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Richard Weikart is a professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus. His book under review here, “From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany” is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book sellers.

This book attempts, as its title states, to show that a belief in Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection was the root cause of the Holocaust and the Nazi eugenics program of the mid-twentieth century. Professor Weikart spends a great deal of his book examining the work of German naturalist Ernst Haeckel and uses Haeckel as his primary link between the Nazi agenda and the work of Charles Darwin.

In the opening pages of this book, Professor Weikart thanks a subsidiary of the Discovery Institute for funding his research. What is ironic is that the Discovery Institute itself was funded with support from holocaust revisionist R. John Rushdoony‘s foundation. A better title for this book may have been: “From Denying the Holocaust to Exploiting Misconceptions about the Holocaust.”

Weikart’s foil throughout the book is primarily the work and influence of a German Lamarckian naturalist named Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel was a contemporary and rival of Charles Darwin. Darwin himself devoted much of his “Origin of Species” to debunking Lamarckism, which was then the prevailing view of evolution. Somehow Weikart misses this simple fact and the plain distinction between the two competing outlooks in his research.

I was also left amazed that a book which claims to be examining the influence of Darwinism on German science and culture in the early 20th Century overlooks every single German Darwinist of that time period. There is no mention of the most influential Darwinians such as Janensch, Rensch, Gross and Stromer. And, the most influential Darwinist since Darwin himself, Ernst Mayr, doesn’t get a mention either.

Perhaps the single most important Darwinist of the Twentieth Century was Ernst Mayr. Mayr lived from 1904 – 2005. His most important work (Systematics and the Origin of Species, From the Viewpoint of a Zoologist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-86250-3) was published in 1942 at the height of Nazi power. Yet Mayr was persecuted by the Nazis and was employed by a Jewish patron (the Rothchilds). Ernst Stromer suffered the loss of his entire collection of dinosaur fossils to confiscation by the Nazis and ultimately saw their destruction in an Allied bombing raid. Werner Janensch was removed from his position as curator of the Berlin Museum of Natural History because he consorted with and protected Jewish colleagues. Bernard Rensch (who formulated “Rensch’s Rule” for sexual dimorphism) lost both his sons to forced impressment in the Wehrmacht allegedly because he too had suspicious ties to “Jews.” Later he would also be forced into service despite advanced age and a crippling disability.

Did Weikart deliberately leave out these names because they were all persecuted by the Nazis for holding such a “foreign ideology” as Darwinism and for “consorting” with Jewish colleagues? Or perhaps, did Weikart’s holocaust denying funders cause him to ignore the important Jewish contributions to Darwinism on the Continent, like Baron von Rothschild’s own funding and financial support to Darwinian research?

Another troubling aspect of “From Darwin to Hitler” is that it ignores the centuries old ethnic rivalry that existed between the German peoples and their Eastern neighbors which included the bulk of European Jewry. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, the Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, has published a book entitled “The German Myth of the East.” In it, Professor Liulevicius demonstrates the centuries old conception held by so many Germans of “the East” (Ostland) being a place of “dirt and chaos” while also paradoxically holding a fascination for them as a place for future German colonization and development. Liulevicius then shows how a group of influential German thinkers (Geopoliticians) would later translate this ethnic desire for expansion into modern terms which they deemed more compatible with their 19th and 20th century milieu. In other words, as Liulevicius demonstrates, the racism and the desire to remove and replace the ethnicities already present in the East predates the publication of “On the Origin Of Species” by many, many centuries. In fact, much of this can be traced directly back to Charlemagne’s wars to “Christianize” and “civilize” the Slavs and other ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe.

All in all, “From Darwin to Hitler” is a disappointing read for anyone who is even the least bit familiar with the history and development of Darwinism or the history of Germany for that matter. Weikart repeatedly misses his mark and displays a level of ignorance that will consign this whole escapade to the same dusty shelves as the other failures of the Discovery Institute such as Ben Stein’s lamentable and grossly inaccurate film. Professor Weikart’s apparent obsession with the writings of the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel – an advocate of  Lamarckism – is perhaps the primary example of how far this work strays from Darwin and his theory of Natural Selection. Almost all of the book’s treatment of “biology” attempts to trace Haeckel’s views and his influence on German popular opinion. Yet, Haeckel was a rival to Darwin and promoted rival theories.  This surprising gloss on the part of Professor Weikart is actually quite stunning as you read his book.

Lessons to be learned: When you’re going to be using the Jewish Holocaust to bash another’s ideas, don’t take your funding from holocaust revisionists. This will only add to your trail of confusion.

Here is a video of Professor Weikart’s presentation following the publication of “From Darwin to Hitler.” Notice that in the opening he appears to distance himself from the title of the book. He then goes on in his presentation to affirm the premise summarized by the title. Such waffling is typical of someone who is unprepared to be held accountable for their published ideas. Can we challenge Professor Weikart on the issues raised by the title of his book? No. He has distanced himself from that title and asks that we not pin it upon him. Can we then reject the idea expressed by the title out of hand? No, because Professor Weikart is promoting those ideas and wants us to embrace them as well. The perfect waffle.