Editing Social Darwinism (section)

===Germany===
In the 1860s and 1870s, social Darwinism began to take shape in the interaction between Charles Darwin and his German advocates, namely [[August Schleicher]], [[Max Müller]] and Ernst Haeckel. [[Evolutionary linguistics]] was taken as a platform to construe a Darwinian theory of mankind. Since it was thought at the time that the [[orangutan]] and human brain were roughly the same size, Darwin and his colleagues suspected that only the invention of language could account for differentiation between humans and other [[Great Ape]]s. It was suggested that the evolution of language and the mind must go hand in hand. From this perspective, empirical evidence from languages from around the world was interpreted by Haeckel as supporting the idea that nations, despite having rather similar physiology, represented such distinct lines of 'evolution' that mankind should be divided into nine different species. Haeckel constructed an evolutionary and intellectual hierarchy of such species.<ref name="Richards_2013">{{cite book |last=Richards |first=R. J. |year=2013| title=Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory | publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0226058931 }}</ref> In a similar vein, Schleicher regarded languages as different species and sub-species, adopting Darwin's concept of selection through competition to the study of the history and spread of nations.<ref name="Aronoff_2017">{{cite book |last=Aronoff|first=Mark |editor-last1=Bowern | editor-last2=Horn | editor-last3=Zanuttini |title=On Looking into Words (and Beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses|publisher=SUNY Press |year=2017|pages=443–456 |chapter=Darwinism tested by the science of language | url=https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/151| access-date=3 March 2020 |isbn= 978-3946234920}}</ref> Some of their ideas, including the concept of [[Lebensraum|living space]] were adopted to the Nazi ideology after their deaths.<ref name="Richards_2013"/>

Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism allowed people to counter the connection of ''[[Relations between the Catholic Church and the state|Thron und Altar]]'', the intertwined establishment of clergy and nobility, and provided as well the idea of progressive change and evolution of society as a whole. [[Ernst Haeckel]] propagated both Darwinism as a part of natural history and as a suitable base for a modern [[World view|Weltanschauung]], a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monist League. [[Friedrich von Hellwald]] had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oxc_CwAAQBAJ|title=Sozialdarwinismus als wissenschaftliches Konzept und politisches Programm, in: Gangolf Hübinger (ed.), Europäische Wissenschaftskulturen und politische Ordnungen in der Moderne (1890–1970) (= Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 77), München 2014, pp. 99–121.|last=Puschner|first=Uwe|date=2014|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG|isbn=978-3110446784|language=de}}</ref>

A sort of aristocratic turn, the use of the struggle for life as a base of social Darwinism ''[[sensu stricto]]'' came up after 1900 with [[Alexander Tille]]'s 1895 work ''Entwicklungsethik'' ('Ethics of Evolution'), which asked to move "from Darwin till [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]". Further interpretations moved to ideologies propagating a racist and hierarchical society and provided ground for the later radical versions of social Darwinism.<ref name=":0" />

Social Darwinism came to play a major role in the ideology of [[Nazism]], which combined it with a similarly [[pseudo-scientific]] theory of [[racial hierarchy]] to identify the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an [[Aryan race|Aryan]] or [[Nordic race|Nordic]] [[master race]].<ref name=Baum2006_156>{{cite book|last=Baum|first=Bruce David|year=2006|title=The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity|location=New York City/London|publisher=New York University Press|page=156}}</ref> Nazi social Darwinist beliefs led them to retain business competition and private property as economic engines.<ref name="economics">Barkai, Avaraham 1990. ''Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory and Policy.'' Oxford Berg Publisher.</ref><ref name="university28">Hayes, Peter. 1987 ''Industry and Ideology IG Farben in the Nazi Era.'' Cambridge University Press.</ref>  Nazism likewise opposed [[social welfare]] based on a social Darwinist belief that the weak and feeble should perish.<ref name="evans">{{cite book|last=Evans|first=Richard J.|author-link=Richard J. Evans|year=2005|title=The Third Reich in Power|publisher=[[Penguin Books]]|location=New York|isbn=978-0143037903|title-link=The Third Reich in Power|pages=[https://archive.org/details/thirdreichinpowe00evan/page/483 483–484]}}</ref> This association with Nazism, coupled with increasing recognition that it was scientifically unfounded, contributed to the broader rejection of social Darwinism after the end of [[World War II]].<ref name=History>{{cite web|access-date=31 May 2019|title=Social Darwinism|url=https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism|website=History.com|date=21 August 2018 }}</ref><ref name=Encarta>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Social Darwinism|encyclopedia=Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000|year=2000|url=http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html|last=Bannister|first=Robert C.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191002062953/http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html|archive-date=2019-10-02}}</ref>