Aryan, in which case no problem having an abortion.

TBH, Nazi Germany was hardly the only country to have the death penalty or life imprisonment for abortion (or infanticide) - after all, murder was punishable by the death sentence and abortion was legally considered murder in most counties at the time.

Nazi ideology was highly chauvinistic, on top of which it was obsessed (often to ridiculous lengths) with the idea that the Aryan race was under threat of going extinct as a result of racial dysgenics. As such, while you would have found women served alongside men in the SS, they were never afforded full SS status and were seen as Helferinnenkorps or 'helper' corps, the idea being that their role was a temporary one and that once completed they'd return to more appropriate duties (making babies).

While extreme, Germany hardly had a monopoly on chauvinism - people tend to forget that even liberal democracies had moral values that we would find horrific today; for example, racial segregation laws in fascist Italian African colonies were ironically far less extreme than in democratic British African colonies.

Of course, there was an advantage to all this chauvinism too, for women. For example, of those Jews who perished as a result of the Holocaust, approximately three million were men and two million were women - as such you were more likely to survive if you were a woman.

Yes, I was looking at one video and the women guards in Dachau (?) were volunteers, which was a surprise.

The Corinthian

GideonMcGrane wrote: »

Yes, I was looking at one video and the women guards in Dachau (?) were volunteers, which was a surprise.

Why would it be a surprise? Do you think that those women who took up factory jobs in the allied countries were not obliged to give them up again for the men returning, once the war ended?

The Corinthian

aristotleirish wrote: »

i dont think so tbh human understanding of genetics is in its infancy a lot of those "weak" characteristics are partly responsable for genius. for example Einstein was dyslexic Jewishness aside as soon at it had been discovered he was dyslexic he would under the nazi regeime have been eliminated cue no atom bomb no atomic power no nuclear anything. the world is not so full of "perfect" people that the gene pool is big enough to do such a thing, the most you could hope to end up with are a bunch of manic power mad inbredds running around trying to off each other.

Two things:

Firstly, you raise an interesting point about the philosophy behind eugenics. Just because a genetic trait is abnormal or appears to have negative consequences, doesn't mean that it's not got positive ones. Asperger's syndrome is probably a much better example of this than dyslexia (why is part of my second point), in that there's a well documented correlation between it and enhanced mathematical abilities, at the expense of many interpersonal ones.

To eliminate it through eugenic policies might eliminate what is considered to be a disability to many, but it would also eliminate quite a few mathematical geniuses in our society too.

Indeed, there's an entire debate behind where to use eugenics or not. After all, natural selection is the ultimate eugenics programme and there's a reason why genetic mutations occur in our species - they're supposed to. Promoting or eliminating mutations, can run the risk of interfering negatively with the process of our own evolution.

This is the question behind eugenics; when should man step in and take over from nature? That would make an interesting discussion in itself.

The second point is on your claim that Einstein was dyslexic. This didn't sound right to me, as dyslexia has famously been something that has gone ignored until very recently, so how would Einstein have been diagnosed?

So I quickly looked up the subject and first found pages that claimed all sorts of people were dyslexic, including Leonardo da Vinci (who was around long before dyslexia had been discovered, or most people could even read); at which point I had to conclude that these facts were more driven by agendas than diagnosis. In the end, there's actually no diagnosis, no proof, that he was, dispite most Web sites nowadays claiming he was. As to the origin of these claims, the best answer I could find was:

"The University of North Carolina published a paper about [30 years ago] that showed evidence that Einstein had certain traits, such as strephosymbolia, which is indicative of dyslexia. You may wish to contact them for a copy of that paper."

So be careful what you claim to be true.

clairefontaine

aristotleirish wrote: »

i dont think so tbh human understanding of genetics is in its infancy a lot of those "weak" characteristics are partly responsable for genius. for example Einstein was dyslexic Jewishness aside as soon at it had been discovered he was dyslexic he would under the nazi regeime have been eliminated cue no atom bomb no atomic power no nuclear anything. the world is not so full of "perfect" people that the gene pool is big enough to do such a thing, the most you could hope to end up with are a bunch of manic power mad inbredds running around trying to off each other.

Silicon Valley for example has a very high rate of Aspergers, but there are some amazing things coming out of silicon valley.

To some extent Eugenics are already practised, as in the amniocentesis. And also with ivf, they can predict genetic traits and people can pick and choose, of course IVF and artificial fertility practises are the absence of natural selection to begin with. Brave new world indeed.

In the US [which let's face it does have very strong German roots- does culture matter?] they take genetic samples of newborn babies and are able to predict the illnesses that have run through their bloodlines. The state health authorities keeps these records. What they do with them, I have no idea, but that they exist is worrisome enough, that they can then distribute them to future employers or health insurance companies if they like [not sure on the laws of this] is also worrisome. With the state slowly taking over private health insurance, ie Obamacare, this incrementalism imo should be kept in checks and balances, but will it? When people add up all the puzzle pieces they might start to thing of the sinister possibilities in the big picture.

I grew up in the US. How many special needs kids did I see in school? ZERO.

How many do I see in the schools now? ZERO.

The Corinthian

clairefontaine wrote: »

In the US [which let's face it does have very strong German roots- does culture matter?]

Sort of. Eugenics programs have tended to be popular in Germanic (German and Scandinavian) countries - however not because they were Germanic, but because they tend also to be Protestant.

The Nazi Action T4 programme, for example, expected most resistance from Catholicism (which after the Anschluss, with Austria in 1938, had turned the enlarged German Reich almost 50% Catholic) and so was largely hidden to avoid any Catholic backlash.

Protestant sentiment, on the other hand, was far less squeamish.

aristotleirish wrote: »

i made the above statement to show that the human race would not be better off if the nazies had won vis a ve "i dont think so" tbh i dont understand the context of your statement.

She's made the point that, at least if only in terms of eugenics, it wouldn't have made a difference in the long run as we already practice eugenics as standard.

Screening for genetic conditions or other problems has become standard in most Western countries and this has had an affect - you'd be hard pushed to find many kids walking around with Down's syndrome in places like France, for example.

The Corinthian

aristotleirish wrote: »

ok i understand now, the term "defective" genes though is very arbitrary.

Not so much arbitrary, as subjective as the Nazi's views on genetics were full of contradictions and pseudo-scientific principles. For example, Slavs were designated as non-Aryan by them, even though ethnically they are very much Aryan, for political reasons. Indeed, as the need for military manpower grew during the war, how an Aryan was 'scientifically' defined underwent a number of convenient transformations, that allow broader recruitment into the SS.

screening an eliminating are too very different things.

Yes, but very much linked too as it's hardly a secret that a lot of screening nowadays is being done specifically so that embryos with undesired conditions may be terminated.

the nazies would have eliminated everyone who is not blond haired blue eyed without any defects ie glasses obesity and so on.

I think you need to read up on the Nazi's a bit more. To begin with eliminating everyone who is not blond haired blue eyed, alone, would have put Hitler, Goebbels, Göring and even Himmler on the chopping block. You need to examine what their policies actually were, not some two-dimensional stereotype from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

the situation would eventually have become untenable the society would collopse. pol pot tryed do to such a thing before and it did not work.

Why would it collapse?

As to Pol Pot; the Khmer Rouge did not engage in eugenics programs, AFAIK - they didn't have the resources. They instead engaged in social rather than genetic mass engineering.

IMHO, left wing groups tend to have more faith in the power of nurture, while the right in nature. As such, you tend to see the far right favouring eugenics programmes, while the far left (like the Khmer Rouge, or Mao's China) go for 're-education' programmes.

dr.fuzzenstein

You might think you would be better off, until you decide to speak out of turn or are seen as "inferior". Then you would be disposed off.
I think it is pretty certain that living like that is not a good thing.
And even if you decide to go along with the regime, someone in charge can decide to dislike you or even a neighbour can blacken your name with the local authorities and you would disappear.
If you are lucky you may only be in a labour camp for 10 years.
I think it's pretty much a no-brainer. Totalitarian regimes do not care for their subjects, they only care about sustaining themselves and if a few million people starve to death, it's no big deal.
Imperfect as our European democracy (or bureaucracy) is, we are infinitely better off.