Page 134 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

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The deceptive idea that inter-racial conflict could lead to na-
tions' progressing also laid the foundation for wars. Before World
War I, when Social Darwinism was widespread, war was consid-
ered the “most appropriate means” for the elimination of the weak
and the eradication of people seen as burdens, the survival of the
strong, and the development of the human race.
Throughout history, many wars have been fought, but usually
they took place within limits, not aimed directly at civilian popula-
tions, between the armies of the nations concerned. But in wars
waged by Social Darwinist means, the real target was the people, to
reduce the “surplus population” of the so-called “unfit” and the al-
legedly “inferior.”
Before World War I, numerous writings and speeches de-
scribed the Darwinist bases of war. Richard Milner, a contributing
editor to Natural History, the magazine of New York's American
Museum of Natural History, writes of the warlike Darwinist views
of German intellectuals at the time:
During World War I, German intellectuals believed natural selection
was irresistibly all-powerful (Allmacht), a law of nature impelling
them to bloody struggle for domination. Their political and military
textbooks promoted Darwin's theories as the “scientific” basis of a
quest for world conquest, with the full backing of German scientists
and professors of biology. 72
During those years, General F. von Bernhardi engaged in pro-
paganda on behalf of Social Darwinism. In his book Germany and
the Next War Bernhardi maintained that conflict was a biological
obligation and the best way of ridding the world of the unfit: “War
is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element
in the life of mankind that cannot be dispensed with, since without
it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every ad-
vancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization.” 73

The Social Weapon: Darwinism