If the Allies had resisted Hitler strongly in his early stages, even up to his seizure of the Rhineland in 1936, he would have been forced to recoil, and a chance would have been given to the sane elements in German life, which were very powerful especially in the High Command, to free Germany of the maniacal Government and system into the grip of which she was falling. Do not forget that twice the German people, by a majority, voted against Hitler, but the Allies and the League of Nations acted with such feebleness and lack of clairvoyance, that each of Hitler's encroachments became a triumph for him over all moderate and restraining forces until, finally, we resigned ourselves without further protest to the vast process of German re-armament and war preparation which ended in a renewed outbreak of destructive war. Let us profit at least by this terrible lesson. In vain did I attempt to teach it before the war.”89
While Churchill seems not to be describing a stable peaceful world, so much as a delicate and increasingly dangerous imperial balance, there is no way to know that he’s mistaken. There was great opposition to Nazism in Germany, and some shift in history -- whether a greater understanding of the tools of nonviolent action, or a more Churchillian militaristic resolve, or an assassination or coup (there were a number of failed plots) -- might have defeated it.
But the point here is not that the world might have gotten lucky, or as we will discuss further, might have acted very differently. Rather, the world acted foolishly, both by the standards of the time, and even more so by today’s. The Marshall Plan following WWII, for all its deep flaws, was an effort not to repeat the stupid way in which WWI had been ended. People were too much aware immediately after WWII of how they had created it after WWI.
The Treaty of Versailles was only one thing among many that did not have to happen. The people of Germany did not have to allow the rise of Nazism. Nations and businesses around the world did not have to fund and encourage the rise of Nazism. Scientists and governments did not have to inspire the Nazi ideology. Governments did not have to prefer armaments to the rule of law, and did not have to wink at German outrages while encouraging a German attack on the Soviet Union. We’ll get to each of these topics. I’d like to focus in the next several chapters on some of the ways in which the United States did not have to contribute to Nazism.
4. The United States did not have to develop and promote the dangerous bunk science of eugenics
Eugenics had British and U.S. roots and was popularized by Americans in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, despite various scientists pointing out the lack of evidence for its claims. It took until the 1930s for most scientists to finally reject it, but much longer for the public and governments to catch on. Eugenics was so American that one of its big promoters was John Harvey Kellogg, the same guy who invented corn flakes. Eugenics was so loony that its proponents developed intelligence tests no more scientific than any eugenic claims, and those tests were used to classify half of U.S. draftees in World War I as “morons.”90 A moron was someone smarter than an “idiot” or an “imbecile” but not smart enough for morality.
Eugenics was so American that Margaret Sanger promoted birth control by describing it as a tool for eugenics. The latter was acceptable, the former scandalous. During the 1920s and right up through WWII, at state fairs in the United States, families competed in “Better Babies” and “Fitter Families” contests (sometimes limited to whites only), exhibiting humans in competitions analogous to those for various farm animals. African American author and brilliant opponent of racism WEB Dubois even suggested that the talented tenth Negroes should breed for a better race. That’s how saturated the society was with eugenics. Even those opposing bigotry thought in its terms. The NAACP held better babies contests to fund campaigns against lynching.91
Eugenics was funded by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune. Members of the American Breeders’ Association (still around but renamed the American Genetic Association) included Alexander Graham Bell. The League of Women Voters promoted eugenic public policies. Witnesses on the evolution side of the Scopes Monkey Trial were eugenicists.
U.S. eugenicist Charles Davenport wrote a letter to U.S. eugenicist and white supremacist Madison Grant arguing for the need to “build a wall” to “keep out the cheaper races.”92 Grant’s book, The Passing of the Great Race, invented a race called The Nordic Race that had a lot in common with the race later promoted by the Nazis.93 Edwin Black writes:
“[T]he concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power.”94
U.S. eugenicist Harry Laughlin shaped U.S. immigration policy with pseudo-science about the inferiority of races, in particular Jews. Various people -- non-morons, I guess you’d call them -- including various Jews, pointed out at the time that Laughlin had fixed the facts around the policy and not pursued actual scientific findings.95 The U.S. Congress didn’t have to ignore those wiser voices.
Most eugenicists supported strict and racist immigration laws, as well as sterilization and the prevention of reproduction through the segregation of “feeble-minded” men and women into separate asylums. Eugenics was also used to support anti-miscegenation laws. Some eugenicists also promoted the idea of extermination. A report by the Carnegie Institute in 1911 proposed euthanasia.96 While eugenicide never gained mainstream popularity, it was practiced. According to Edwin Black:
“The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in the United States was a ‘lethal chamber’ or public, locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, [Paul] Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, ‘Applied Eugenics,’ which argued, ‘From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution . . . Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated.’ . . . Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.”97
Straying for a moment from eugenics to gas chambers, here’s a passage from a long article about Hitler in The New Yorker in 2018:
“In 1924, the first execution by gas chamber took place, in Nevada. In a history of the American gas chamber, Scott Christianson states that the fumigating agent Zyklon-B, which was licensed to American Cyanamid by the German company I. G. Farben, was considered as a lethal agent but found to be impractical. Zyklon-B was, however, used to disinfect immigrants as they crossed the border at El Paso—a practice that did not go unnoticed by Gerhard Peters, the chemist who supplied a modified version of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz. Later, American gas chambers were outfitted with a chute down which poison pellets were dropped. Earl Liston, the inventor of the device, explained, ‘Pulling a lever to kill a man is hard work. Pouring acid down a tube is easier on the nerves, more like watering flowers.’ Much the same method was introduced at Auschwitz, to relieve stress on S.S. guards.”98
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1927, in the case of Buck v. Bell (which has yet to be overturned), that a healthy and intelligent rape victim abused by her society could be forcibly sterilized, the ruling was reported in the press as a step toward “a super race.”99
When Hitler came to power, he put in place a sterilization law based on a model law written by Harry Laughlin and the laws that 27 U.S. states had put in place. Hitler had read Madison Grant and written him a fan letter, and referred to his book as “my Bible.” Hitler had written in Mein Kampf that Germany must follow the United States in immigration and segregation:
“At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German