ABSTRACT
Haeckel had a direct and powerful influence upon many individuals important to the rise of racial anthropology and National Socialism. One of them was Ludwig Woltmann, a member of the Social Democratic Party who attempted to fuse the ideas of Haeckel and Marx, transforming the latter’s concept of class struggle into a theory
of worldwide racial conflict. Another was Adolf Hitler. According to Daniel Gasman, Hitler’s views on history, politics, religion, Christianity, nature, eugenics, science, art, and evolution, however eclectic, coincided with those of Haeckel and were more than occasionally expressed in very much the same language. At least two significant ideological contacts can be established between Hitler and the Monist League that propagated Haeckel’s doctrines. Among many Nazi scientists and intellectuals there was a general acclaim for Haeckel as an intellectual ancestor and forerunner, but he was never lauded as a major prophet of the movement (as was Houston Stewart Chamberlain). Chamberlain’s conception of race derived from the preDarwinian theory of racial typology which permitted enthusiasts to regard the Aryans as being of distinctive origin and permanently superior. Darwinism was included in the German curriculum in biology but the Nazis were suspicious of a doctrine which attributed an inferior anthropoid ancestry to all men and was incompatible with their belief that Aryans had been racially superior from the very beginning.
