In the novel White Noise, Jack Gladney is a professor of Hitler Studies. Hitler is the point of fascination for Jack and he is drawn to the fact that Hitler is synonymous with the command of death. Hitler was able to manipulate crowds into thinking that his mass slaughtering was justified, which allowed him to carryout genocide and experiments on people he considered lesser beings.
The Holocaust, brought on by Hitler, has been viewed, by a majority of people, as a mass genocide of a group of people in order to control the human race. Other people, such as Neo-Nazis, believe that Hitler’s holocaust was just a mass science experiment. In the book Ethics and Extermination by Michael Burleigh discusses both the views of the Neo-Nazis and the views of the Left-Sided Germans and how they viewed the Holocaust. On pg. 172, Aly and Heim state that “ The destruction of the socioeconomic existence of Polish Jews did not spring from the minds of racist, but from those of respected Hanceatic economists...This mass extermination [of the Jews] was not contrary to the Mein hold concept of industrialization, but rather an integral part of it, while conversely those who practiced extermination used just such scientific lines of argument to invest their activities with higher meaning.” Summed up, this states that the reason for Hitler’s creation of the Holocaust was not to get rid of an entire race, but instead to do research for scientific reasons. The counter argument, and a more popular belief, is that “ ‘science; switched its concern to the enduring supra mortal, collective gene pool, abandoning the impossible dream of mass well-being in favor of the easier goal of mass annihilation” (p. 180) This argument is that the Holocaust took place because Hitler and the Neo-Nazis wanted to create a genocide, and rid the earth of the Jewish people, and hopefully gain control of the human race.
To gain control of the human race, one must learn how to manipulate the biological processes in one’s own favor. To learn how to do this, many unorthodox experiments were preformed on prisoners in concentration camps. The prisoners obviously had no choice in whether or not they would participate in the experiments and were not informed on the procedures being done to their body. There was a vast array of experiments preformed including investigations on Hypothermia, genetics, sterilization, surgery and twin research. The majority of the subjects ended up were dead, disfigured or disabled due to the experimentation.
What is interesting is that most of these experiments were done to improve human life. For example in the freezing experiments simulated the conditions the armies faces on the Eastern Front. The first test we run to see how low a person’s body temperature could be lowered before becoming unconscious or dying (25 degrees Celsius). Then, after obtaining these results, attention turned towards how to revive a frozen person. Many cruel tests were preformed to determine the best method of revival, but these experiments proved successful in not only reviving a frozen victim but also in expanding our knowledge of the human body functions.
The bettering of the human race did not stop at manipulation after birth. Hitler also toyed with the idea of Eugenics. The concept of eugenics existed prior to the second world war and had strong support (especially among leading intellectuals) in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, but it was Nazi Germany that took the concept to its horrific logical conclusion: the extermination of all members of society not considered racially fit. Before 1939 most eugenists didn't support the killing of "inferior" genetic specimens, but rather a mandatory sterilization, or, failing that, a forced war between nations with armies consisting of the elderly and genetically inferior. Most eugenists considered war to be the ultimate detriment to racial advancement: the strong, physically able members of society died while the weak remained behind to reproduce and pass on their genes. Eugenics was therefore declared the ultimate policy of peace, a notion that Hitler himself supported. With the outbreak of the second world war sterilization was no longer viewed as sufficient to counteract the loss in prime racial stock; extermination became widespread, and the pool of the exterminated grew larger. People accused of being "alcoholics" were placed on the list, as were single mothers and people suffering from non-permanent mental distress. In addition the process for conviction became lack; a judge was not required to even examine a person before determining whether or not they deserved death.
The implementation of eugenics in Nazi Germany involved a great deal of propaganda. By 1939 the rationalization emerged that not only was extermination of racially inferior people good for the nation as a whole, but actually merciful to those killed: the state should mercifully end all lives that were "not worth living". The other main justification for the killing was the death of Germany's "best" as soliders: if the best had to die for their country, the reasoning went, there was no reason the lesser civilians should not also make that sacrifice. By 1939 the proganda machine was in full force convincing its population of these ideas. Classroom teachers instructed their students to draw their family trees, with the intent of finding and pruning "weak limbs" of the tree. Nazi films, produced by the state, depicting the mentally handicapped as subhuman beasts were played constantly. Tours were given of mental asylums by prominent eugenists, with the strong implication that they were a burden on the racial purity of the German people. Over six thousand future SS members went on these tours, with many of them concluding their tour by suggesting that machine guns should be set up in front of the asylum entrance, in order to best mow down the patients. The propaganda campaign was effective; in a 1939 survey 73% of parents said they would consent to the killing of their own child if it was proved to be mentally handicapped.
The presence of science during the Holocaust period obvious proved to be very influential in the acts carried out among the victims. Maybe science was used as an excuse to dish out hatred, or perhaps the bases of many actions was, indeed, for scientific exploration. Regardless of the motives, the truth still remains that the experiments and executions on the victims of the Holocaust were cruel and coldhearted. Still, it is interesting to hypothesized that maybe the Nazis actually believed that they were doing the world an academic and scientific favor.
Burleigh, Michael. Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.
Szöllösi-Janze, Margit. Science in the Third Reich. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Print.
Burleigh, Michael. Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 160-185. Print.
