Talk:Paul Popenoe

A fact from Paul Popenoe appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 16 September 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that eugenicist Paul Popenoe introduced marriage counseling to the United States?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/September.

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Popenoe and the Nazi regime

in the article there is this statement without any reference: "While Popenoe had no contact with the regime of Nazi Germany and abhorred the Racial hygiene campaign as it unfolded, some theorists in retrospect associate his work as feeding this program of the Nazi government".
This statement is in contrast with other sources as:
"His book Sterilization for Human Betterment was one of the first American books translated into German by the Nazi government, and it was widely cited by Hitler's “racial hygiene” theorists to justify the Nazis' own sterilization"[1].
"In a letter to LC Dunn, a critic of Hitler's race policy, Popenoe defended the German sterilization law" [2].
"Popenoe and Gosney defended the German law through the 1930s. In both private correspondence and publications, Popenoe emphasized that the law was "not a hasty improvisation of the Nazi regime". [3].
"Paul Popenoe, a director of the American Eugenics Society, lauded Hitler for basing "his hopes of biological regeneration solidly on the application of biological principles of human society"[4].

And only "by the end of the decade, Gosney and Popenoe wanted to avoid any associations with Hitler" [5].--Domics (talk) 09:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have read in perhaps not the most reputable source (a slim book on pseudoscience like flat earth, etc. including the eugenics movement before ww2) that Popenoe advocated not just sterilization of those thought not fit to reproduce but even their elimination via gas chambers. Now, if false, that is a terrible thing to propagate, but if Popenoe really did suggest murdering humans, it belongs in the article.

https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/11080.ch01.pdf has him suggesting killing people for the purpose of keeping up the "standards of the race" -- all sorts of aholes around before nazis and don't think they are gone by any means. 50.230.251.244 (talk) 22:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]