Hoo boy, we’re going deep down the rabbit hole with this one. I hope you’ll bear with me, as this
might bewill be a disturbing post. Here, have some shirtless!Seb as a precautionary measure:
(source)
He’s laughing at me because I’m kind of a masochist. Anyway, check back with him if you need to.
I have German heritage on both sides of my family – my paternal great-great grandparents came over sometime in the early 20th century (don’t know much about them) and my maternal grandmother grew up in Nazi Germany. Plus I was a history major specializing in European history from 1871 to the Cold War. So…I know some things. You could chalk up all that to another reason this movie was like catnip to me. That said, it will take a bit to unpack all of this, so bear with me.
The idea of there being a superior race was pretty much unheard of before European imperialism and the Atlantic slave trade. Before then, Europeans didn’t have much cause to compare themselves to the rest of the world. But over the course of the 17th-19th centuries, that small part of the globe came to control the remaining 85% of the world. Suddenly, they were faced with millions upon millions of “savages,” and had to justify their superiority. Their right to subjugate the rest of humanity.
Eugenics started [in America], Germans just ran with it.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. This is something that we do NOT get taught (or that we didn’t get taught when I was taking community college history classes, let alone high school), and I know it’s just an aside, but THANK YOU.
Nazi Germany based all its initial forays into eugenics on programs in America that were active in over 20 states. That may not really be the topic of this post (which is a good one), but it is very very important to make sure people know.
The Super Soldier and the German Psyche
Published
knitting in the dark 