Darwin and Hitler

I am presently reading a book called The Modern Mind. It is basically an intellectual history of the 20th Century. I love the concept of the book. So many people have analyzed the geo-political, military, and economic history of the twentieth century, but Peter Watson was the first person I have seen to recount all of the great ideas and thinkers. Of course, almost immediately in the 20th century two of the most revolutionary ideas in centuries appeared. Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Darwin's Origin of Species. Whether you agree with the ideas or not they changed how we collectively looked at the world. It is hard think that we never even considered psychoanalysis before Freud. Try to imagine a world without psychoanalysis...it has become an integral part of how we live with each other.

We still argue about Darwin to this day. Honestly the war between creationists and evolutionists is almost out of control. For the time being I am not going to weigh in on my opinion on this subject. However, as I was reading this book, I started to see the roots of the ideology behind WW II even at the beginning of the century. Would World War II have happened had Darwin never published his book on evolution? I really do not think so. Granted anti-Semitism raged throughout Europe during the day, but hatred of the Jews was not the primary reason Hitler was able to engage in his conquest of Europe. Instead the supremacy of the Aryan race (that idea actually sprang up in France even before WW I) is what Hitler used to impassion the German people to throw their hearts into conquering Europe. The Perfect Race should reign supreme. Ironically it was the resource intensive extermination of the "lesser race" that hamstrung the German war machine.

I think that it is important to look at this for several reasons. First, WW II was not a religious war. Yes, the extermination of Jews sounds religious, but really they were after Jews as an ethnicity not a sect. WW II was the first evolutionist war. A war used to promote the "superior" species and annihilate the "inferior" species. Evolution proved to be as deadly an idea as any religious idea. It just gave humans another way to segregate themselves, and hate one another.

If you zoom out even further and look at Darwin's idea as the spark. You will see the fire that it started; a fire that engulfed the entire globe. The most costly war in human history. Has there ever been any better illustration of the power of an idea? Good, bad, or indifferent?

It is something to think about.