Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945

11. Building Hitler’s “New Europe”

11 Building Hitler’s “New Europe” Ethnography and Racial Research in Nazi-Occupied Estonia A N T O N W E I S S - W E N D T Racial discourse was commonplace in wartime Europe. What makes Estonia standapartfromtherestoftheNazi-occupiedcountriesofEastCentralEurope isthatmanyEstonianacademicsandscientistsnotonlytalkedracialsciencebut alsoacteditout,withoutsubscribingtoNaziideology.Inretrospect,Estonians proved simultaneously the object and the subject of Nazi racial grand designs. This chapter argues that the local discourse concerning the biological health of the Estonian nation was far more attuned to the views of German, and later Nazi,racialexpertsthanhaspreviouslybeenassumed.Therelativelylaxoccupation regime introduced by the Nazis in Estonia and the idea of Finno-Ugrian ethnographicorderinfluencedasubstantialnumberofEstonianscientistsand scholars to both intellectually and practically contribute to the Nazis’ radical reshapingofEurope.By advancingracialresearchandparticipatinginpopulationtransfers ,prominentmembersoftheEstonianscientificandacademicelite unwittingly contributed to the building of Hitler’s “New Europe.” Existential Fear: The Nation in Peril Population-related issues had preoccupied the Estonian literati since the time Estonians emerged as a nation in the second half of the nineteenth century. 288 A N T O N W E I S S -W E N D T The impending danger of Germanization and/or Russification, coinciding with increased migration within the Russian Empire, raised the question of the sustainability of the Estonian nation. In 1870 one of the leading Estonian intellectuals, Jakob Hurt, formulated what he called a “categorical imperative of Estonian nationalism.” According to Hurt, the Estonians, although small in numbers, could attain greatness spiritually and culturally.1 Estonian national identityrestedonthreepillars:language,culture,andamythofcommondescent. By emphasizing the uniqueness of the Estonian language and its Finno-Ugric base,Estonianintellectualshelpedtolegitimizetheexistenceofthenewnation. A cultural component thus came to play a central role in Estonian nationalist ideology.TheideaoftheEstoniannationasalinguisticandculturalcommunity became dominant even among those influenced by social Darwinism. One of thefoundersoftheEstonianstate,JaanTõnisson,forexample,interpretedthe struggle for existence mainly in cultural terms.2 The Estonians had neither a highculturaltraditionnorthememoryofpoliticalindependenceandtherefore developedonlyaweaksenseofhistory.Thereforethelatterhadtobemanufactured by such nineteenth-century ideologists as Carl Robert Jakobson.3 Some Estonian intellectuals, however, argued that the sheer size of the population determined the spiritual health of a nation, reflecting widely held popularopinionthattheterritoryofEstoniacouldsustainamuchlargerpopulation . In the wake of the program of Estonianization in the late 1930s, leading Estonian politicians had accommodated thisidée fixe into their programmatic speeches. Thus Jaan Tõnisson believed in the possibility of increasing the size of the Estonian population from 1 million to 4 million. Likewise, President KonstantinPätsinhisNewYearaddressto thenationinDecember1937 urged the Estonians to make natural growth a priority. The paternalistic, pronatalist regime of Päts projected the long-term effect of a low birthrate on the labor forceandthecountry’scapabilitytodefenditselfagainstpotentialaggressors.4 ThehumanlossesinflictedbytheFirstWorldWarandsubsequentcivilwar contributedtothegrowthinpopularityofDarwinismandMendelisminEstonia. Althoughmilitaryvictorieshadboostedcollectivemorale,thewarwasviewed asharmful:healthyyoungmenhadbeenkilled,whilediseasedorhandicapped individualshadreturnedhomeandpropagated.FromtheEstoniannationalist perspective, the country’s low birthrate, indeed, one of the lowest in Europe, threatened the nation with extinction. The fact that the Russian minority constitutedtheonlypopulationgroupwithahighbirthrateinEstoniaexacerbated Building Hitler’s “New Europe” 289 these fears. According to the neurologist Voldemar Üprus, in three hundred years the Estonian people would be vastly outnumbered by the Russians. At the other end of the spectrum, some Estonian politicians had calculated the possible impact of the application of the Nazi concept of Lebensraum to their country. Considering the voracious appetite of the leaders of the Third Reich, they prophesied, it would not take long before the Germans set their eyes on the sparingly populated territory of Estonia.5 PositiveeugenicsfirstmadeinroadsinEstoniaintheformofanantialcoholismmovement .Theemphasisontheprotectionofmothersandchildrenadded credibility to eugenic programs. The establishment of the Estonian Eugenics Society Healthy Breeding program (Eesti Eugeenikaselts Tõutervis) in 1924 institutionalized ideas that had long been part of the mainstream discourse within educated circles. In 1927 and 1935 the society held the Convention of NationalUpbringing,whichdiscussedsuchissuesasrace,fertility,andsociety, thusintroducingabiologicalperspectiveonthenationalistdebate.6Otherwise theboundarybetweenpositiveandnegativeeugenicswasratherthin.Intimes ofcrisis,promotionofbettergeneticstockquicklydegeneratedintorestrictive measures against deficient hereditary “carriers.” According to some estimates, theproportionofinferiorracialelementsinEstoniaranashighasone-thirdof thetotalpopulation.7Forcedsterilizationappearedtobethemostefficientway of fighting the hereditary ills of society. In that respect, proponents of eugenic intervention in Estonia tended to follow trends found in the Scandinavian countries, which, in turn, closely observed developments in Germany and the United States. Mostofthetwenty-sixknownsterilizationlawsinEuropeandNorthAmerica were adopted in the 1930s. The issue of sterilization received most attention in Protestantcountries,notablyinScandinavia. Denmarkintroduced preventive legislationin1929,followedbyNorwayin1934andSwedenin1935.ThesterilizationlawthathadthemostimmediateimpactonEstoniawasthatpassedbythe Finnishparliamentin1935.Inadditiontohistorical,cultural,andlinguisticties that bound the two countries together, Estonia and Finland had developed a similarsetofbasicprinciplesthatguidedthemthroughouttheinterwarperiod. Adherence to peasant values and defense of Western civilization against the Communist danger were probably the two most important components of both the Finnish and Estonian worldview. As regards racial hygiene, Finland and Estonia differed in one particular respect. In Finland eugenics enjoyed 290 A N T O N W E I S S -W E...