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Friday October 17, 2003 Drowning in history Details overload exposé of America’s shocking treatment of the ‘unfit’ It’s easy to see why the Library Journal calls Edwin Black’s “War Against the Weak” a “bombshell of investigative journalism.” The facts gathered in it exhume a rank and shameful shadow history of American idealism. A strange collection of nutcases and some of the most influential figures in the 20th century — including the Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie — laid the foundation for the Shoah and for the terrible birth pangs of ethnic cleansing all over the “land of liberty.” You probably didn’t know this. But who is supposed to be the audience for this book on the terrors of eugenics, the selective breeding of human beings? You may be intrigued, but you’re probably not going to make it all the way through the volume. Because, if this masterfully compiled compendium is meant to be read by a general audience, it is a profound disappointment. In this regard, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” aches because in its attempt to be all-encompassing, it piles on so many details that it loses the reader. What it does is take the stuff of nightmares, of urgent political import, write passionately about it, then render the story inaccessible to a wide audience that desperately needs to hear it. The 550-page work by investigative reporter Black, author of The New York Times bestseller “IBM and the Holocaust,” exudes rage from the red-and-black cover image that resembles a raw wound. It draws you in but soon leaves you drowning in history. Try this: Buy a copy for the most erudite, patient person you know. Have him or her read it, then organize an evening in which that bookworm recounts the salient parts of the wrenching story to you and your friends and family. The stuff of nightmares is between these overstuffed pages, stuff that has been exploited in horror films and science fiction. Here some of the creepiest parts of the “X-Files” are revealed as truth. The tragedy starts where disasters often do, with good intentions. The eugenics movement of the 19th century wanted to identify the common characteristics of perceived ethnicities. The bridges of noses and arm length were measured and compiled from thousands of usually unsuspecting subjects, and the data was used to reach less-than-benign results: “California was the third state to adopt forced sterilization in 1909; Chapter 720 of the state’s statutory code permitted castration or sterilization of state convicts and the residents of the California Home for the Care and Training of Feebleminded Children in Sonoma County,” Black writes. The facts become more nauseating. The corporate elite financed the growth of eugenics in the United States out of a sense of moral righteousness. The movement spread, and thousands of “social undesirables” were sterilized, often quietly but legally. College courses on eugenics disseminated the foundations of a philosophy of racial purity. It didn’t take long for the philosophy to tango with intellectual justifications for slaughter. In fact, as far back as 1906, “the Ohio Legislature considered a bill empowering physicians to chloroform permanently diseased and handicapped persons,” he writes. Strains of the eugenics movement ran deep in social movements to prevent blindness, to promote the use of birth control and many of the causes typically considered politically “progressive.” Indeed, one dedicated eugenics fan was Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Nazi Germany picked up on this good old-fashioned American idealism and took it to its natural conclusion. Many moments in “War Against the Weak” shock. In fact, almost every detail read in short bits will chill your spine: Oliver Wendell Holmes writing an opinion that forces a “feebleminded” young woman to be separated from her newborn; or an American eugenicist who, initially a prisoner at Buchenwald, is gradually celebrated by the Nazis and allowed to run a so-called hospital in the camp according to his brutal, perverse whims. There are many more. But it is hard to reach them through this relentless surge of information. Black is correct that a slow, meticulous path is necessary to validate the claims he lays out. It is a challenge to gain acceptance for revelations as damning as the stuff on these pages. And Black’s last section is a scary look at how genetics (which he calls “newgenics”) is an uncomfortably close descendant of eugenics: “Some who speak of human cloning speak of mass replication of a perfected species. That is nothing less than a return to the campaign to create a master race — but now aided by computers …” Black certainly has the evidence to back these compelling concerns. His team of 50 researchers scoured dozens of archives in four countries, generating nearly 50,000 documents. The evidence though — including the 95 pages of notes, sources and index — buries the visceral impact that is necessary for general readers to take heed of Black’s call for action. Artists, writers, musicians — take this book and present the kernels of this story in a form that will rip out the hearts of the audience. Because this story can, and should, rip out your heart.
“War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” by Edwin Black (592 pages, Four Walls Eight Windows, $27.) |
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