From Darwin To Hitler - Academic Reception

Academic Reception

Academic reviewers are critical of the book citing Weikart's selective use of primary sources and ignoring a range of developments that shaped Nazi ideology. In 2004, Sander Gliboff, professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, criticized the work writing that "It is dismaying to see such opinions being passed off as results of scholarly research." In 2005, Andrew Zimmerman, a professor of German history, reviewed it in the American Historical Review, writing "Weikart presents an image of Darwinism at once both too narrow and too broad." Zimmerman wrote:

The German Darwinians who are the focus of the book appear only as advocates of eugenics, racism, and imperialism, although presumably these policies were informed by a broader intellectual project. At the same time, German anthropologists, who opposed Darwinism before the turn of the century (as a doctrine possessing no more empirical foundation than revealed religion does), are lumped with Darwinists, since these anthropologists also supported imperialism and racist hierarchies.

Weikart replied to Zimmerman's criticism with a letter to the editor to which Zimmerman offered a rebuttal saying Weikart's work "is anachronistic, projecting present‐day theocratic agendas onto the history of science in Imperial Germany."

Nils Roll-Hansen, historian and philosopher of 19th and 20th century biology at University of Oslo, also reviewed the work in 2005 and was critical of it in a review published by Isis calling it "selective" and containing "insufficient attention to historical change—leaving out political, social, and economic factors as well as the role of new knowledge in genetics-make his overall argument unconvincing." Jonathan Judaken, professor of History at University of Memphis, wrote that while it is a "significant study," he "fails to follow the rich nuances of the discourse/practices and institutions that have preoccupied the contemporary generation of intellectual historians, who have paid attention to the continuities and ruptures within systems of thought. So his presentation of racism, for example, reiterates a rationale that does not stand up to the critical scrutiny of intellectual history." Larry Arnhart, a professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University wrote "Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism."

Also in 2005, science historian Paul Lawrence Farber wrote in the Journal of the History of Biology that "Like other attempts to tar Darwin with all of the problems of modernity, Weikart's suffers from conceptual flaws that detract from his book, which contains some interesting material on the German eugenics movement, popular Darwinism in Germany, and German evolutionary ethics." He concluded "Weikart's book, unfortunately, is likely to spawn more urban myths about Darwin that will have to be addressed."

In 2006, Robert J. Richards, historian of Darwin and eugenics at University of Chicago, wrote "It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis." Richards more pointedly concluded "Hitler was not a Darwinian" and "calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution." Richards explained, "There's not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin," and "Some of the biggest influences on Hitler's anti-Semitism were opposed to evolution, such as British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose racial theory became incorporated into Nazi doctrine."

Similarly, historian Marius Turda's review asks why Weikart's book did not focus on "some authors who actually are credited with influencing Hitler, such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, the Viennese Aryan racist who formulated the doctrine of Ariosophy, or Guido von List, another Viennese occult racist, or Josef Reimer, author of A Pan-German Germany (1905) (whom Weikart discusses cursorily)."

Also in a review that same year Helmut Walser Smith of Vanderbilt University writes that the book's "larger argument remains too narrowly conceived," as elements of Nazism, including "nationalism and anti-Sermitism make cameo appearances, for example, but their power is hardly gauged." He concludes saying its "a thesis on a tight rope," which is "convincing as long as one does not look down."

In 2006, Ann Taylor Allen, a professor of German history at the University of Louisville, reviewed Weikart's book for The Journal of Modern History. She explained that Weikart's talk about "Darwinism" is not based on any careful reading of Darwin himself but on vague ideas by a variety of people who presented themselves as "Darwinian." Moreover, fundamental elements of Nazism like anti-Semitism cannot be attributed to Darwinism since they predate evolutionary theory. Allen concluded:

This picture of the Holocaust as the outcome of a 'culture war' between religion and science leads to serious distortions on both sides. The 'Judeo-Christian' worldview is unproblematically associated here with many beliefs — such as opposition to birth control, legalized abortion, and assisted suicide — that many believing Christians and Jews would reject. And 'Darwinism' is equated with a hodgepodge of ideas about race, politics, and social issues. If all these ideas were to fall into well-deserved obsolescence, this would in no way detract from the validity of Darwin's contributions to modern biological science. Neither religion nor science is well served by this oversimplified view of their complex history.

In 2007, Hector Avalos, a professor of Religious Studies, wrote an essay "exposing the historical flaws found in the work of Weikart" and argued "that the defense of genocide, infanticide and "eugenics" by creationists actually has a very venerable and lengthy tradition that precedes Darwin." In a May 2008 debate with Weikart, Avalos criticized Weikart's quoting of Darwin. Weikart states in his book:

Darwin clearly believed that the struggle for existence among humans would result in racial extermination. In Descent of Man he asserted, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

Avalos said that the quote is often "misrepresented" in creationist literature, and that Darwin was reporting and criticizing the extermination of people at a time of colonial expansion, rather than promoting it. According to talk.origins, this is a common creationist quote mine. In fact, in the passage "there is nothing in Darwin's words to support (and much in his life to contradict) any claim that Darwin wanted the "lower" or "savage races" to be exterminated. He was merely noting what appeared to him to be factual, based in no small part on the evidence of a European binge of imperialism and colonial conquest during his lifetime." Indeed, the historical concept of race has changed from "race" referring to "variety" and only later did it shift in the 19th and 20th centuries to mean genetically divergent populations within the same species. Darwin's passage, in full context, reads:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

In 2009, historian Peter J. Bowler of Queen's University wrote in Notes and Records of the Royal Society that Weikart's book reflects a "simple blame game in which (for example) Darwin and Haeckel are accused of paving the way for Nazism," and criticized him and others for associating Darwin "with distasteful social policies" using a "remarkably simple-minded approach".

Weikart has posted responses to four reviews on his webpage.

Besides criticisms from historians, Weikart was criticized by Jeff Schloss, professor at Westmont College and former Discovery Institute fellow, in the Christian American Scientific Affiliation's publication regarding the Expelled film. Schloss wrote that the "ideas that are attributed to Darwin (such as natural selection makes might right in social policy) were actually not advocated but repudiated by Darwin and his immediate colleagues." Weikart wrote a response.