The Scientific Origins of National Socialism

With a new introduction by the author The Scientific Origins of National Socialism Ernst Haeckel f*_. 'ii a Daniel Gasman The Scientific Origins of National Socialism Daniel Gasman With a new introduction by the author 2004 [ 1971] 0 Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.) Contents List of Plates ix Introduction to the Transaction Edition xi Preface xxxiii Introduction: Ernst Haeckel and the Volkish Tradition xxxv 1. Ernst Haeckel and the German MonistLeague 1 2 . The Political Assumptions of Monism 31 3. Monism and Christianity 55 4• Monism, the Corporative State and Eugenics 82 5. Monism and Marxism 106 6 . Monism, Imperialism, and the FirstWorld War 126 7. Monism and National Socialism 147 Selected Bibliography 183 Index 203 List oj Plates Frontispiece E r n s t H a e c k e l a t e ig h t y : t h e v o l k is h p r o p h e t . Reproduced from the journal o f the Monist League, Das monistische Jahrhundert. Appearing between pages 8 and 9 I. A POSTER ANNOUNCING A LECTURE ON EVOLUTION TO BE DELIVERED IN BERLIN BY HAECKEL. Reproduced from Peter Klemm, Der Ketzer von Jena, Leipzig: Urania, 1968. II. A GNARLED EVOLUTIONARY TREE DRAWN BY HAECKEL. Reproduced from Peter Klemm, Der Ketzer von Jenat Leipzig: Urania, 1968. III. ILLUSTRATION OF BIZARRE BOTANICAL SPECIMENS. Reproduced from Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur, Leipzig: Verlag des Biblio- graphischen Instituts, 1899- 1904. IV. (a) A d e t a il f r o m g u s t a v e m o r e a u ’ s Galatea. Reproduced from Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961. Galatea is held in the collection o f Mr & Mrs Harold Weinstein of Chicago, to whom acknowledgement is made. (b) A SYMBOLIST WORK BY HAECKEL DRAWN IN CEYLON. Reproduced by permission of Johannes Hembleben from his book, Ernst Haeckel in Selbstzeugnissen undBilddokumenten, Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967. Ernst Haeckel at Eighty: The Volkish Prophet. Introduction to the Transaction Edition HE passage of time and the dramatic events of the twentieth century offer a retrospect on the life and career of Ernst Haeckel that could hardly have been imagined a century ago. The somber events of World War II, the rise and fall of fascism and communism, the rapid growth of modern science, and the spectacular flowering of contemporary culture all seem strik ingly remote from the nineteenth-century world that Haeckel dominated. After his death in February 1919, relatively little attention was paid to Haeckel’s memory, except for some very passionate, but ultimately guarded praise in Nazi Germany, and then, paradoxically enough, equally intense yet, in the end, decidedly wary praise in communist East Germany. Even at the present time, Haeckel, for many individuals, remains a rather elusive intellec tual and scientific figure: the popular German scientist who coined phrases like ‘ontogeny recapitulates phytogeny’ or the word ‘ecology,’ but whose politi cal and intellectual significance is indefinite or loosely associated with the materialistically and progressively inclined positivists of the late nineteenth century. When this book was first published in 1971 I proposed that insights gained from the history of science could explain more successfully than any other theoretical framework the origin and nature of Nazi ideology. Nazism, I argued, closely paralleled the teachings of Haeckel, and reflected as well many of the demands articulated in the public programs of the German Monist League, an internationally influential organization that Haeckel launched in 1906, in the years prior to World War I. Other sources of Na zism were, I pointed out, also important to bear in mind, but its ideological xi THE SCIENTIFIC ORIGINS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM nature was most clearly apparent in the way that Haeckel had formulated his idiosyncratic Weltanschauung. Thus, I suggested, the determining ideological characteristic of the Na tional Socialist State was the fact that it flaunted political and social doctrines that were allegedly derived from the established findings of modern evolu tionary science. No state or society has ever been initiated in an even re motely similar way, and it was this theoretical designation of the social realm based ostensibly on biological and scientific truth that marked German Na tional Socialism as an unprecedented episode in human history. Since 1971, discussion of the meaning of the obsessive scientific con sciousness and Social Darwinist activity of the Nazi State,1 and the related role that Ernst Haeckel played in the formulation of Nazi ideology, has grown exponentially, and the interpretation that I have advanced has received an internationally widespread and positive response. Stephen Jay Gould, for ex ample, adopted my evaluation of the National Socialist political significance of Haeckel, and the developmental biologist, Scott Gilbert, has noted the role of The Scientific Origins of National Socialism in helping to redirect the field of developmental biology (evo-devoJ in the 1970s, along with Gould’s Ontogeny and Phytogeny, a book influenced by the general philosophical and scientific evaluation of Haeckel’s work undertaken in The Scientific Origins.2 Noted historians like Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann have approv ingly written that the ‘rather undifferentiated approach towards the history of German racism...has been corrected’ in The Scientific Origins,3 and the Oxford University historian of ideas, J. W. Burrow, has based his evaluation of Haeckel in his recently published The Crisis of Reason largely on the insights that I have offered.4 Many more examples of the worldwide influence of The Scientific Origins can be readily demonstrated. However, popular interpretations of National Socialism frequently ignore the conclusions reached in The Scientific Originst and in a general sense, it is the failure to grasp fully the significance of the Haeckelian scientific origins of Nazism, and related fascisms in other countries like Italy and France, that continues to account for many of the inadequacies of recent studies of the Nazi and fascist phenomena.5 In The Nazi Dictatorship,6 for example, Ian Kershaw carefully summarized, in all their historical complexity, the main contemporary theories that seek to explain the origin and meaning of Na tional Socialism. Yet, assigning no role to the influence of science, and little to the importance of ideas, Kershaw listed hypotheses about fascism that, for xii INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION all their flair, are never completely satisfying and, over the course of time, seem to fall by the wayside in the light of evolving research: such explanations for Nazism as the uniqueness of German history; the impact of the rise of totalitarianism; the Marxist hypothesis of an assumed crisis of capitalism; the role played by German industry in supporting Hitler; fascism as an histori cally determined manifestation of the unavoidable forces of modernization, dragging Germany kicking and screaming into the twentieth century; and Nazism as a consequence of the age-old irrational and destructive pattern of German anti-Semitism. Kershaw does not seem to choose among these hypotheses and does not succeed in developing a coherent theoretical framework of his own that would account for the fascist phenomenon. Above all, he fails to single out the fundamental essence of National Socialism, its basic ‘pseudo scientific biological-eugenicist underpinnings/ as one historian has recently expressed it, echoing, at least partially, the theoretical perspective I have urged since the early 1970s.7 In other words, even though details of Nazi racial policy are provided, the theories that Kershaw selects, at best, attach too little signifi cance to the massive racial and genocidal programs that overwhelmingly domi nated Nazi state policy—scientific racial and eugenic goals that were pursued at the expense of strategies and tactics that from a rational perspective would have seemed infinitely more desirable for protecting and sustaining the Third Reich.8 The fact remains, however, that on a basic level the history of National Socialism in Germany, and fascism in other countries like Italy and France, should be viewed largely from the perspective of the scientific culture rooted in evolutionary biology that emerged under the sway of Haeckelian Monism during the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.9 National Socialism, which, superficially considered, appears to be an anti-rational movement that was highly skeptical of science, demonstrates rather a profound connection with certain heterodox traditions of scientific thought—above all, the tradition of Haeckel.10 Haeckel’s evolutionary Monism was formulated as early as the 1860s, and soon achieved great popularity as the authoritative voice of modern science. Monism’s influence extended not only to the biological and anthropological sciences, but also to a host of ideologies and social movements whose Weltanschauungs depended upon an ostensible scientific mandate for deter mining their ideas and agendas. Many of these movements were progressive, xiii THE SCIENTIFIC ORIGINS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM left-liberal, and Marxist but, at the same time, somewhat paradoxically, mysti cally oriented individuals and groups also fell under the sway of Monism, such as proponents of volkisch nationalism in Germany who desired to create a new kind of nationalist consensus by synthesizing romantic, racial, and scientific beliefs, and adepts of spiritualized

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