Eugenics: A Comparison Between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany

EUGENICS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE UNITED KINGDOM, THE UNITED STATES, AND GERMANY
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Eugenics: A Comparison between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany
Introduction
While there are contradicting narratives regarding the origin of eugenics, Germany was the one country that went to the most extreme length to implement it. In 1938, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, argued as follows.
“Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked…Our objectives are entirely different…we must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2020).
The appeal of eugenics peaked in the early 20th century as politicians, scientists, cultural leaders, and intellectuals in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany contemplated creating a superior race. While each country had different social beliefs, political ideologies, nationalist sentiments, and economic conditions, the basic idea was that eugenics could resolve each country's social and economic challenges at the time. Eugenics became the foundation for racism, social reform, and national health policy, triggering such responses as women's rights movements.
A Comparison between the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany
The three countries implemented eugenics to different extents. For example, Germany’s Nazi regime was built around the need to purify the genetic makeup of the country’s population to eliminate people regarded as threatening the nation’s health. In the United Kingdom (henceforth, the UK), the primary motive was to use eugenics as a form of social control in the face of social and economic turmoil in the 1930s (Searle 1979). In the United States, the ideas of eugenics began with animal studies and went on to humans as scientists sought to reduce negative human traits. Therefore, the main observation in this comparison is that the development of eugenics took different paths and occurred at different times across the three countries as each pursued a different objective.
A good starting point in this comparison is the United Kingdom since it is where the earliest definition of eugenics can be found. Francis Galton was the first scientist to define the term eugenics. He started his arguments in 1865 by expressing that people should be responsible for their evolution. In 1883, he coined the term "eugenics" from the Greek word "eugenes", which meant 'good in birth.' In the early 1900s, Galton experimented with the application of eugenics in social control to improve the racial qualities of future generations (Paul 1995). This action explains why the focus of eugenics in the UK revolved around social control as the country struggled with social and economic movements. In this case, the eugenics propagandists proposed that the social and fiscal policy of the UK would be redesigned to improve racial qualities. The economic depression that triggered the social and economic turmoil was often the reference point for the propagandists, who were majorly recruited by the various eug...