Request for a Skeptoid episode on Nazi pseudo-history

[Kevin R Brown]

Topic.


While some of it is amusing, when regarded as entertaining fiction, I'm pretty tired of a lot of the babbling done by conspiracy theorists about, for example, the Thule Society's grand scheme to acquire extraterrestrial fuel and/or vehicle schematics, the ties of the Nazi party to Charles Darwin & Darwin's theories, the alleged successes of Nazi 'psychic soldier' / 'super soldier' programs, etc.

The real history is much more compelling regardless, IMHO, and the fairy tales have grown just so tiresome after hearing them repeated ad nauseum by the media.

[maximara]

Topic.

While some of it is amusing, when regarded as entertaining fiction, I'm pretty tired of a lot of the babbling done by conspiracy theorists about, for example, the Thule Society's grand scheme to acquire extraterrestrial fuel and/or vehicle schematics, the ties of the Nazi party to Charles Darwin & Darwin's theories, the alleged successes of Nazi 'psychic soldier' / 'super soldier' programs, etc.

The real history is much more compelling regardless, IMHO, and the fairy tales have grown just so tiresome after hearing them repeated ad nauseum by the media.

True but part of that real history is the pseudo-history (or more accurately pseudo-prehistory) the Nazis tried to invent for themselves. That would serve as an example of how governments can corrupt the scientific process for their own political agendas.

[Paradox74]

I'm wishing for an episode on the holocaust revisionist(aka denial) movement but if Dunning wants to deal with the myths surounding the Nazis (psychic soldiers, Hitler's supposed ties to Darwing etc.) then that would be okay.

[Donal]

Well, the Nazis did try to twist Darwin's theory of evolution to justify the claim that the "Aryan race" was superior to all others.

[Jontg]

This. This this this this THIS.

[BaaBaa]

That.

[Jontg]

No, THIS.

[BobTheDonkey]

There?

[BaaBaa]

What?

[BobTheDonkey]

HuH?


(on topic: I'd also love to see a Skeptoid on any of the aforementioned areas)

[Safe-Keeper]

What? :groans, loudly: Stay on topic, please.

More seriously, I second " I'd also love to see a Skeptoid on any of the aforementioned areas".

[BaaBaa]

Seriously, I would love to hear this: the woos seem to have a corner on the more esoteric aspects of Nazism and I, for one, would like to hear some sense.

[Achán hiNidráne]

While some of it is amusing, when regarded as entertaining fiction, I'm pretty tired of a lot of the babbling done by conspiracy theorists about, for example, the Thule Society's grand scheme to acquire extraterrestrial fuel and/or vehicle schematics, the ties of the Nazi party to Charles Darwin & Darwin's theories, the alleged successes of Nazi 'psychic soldier' / 'super soldier' programs, etc.
.

You've just described the plot of a large number of the RPGs I own, especially one I'm trying to get a campaign started for (well, except the Darwin part).

[Moss]

Don't forget Wilhelm Landig's nazi pulp fiction, Hörbiger's Glacial Cosmogony and Wiligut's take on a Germanic "Krist".

[Father Dagon]

Don't forget Wilhelm Landig's nazi pulp fiction, Hörbiger's Glacial Cosmogony and Wiligut's take on a Germanic "Krist".Now we're cooking with gas! And don't forget Edmund Kiss, Julius Evola and Heather Pringle's The Master Plan (http://www.heatherpringle.com/books/master.html).

[maximara]

Well, the Nazis did try to twist Darwin's theory of evolution to justify the claim that the "Aryan race" was superior to all others.

To be fair to the Nazis you have to remember they borrowed from other rather than really make anything really news.

Spencer's "survival of the fittest" idea came out in his 1864 Principles of Biology and Darwin's half-cousin Galton came out with Inquiries into human faculty and its development 1883 inventing the very word "eugenics" in the process.

James Burke gave a very good thumbnail sketch of these and other pieces coming together to form Nazi ideology in the Day the Universe Changed episode "Fit to Rule" and the Connections^2 episode "Deja Vu".

[Kevin R Brown]

Well, the Nazis did try to twist Darwin's theory of evolution to justify the claim that the "Aryan race" was superior to all others.

...See, this is the sort of thing I mean.

Adolf Hitler himself staunchly rejected evolution via natural selection, of any sort, in Mein Kampf. Rosenberg (whom built the core framework for the Nazi racial & religious theories) was strongly influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain & Madison Grant; Goebbels's framing of the world, meanwhile, came almost exclusively from Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.

The only secularists within the upper echelons of the Third Reich were Bormann and Speer, and neither adopted any kind of social model (Darwinian or otherwise); Bormann espoused belief in whatever would win him favor with the Fuhrer, Speer was much more interested in flexing his mechanical artistry than involving himself in Nazi politics or religion.

Darwin's name appears nowhere in any of the surviving manuscripts or journals of Nazi officials.

[John Albert]

What about that story of Josef Mengele fleeing to Brazil at the end of the war and settling down as a obstetrician/pediatrician, resulting in an abnormally high incidence of twins in a certain small Brazilian town?

That's a really cool story, even though I'm sure it's total ************.

[Eligbak]

Anti-Semitism in Germany, as everyone knows, was much older than the Nazis. Like the anti-Semitism of other European countries, it has a long and infamous history reaching back into the early Middle Ages. Protestant readers who associate its origin with Medieval Catholicism and the Inquisition may be surprised to learn that in Germany, the first influential and passionate anti-Semite was Martin Luther. His solution of the German "Jewish problem" was a simple one. Drive them out of Germany. "Country and streets are open to them," he wrote. "... They are a heavy burden like a plague, pestilence, misfortune..." For Jews who refuse to leave he recommended, "that into the hands of the young strong ,Jews and Jewesses be placed flails, axes, mattocks, travels, distaffs, and spindles, and they be made to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their noses as it is put upon the shoulders of the children of Adam." He further suggested, "that their synagogues or schools be set on fire ... that their houses be broken up and destroyed... and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies ... in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us."
From: Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Dover, 1957)

In the same chapter (Apologists for Hate), Gardner also explains the Gobineau-Fichte ideology of the "Nordic super-race".
I found the book a great read, and (psst) there's an e-Book version. It includes funny stuff like the Hohlweltlehre, or Hollow Earth theory. All well-sourced and easy to follow which creative individual copied from whom.