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Adolf Hitler is rightly condemned for his brutal implementation of eugenics, a term often masking mass extermination. However, it’s astonishing how many revered individuals shared similar ideologies of purging so-called undesirables from society. While most didn’t advocate for gas chambers, their proposed methods were far from compassionate.
10. Helen Keller
As is widely known, Helen Keller became blind and deaf after a childhood illness in the late 19th century. Were it not for the dedication of her young teacher, Anne Sullivan, she might have spent her life in an institution.
Keller dedicated her life to advocating for the blind and deaf. However, her strong political stances, which led to FBI surveillance for much of her life, are less commonly known. She joined the Socialist Party in the early 1900s, championed women’s rights and birth control, supported the NAACP, and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. Today, the Helen Keller Services for the Blind continues to empower visually and hearing-impaired individuals through education and employment opportunities.
Keller also sought love in her personal life. Though she never married, she was once engaged to Peter Fagan. However, her mother and Anne Sullivan opposed the union, fearing Keller’s disabilities would prevent her from managing a family. Initially resistant, Fagan eventually withdrew under pressure from Keller’s family.
Keller shared a close, enduring friendship with Alexander Graham Bell, whose eugenics views we’ve previously explored. Keller herself supported eugenics, particularly concerning individuals with mental disabilities. In 1915, when baby John Bollinger was born with severe deformities, surgeon Harry Haiselden refused to operate, advising the parents to let their “defective” child die, claiming the infant would grow up to be “an imbecile and possibly a criminal.” Haiselden even promoted his beliefs through a movie in which he starred.
The Chicago Medical Society expelled him for his actions. Keller publicly shared her perspective in a 1915 letter to The New Republic:
“In my view, the most straightforward and sensible approach would be to refer cases like that of the severely disabled infant to a panel of expert physicians. Ordinary juries determine life-and-death matters based on the testimony of untrained, often biased individuals . . . Even when the accused is guilty, there’s often no certainty that they wouldn’t eventually contribute positively to society. However, a mentally impaired individual is almost certain to pose a potential threat. A medical jury would base their decision on precise, scientific evidence, free from the biases and errors of untrained observers. They would only act in cases of genuine idiocy, where no mental improvement is possible . . . We must choose between Dr. Haiselden’s principled humanity and a weak, sentimental approach.”
9. Theodore Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt, a US president widely celebrated during his lifetime, remains highly respected today. Known as the “trust buster,” he championed a “Square Deal,” established the US Forest Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System, and became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
The teddy bear was named in his honor after he refused to shoot a bear tied to a tree, deeming it unsportsmanlike. However, he held no such qualms about eugenics. In a January 3, 1913, letter to Charles Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office, Roosevelt drew parallels between human reproduction and livestock breeding:
“Society has no right to allow degenerates to reproduce. It’s astonishing that our society refuses to apply basic principles of breeding, which every successful farmer uses for livestock, to human beings . . . We fail to grasp that such actions are logical compared to a nation that permits unchecked reproduction among the worst physical and moral stock . . . One day, we’ll recognize that the primary duty—the unavoidable duty—of upstanding citizens is to pass on their lineage, and we must not allow the continuation of those deemed unfit.”
Many eugenics advocates aimed to eliminate physically weak individuals. Roosevelt echoed this sentiment in his letter, despite his own lifelong struggles with poor health. Though he projected an image of strength, he was a sickly child, suffering from severe asthma, poor eyesight, heart issues, blindness in one eye from a boxing injury, and hearing loss in one ear.
8. Sir Winston Churchill
In 2002, Sir Winston Churchill was named the greatest Briton of all time in a public vote. Though often a divisive figure, he was praised for getting “the big issues right,” as one commentator noted.
Churchill was far more than a gifted speaker. At a time when few in the US or UK acknowledged the horrors unfolding in Nazi Germany, he visited to see the situation firsthand. “It’s a mistake to think he was just a rhetorician who glossed over details,” said Boris Johnson, former Conservative mayor of London. “He was deeply involved in the specifics and technicalities, which helped him make the right decisions.” Churchill also earned the Nobel Prize in Literature for his historical writings.
Despite his opposition to Hitler, Churchill shared the dictator’s belief in eugenics as essential for maintaining racial purity. In a 1910 letter to British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, he wrote, “The rapid and unnatural rise in the numbers of the Feeble-Minded and Insane, alongside the decline of the thrifty, energetic, and superior classes, poses a national and racial threat that cannot be overstated.”
The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 categorized “mental defectives” who could be institutionalized indefinitely. “Idiots” were defined as those too mentally impaired to protect themselves from physical harm. “Imbeciles” could not manage their own affairs but were less impaired than idiots. The “feeble-minded” required supervision to protect themselves or others, while “moral defectives” had permanent mental weaknesses coupled with uncontrollable criminal tendencies. These definitions, with slight modifications, also applied to children.
While Churchill never endorsed gas chambers, he supported the segregation, confinement, and sterilization of those he deemed inferior.
7. Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling, a renowned scientist and peace activist, is the only individual to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes—one in chemistry and the other for peace. His work was driven by a philosophy of reducing human suffering. He campaigned tirelessly against nuclear weapons testing, highlighting the dangers of nuclear fallout to human health. Despite occasional controversy, he remained a steadfast advocate for global peace.
He also made significant scientific contributions, such as discovering that sickle-cell anemia resulted from a genetic mutation altering hemoglobin in blood cells. This marked the first identification of a “molecular disease.”
He later applied eugenics to his findings. To alleviate human suffering, he argued for legal measures to eliminate factors causing genetic diseases. For sickle-cell anemia, he proposed mandatory testing for African Americans, followed by restrictions on marriage and reproduction for carriers. He extended this approach to other genetic conditions like fibrocystic disease and phenylketonuria.
Years later, Pauling suggested even more drastic measures to reduce suffering from genetic diseases. He proposed that carriers receive a tattoo or visible mark, possibly on their foreheads, to identify them. This, he believed, would prevent carriers of the same disease from marrying. He also supported aborting pregnancies where both parents were carriers, arguing it would prevent the child’s suffering. To him, abortion was less harmful than living with a hereditary disease.
However, Pauling did not support killing children already born with such diseases or enforcing castration or sterilization.
6. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an associate justice of the US Supreme Court for three decades, is regarded as one of the most influential legal minds in history. His impact on jurisprudence persists even 90 years after his passing. Appointed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902, Holmes earned the nickname “The Great Dissenter” for the profound insights in his dissenting opinions.
Despite his widespread acclaim, Holmes’s career is marred by his 1927 majority opinion in Buck v. Bell, which upheld forced sterilization of individuals deemed undesirable. Carrie Buck, a Charlottesville resident, was labeled unfit to bear children after becoming an unwed mother at 17 due to rape. Her mother had also been institutionalized for alleged promiscuity, though she too was a rape victim. To justify sterilizing Carrie, her six-month-old daughter was falsely declared “abnormal.”
Holmes argued that Carrie was likely to produce “socially inadequate offspring” and that “her sterilization would benefit both her welfare and society’s.”
Holmes inadvertently provided the Nazis with a defense during the Nuremberg trials. They cited his ruling to justify their atrocities, quoting: “It is better for society to prevent those clearly unfit from reproducing, rather than waiting to punish their degenerate offspring for crimes or allowing them to suffer due to their incapacity . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
This ruling legitimized the forced sterilization of thousands of women in the US by validating Virginia’s sterilization legislation.
5. John Maynard Keynes
In the early 20th century, John Maynard Keynes emerged as one of the foremost economists globally. His seminal work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, shifted focus from individual markets to the economy as a whole, laying the foundation for macroeconomics—a field that has since been both influential and, for many students, a source of drowsiness.
At the time, Western governments maintained balanced budgets. Keynes introduced a groundbreaking idea, advocating that governments should run deficits during economic downturns to sustain employment. He proposed increased government spending during recessions, with a reversal of this approach once economic stability was restored.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to Keynesian economics as a last-ditch effort to revive the US economy. In a national address, Roosevelt stated, “I concluded that the current crisis demands action from both the government and the people. Our primary issue is a lack of consumer demand due to insufficient purchasing power. Therefore, it is our responsibility to stimulate economic recovery.”
Keynes was hailed as an economic hero for his role in revitalizing the US economy. However, some question whether Roosevelt’s policies truly made a difference. Regardless, Keynesian principles dominated US fiscal policy until the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan shifted to monetary policy to combat soaring inflation.
Keynes also supported population control through eugenics. In his book The Essential Keynes, he wrote: “The time has come for nations to establish clear policies on optimal population size, whether larger, smaller, or unchanged. Once determined, we must implement measures to achieve this goal. Soon, society must also consider not just the quantity but the quality of its future generations.”
During his seven-year tenure as director of the Eugenics Society, Keynes argued that contraception was essential to curb the expansion of the lower classes, whom he described as too “drunken and ignorant” to regulate their own reproduction.
4. Edward Franklin Frazier
Edward Franklin Frazier was regarded as the most influential African-American sociologist of the 20th century. Like many of his peers who studied the black community, he was a polarizing figure. He eventually became the head of the sociology department at Howard University.
One of his more controversial conclusions was that African Americans had lost their connection to African heritage and were now culturally American. He was especially critical of middle-class African Americans, accusing them of cultural elitism and prioritizing material wealth over meaningful values.
Frazier rejected the white eugenics model of Nordic superiority but applied a class- and geography-based version of eugenics to the black community. In Eugenics and the Race Problem, he wrote, “There is little risk that intellectually gifted African Americans will dilute their mental inheritance by marrying those with cognitive impairments. However, the lack of institutional controls to regulate the reproduction of the colored feebleminded is concerning. In the South, where little attention is paid to this issue, their numbers are growing unchecked.”
Frazier argued that black Southerners exhibited undesirable traits due to unchecked reproduction, while black Northerners, whom he viewed as high achievers, benefited from a “socializing process.” He suggested that the Northern environment naturally selected the best and brightest. However, his advocacy for controlling reproduction among certain segments of the black population aligns with traditional eugenics rhetoric.
3. Clarence Darrow
Renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow often spoke with poetic eloquence, advocating for compassion and understanding toward those who didn’t meet societal expectations. “I am pleading for the future,” he once declared. “I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty no longer dominate human hearts. When we can learn through reason, judgment, understanding, and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is humanity’s greatest virtue.”
By the early 20th century, Darrow earned the nickname “Attorney for the Damned,” reflecting his reputation for defending society’s outcasts. However, the man didn’t always live up to the legend.
When Darrow claimed that all life was worth saving, he was defending Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, recent college graduates who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in an attempt to commit the perfect crime. Darrow argued that the killers’ actions were influenced by their upbringing, wealth, youth, detective novels, and anything else he could attribute blame to. He insisted that Leopold and Loeb didn’t kill Franks out of malice but out of curiosity, likening the act to squashing a spider.
Darrow is particularly celebrated for his 1926 article in The American Mercury, where he passionately opposed sterilization and bans on intermarriage for eugenic purposes. He even argued that society should retain “morons, idiots, and imbeciles” because they perform the manual labor needed by the intellectual elite.
Despite his advocacy for the marginalized, Darrow exhibited a harsh indifference toward disabled children. Aligning with Haiselden, the Chicago surgeon Helen Keller had criticized, Darrow stated, “Chloroform unfit children. Treat them with the same compassion we show animals that are no longer fit to survive.”
2. Woodrow Wilson
For more than half a century, Woodrow Wilson has been consistently ranked among the top 10 US presidents. Franklin D. Roosevelt once remarked, “All our great presidents were visionaries who clarified critical ideas shaping the nation’s identity.” He believed Wilson was a moral leader who effectively used his presidency to guide both the public and Congress toward what he deemed the right direction.
As the 28th president of the United States, Wilson led the nation through World War I and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in negotiating a peace treaty that proposed the creation of the League of Nations, an international body aimed at preventing future conflicts through mediation.
Wilson’s presidency saw the creation of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. He championed labor reforms, including child labor laws, and advocated for women’s suffrage. “I do not believe,” Wilson stated, “that any leader can succeed without acting . . . Driven by a deep empathy for those he leads—a sympathy that is insight—an insight rooted in the heart rather than the mind.”
However, his actions as New Jersey’s governor in 1911 contradicted these sentiments. He signed the state’s sterilization bill into law, which authorized the sterilization of individuals deemed “feeble-minded” (including idiots, imbeciles, and morons), epileptics, rapists, certain criminals, and others labeled as “defectives.” The law justified forced sterilization by attributing these conditions to heredity.
In 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke during his presidency, leaving him partially paralyzed and visually impaired. Confined to bed for 17 months, his condition was concealed by his wife and doctor, leading some to consider her the de facto first female president. This raises the question of whether Wilson himself would have been targeted under eugenics programs.
1. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois was a multifaceted and influential figure in African-American history. Though he frequently disagreed with other black leaders, his impact on the community was profound and enduring.
Born in 1868, shortly after the Civil War, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard University. His groundbreaking research on the black experience in America established him as the nation’s first serious scholar of African-American life.
Du Bois’s confrontational stance against racism often put him at odds with the more moderate Booker T. Washington, the leading African-American figure of the time. This ideological divide created a split within the black community, as individuals aligned themselves with one of the two contrasting leadership styles.
Du Bois was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as the editor of its monthly publication, The Crisis. In 1934, he departed from the organization due to a disagreement with Walter White, the NAACP’s leader, over the concept of voluntary segregation within the black community. While the NAACP focused on advocating for integration, Du Bois believed segregation was the more appropriate path.
Despite his fervent advocacy for equality, Du Bois surprisingly supported eugenics. He rejected the Nordic eugenics movement but endorsed a eugenics-based approach for the black community. He categorized African Americans into four groups, ranging from the desirable “Talented Tenth”—educated leaders—to the undesirable “submerged tenth,” which he described as comprising criminals, loafers, and prostitutes.
Du Bois aimed to encourage marriage and reproduction among the Talented Tenth while discouraging it within the submerged tenth. In the Birth Control Review, he stated, “The uninformed masses of Negroes continue to reproduce recklessly and detrimentally, resulting in a population increase that stems from the least intelligent and capable segments, who are also the least equipped to raise their children effectively.”
