War Against the Weak

822 Pages·2013·7.23 MB·English

by  Black, Edwin

MOST CHILLING. War Against the Weak is filled with tale after tale
of arrogance, ignorance, and cruelty—accounts that Black wisely allows
the eugenicists to relate in their own words … Perhaps most chilling,
though, were the ways in which American eugenicists influenced their
German counterparts.
Carl Zimmer, Discovery
HAIR-RAISER AND EYE-OPENER. A hair-raiser and an eye-opener
… contains details so vivid and horrid that one can hardly believe them
or bear to read them … This is an important book, filled with little-
known facts about how some of our most esteemed institutions and
professionals funded and practiced very bad science, if it was science at
all, and how this pseudoscience permeated much of the world’s thinking
and led to the atrocities of a world war.
Nancy Schapiro, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
SENSATIONAL. At the beginning of the last century, American
scientists, politicians, and livestock breeders decided to “create a superior
Nordic race.” Sixty thousand men and women, most of them poor or of
color, underwent compulsory sterilization—an idea that stimulated the
Nazi’s eugenics program. The full extent of this medical crime has been
described by Black in this sensational book.
Paul Ranier, Der Spiegel
FIERCE. A PRODIGIOUS FEAT OF REPORTING . War Against the
Weak offers a fierce, compelling, account of how American ideas helped
inspire—if that’s the right word—Hitler’s Reich … War Against the
Weak is well told and extraordinarily sad. It represents a prodigious feat
of reporting, as Black has trolled every archive and read every letter. A
very persuasive book.
David Plotz, Mother Jones Magazine
SHOCKING AND GRIPPING. An impressive job and the resulting
story is at once shocking and gripping.
Publishers Weekly in a Starred Review
IMPRESSIVE. Impressive, probably the history of eugenics for the
foreseeable future.
Ray Olson, Booklist
WELL-DOCUMENTED. COMPREHENSIVE. An important, well-
documented, comprehensive story, not known to most Americans, about a
perversion of the pursuit of knowledge in the interest of race and social
superiority.
Steve Courtney, Hartford Courant
CHILLING AND THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED. Chilling and
thoroughly researched … it is a book whose message must be made
known … for those who say “It can’t happen here.”
Mark Lewis, Tampa Tribune
The Books of Edwin Black
www.edwinblack.com
British Petroleum and
Banking on Baghdad
The Redline Agreement
Inside Iraq’s 7,000 Year History of
The West’s Secret Pact to Get
War, Profit, and Conflict
Mideast Oil
www.bankingonbaghdad.com
www.redlineagreement.com
2004
2011
The Farhud War Against the Weak
Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance Eugenics and America’s Campaign to
in the Holocaust Create a Master Race
www.farhudbook.com www.waragainsttheweak.com
2010 2003, 2012
IBM and the Holocaust
Nazi Nexus The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi
America’s Corporate Connections Germany
To Hitler’s Holocaust and America’s Most Powerful
www.nazinexus.com Corporation
2009 www.ibmandtheholocaust.com
2001, 2012
The Plan
The Transfer Agreement
How to Rescue Society When the
The Dramatic Story of the Pact
Oil
Between
Stops—or the Day Before
the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
www.planforoilcrisis.com
www.transferagreement.com
2008
1984, 2001, and 2009
Internal Combustion
How Corporations and
Format C:
Governments
A Novel
Addicted the World to Oil and
www.formatnovel.com
Derailed the Alternatives
1999
www.internalcombustionbook.com
2006

Illustrations
Title page. Nazi eugenicist Ernst Rüdin, president of the International
Federation of Eugenic Organizations and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.
Dedication. Nazi eugenicist Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer examining
the eyes of twins. His assistant, Josef Mengele, continued the
experiments at Auschwitz.
Opposite Table of Contents. Nazi eugenicist Dr. Otmar Freiherr von
Verschuer examining twins for height.
Part One. First Race Betterment Conference Banquet, held in Battle
Creek, Michigan, in 1914.
Part Two. Imprisoned children following eugenic experiments at
Auschwitz.
Part Three. Eugenics Record Office files.
Copyright © 2003, 2012 Edwin Black
Second paperback edition 2012
Printed and published in the United States
Dialog Press, Washington, DC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
database, or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any
means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover art: Tallgrass Studios, Nancy Percich and Marcia Escobosa
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http://www.waragainsttheweak.com. Web site addresses (URLs) were
accurate as of press time. Neither the author nor the publisher is
responsible for URLs that have expired or moved since the manuscript
was prepared.
The Library of Congress cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Black, Edwin
War against the weak : eugenics and America’s campaign to create a
master race / by Edwin Black.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 1-56858-258-7 (hardcover)
1. Eugenics—United States—History 2. Sterilization (Birth Control)—
United States. 3. Human reproduction—government policy—United
States. 4. United States—Social policy. 5. United States—Moral
conditions. I. Title.
HQ755.5.U5B53 2003
363.9’7—dc21 2003048857
ISBN 978-0-914153-29-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-914153-30-6 (ebook)
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