Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Eugenics

The term eugenics (from the Greek eugenes, meaning well-born) was coined by Englishman Francis Galton in 1883. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, used Darwin's ideas of evolutionary fitness in the animal kingdom to forge a concept of selective breeding for humans. Proposing to produce superior citizenries, eugenics encompasses two interconnected philosophies: (1) restricting the reproduction capabilities of so-called undesirable segments of a population (negative eugenics); and (2) encouraging so-called desirable segments to reproduce (positive eugenics). At the turn of the twentieth century a eugenics movement gained widespread international support, particularly in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. In 1895 German physician Alfred Ploetz created the related science of Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene), and in 1907 he founded the International Society for Racial Hygiene. That same year Indiana passed laws...