scientific origins of NS

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

here is a paper on the scientific origins of NS. I dont know if it's accurate or not, and I warn readers that Jew Barry Mehler said the author "had it right." So be forewarned the tone is probably negative. I havent read the whole thing but maybe you all will find it interesting.

also-- look for antecedents of "cosmotheism"

http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Gasman.htm

THE SCIENTIFIC ORIGINS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM

Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League

DANIEL GASMAN

Assistant Professor of History, john JayCollege,

The CityUniversity of New York

@ Daniel Gasman 1971 ...........Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-132637 Standard Book Numbers British SBN 356 034119 American SBN 44419664 I

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Chapter Seven

Monism and National Socialism

IFone surveys the origins of the Volkish movement in Germany during the three or four decades prior to the First World War it is apparent that Haeckel played an influential, significant, indeed a decisive role in its genesis and subsequent development. An impressive number of the most influential Volkish writers, propagandists, and spokesmen were influenced by or involved in some way with either Haeckel or his Monist followers. In the development of racism, racial eugenics, Germanic Christianity, nature worship, and anti-Semitism, Haeckel and the Monists were an important source and a major inspiration for many of the diverse streams of thought which came together later on under the banner of National Socialism.

Probably the most important and far-reaching influence of Haeckel may be found among the leading racial anthropologists and eugenicists Who lived and wrote in the decades around the turn of the century. Apart from such writers as Wilhelm Schallmayer, Heinrich Ziegler, and August Forel, whom we have already noted as active members of the Monist League, the fact is that nearly all other leading figures in the field of eugenics and racial science inGermany were deeply and consciously indebted to Haeckel for many, if not for most, of their ideas. It was this group of individuals, both within and outside of the Monist League, who as it were published the banns for the marriage of racism and eugenics which took place a few decades later on under the Nazis.

One of the most influential authors in the field of racial anthropology and eugenics was the physician Ludwig Woltman (1871-1907), Who

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has been described as the 'most important representative of the Gobineau theory of the Nordic race' in Germany at the turn of the century! Woltmann studied under Haeckel and in 1900 submitted a manuscript, ‘Der politische Anthropologie,' to an essay contest in which Haeckel, Heinrich Ziegler, and another Monist, Professor J. Conrad, were the judges. The contest itself, which ultimately led to the publication of ten volumes of influential social Darwinist tracts, was sponsored by the industrialist, Alfred Krupp, and its theme was: What can we learn from the principles of Darwinism for application to inner political development and the laws of the state?'2 The first prize was won by Haeckel's disciple, Wilhelm Schallmayer, for his manuscript, ‘Vererbung und Auslese' ; Woltmann, who won fourth prize, had rejected the decision of the judges and withdrew in anger from the contest, which served to alienate him permanently from Haeckel.3 Nonetheless, as a result of the contest and the publicity surrounding his dispute with the committee of judges, Woltmann gained a great deal of popular recognition and in 1903 published the contest-essay on his own. A year earlier, in 1902, he founded a racist joumal, the Politisch-anthropologische Revue, and in its pages campaigned for the forceful biological maintenance of the Nordic race. Also, in a number of books written during the seven or eight years before his premature death in 1907, Woltmann attempted to effect a fusion of the ideas of Haeckel and Marx.4 Although he criticized Haeckel's negative attitude towards socialism he accepted his fundamental idea that there was an exact parallel between the laws of nature and those of society. A member of the Social Democratic Party, Woltmann transformed the Marxist concept of class struggle into a theory of worldwide racial conflict5. He described the Germans as the highest species of mankind and contended that the perfect physical proportions of the Nordics expressed an inner superiority and a heightened spirituality. Like Haeckel, he argued that any mixture of the races would lead to the biological deterioration of the Germans. Woltmann, like Haeckel, taught that life was a constant struggle for existence and for racial purity, and he sought to forearm Germany against biological decay.6

Even closer than Woltmann to Haeckel's social theories was Otto Ammon (1842-1916), another leading social Darwinist and racial

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anthropologist.7 Ammon was among the authors recommended for additional reading in the Welträtsel,8and in three inf1uential books, Die naturliche Auslese beim Menschen (1893), Der Darwinismusgegen die Sozialdemokratie (1893) and Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen (1895), Ammon very closely paralleled Haeckel's social Darwinism. For Ammon, predictably, the laws of nature were also the laws of society. Struggle for existence and the inequality of all men, he wrote, were permanent aspects of life. Bravery, cunning, competition were all parts of the eternal scheme of things and it would be foolish to wish them away.

In obvious imitation of Haeckel, Ammon taught that Darwinism had to become Germany's new religion. It had to be accepted as a complete Weltanschauung and its ideas had to be encouraged in every facet of life. With a triumph of evolutionary Monism, he contended, religion and philosophy would no longer be in mutual contradiction.9

Ammon also repeated the well-worn racial arguments. He suggested that the lower races of mankind had to succumb in the struggle for existence. Racial struggle itself was a 'necessity for mankind.'10Only when weak individuals and races perish is mankind as a whole able to reap the benefit. Ammon believed, of course, that it was the Germans who possessed superior racial and biological characteristics and he appealed for a return to the values and attitudes of the primitive Germanic tribes, who had led lives of natural bravery unencumbered by the errors and weaknesses of Christian civilization.11

The ideas of other prominent social Darwinists like Alexander Tille and Alexander Ploetz who also began writing in the decades around the turn of the century, may also be linked with Haecke112 In 1893, Tille published a book entitled Volksdjenst. Von einem Sozialaristokraten, which was highly praised by Haeckel.13 Tille freely borrowed Haeckel's conception of the 'aristocratic' character of nature and he argued that social inequality was biologically determined. His defense of social inequality won for him the appreciation and support of a number of German industrialists, who appointed him director of public relations for German industry in Berlin and in Saarbrücken. Like Haeckel, Tille attached enormous importance to the animal origin and character of man and he felt that a general acceptance of this fact would lead to spiritual and ideological changes both necessary and desirable in German

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cultural life. And in another influential and widely read book which also received the approbation of Haeckel, Von Darwin bis Nietzsche (1895), Tille, who acknowledged his debt to Haeckel, explained the impact which the discovery of biological evolution had made on ethics, and agreed with Haeckel that all absolute ethical values had been obliterated by the discovery of evolution. Tille argued that only the unimpeded laws of nature could be the source of morality .14

Dr. Ploetz was vitally interested in the problem of achieving proper biological selection and became one of the more important workers in the school of racial hygiene in Germany.....

After 1933, therefore, no need was found by the new regime to disband the Archiv, to alter its general point of view, or to change its board of editors. On the contrary, it may be said, that the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafisbiologie had anticipated events by over a quarter of a century.17

In regard to the racial theory of the Germans as Aryans, one should take note of the famous colleague of Haeckel, Ernst Krause (pseudonym Carus Steme).18 Together with Haeckel, Krause edited the joumal Kosmos, the chief organ of the Darwinian movement in Germany in the 1870'S and in the 1880's.