Schindler's List and Hitler's List

[The idea]

Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

[aerocontrols]

Originally posted by The idea
Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here, but the gist of it seems to be "why wasn't Hitler rational about his hatred". If so, the answer seems to be self-evident.

[CapelDodger]

Originally posted by The idea
Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people? I think we can all agree that the racial theories that were so much the rage in the 19th and early 20thCE were irrational. But there is something peculiarly odd about the Nazi idea that Germans were the best race, but the Jews had been getting the better of them for centuries. If the Jews were that successful, surely they were the "better" race? Any convinced German eugenicist should have topped himself for the benefit of the species. Sadly, they didn't.

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by CapelDodger
I think we can all agree that the racial theories that were so much the rage in the 19th and early 20thCE were irrational. But there is something peculiarly odd about the Nazi idea that Germans were the best race, but the Jews had been getting the better of them for centuries. If the Jews were that successful, surely they were the "better" race? Any convinced German eugenicist should have topped himself for the benefit of the species. Sadly, they didn't.

Yeah, but they were better by being sneaky and using good Aryian virtues against them. In an "honest" competition the Ayrians would win every time.

[BPSCG]

Rational racism. What a concept.

Don't look for great feats of logic from Hitler. Read an excerpt from Mein Kampf when I was in college, where the genius states that just as it is against nature for a fox to mate with a goose, it is against nature for an arayan to mate with another race...

[csense]

Originally posted by The idea
Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce.


Why would you even propose this as a supposition, since it isn't even a possibility.

These are the very people that Hitler went after first, and the very people that anyone else in Hitler's place would go after and eliminate first, since they are the greatest threat, obviously.

[csense]

Originally posted by The idea
Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?


If, even for a moment, you think that Schindler's list, or his motivations, had anything at all to do with eugenics, in any way whatsoever that one can think of in their infinite imagination....then you have just aswered why I actually had to read your post many times over, because, to be perfectly honest with you, I just couldn't believe what I was reading.

[RandFan]

Originally posted by The idea
Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people? It is demonstrable that in the case of the Jews Hitler was not at all interesested in eugenics. He simply wanted them gone. Yes he saw them as inferior but eugenics would not have solved the precived problem that Hitler had about the Jews.

That being said, you have given a valid hypothetical?

If Hitler did as you said wouldn't his list have been larger than Schindlers? Perahps, who cares?

[TragicMonkey]

I never understood where the Nazis got "Aryan" from. I mean, they killed a bunch of gypsies. Didn't they know that gypsies were originally from northern India, and thus more Aryan than a bunch of Germans could be?

[csense]

It's not even a valid hypothetical in it's basic form.

Schindler's intent was to save people from Hitler.
How can Hitler save people from himself.

[The idea]

Originally posted by csense
It's not even a valid hypothetical in it's basic form.

Schindler's intent was to save people from Hitler.
How can Hitler save people from himself.
When did the concept of self-control become invalid?

[RandFan]

Originally posted by csense
It's not even a valid hypothetical in it's basic form.

Schindler's intent was to save people from Hitler.
How can Hitler save people from himself. Possibly. I'm not certain what his meaning is. I'm not certain that idea is certain.

[csense]

Originally posted by The idea
When did the concept of self-control become invalid?


Self control?!?

You might want to start with the concepts malevolence and benevolence, and tell me why they are compatible, rather than conflictual.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by The idea
Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

What makes you such a jerk and you feel compelled to keep demonstrating your idiocy in this forum? Is it something in your diet?

[karl]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
I never understood where the Nazis got "Aryan" from. I mean, they killed a bunch of gypsies. Didn't they know that gypsies were originally from northern India, and thus more Aryan than a bunch of Germans could be?

The Nazis read a little too much into the relationship between language and race. Of all the people speaking Indo-European languages, the North Germanic tribe was considered the "purest" branch of Indo-European descendants, and thus the only one worthy of being called "Aryan." (If I wanted to start a flame war, I guess I could draw a parallel to the way some people use the word "American" today. ;))

[geni]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
I never understood where the Nazis got "Aryan" from. I mean, they killed a bunch of gypsies. Didn't they know that gypsies were originally from northern India, and thus more Aryan than a bunch of Germans could be?

The nazis did notice that problem. They delt with it by claiming that the romany had had thier gentic stock or whatver poluted by sourounding cultures.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by geni
The nazis did notice that problem. They delt with it by claiming that the romany had had thier gentic stock or whatver poluted by sourounding cultures.

Lol. That's pretty rich coming from Germans, what with all those Gepids, Goths, Vandals, Angles, Jutes, Lombards, Huns, and others passing through Germany over the years.

[The idea]

Originally posted by csense
These are the very people that Hitler went after first, and the very people that anyone else in Hitler's place would go after and eliminate first, since they are the greatest threat, obviously.
The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat?

[csense]

Originally posted by The idea
The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat?

...sigh

Well, look it....I don't really know you well enough to draw any conclusions about your motivations concerning this thread, so I'm going to assume that your heart is in the right place. Your mind however, is another story, and suffice it to say that my advice to you is, read a little history concerning this subject. In the long run, it's better for you, me, and everyone else.

[The idea]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
What makes you such a jerk and you feel compelled to keep demonstrating your idiocy in this forum?
You wait until after I've made over a thousand posts to ask that question? You're not much help.

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Is it something in your diet?
Isn't it much more likely for idiocy to be caused by genetics than for it to be caused by diet? Now, suppose the smartest two percent of the posters here were selected to live and reproduce ...

[RandFan]

Originally posted by The idea
The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat? idea, the question is nonsensical in context with Hitler's irrational fear and hatred of the Jews. You are trying to insert logic where it won't fit.

Hitler believed that Jews were genetically inferior. Nothing in that belief held that Jews could be made superior through selective breeding.

On the contrary, ANY Jewish blood was reason to find an individual inferior. Hitler didn't test for ability and intelligence as far as survival goes. Some were kept some for labor free labor purposes. He didn't care about breeding them. In fact he destroyed many gifted and highly intelligent people because of his irrational fear.

Trying to make sense from such madness is a waste of time.

[Crossbow]

Originally posted by The idea
The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat?

Hitler viewed all Jews (not just 2% of the Jewish population, but 100% of the Jewish population) as a threat to himself and Germany and therefore felt completely justified in all of his efforts to rid Europe of all Jewish people via legal discrimination, to forced emmigration, to genocide.

His hatred and fear of all Jews was quite evident and legion; for example, this is just one of the many anti-Jewish passages from Mein Kampf:

"The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end...spying on the unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce.....he wants to contaminate her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the Jews might dominate."

[LW]

Originally posted by The idea
Why didn't Hitler make a list?

He made many lists. Getting on his list was not a good thing for survival, though.

Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

I hope you are not under the misbelief that Hitler knew about and approved of Shindler's list. Hitler wanted to kill all Jews. (Well, at least in the end he did, earlier he pondered about just sending them somewhere far away). No exceptions.

However, Hitler was also in a great shortage of workers. This need was so pressing that he could be persuaded to let a portion of them to work in the war industry. Even then the main objective was never to produce lots of good work but to work the Jews to death.

Schindler's list basically said that "these Jews have specialized industrial skills so they are difficult to replace and thus still more valuable living than dead." (BTW, the reason why he is a hero is that he lied in the list. Most of those in the list were not highly-trained workers and if this had been found out by the Nazi officials he would have ended in a concentration camp himself).

The Nazi officials never thought that the Jews in the list would be left alive at the end. Only that killing them "just now" would be counterproductive. Had Germans won the war, none of them would have survived.

[joesixpack]

This question is so weird. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be asking "If Hitler had decided NOT to kill EVERY SINGLE jew he could get his (metaphorical) hands on, then would he have killed as many as he did?"

I guess the answer would be that, no, he wouldn't have killed, um, excuse me, MURDERD as many as he actually did.

My question to you is, would that have redeemed him in some way? I'm pretty sure that's not what you're suggesting, but it sortta' sounds that way.

[The idea]

Originally posted by joesixpack
My question to you is: would that have redeemed him in some way?
No. However, you can't say that there's no significant difference between sparing the smartest 2% and not sparing the smartest 2% unless you are also going to say that Schindler's list itself had no significance.

If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

[Beady]

I'm going to hate myself for this, but...

Originally posted by The idea
If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

Hitler's version of eugenics demanded the extermination of any factor which polluted the Aryans. He saw the Jews as the worst pollutants. He therefore had no interest in improving the genetic stock of the Jews, he wanted them completely removed from the face of the planet. He was not interested in preserving a remnant for academic study or other purposes. He wanted them gone.

Try this for an analogy: Your house is infested with roaches. Your interest is in exterminating them. You want to eradicate them, you do not want to improve or nurture them because that would only make them more difficult to get rid of. You know that there are going to be survivors after each time you call the exterminator, but that does not make you think that maybe it's time to start learning to live with the little @%&*!s. You keep on indiscriminately killing them, and keep on calling the exterminator, dreaming of the day when they are all dead, never to be seen again.

Schindler, from Hitler's POV, was a human who thought it wrong to kill cockroaches. He liked cockroaches, and wanted to keep them in his world.

My apologies for any offense the analogy may have caused. I suppose, though, that it's understandable that someone so removed in time from the Holocaust as "The Idea" obviously is would have trouble understanding the Nazis' mindset. Face it, even for us older farts, who either experienced it first-hand or directly from the survivors and other participants, it's not easy to understand a hatred so consuming that it loses all passion.and simply becomes an accepted way of life.

[Skeptic]

Er, since Hitler wanted to destroy the jews, since he considered their very existence as bad, it would not make sense for him to try and save any one of them. And in any case it would not make sense for him to deliberately save the smartest--and therefore, from his point his view, the most dangerous--jews.

But again, the question is weird. You are asking, in effect, "why wasn't Hitler more rational in his genocidal hatered?". That's a question that answers itself, doesn't it?

[joesixpack]

No. However, you can't say that there's no significant difference between sparing the smartest 2% and not sparing the smartest 2% unless you are also going to say that Schindler's list itself had no significance. Regardless of which 2% you save, you've still murdered the other 98%. It's not important WHICH 2% you save, so yeah, I say there is no significant difference, and Schindlers list was significant in that it saved anyone.

[The idea]

Originally posted by joesixpack
Regardless of which 2% you save, you've still murdered the other 98%. It's not important WHICH 2% you save, so yeah, I say there is no significant difference, and Schindlers list was significant in that it saved anyone.
The question of which 2% would have been saved is a question of what kind of eugenics would have been applied. If we are comparing eugenics to no eugenics then we are comparing something like an additional 2% (i.e. 2% more than the random survivors) to an additional 0%.

[Beady]

Originally posted by The idea
The question of which 2% would have been saved is a question of what kind of eugenics would have been applied. If we are comparing eugenics to no eugenics then we are comparing something like an additional 2% (i.e. 2% more than the random survivors) to an additional 0%.

Don't you get it? We're not talking eugenics, we're talking extermination, eradication, and genocide. The goal of the Final Solution was the complete erasure of an entire race.

[Soapy Sam]

idea- Have you considered the obvious answer, namely that Adolf Hitler was a screaming nutjob who was rational about very little?

[Flo]

Originally posted by The idea
If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

Hitler was in favor of eugenics only for the "superior" races (i.e. breeding a super-duper-superior race), and that included eliminating all possible "corrupting influences". His plan didn't allow for any survivors among those he had singled out as such, be them Jews, Roms, homosexuals, mentally or physically handicapped, etc. The only reason there actually were survivors had nothing to do with his choice, but all with the fact that his dream of a "thousand years reich" was thwarted earlier than he had predicted. In his (and his henchmen) mind, he had all the time in the world to eliminate all Jews and others undesirable while taking advantage of free labor on the way.

[Psi Baba]

The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done). In fact, they began to worry about what they might be creating by selecting those fit for work and exterminating the unfit. In Part III of the Wansee Protocol, Eichmann offered this "solution":
Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction.

The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival (Witness the experience of history.)

[Beady]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done).

The Idea apparently lost interest in this conversation when he couldn't find a single person to agree with him.

My only regret is that you didn't join in earlier.

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by Beady
The Idea apparently lost interest in this conversation when he couldn't find a single person to agree with him.

My only regret is that you didn't join in earlier.
Yeah, I wish I had seen it before now, but his OP was a little confusing. I wasn't even sure what he was getting at until I read some of the subequent posts. I'm not sure if he even knows what he was trying to say.

[The idea]

Originally posted by Beady
Try this for an analogy: Your house is infested with roaches. Your interest is in exterminating them. You want to eradicate them, you do not want to improve or nurture them because that would only make them more difficult to get rid of. [...]

If we stop talking about roaches and start talking about people, then won't we find that the top 2% are more likely, rather than less likely, to be accepted into other countries and therefore more likely to be able to leave?

Originally posted by Beady
You keep on indiscriminately killing them, and keep on calling the exterminator, dreaming of the day when they are all dead, never to be seen again.

When that day arrives, is there a danger of finding out that your clean, quiet tenant, who rents a room in your house actually had a grandparent who was a roach?

[The idea]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done). In fact, they began to worry about what they might be creating by selecting those fit for work and exterminating the unfit.

In Part III of the Wansee Protocol, Eichmann offered this "solution":

"Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction.

"The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival (Witness the experience of history.)"
You have done good work in gathering this information! :)

Perhaps I should have put, at the beginning of my questions, a preamble along the following lines: "If the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics...." I did not intend to claim that the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics. I was raising a question that arises if we take such a claim seriously.

In the past I have occasionally attempted to make conversation by suggesting that there might be good public policies that could be devised to have, over the long term, a eugenic effect. People have reacted in a hostile way and mentioned the Holocaust. Who were these people? Isn't this just anecdotal evidence?

Is there an easy way to bring Eichmann's words to the attention of the people who wrote the following?

The final result of the Nazi eugenics program was the Holocaust, which claimed six million lives.

Source: http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/engineering_evolution.htm

The Eugenics movement, which aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human race through selective breeding, was the forerunner of the Holocaust.

Source:
http://www.humanitas-international.org/holocaust/eugenics.htm

Smith, J. David. The Eugenic Assault on America: Scenes in Red, White and Black. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1993.
114 p.
[...] Smith chronicles these events and legislation, holding that "the issue of eugenics as potential genocide is even today not dead."

Source:
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/publications/scopenotes/sn28.htm

The eugenics movement had its logical conclusion in the death camps of the Third Reich.

Source:
http://www.hli.org/sr_7_2004.html

[...] the Final Solution appears in hindsight to have been the logical conclusion of a chain of events that began with the popular acceptance of eugenics theories [...]

Source:
http://www.chaos.net.nz/articles/eugenics.html

The Third Reich’s racial laws were profoundly influenced by American eugenics philosophy and legislation. In turn, the eugenics movement in Germany gave rise to the "T-4" euthanasia program, which was the beginning of and the operational foundation of Nazi genocide.

Source:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f032.html

[Zep]

Originally posted by The idea
Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people? Oh but Hitler DID have a list. It was a fairly short one, though, but quite encompassing: "All the Jews". But not in his own diary...

The "Final Solution", meaning extermination, was not persued actively until the Wansee conference in 1941. Before that, it appears the prefered solution was forced emmigration (e.g. the Madagascar Plan). And even when the decision was made at Wansee, Hitler made sure that his own name and/or signature was not on any "orders". It seemed to be more of a case of "the Fuhrer's wish" being enacted.

Really, I'd suggest you go take a better and longer look at this part of modern history. It is documented out the wazoo with pertinent details which are particularly easy to find, even on the Internet.

[The idea]

Originally posted by Flo
In his (and his henchmen) mind, he had all the time in the world to eliminate all Jews and others undesirable while taking advantage of free labor on the way.
Then why didn't he simply establish an income tax for Jews only, starting at one percent of income and increasing, every year, by one percent?

[Flo]

Originally posted by The idea
Then why didn't he simply establish an income tax for Jews only, starting at one percent of income and increasing, every year, by one percent?

and why didn't he wait until space travel was invented and he could send them all on the moon ? :rolleyes:


Are you dense or are you "en train de faire l'âne pour avoir du son" ?

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by The idea
You have done good work in gathering this information! :)

Perhaps I should have put, at the beginning of my questions, a preamble along the following lines: "If the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics...." I did not intend to claim that the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics. I was raising a question that arises if we take such a claim seriously.

In the past I have occasionally attempted to make conversation by suggesting that there might be good public policies that could be devised to have, over the long term, a eugenic effect. People have reacted in a hostile way and mentioned the Holocaust. Who were these people? Isn't this just anecdotal evidence?

Thanks. Yes, your OP was a bit unclear. You might have said, "Some people claim that..." or "When eugenics is mentioned, many people try to link it to the Holocaust." Hitler's attempts at eugenics began with the T-4 program which was an attempt to apply eugenics to the German people by exterminating the mentally and physically disabled, the physically deformed, and anyone else who was believed genetically inferior. Although there may have been some overlap or blending of policies and rationale, the attempts at genocide against the Jewish people had less to do with eugenics (unless one wants to believe Hitler was trying to apply a eugenics policy to the whole world by eliminating what he considered to be an inferior race) than it did with hatred, plain and simple. Nevertheless, the Holocaust makes it plain for all to see where eugenics, at its most extreme, can lead.

People react to eugenics with hostility because any kind of eugenics plan always lead to issues of, "Who sets the policies? Who makes the decisions? How far will it be taken? What evidence is there that the science is even valid?" Applied eugenics flies in the face of generally accepted ideals regarding humanity and liberty.