The eugenics movement and Nazi Germany, James Watson

Interviewee: James Watson. Benno Müller-Hill and James Watson discuss how the euthanasia techniques used at mental hospitals were transferred to the extermination camps in Poland. Here Watson talks about Hitler allowed German eugenicists to carry on with their research in return for their help in marking Jews and Gypsies for death. (DNAi Location: Chronicle > In the third Reich > Applying the solution > A Faustian bargain)

The eugenicists in Germany was a sort of Faustian bargain, Hitler let them do their eugenics and in return they had to help the Nazis proscribe the Jews and the Gypsies, and the genetically deformed, so that eventually they could kill them. They say it was a step by step thing and in 1933 they didn't know where Hitler was going, but if they had read Mein Kampf it was very clear where he wanted to go.

kaiser wilhelm institute,josef mengele,extermination camp,carbon monoxide gas,eugenics movement,james watson,university of frankfurt,faustian bargain,mental institutions,mental hospitals,gas chambers,human genetics,nazi germany,eugenicists,mller,third reich,dnai,mental patients,environmental influences,zyclon b

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