For the Betterment of the Race, 2013 The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene

Racism, race hygiene, eugenics, and their histories have for a long time been studied in terms of individual countries, whether genocidal ideology in Nazi Germany or scientific racial theories in the United States. As this study demonstrates, however, eugenic racial policy and scientific racism alike had a strongly international dimension. Concepts such as a 'Racial Confederation of European Peoples' or a 'blonde internationalism' marked the thinking and the actions of many eugenicists, undergirding transnational networks that persist even today. Author Stefan Kühl provides here a historical foundation for this phenomenon, contextualizing the international eugenics movement in relation to National Socialist race policies and showing how intensively eugenicists worked to disseminate their beliefs throughout the world.

1. The Dream of the Genetic Improvement of Mankind:The Formation of the International Eugenics Movement 2. World War I and Its Effect on International Eugenics 3. Racism, Internationalism, and Eugenics 4. The Crisis of Orthodox Eugenics and the Rise of Human Genetics and Population Science  5. National Socialist Germany and the National Eugenics Movement 6. World War II and the Mass Murder of the Sick and Handicapped 7. On 'Good' and 'Bad' Eugenics: The Reorientation to Human Genetic Counseling and the Struggle Against 'Overpopulation'  8. The Renaissance of Racist Eugenics 9. The Dissolution of the Eugenics Movement: Will There Be Eugenics Without Eugenicists?

Stefan Kühl is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. He is the author of The Nazi Connection: American Racism and German National Socialism (2002).