Time Magazine’s Most Influential Leader

[suchandra]

Well yes, once again TIME magazine foolishly promotes mayavada philosophy. The Vaishnavas should in return explain them what actually is Buddhism and at least target to globally establish that Buddhism means to stop killing the cows.

 

from: http://www.essentialspirit.com/archives/151

 

H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama Time Magazine’s Most Influential Leader

 

Filed Under Tibet, Commentary | Posted on May 4, 2008

 

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has been named Time Magazine’s most influential leader in the “Leaders and Revolutionaries” category. Deepak Chopra’s essay that accompanies the distinction notes,

 

He and his people have struggled all their lives with the audacity of hopelessness. Oppression and exile are their daily bread. Yet the Dalai Lama, 72, remains calm in the face of cruelty. What does he think of the human race? “We are the superior species on Earth but also the biggest troublemakers,” he once told me.

 

In the Leaders and Revolutionaries category, His Holiness edged out:

2. Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister

3. Barack Obama, U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate

4. Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate

5. John McCain, U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate

6. Hu Jintao, President, People’s Republic of China

7. George W. Bush, U.S. President

8. Jacob Zuma, African National Congress Chair

9. Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian Politician

10. Kevin Rudd, Australian Prime Minister

The other categories and the “winners” in those categories are:

Heroes and Pioneers: Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie, actors and human rights activists

Scientists and Thinkers: Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor

Artists and Entertainers: Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of Saturday Night Live

Builders and Titans: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO

[Kulapavana]

I thought it was this one

 

Time Magazine, 1938

Man of the Year: Adolf Hitler

[bija]

thats pretty oddball comparison....

 

by the way...was Hitler a vegetarian:(?

 

http://www.geocities.com/hitlerwasavegetarian/

[Amlesh]

For me it's Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

No leader can be equal to him in recent times.

[Kulapavana]

 

thats pretty oddball comparison....

 

by the way...was Hitler a vegetarian:(?

 

http://www.geocities.com/hitlerwasavegetarian/

 

the title of the thread is: Time Magazine’s Most Influential Leader

 

at various points in history Time picked world leaders to be their "Man of the Year". if I am not mistaken, Hitler got that title twice (1933 and 1938) or at least in 1933 he made the cover of Time Magazine as one of the most important people of the time.

 

The point is that just making the cover of the magazine or earning some coveted title is not a true measure of a person.

 

Btw. Hitler was only a partial vegetarian for health reasons, but he had an authentic admiration for the Vedic culture, shared by many German intellectuals and social activists. No Western country or government before or after that took seriously the Vedas and it's wisdom. Point lost on many devotees.

[theist]

Hitler was not a vegetarian. His favorite food was Bavarian sausage.

[bija]

 

The Vaishnavas should in return explain them what actually is Buddhism and at least target to globally establish that Buddhism means to stop killing the cows. by suchandra

 

thx kula

 

Sorry for my sarcasm, I realised being on a Time front cover does not measure the moral greatness of a man. I have read a thread at Audarya Fellowship that the Dalai Lama is not vegetarian. When I first met tibetan buddhists I was surprised at the time that their cookbook was mostly meat dishes.

 

As Hare Krsna people we have a moral compass that meat eating is wrong. The point I was hoping to bring out is that culturally many think differently. When I was young man I went toThailand in search of monastic life (buddhism). And presumed the country would be vegetarian also. How wrong was I! They ate alot of meat, insects, all sorts of things...

 

I still cant figure how a non-violet approach to life like buddhism can sit down at meal and eat meat!

 

 

From the link I posted it seems Hitler used to be a meat eater, and gradually changed to vegetarianism. But ofcourse the link I posted could be poorly researched.

[bija]

Ten years ago I was unemployed and a government scheme basically moved me into work in the animal slaughter industry.

 

It was an islamic kill slaughter house, I was next in line on the chain to the muslim slaughterman. He would slice the cows throat with a sharp knife. We were killing 300-500 cows perday and 3000 sheep. Each night I would take shower covered in blood, even my under-wear would be red.

 

I worked there for three months. After that I became vegetarian by the grace of devotees.

 

The buddhist or muslim can justify sanctified killing for various reasons. But from my experience no mass killing and suffering is justified to soothe the palate, when we can produce grains, vegetables, milk products etc with much less violence.

 

I have worked in various cow-industry over the years. The area I live is rural. Cows are beautiful and they are fully conscious. Milking cows is a pleasure, by showing them affection they remember you, each time they come around on the rotary machine. One jersey cow I used to 'pat' with affection always turned and greated me each day. Beautiful calm eyes!

 

The eyes of the animals in the slaughter house are maddened in fear!

[theist]

 

Ten years ago I was unemployed and a government scheme basically moved me into work in the animal slaughter industry.

It was an islamic kill slaughter house, I was next in line on the chain to the muslim slaughterman. He would slice the cows throat with a sharp knife. We were killing 300-500 cows perday and 3000 sheep. Each night I would take shower covered in blood, even my under-wear would be red.

I worked there for three months. After that I became vegetarian by the grace of devotees.

The buddhist or muslim can justify sanctified killing for various reasons. But from my experience no mass killing and suffering is justified to soothe the palate, when we can produce grains, vegetables, milk products etc with much less violence.

 

I have worked in various cow-industry over the years. The area I live is rural. Cows are beautiful and they are fully conscious. Milking cows is a pleasure, by showing them affection they remember you, each time they come around on the rotary machine. One jersey cow I used to 'pat' with affection always turned and greated me each day. Beautiful calm eyes!

 

The eyes of the animals in the slaughter house are maddened in fear!

 

OMG bija!!!!!!!!!!

 

Just see how far you've come. Your at the top here for being most gentle.

[theist]

The fact is the Dalai Lama has huge influence. Imagine if he could turned to vegetarianism on the basis of compassion. So many hundreds of thousands would follow his example.

 

I know he has flirted with the idea.

[bija]

He should Theist!!!

 

By the way mate, I am still struggling in a material cesspool. Give me your hand please and pull me out....

[bija]

Actually Theist I had a hard time of getting out of that job...

 

I cut my thumb open oneday and had the rest of the day off after the stitches went in. The next day the owner confronted me for the half day off...by Krsna's grace I got out of that prison.

 

Often still look at the huge scar on my thumb and wonder why...why such karma. That's a scary thought...

[AncientMariner]

 

I thought it was this one

 

Time Magazine, 1938

Man of the Year: Adolf Hitler

 

 

 

I have worked with a 72 year old man who is a German-Jew and he told me that he once took a class in college and they compared the speeches of Hitler and FDR and the class basically could not tell the difference between them.

[AncientMariner]

 

the title of the thread is: Time Magazine’s Most Influential Leader

 

at various points in history Time picked world leaders to be their "Man of the Year". if I am not mistaken, Hitler got that title twice (1933 and 1938) or at least in 1933 he made the cover of Time Magazine as one of the most important people of the time.

 

The point is that just making the cover of the magazine or earning some coveted title is not a true measure of a person.

 

Btw. Hitler was only a partial vegetarian for health reasons, but he had an authentic admiration for the Vedic culture, shared by many German intellectuals and social activists. No Western country or government before or after that took seriously the Vedas and it's wisdom. Point lost on many devotees.

 

 

I watched a show on the History Channel that said that Hitler got his ideas of the Aryan master race from some kind of crazy psychic lady who had a habit of mixing together different religous traditions and coming up with some real crazy ideas as a result.

[suchandra]

 

I watched a show on the History Channel that said that Hitler got his ideas of the Aryan master race from some kind of crazy psychic lady who had a habit of mixing together different religous traditions and coming up with some real crazy ideas as a result.

 

They say it was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who invented the whole concept and while living in India also selected the svastika as logo.

[theist]

 

They say it was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who invented the whole concept and while living in India also selected the svastika as logo.

 

That makes sense.

[Kulapavana]

 

They say it was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who invented the whole concept and while living in India also selected the svastika as logo.

 

Not true at all. Both the tribal purity concept and the swastika use go back to much earlier Germanic roots and German intellectual revival of mid 1800's.

[suchandra]

 

Not true at all. Both the tribal purity concept and the swastika use go back to much earlier Germanic roots and German intellectual revival of mid 1800's.

Good point, excellent post! Since you present rumors and hearsay, there is even more.

 

The Thule Society

Hitler was trained to be a supreme adept in the arts and ritual of Black Magic by Dietrich Eckart. the leader of a powerful, secret society called the Thule Society. Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an avid fan of Helena Blavatsky, founded the "Thule Society", a spiritualist group which borrowed heavily from Blavatsky's "The Secret Doctrine". Thule in occultic, Greek and Viking lore was the capital of an ancient ice-island called Hyperborea (known in Hindu legend as the "White Isle"), inhabited by superhumans with psychic powers who eventually founded the Aryan race. After an unexplained disaster, survivors of Hyperborea took refuge first in the "West" [meaning west of India, perhaps Babylon?], then in the Gobi desert, and later in Tibet; their spirit mentors retreated to a hidden spiritual center called "Asgard", located in a subterranean city. These beings, headed by one known in Hindu/Buddhist tradition as "the Lama of lamas" or "King of the world", can only be contacted on the spiritual plane. The symbol of this "Master" is the swastika, "symbol of the central power of the gem of Heaven".

[Kulapavana]

 

Good point, excellent post! Since you present rumors and hearsay, there is even more.

 

from Wikipedia:

 

In the Western world, the symbol experienced a resurgence following the archaeological work in the late 19th century of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorized that the swastika was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking Germanic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures.[3][4] By the early 20th century, it was widely used worldwide and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and success.

The work of Schliemann soon became intertwined with the völkisch movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe.

 

 

Our enemies are eager to connect Hindiusm with the nazis

[tackleberry]

 

but he had an authentic admiration for the Vedic culture, shared by many German intellectuals and social activists. No Western country or government before or after that took seriously the Vedas and it's wisdom. Point lost on many devotees.

 

Can you say more on this, as to why you think Hitler and the nazis were interested in vedic culture? If they were, why would they indulge in mass slaughter and such activities? Sounds a little contradictory, doesn't it?

[bhaktajan]

Originally Posted by Theist

Bija, "Just see how far you've come."

 

 

 

After (7) seven years all your cell will be new cells --if you eat only krsna-prasadam during these years your cells will be composed of prasadam.

 

........................................................................................

Originally Posted by suchandra

They say it was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who invented the whole concept and while living in India also selected the svastika as logo.

 

She may very likely have spiked drinks with her urine [or other bodily fluids] inorder to 'control/infatuate' her students --this is listed among acts called 'white magic' in the Bhagavatam {just my speculation}

 

 

........................................................................................

Originally Posted by Kulapavana

Not true at all. Both the tribal purity concept and the swastika use go back to much earlier Germanic roots and German intellectual revival of mid 1800's.

 

The history of "the old world" [which simularly continued into the western hemisphere] is the migration of Ksatriyas et al from India to the furthest western points & also, the to the most eastern shores ergo, Ksatriya Propensities arrived in England and later in Japan.

 

Simularly, the last frontier was the 'wild-west' --Admiral Perry in 1852 [?] entered Japan's "isolationist" country and demanded the Jpanese government "allow free trade" with America "or else".

 

Ninety years later Japan invaded her Far-east neighboring countries and also attacked Pearl Harbor and thus entered the war with the USA from 1941 till Hiroshima & Nagasaki were Atomic Bombed.

 

........................................................................................

Originally Posted by tackleberry

Can you say more on this, as to why you think Hitler and the nazis were interested in vedic culture? If they were, why would they indulge in mass slaughter and such activities? Sounds a little contradictory, doesn't it?

 

Oy vey. What a lope-sided question!

Cain and Abel were such rare souls and they're in the first book of the Bible--such an esteemed position to be in for all posterity.

 

You're right. "Sounds a little contradictory, doesn't it?" --just like your disingenuous logic --am I being provacative? Sorry if I am.

 

[tackleberry]

Bhakta Jan, you're so funny and you don't even realize it.:)Please keep posting, we all need a few laughs every now and then.

[RadheyRadhey108]

 

by the way...was Hitler a vegetarian:(?

 

http://www.geocities.com/hitlerwasavegetarian/

Surprsingly enough, I was reading this just last night:

Hitler Was a Vegetarian like Bush Was a Valedictorian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

<!--readmore-->

 

 

Thursday, March 8, 2007

 

 

 

The Editor

 

The New York Times Book Review

 

229 West 43rd Street

 

New York, NY 10036

 

 

 

To the Editor,

 

 

I must take issue with Mr. Rothstein's glib characterization of Hitler and his Nazi henchmen, Hess, and Himmler, as vegetarians, in his review of Tristram Stuart's The Bloodless Revolution (February 25). As the historical advisor to the North American Vegetarian Society, I am constantly being taxed with having to explain Hitler's alleged vegetarianism. In researching the matter, I discovered that Hitler was not a true vegetarian. I presented my findings in a book entitled Hitler Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover (Pythagorean Publishers, 2004).

 

 

In my book, I cite numerous primary sources that attest that Hitler was not a thoroughgoing vegetarian. Here are a few examples: For instance, one of his closest friends, Frau Hess, asserted that Hitler was a strict vegetarian except for Liver Dumplings. "From that moment on, Hitler never ate another piece of meat, except for liver dumplings." (His habitual eating of liver dumplings is an important exception that disqualifies Hitler as vegetarian.)

 

 

Chef Dione Lucas, who used routinely to prepare meals for him into the early 1930s, actually published Hitler's favorite recipes in her cookbook, The Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook (1964, p. 89) "I learned the recipe when I worked as a chef before World War II, in one of the large hotels in Hamburg, Germany. I do not mean to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to know that it was a great favorite with Mr. Hitler who dined at the hotel often. Let us not hold that against a fine recipe though." (His habitual eating of stuffed squab disqualifies Hitler as a vegetarian.)

 

 

In the New York Times of May 30 1937, in an article entitled "Where Hitler Dreams and Plans," Times reporter Otto D. Tolschuss wrote, "It is well known that Hitler is vegetarian and does not drink or smoke. His lunch and dinner consist, therefore, for the most part of soup, eggs, vegetables and mineral water, although he occasionally relishes a slice of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with such delicacies as caviar, luscious fruits and similar tidbits." (His occasional eating of sliced ham and caviar disqualifies Hitler as a vegetarian.)

 

 

Hitler biographer, Thomas Fuchs, in his book, A Concise Biography of Adolf Hitler (New York: Berkeley, 2000, p.78), also confirms that Hitler was not a vegetarian. " A typical day's consumption included eggs prepared in any number of ways, spaghetti, baked potatoes with cottage cheese, oatmeal, stewed fruits and vegetable puddings. Meat was not completely excluded. Hitler continued to eat a favorite dish, leberkloesse (liver dumplings)."

 

 

To be sure, Hitler professed to be a vegetarian (in section 66 of Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-44), but the primary sources that I have cited in my book show that while he paid lip service to vegetarianism, he was not consistent in his practice of the diet. "Vegetarian"--which means, (according to the standard dictionary definition),"the practice of eating only vegetables and refraining from eating meat, fish, or other animal products"-- is like that other V word, Virgin: you either are one, or you are not. By that criterion, Hitler was a quasi vegetarian, a would-be vegetarian, or a flexitarian. He was decidedly not a true vegetarian.

 

 

With regard to Rudolf Hess, the Fuhrer's fawning deputy, Hess may have been a vegetarian for a brief space--perhaps as a result of his faddish interest in Rudolf Steiner's bio-dynamic agricultural theories. In fact, Hess's biographer, Wulf Schwarzwaller, in his book, Rudolf Hess the Last Nazi (Bethesda, MD: National Press, 1988), suggests (pp. 157, 161) that Hess's flirtation with biologically dynamic vegetarian foods was just that--a dietary experiment prescribed by a Steinerian doctor. By the time Hess was in Spandau prison in the 1940s, he was back to eating animal flesh with gusto. Schwarzwaller (p. 278) quotes him as complaining to the prison doctor, "The sausages are much too spicy."

 

 

Mr. Rothstein's statement that Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, was a vegetarian advocate ["Himmler was an advocate,"] is preposterous and utterly without foundation in fact. Nowhere in the biographical literature on Himmler does it state that he was ever a practicing vegetarian. In fact, in the definitive biography of Himmler, Peter Padfield's Himmler, (New York: Henry Holt, & Co., 1990, p. 352), Padfield writes that Himmler despite his queasiness about the hunting of animals, "was not a vegetarian."

 

 

Finally, to suggest with Tristram Stuart, as Mr. Rothstein does, that many Nazis were vegetarians, ["Many Nazis, as Stuart suggests were either vegetarians or interested in related issues."] is a gross distortion of the facts. The truth is that not one Nazi was a thoroughgoing vegetarian--not even Hitler himself. I hope that you will be fair-minded enough to print this letter so that readers may judge for themselves whether Hitler, Hess and Himmler were vegetarians. I'm afraid Mr. Rothstein's review is just one further instance of a pundit's publicly relishing the (false) paradox that a triumvirate of genocidal tyrants should have been the followers of a Gandhian diet.

 

 

Rynn Berry

 

Historial Advisor

 

North American Vegetarian Society

 

[bija]

'....asserted that Hitler was a strict vegetarian except for Liver Dumplings.'

 

...what a weirdo!

[suchandra]

 

'....asserted that Hitler was a strict vegetarian except for Liver Dumplings.'

 

...what a weirdo!

We understand the enormous interest of American Vaishnavas in rumors and hearsay about Hitler is to justify the great plunder and total demolition they performed to bring down Vaishnavism in German speaking countries for the past 30 years by sending one by one "suddenly corrupt" GBC men in the name of Prabhupada.

However, as soon someone points out the bank connections where the Hitler regime was getting all the bank loans from and especially all the million tons of petrol for the huge war machinery these folks immediately change topic or keep quiet.

Also see article below about Hitler's teachers. This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL

 

Edwin Black

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations -- which functioned as part of a closely-knit network -- published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics,

and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863,

Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people married only other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported to the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenics advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In a United States demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early 20th century. Elitists, utopians and so-called progressives fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: Populate the Earth with vastly more of their own socioeconomic and biological kind -- and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the Earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark- haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called defective family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit. The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point No. 8 was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in the United States was a "lethal chamber" or public, locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, "Applied Eugenics," which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution . . . Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated.Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate,oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes' words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant, calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of the Great Race," his "bible."

Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe, upon returning from Germany, ebulliently bragged to a colleague, "You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions.

By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in today's money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of eugenics institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around ... the Germans were calling a spade a spade."

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades,

American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity.

The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND

DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON

 

TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.

 

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenics press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenics doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."

Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.

On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer (captain) and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer (Himmler)."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them,

he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the great institutions they helped found, and the science they helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity -- an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re- established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946, when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenics luminaries and then sent various eugenics publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."

Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

 

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California, have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late 20th century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On Oct. 14,

the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.

Edwin Black is author of the award-winning "IBM and the Holocaust" and the recently released "War Against the Weak" (published by Four Walls Eight Windows), from which this article is adapted.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle