We were as likely to scrutinize the visitor registers at the Kaiser WIlhelm Institute’s guest facility, Harnack House, to see which Americans visited Berlin, as we were to review the mailing lists of Carnegie scientists to see who in Germany was receiving their reports. Progress among my researchers was exchanged by continuous use of the Internet and by the extensive use of faxed and scanned documents. Eventually all of the documents came together in my office in Washington. They were then copied and arranged in chronological folders-one folder for every month of the twentieth century. The materials were then cross-filed to trace certain trends, and then juxtaposed against articles published month-by-month in journals such as Eugenical News, Journal of Heredity and Eugenics Review, as well as numerous race science publications in Nazi Germany. By pulling anyone monthly folder I could assemble a snapshot of what was occurring worldwide during that month.
When we were done, we had assembled a mountain of documentation that clearly chronicled a century of eugenic crusading by America’s finest universities, most reputable scientists, most trusted professional and charitable organizations, and most revered corporate foundations. They had collaborated with the Department of Agriculture and numerous state agencies in an attempt to breed a new race of Nordic humans, applying the same principles used to breed cattle and com. The names define power and prestige in America: the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Harriman railroad fortune, Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Stanford University, the American Medical Association, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Yerkes, Woodrow Wilson, the American Museum of Natural History, the American Genetic Association and a sweeping array of government agencies from the obscure Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics to the U.S. State Department.
Next came an obsessive documentation process. Every fact and fragment and its context was supported with black and white documents, then double-checked and separately triple-checked in a rigorous multistage verification regimen by a team of argumentative, hairsplitting fact-checkers. Only then was the manuscript draft submitted to a panel of known experts in the field from the United States, Germany, England and Poland, for a line-by-line review. The result: behind each of the hundreds of footnotes, there is a folder that contains the supporting documentation.
To ensure that all of our information was accurate, we also set about verifying the work of numerous other scholars by checking their documentation. We often asked them to provide documents from their files. In other words, we not only documented my book, we verified other works as well. Most of the authors graciously complied, readily faxing copies of their documents or explaining precisely where the information could be found. During this process, however, we discovered numerous errors in many prior works.
For example, in one book an important speech on the value of heredity is attributed to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States-the speech was actually given by Jim Wilson, president of the American Breeders Association. I can understand how errors like this occur. Many scholars rely on other scholars’ works. Summaries of summaries of summaries yield a lesser truth with every iteration. Except for the work of a few brilliant world-class documenters, such as Daniel. Kevles, Benno Miiller-Hill, Paul Weindling and Martin Pernick, I largely considered published works little more than leads. What’s more, there is boundless information on eugenics accumulating on the Internet, some of it very prettily presented, much of it hysterical, and unfortunately, most of it filled with profound errors. Hence whenever possible, I acquired primary source material so I could determine the provable facts for myself.
When the research phase was over, I realized that less than half the information I had assembled would even make it into the book. Frankly, I had amassed enough information to write a freestanding book for each of the twenty-one chapters in this volume. It was painful to pick and choose which information would be included, but I am confident that with so many journalists throughout America now aggressively delving into eugenics, the field will soon be as broad and diversified as the investigations of the Holocaust and American slavery. At least one book could be written for each state, starting with California, which was America’s most energetic eugenic state. Critical biographies are needed for the key players. In-depth examinations of the links between Germany and the Pioneer Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Institution as well as numerous state officials would be welcome. The role of the Chicago Municipal Court must be further explored.
When I began this project in 2001, many in the public were not even aware of eugenics. Indeed, for a while my publisher did not even want me to include the word eugenics in the title of this book. In reality, however, the topic has been continuously explored over the past decades by several extremely talented academics and students hailing from a range of disciplines from biology to education. Although most were gracious and supportive, I was surprised to find that many tended to guard their information closely. One such author told me she didn’t believe another book on eugenics was necessary. (“It depends on how nuanced,” she said with some discomfort.) Another professor astonished me by asking for money to answer some questions within his expertise-the first time I had encountered such a request in thirty-five years of historical research. When I contacted a Virginia professor who had written a dissertation decades earlier, she actually told me she didn’t think a member of the media was “qualified” to read her dissertation. One collaborative scholarly eugenic website, ironically funded by a federal grant, restricts media usage while permitting unrestricted scholarly usage.
As I was completing my work, the public was beginning to discover the outlines of eugenics. The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Winston-Salem Journal, and several other publications and radio stations, as well as the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and American Heritage magazine, all produced exemplary articles on various aspects of eugenics. The Winston-Salem Journal series was a feat of investigative journalism. As the manuscript was being typed, the governors of Virginia, Oregon, California, North Carolina and South Carolina all publicly apologized to the victims of their states’ official persecution. Others will follow. The topic is now where it belongs, in the hands of hard-driving journalists and historians who will not stop until they have uncovered all the facts.
Now that newspaper and magazine articles have placed the crime of eugenics on the front burner, my book explains in depth exactly how this fraudulent science infected our society and then reached across the world and right into Nazi Germany. I want the full story to be understood in context. Skipping around in the book will only lead to flawed and erroneous conclusions. So if you intend to skim, or to rely on selected sections, please do not read the book at all. This is the saga of a century and can easily be misunderstood. The realities of the twenties, thirties and forties were very different from each other. I have made this request of my readers on prior books and I repeat it for this volume as well.
Although this book contains many explosive revelations and embarrassing episodes about some of our society’s most honored individuals and institutions, I hope its contents will not be misused or quoted out of context by special interests. Opponents of a woman’s right to choose could easily seize upon Margaret Sanger’s eugenic rhetoric to discredit the admirable work of Planned Parenthood today; I oppose such misuse. Detractors of today’s Rockefeller Foundation could easily apply the facts of their Nazi connections to their current programs; I reject the linkage. Those frightened by the prospect of human engineering could invoke the science’s eugenic foundations to condemn all genomic research; that would be a mistake. While I am as anxious as the next person about the prospect of out-of-control genomics under the thumb of big business, I hope every genetic advance that helps humanity fight disease will continue as fast and as furiously as possible.