History in the Making
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper analyzes the American eugenics movement’s significant role in shaping Nazi policies, by providing institutional models, ideological inspiration, scientific justification, and legal frameworks that the Third Reich expanded on to pursue its racial purification goals. First, this article traces how the eugenic movement developed from Francis Galtons’s theories to fully established organizations and independent groups such as the Eugenics Record Office and the American Eugenics Society. The paper further examines figures like Charles B. Davenport and Harry Laughlin, who influenced American sterilization laws and immigration restrictions, as well as Ernst Rubin, Eugen Fischer, and Fitz Lenz German, racial hygienists who drew on American examples of eugenics while adapting it to a more authoritarian state. Using scholarly works by Stefan Kuhl, Robert Proctor, Henry Freidlander, Garland Allen, and others, alongside legal cases and primary sources such as Mein Kampf, this paper engages the ongoing historiographical debate over whether Nazi eugenics was uniquely German or developed through a transnational exchange.
Recommended Citation
O’Connor, Dylan and Vazquez, Elizabeth
(2026)
"The Connection: American Influence on Nazi Racial Hygiene,"
History in the Making: Vol. 19, Article 8.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol19/iss1/8