Independant Articles Regarding History
Social Darwinism
By Maddy Hedman
Social Darwinism greatly affected society before both wars due to the contention between white Europeans and those who differed, and the quandary of racism. Charles Darwin’s idea of “natural selection” and Herbert Spencer’s idea of “survival of the fittest” were falsely applied to society in the nineteenth century. People mistook their ideas and used them to dignify one race against the others. White Europeans believed they were superior to all races, and felt the need to discriminate other ethnicities with different appearances. They believed that they evolved further and faster than other races. Racial dissidence such as this led to an issue that is still seen today, which is called racism. Racism is the comparison between races, where one believes certain traits may be superior or inferior to the
infirior to the contending race. Before the war started, this was already an emerging controversy. Social Darwinism contributed to World War II because of Adolf Hitler’s belief in Germans being the superior race. His “final solution” would be to kill off the races he deemed inferior. A genocide occurred in result of Hitler’s beliefs, and it’s known as the Holocaust. An estimated number of forty-five to sixty million people were killed, solemnly based upon the ideas of social Darwinism. This theory affected society decades before World War II, which supports that social Darwinism caused the war. If these ideas were never introduced, this racial inequality wouldn’t have been taken to the extremes of a massive war and genocide.