1.The more progressive new generation of social historians in Germany since the 1960s has tended to present racism as a mere ideology, its application as more or
less economically/politically "rational" or "irrational," often as merely instrumental, and mostly as an appendage to more important developments, "political" or
"economic." See, for example,
Peter M. Kaiser, "Monopolprofit und Massenmord
im Faschismus: Zur ökonomischen Funktion der Konzentrationslager im faschistischen Deutschland," Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 5 ( 1975): 552-77.
2.A rare exception is
Marion A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany:
The Campaigns of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, 1904-1938 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979).
3.However, three conferences of women historians on women's history have taken
place: "Women in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism," Berlin, 1979; "Muttersein und Mutterideologie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft," Bremen, 1980; and "Frauengeschichte," Bielefeld, 1981. Some of the workshops of
the latter are documented in Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis 5 ( April
1981). Thus, women's history has been exploring this and similar themes in recent
years, but much work still needs to be done, and many questions cannot yet be
answered in a consistent way.
4.A good overview of the American and international eugenics movement is
Allan Chase
, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism ( New
York: Knopf, 1977). Although there had been, at the beginning of this century, a
debate among experts on distinctions between "eugenics" and "race hygiene," I
use these terms interchangeably, as does Chase, for I believe the issue dealt with in
this article requires my doing so. On this debate see
Georg Lilienthal, "Rassenhygiene im Dritten Reich: Krise und Wende," Medizinhistorisches Journal 14 ( 1979): 114-34.
5.See
Alfred Grotjahn, Geburten-Rückgang und Geburten-Regelung im Lichte der
individuellen und der sozialen Hygiene ( Berlin and Coblenz, 1914; 2d ed., 1921), p. 153, and the chapter "Birth Regulation Serving Eugenics and Race Hygiene"; and Agnes Bluhm, Die rassenhygienischen Aufgaben des weiblichen Arztes: Schriften zur
Erblehre und Rassenhygiene ( Berlin: Metzner, 1936), esp. the chapter "Woman's
Role in the Racial Process in Its Largest Sense."
6.Good examples are the classic and influential books by Grotjahn, Geburten-
Rückgang ( 1914) and Die Hygiene der menschlichen Fortpflanzung ( Berlin and Vienna: Urban and Schwarzenburg, 1926); Erwin Baur,
Eugen Fischer, and
Fritz Lenz
, Grundriss der menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, Vol. 2, Menschliche Auslese und Rassenhygiene ( Munich: Lehmann, 1921). These volumes had
many interestingly divergent editions. I have used Vol. 1 ( 1936) and Vol. 2
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