Eugenics Poster

A colorful illustrated poster with two scenes, similar to a cartoon strip. In the left box, a hawk perches on a branch with a dead rabbit. On the right, a man chops down a small, brown tree. Tall, green trees stand in the background. — *United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hans Pauli*

Nazi Eugenics

The Nazis firmly believed in eugenics or “race hygiene” as the belief was commonly called in Germany at the time. The term refers to the idea that selective breeding could improve a nation or race. Similarly, sterilizing “inferior” individuals or groups could eliminate social and medical problems such as crime or mental illness. Nazi propagandists waged campaigns to “educate” the German population about those topics so people would support the Nazis’ statewide health policies.

After taking power in 1933, the Nazi regime introduced eugenics laws and policies aimed at increasing the population of healthy, racially fit Germans. They prohibited those individuals deemed as “hereditarily ill” from reproducing. Laws mandated the teaching of “race science” and “race hygiene” in schools throughout Nazi Germany. Moreover, teachers were to emphasize the benefits.

In Propaganda

This 1938 German poster, “The eradication of the sick and weak in nature” promotes the Social Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest. It emphasizes that human society needs to be regulated by the laws of nature. This point is dramatized by the image of the hawk (representing the strong) eliminating the rabbit (the sick and weak).

The poster uses the visual metaphor of a forester chopping down a sick tree to prevent disease from spreading to the healthy forest. This symbolism was meant to justify government-sponsored forced sterilization of hereditarily ill persons. Medical courts established by the Nazi regime approved and carried out the sterilization of some 400,000 Germans between 1934 and 1945. Perhaps as many as 20,000 persons, primarily women, died as a result of such procedures.