The claim is made that the infamously proto-Nazi assertion of Darwinism by Darwinism's foremost proponent in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, is a complete distortion of the theory of Charles Darwin and its consequences for the world and, most relevantly to my posts on it, human, their societies and their countries. That claim is obviously a lie, it can be known to be a lie because Charles Darwin endorsed Ernst Haeckel's interpretation of his theory of Natural Selection and common ancestry* in letters written to him in the 1860s and, in fact, for the rest of Charles Darwin's life, his son Francis attests to the agreement of his father and Haeckel on these things from his first person witness accounts of Haeckel's visits with his father, and, most of all, Darwin's citations of Haeckel, especially his glowing, complete endorsement of one of his most extreme, racist and homicidal volume published during Darwin's life, Haeckel's The History of Creation.
That he agreed with Haeckel' social Darwinism is also known by the letter Darwin wrote to Haeckel on reading what was Haeckel's most overt statement of that published during Darwin's life, His "Freedom in Teaching and Science," in which Haeckel said that Darwinism didn't support socialism or democracy but supported the inequality of an aristocratic system. His idea of such a Darwinian aristocracy included those he regarded as superior murdering huge numbers of those he regarded as inferior, that's something he had asserted in his scientific books and would, in fact, continue to assert during the rest of his life, ending the very year Nazism was first organized 1919. That is especially true of what was probably his best seller, The Riddle of the Universe, which went through many editions in German during the formative years of the boys and girls who would become the Nazi leadership and the true believers in it. Of that book, the scholar of the rise of Nazism, Daniel Gasman said:
The common understanding among historians about the connection between Haeckel and Hitler is this: Adolf Hitler (b. 1889) came of age during the decade and a half following the publication in 1899 of Ernst Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe, a runaway best seller that over the next two or three decades sold more copies internationally than the Bible and profoundly shaped the consciousness of the modern world. Haeckel’s book imparted a rigid Social Darwinist message purportedly derived from science: politics is applied biology, the Jews were an inferior race compared with the Aryans, Christianity was a religion of weakness, and that eugenic action was necessary to protect the racial composition of society.
That reading of Haeckel will be confirmed by that rarest of events in the life of any true-believing Darwinist, honestly reading Darwin and those people he cites, especially Haeckel. Though Darwin was reluctant to be specific about which races he believed were bound for extinction, though he named a number of smaller groups in the South Pacific and a few others, Haeckel, in books Darwin promoted as reliable science, was not so shy about starting an extermination list.
For anyone, especially today, who wants to deny that Haeckel's thinking was genuinely Darwinian, he could, if he were still around, point to numerous letters from Charles Darwin endorsing his excellence in articulating Darwin's theories, praise for his boldness and appreciation for the promotion of Haeckel of Darwin's theories in Germany. He could also cite Darwin's second in command, Thomas Huxley naming him the "chorus leader" of Darwinism on the Continent and, as mentioned, Francis Darwin's first hand testimony about his father's agreement with Haeckel. No one today has the authority to deny that all of the evidence, up to and including Charles Darwin's own assertions, is that he accepted Haeckel's view of Darwinism and his assertion of its logical consequences for human, individually, in societies and between racial groupings, including that it was supportive of salubrious and progressive violent struggle, murder and genocides.
I, from time to time, look closer at the English language and German phenomenon of Darwinism and, over and over again, find confirmation of that characteristic of it, producing ideas and theories and ideological assertions that produced anti-democratic movements and, yes, Nazism. When I started writing on this nine years ago, I was hesitant to make that connection but every year since then has only confirmed that connection and that it is obvious.
Note: I think Robert J. Richards attempt to rehabilitate Haeckel so as to exonerate Darwin is one of the most blatantly dishonest things I've ever looked into. It is blown up by doing what I've always advocated, reading the primary documentation and looking up the primary documents cited in those. I think it is truly stunning that someone who has done what he has is accepted as a legitimate scholar, who can work at a major university. While I think Gasman was too reluctant or unwilling to note that Darwin endorsed pretty much everything Haeckel said up to the time of his death - and, in fact, most of the worst things he said he'd already said in one form or another by that time - his take down of Richards is quite convincing.
* I believe in the latter, with the caveat that the ultimate nature of that is unknowable for the earliest life on Earth, I have become ever more skeptical of the former.
Update: Unlike you, unlike Robert Richards, unlike all of Darwin's post-war hagiographers who want to disassociate them, Ernst Haeckel knew Darwin, met him, conversed with him, first-hand as Darwin's honored guest at his home, he corresponded with Darwin and had letters from him endorsing his understanding and articulation of Darwin's theories and ideas. He had the confirmation of his understanding of that from Darwin's closest British colleagues and, in fact, Darwin's children, as well.
Your claims in that matter, separating Haeckel and Darwin and, in fact, even Daniel Gasman's has to give way to the superior claims that Haeckel could make in that regard. Richards is right in so far as he associates Haeckel and Darwin, he is not merely wrong but dishonest in asserting that both men didn't assert some of the most putrid of racist, elitist and violent assertions ever to be taken up as legitimate science and acted on politically and legally by politicians and jurists and military figures on the strength of those ideas identification as having the reliability of scientific knowledge. That couldn't possibly be clearer from reading the primary documentary evidence.
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