Abstract
Hitler’s sexual morality aimed not only at increasing the German population, but also improving its biological quality. As we have seen, even the drive for higher birthrates was motivated by the belief that it would biologically elevate the German people by begetting more geniuses and superior individuals. The push for higher birthrates, eugenics, and racial purity were all part of the program to biologically reinvigorate the German people. As Walter Gross explained in the foreword to Hitler’s pamphlet Volk und Rasse (an excerpt from Mein Kampf), Nazism was tackling three major manifestations of racial decline: the sinking birthrate, degeneration through hereditary illness, and racial mixture.1
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Notes
Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975), 62.
Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 249
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Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, and Kurt Bayertz. Rasse, Blut, und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 502–503.
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© 2009 Richard Weikart
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Weikart, R. (2009). Controlling Reproduction to Improve the Human Species. In: Hitler’s Ethic. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623989_8
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