Nazism

"We should not allow our judgment of the ethical character of Nazi medical practice to hinge entirely on whether we consider it to have been based on “genuine science”. One cannot (or at least should not) radically divide the practice of science from its product science is, among other things, a social activity, and the politics of those who practice it is part of that science. Furthermore, we miss something if we assume at the outset a fundamental hostility between science and a form of political practice such as National Socialism. This was not how scientists themselves viewed the matter[..]"

"American eugenicists rejected the entire concept of birth control because it was associated, in their view, with an “antibaby strike” on the part of emancipated women. Curiously, at the same time that racial hygienists warned of a declining population, conservative apologists for the Pan-German League argued that overseas colonies were needed to relieve the “overcrowding” caused by Germany’s rapidly growing population. Similar contradictions would persist in the Nazi period. Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick in 1933 thus found it possible to warn of “race suicide” (caused by the declining birthrate) in one breath and then to call for the need to acquire “Lebenstraum” for Germany’s growth, in the next. Such pronouncements make one suspect that population concerns were (then as now) more the product of political interests than of incontrovertible facts."

"Hereditary theory remained a point of political contention throughout the period of Nazi rule (and indeed, for some time after). In 1939 the Moscow Anthropological Museum sponsored an exhibit on “Race and Race Theory” attacking the Nazi ideal of Nordic supremacy as part of an “effort by the German ruling class to justify its domination over subjugated classes as ‘natural’.” Nazi physicians reporting on the exhibit claimed that by virtue of their support for the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Soviet biologists had abandoned the goal of “pure science”; Nazi physicians also suggested that the Soviets hoped, with the help of the Lamarckian doctrine, to “disprove the existence of racial boundaries” and thereby “facilitate the assimilation of Jews into the country.” By this time, however, Russia was not the only country issuing official proclamations on the nature of heredity. In 1937 the Nazi party published its official “Handbook for the Hitler Youth”, issued as required reading for the 7 million members of this organization. The “Handbook” presented a chapter titled “Race Formation: heredity and Environment,” including discussions of Mendel’s laws of inheritance, Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by natural selection, and the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics."

"One of the leading research efforts of Germany’s racial hygiene institutes was twin studies (for example, studies of identical twins raised apart) designed to determine the relative importance of heredity an environment. Suggestions that the study of twins might be used for this purpose date back at least as far as Francis Galton’s 1875 “History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture.” In the Third Reich, twin studies were lavisihly funded as part of an effort to prove that heredity was the key to many human talents and imperfections. Twin studies purportedly demonstrated the heritability of everything from epilepsy, criminality, memory, and hernias to tuberculosis, cancer, schizophrenia, and divorce. In 1933 Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer published a book purporting to provide exact ratios of the relative influence of heredity and environment in a wide range of bodily traits; he derived his data from the study of several thousand identical and nonidentical twins. (see Figure 8). Verschuer’s studies were followed by hundreds of others. By 1936 Otto Reche’s Institute for the Study of Race and Volk had examined 12,50 pairs of twins, recording forty-two separate physical or physiognomic traits for each pair. Eugen Fischer called twin studies “the” single most important research tool in the field of racial hygiene; Verschuer called twin research the “sovereign method for genetic research in humans” Racial hygienists were able to convince Nazi authorities that twin studies warranted substantial government support: in 1939 Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick ordered the registration of all twins, triplets, or quadruplets born in the Reich, for the express purpose of research to isolate the effects of nature and nurture in the formation of the human racial constitution."

"The Nazis found biology and medicine a suitable language in which to articulate their goals; scientists found the Nazis willing to support many of their endeavors. Furthermore, racial hygiene was not “imposed on” the German medical community; physicians eagerly embraced the racial ideal and the racial state. This in fact was perceived by observers at the time. In 1933 Fritz Lenz noted: Whatever resistance the idea of racial hygiene may have encountered in previous times among German doctors, this resistance exists no longer. The German core [Kern] within the medical community has recognized the demands of German racial hygiene as its own; the medical profession has become the leading force in making these demands. Lenz than cited the words of Gerhard Wagner, leader of the German medical profession: Knowledge of racial hygiene and genetics has become, by a purely scientific path, the knowledge of an extraordinary number of German doctors. It has influenced to a substantial degree the basic world view of the State, and indeed may even be said to embody the very foundations of the present state [“Staatsraison”]."

"Why did physicians join the Nazi party in such numbers? Professional opportunism certainly played a role: many reasoned that by driving out the Jews, jobs could be created for non-Jewish physicians-an important motive, given the overcrowding and financial stress suffered by the profession in the years before the rise of the Nazis (see Chapter 6). The traditionally conservative character of the medical profession was another factor. Prior to 1933, many German physicians identified with the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, a conservative and nationalistic party that eventually threw its support to Hitler. Most physicians shared a strong sense of national pride: in the spring of 1933, for example, the “Deutsches Arzteblatt” noted that most German physicians had taken part in World War I and that 1,000 had died “on the field of honor.” In the years preceding the triumph of the Nazis, physicians were faced with a series of economic shocks that moved many to realign their politics. Impoverishment after the war and economic collapse during the final years of the Weimar Republic polarized the profession politically. At the same time, physicians warned of a “crisis in medicine,” a crisis variously construed as the bureaucratization specialization, or scientization of medicine-problems blamed on the socialists, the Jews, or the numerous quacks that eternally plague the profession. Physicians expressed a desire to win back “the confidence of the people.”"

"The single most important classes of journals that, generally speaking did “not” survive the Nazi seizure of power were those publishing in the field of social hygiene (“Sozialhygiene”). These were journals concerned primarily with broader social or public health aspects of medicine, often from a socialist or communist point of view. The journal “Soziale Medizin”, for example, folded in the first year of Nazi rule, as did “Der Sozialistische Arzt”, the official journal of the Association of Socialist Physicians."

"The Nazi medical community also published special journals designed either to popularize the new racial ideal or to keep Nazi physicians abreast of social and racial policy. “Ziel und Weg” was the primary journal responsible for articulating Nazi philosophy in the sphere of medicine. In 1931 it began publishing in editions of 3,000 copies; by 1934 this number had grown to 16,000; and by 1939 the journal was publishing 40,000 copies twice a month. The Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt) published the popular health magazine “Neues Volk” (New people), issued as the successor to the pre-Nazi journal “Das Horrohr”, in editions that ran as high as 360,000 copies (in 1939); the office also published an in-house journal called the “Informationsdienst” (Information service) to keep its members informed on issues of racial policy. Circulation of the “Informationsdienst” was deliberately limited to 5,000 copies in order to be able to include confidential information; readers were asked not to repeat information published in the journal unless they withheld the source. Published from 1934 to 1944 the “Informationsdienst” today serves as one of the most revealing sources of information on Nazi racial policy."

"Socialist physicians wanted to legalize abortion; Nazi physicians saw abortion as a feminist plot designed to sap the strength of the nation."

"The total state led by the Fuhrer was, however, never simply a dictatorship of one man. The new politics advocated by the Nazis, the vast project of social and biological engineering that they instigated, required popular participation. Goebbels, as minister for popular enlightenment and propaganda, made clear that the regime, the express “will” of the nation, also had to win to its side those elements of the national community that still resisted the siren song of National Socialism. They could not just be “terrorized” but had to be won over through hard work, including propaganda. But dissent could not be tolerated. The claims of the Nazi movement and state upon the individual were total. The National Socialist Revolution, asserted Goebbels, “does not stop for [the realm] of private life.” These totalizing ambitions required not just obedience but also participation. The state had to “set the masses in motion,” as Goebbels put it. If Hitler did not deign to intervene directly in every policy matter, Hitler’s followers believed that “working toward the Fuhrer,” pursuing his goals without his express orders, placed them in accord with the movement of history. Nazi views on the total state and popular mobilization concurred with strategic doctrine, Hitler’s as well as the Wehrmacht’s. In Nazi doctrine, war would allow the race to flourish; to pursue the war successfully, the race had to be purified. Since the coming conflict was never simply a campaign of territorial conquest but always a racial, ideological war, the links between domestic and foreign policy were particularly tight in Nazi Germany."

"Just so are idealistic National Socialists judged even today, ten, twelve years after the end of the war. Certainly, in a hundred or more years, laurels will be handed even to National Socialism."

"To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing."

"According to the idea of the NSDAP [Nazi party], we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block.”"

"While National Socialism brought about a new version and formulation of European culture, Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself. It is not only anti-bourgeois, it is anti-cultural. It means, in the final consequence, the absolute destruction of all economic, social, state, cultural, and civilizing advances made by western civilization for the benefit of a rootless and nomadic international clique of conspirators, who have found their representation in Jewry."

"We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism! We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature! We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!"

"The path to freedom leads through the nation. The more united this nation, the stronger and more fervent the will to freedom. To set in motion this passionate will for freedom in the nation, that is the task of National Socialism. We want freedom, as you do, but with other means, with the solidarity of the nation, the community of the people as ours. I noticed one thing yesterday with joy: You now believe me that our community of the people is not the pacifistic mush that Mr. Marx and Mr. Stresemann mean. The community of the people today is nothing but the struggle for the rights of the people for the sake of the nation. We want this struggle because it alone can bring freedom. There must be fighting for the future. You and I, we fight each other without really being enemies. In this way we splinter our forces, and we never reach our goal. Perhaps the most extreme need will bring us together. Perhaps! Do not shake your head! This question is a matter of Germany’s future, and more, of Europe’s future. The new state or the decline of the West, both lie in our hands."

"We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation. . . .The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism."

"My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel."

"Our nation has the good fortune today to be led largely by front soldiers, by front soldiers who carried the virtues of the front to the leadership of the state. The rebuilding of the Reich was guided by the spirit of the front. It was the spirit of the front that created National Socialism. In the face of looming death at the front, ideas of social standing and class collapsed. At the front, the sharing of common joys and common sorrows led to a previously unknown camaraderie between citizens. At the front, everyone could see that the common fate towered above the individual fate."

"One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."

"Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists. Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic. We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."

"The National Socialist State recognizes no ‘classes’. But, under the political aspect, it recognizes only citizens with absolutely equal rights and equal obligations corresponding thereto."

"We National Socialists see in private property a higher level of human economic development that according to the differences in performance controls the management of what has been accomplished enabling and guaranteeing the advantage of a higher standard of living for everyone. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the readiness to shoulder responsibility."

"Germany's economic policy is conducted exclusively in accordance with the interests of the German people. In this respect I am a fanatical socialist, one who has ever in mind the interests of all his people."

"The consequences of the activity of this regime were nothing but chaos, misery and starvation in all countries. I, on the other hand, have been striving for twenty years with a minimum of intervention and without destroying our production, to arrive at a new Socialist order in Germany which not only eliminates unemployment but also permits the worker to receive an ever greater share of the fruits of his labor."

"All the more so after the war, the German National Socialist state, which pursued this goal from the beginning, will tirelessly work for the realization of a program that will ultimately lead to a complete elimination of class differences and to the creation of a true socialist community."

"The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God's gift and God's handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation."

"National Socialism is not a cult-movement—a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship. Therefore we have no rooms for worship, but only halls for the people — no open spaces for worship, but spaces for assemblies and parades. We have no religious retreats, but arenas for sports and playing-fields, and the characteristic feature of our places of assembly is not the mystical gloom of a cathedral, but the brightness and light of a room or hall which combines beauty with fitness for its purpose."

"I was a young student of law and economics, a Left Wing student leader, and a leader of ex-soldier students."

"Yes, from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe."

"We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!"

"The Capitalist system with its exploitation of those who are economically weak, with its robbery of the workers labour power, with its unethical way of appraising human beings by the number of things and the amount of money he possesses, instead of by their internal value and their achievements, must be replaced by a new and just economic system, in a word by German Socialism."

"The National Socialist-Labor Party, of which Adolf Hitler is patron and father, persists in believing Lenin and Hitler can be compared or contrasted in a party meeting. Two weeks ago an attempted discussion of this subject left to one death, sixty injuries and $5,000 damages to beer glasses, tables, chairs, windows and chandeliers in Chemnitz. Last night DR. Göebells tried the experiment in Berlin and only police intervention prevented a repetition of the Chemnitz affair. On the speaker's assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer glasses. When this sort of ammunition was exhausted a free fight in which fists and knives played important roles was indulged in. Later a gang marched to the offices of the Socialist paper Vorärts and smashed plate-glass windows. Police made nineteen arrests."

"By exploiting material wealth confiscated and plundered in a racial war, Hitler’s National Socialism achieved an unprecedented level of economic equality and created vast new opportunities for upward mobility for the German people."

"Another source of the Nazi Party’s popularity was its liberal borrowing from the intellectual tradition of the socialist left. Many of the men who would become the movement’s leaders had been involved in communist and socialist circles."

"In one of his central pronouncements, Hitler promised 'the creation of a socially just state,' a model society that would 'continue to eradicate all [social] barriers.'"

"All dictators risk being overthrown by their opponents... [and] therefore need large police forces to protect them. ...The police force in ...their job was to arrest people before they committed crimes. ...All local police units had to draw up lists of people who might be 'Enemies of the State'. They gave these lists to the ... a branch of the SS... [with] the power to do... as it liked. ...'Enemies of the State' ...are [likely] woken ...by a violent knocking at the door. ...[M]en in black uniforms ...[give] three minutes to pack a bag. ...[T]hey take you to the ...police station where you are shut in a cell. ...[D]ays, weeks or months ...[later] ...you are ...told to sign Form D-11, an 'Order for Protective Custody' ...agreeing to go to prison ...[Y]ou are too scared to refuse to sign ...Without ...a trial you are ...taken to a concentration camp where you ...stay for as long as the Gestapo pleases. ...A former prisoner ...described ...'In Buchenwald there were 8000 ...2000 Jews and 6000 non-Jews. ...first ..."politicals" ...many ...in concentration camps ...since 1933 ...many ...accused of having spoken abusively of the sacred ... Fuehrer ...After the "political", the ..."work-shy" is the largest. ...A business employee lost his position and applied for unemployment relief. ...he was informed by the Labour Exchange that he could obtain employment as a navvy on the ...roads. This man, who was looking for a commercial post, turned down the offer. ...[R]eported as "work-shy" ...he was ...arrested and taken to a concentration camp. The next group were the "Bibelforscher" a religious sect ...proscribed ...by the Gestapo since ...members refuse military service. The fourth... homosexuals... To charge this offense is a favorite tactic of the secret police. ...The last class ...professional criminals...'"

"Sipo and SD was a conglomerate, formed... when Heinrich Himmler, Reichfuehrer SS, became chief of the German Police. He fused the Criminal Investigative Police (Kripo) and the (the political police) to form the Security Police ( or Sipo) under the command of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. ...[T]he exchange of personnel ...produced an amalgam of party and state agencies that became central to the execution of most of the terror and mass murder of the Third Reich. ...Although no single organization carries full responsibility for the evils of the Third Reich, the SS-police system was the executor of terrorism and "population policy" in the same way that the military carried out the Reich’s imperialistic aggression. Within the police state, even the concentration camps could not rival the impact of Sipo and SD. It was the source not only of the "s" who administered terror and genocide by assigning victims to the camps, but also of the police executives for identification and arrest, and of the command and staff for a major instrument of execution, the . ...Sipo and SD was ...central to many ...controversial developments in the Third Reich—the totalitarian efforts to achieve conformity and to end opposition, the race and resettlement programs, the development and implementation of imperialistic expansion ...The creation of the totalitarian police state as an essential step toward the provides one ...perspective for this study. ...[H]ow [could] a modern of such cultural prestige as Germany... be twisted to Hitler's ends, how so many thousands of functionaries—more ordinary Germans than Nazi extremists or sadists—could be found to execute Hitler's will[?] When the Nazi experience becomes the will of the ... the result is both an alabi... and a smoke screen that obscures insights into how similarly extreme developments might reoccur, perhaps without a Hitler or a German '."

"[T]he real key to power in the State—control of the n police force and of the... State Administration—lay with Goering, as Prussian Minister of the Interior. ...In the critical period of 1933-1934, no man after Hitler played so important a role in the Nazi revolution ...His energy and ruthlessness together with his control ...were indispensable to Hitler's success. Goering showed no intention of being restrained ...he enforced his will, as if he already held absolute power. The moment Goering entered office he began a drastic of the Prussian State service, paying particular attention to the senior police officers, where he made a clean sweep in favour of his own appointments, many of them — S.A. or S.S. leaders. ...Goering issued an order to show no mercy to the activities of "organizations hostile to the State" ...Goering continued: "Police officers who make... use of fire-arms in the execution of their duties will... benefit by my protection; those who... fail in their duty will be punished..." In other words, when in doubt shoot. ...All they had to do was ...put a white arm-band over their brown ...or black shirts: they then represented the authority of the State. ...For the citizen to appeal to the police for protection became more dangerous than to suffer assault and robbery in silence. At best, the police... looked the other way; more often the auxiliaries helped ...S.A. comrades ..beat up their victims. This was “legality” in practice."

"From the point of view of fundamental human liberties there is little to choose between communism, socialism, and national socialism. They all are examples of the collectivist or totalitarian state … in its essentials not only is completed socialism the same as communism but it hardly differs from fascism."

"The Nazis despised Christianity for its Judaic roots, effeminacy, otherworldliness and universality... One would have to visit the Reformation or the extremes of liberal in the modern era to find anything analogous to their vicious and vulgar attacks on priests."

"One fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it."

"We are confronted with another theme. It is not a new theme; it leaps out upon us from the Dark Ages – racial persecution, religious intolerance, deprivation of free speech, the conception of the citizen as a mere soulless fraction of the State. To this has been added the cult of war. Children are to be taught in their earliest schooling the delights and profits of conquest and aggression. A whole mighty community has been drawn painfully, by severe privations, into a warlike frame. They are held in this condition, which they relish no more than we do, by a party organisation, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime. Like the Communists, the Nazis tolerate no opinion but their own. Like the Communists, they feed on hatred. Like the Communists, they must seek, from time to time, and always at shorter intervals, a new target, a new prize, a new victim. The Dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his Party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within. As Byron wrote a hundred years ago: “These Pagod things of Sabre sway, with fronts of brass and feet of clay.”"

"Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction."

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

"Nazi leaders were noted for love of their pets and for certain animals, notably apex predators like the wolf and the lion. Hitler, a vegetarian and hater of hunting, adored dogs and spent some of his final hours in the company of Blondi, whom he would take for walks outside the bunker at some danger to himself. He had a particular enthusiasm for birds and most of all for wolves. [...] Goebbels said, famously, ‘The only real friend one has in the end is the dog. . . The more I get to know the human species, the more I care for my Benno.’ Goebbels also agreed with Hitler that ‘meat eating is a perversion in our human nature,’ and that Christianity was a ‘symptom of decay’, since it did not urge vegetarianism. [...] On the one hand, monsters of cruelty towards their fellow humans; on the other, kind to animals and zealous in their interest. In their very fine essay on such contradictions, Arnold Arluke and Boria Sax offer three observations. One, as just noted, many Nazi leaders harboured affection towards animals but antipathy to humans. Hitler was given films by a maharaja which displayed animals killing people. The Führer watched with equanimity. Another film showed humans killing animals. Hitler covered his eyes and begged to be told when the slaughter was over."

"America had a fling at National Socialism. Roosevelt was for all administration purposes a dictator, but a benevolent one, and the country loved it."

"In view of the often acrimonious debates surrounding many discussions of abortion, and the occasional references to the Holocaust, it seems appropriate to review the abortion experience in Germany during the Hitler years (1933-45). Increasingly severe restrictions were placed on the availability of contraceptives and on access to legal abortion. During World War II special courts in Vichy France and Nazi Germany were authorized to impose the death penalty for the illegal termination of unwanted pregnancies, and carried out their mandate. While “fifty thousand books and monographs” have been written about the Nazi period (Koonz, 1987, p.3), a search of numerous German and American archives, research libraries, and indexes of volumes especially oriented to the experiences of women produced few references specifically pertaining to abortion trends in the Hitler era."

"Revelations of sterilization abuse during that time exposed the complicity of the federal government. At firs the Department of Health, Education and Welfare claimed that approximately 16, 000 women and 8, 000 men had been sterilized in 1972 under the auspices of federal programs. Later, however, these figures underwent a drastic revision. Carl Shultz, director of HEW’s Population Affairs Office, estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 sterilizations had actually been funded that year by the federal government. During Hitler’s Germany, incidentally, 250,000 sterilization were carried out under the Nazi’s Hereditary Health Law. Is it possible that the record of the Nazis, through the years of their reign, may have been almost equaled by the U.S. government-funded sterilizations in the space of a single year?"

"As for the explanation that fascism is a last desperate attempt of capitalism to delay the socialist revolution, it simply is not true. It is not true that ‘big business’ promoted fascism. On the contrary, both in Italy and in Germany the proportion of fascist sympathizers and backers was smallest in the industrial and financial classes. It is equally untrue that ‘big business’ profits from fascism; of all the classes it probably suffers most from totalitarian economics and Wehrwirtschaft."