Germany’s complex of race science agencies ultimately took on a bureaucratic life of its own. The Fuhrer’s Office operated the Race Political Office. The Justice Ministry empowered one of its lower court divisions to rule on matters of hereditary health. Josef Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda vested its Department II with questions of Jewish policy, popular health, and population. Labor and unemployment offices under the aegis of the Labor Ministry maintained an index of foreigners, meaning Jews and non-Aryans.66
Race science in the Interior Ministry was the provenance of the Reich Committee for the Protection of German Blood. Department I dealt with issues of race law and policies. Department IV studied population politics, genetic hygiene, and medical statistics. Department VI was concerned with foreign groups within Germany.67
The Reich Health Office, also part of the Interior Ministry, included two special units: Department L supervised genetic health and racial hygiene; Department M was authorized to oversee genetic research. In addition, the Reich Committee for Popular Health, which advised the Interior Ministry, maintained a sub-office for genetic and race hygiene.68
In the Reich Statistical Office, which was completely dependent upon IBM equipment and technical assistance, Department IV was responsible not only for traditional data such as census, household, and family data, but nationality and race statistics as well. The Ministry of Science and Education de veloped special offices for racial and genetic research and oversaw the work of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics.69
The Nazi Party itself also maintained a plethora of structured and informal special advisory bureaus on race and public health.70
Offices devoted to race science melded genuine documentation with rumors, poison pen letters, and vengeful tips. Challenges to one’s Aryan background were commonplace. Whether driven by a sense of national duty or ordinary fear, everyone was forced to confront their racial make-up. At the apex of racial grading was a bureaucratic entity attached to the Interior Ministry. This section began its existence before 1933 as the Nazi Information Office. Ultimately, after numerous name changes, it became known as the Reichssippenamt, or Reich Family Office, endowed with the final authority to decide who was Jewish or Aryan.71
Lists were distributed, exchanged, and updated continously, often in a haphazard fashion. To cope with the growing bureaucratic fascination with punch card records, senior Interior Ministry officials reviewed one fanciful proposal for a twenty-five-floor circular tower of data to centralize all personal information. The proposal was rejected because it would take years to build and stock. But the futuristic concept opened the eyes of Reich planners. Each of the twenty-five floors in the imagined tower would be comprised of 12 circular rooms representing one birth year. Every circular room would contain 31 cabinets, one for each day of the month. Each cabinet would in turn contain 7,000 names. Registrations and updates would feed in from census bureaus. All 60 million Germans could then be organized and cross-indexed in a single location regardless of changes in residence. Data could be retrieved by some 1,500 couriers running from room to room like so many magnetic impulses fetching files.72
Lists were indeed everywhere. Non-German Registries were maintained in police stations, employment bureaus, professional associations, church organizations, local Nazi departments, and the SS Security Office, the Sicherheitsdienst, known as the SD. The SD was under the control of Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed the Hangman.
Buried within the bowels of Heydrich’s Berlin office was the Department of Research, which developed registries on Freemasons. In 1934, one of the SD’s nameless specialists on Freemasons demonstrating particular zeal was a corporal who had just transferred in from the Dachau concentration camp. He showed such promise working with registries that he was re-assigned to Referat II 112, the Jewish Department, where he could work with more lists. The corporal’s name was Adolf Eichmann.73
As the cross-indexing capabilities and sorting routines of Dehomag’s machinery became more sophisticated, race researchers continuously discovered greater informational depth about Jews and those of Jewish bloodline. For Dehomag, such statistical feats were both its science and its competitive edge. Educating its customers was an everyday occurrence.
An August 1934 article in the Dehomag publication, Hollerith Nachrichten, extolled the benefits of advanced data processing. The article, entitled “An Improved Analysis of Statistical Interdependencies via Hollerith Punch Card Process,” illustrated how difficult data calculations could be better interpreted and predict probabilities. As a prime example, the journal cited “the field of medicine, and the science of genetics and race.” Complex tabulations could be rendered, the article suggested, regarding “the size of fathers and their children, number of children and parents. Diphtheria and age, and the different racial characteristics.” The article explained, “Even though the gathering of statistical material in industrial and commercial businesses has steadily grown in size… in administrative archives and because of censuses and other surveys, the interpretation has not kept pace. Due to the lack of manpower… one is limited… to sorting out past developments…. This is not always enough…. The actual justification for the collection of data in great quantity is the ability to draw conclusions… and ensure a safe estimate of future and current occurrences.”74
Racial purity was not just a catchphrase for Nazis, it was an obsession. Germany wanted more than a society of Aryans, it wanted a master race: tall, strong, blond, and blue-eyed, intellectually and physically dominant. Eugenics became an elite cult. Nazis sought to weed out the weaker elements of its population, regardless of parentage—even from among their own people. The mentally ill, diseased, handicapped, homosexual individuals, certain Jews, Gypsies, and a group of misfits termed “anti-social,” were not to be part of Germany’s future.
Beginning in summer 1934, the Third Reich took the next step. Armed with statistical data and other information collected from medical offices, doctors, and insurance companies across the nation, Germany began organized sterilization.
TWO DECREES were promulgated by mid-1934. One was The Law for Simplification of the Health System, enacted in July 1934, requiring doctors and other clinicians to fill out detailed forms about the health condition of their patients. These were filed with Health Offices and eventually processed by Hollerith systems at the Reich Statistical Offices in Berlin and its regional divisions. The information, combined with extensive information from health insurance questionnaires, created a eugenic profile.75
The second decree was The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Sick Offspring, made active in January 1934. Eugenic theorists in Germany had developed a maze of precepts mandating exactly which bloodlines should be terminated based on the statistical probability of endowing defective genes. Sterilization guidelines initially specified individuals deemed insane, retarded, epileptic, or manic-depressive, among others.76