>>13697069>>13697125(2/4)
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855 – 1927) was another key thinker in the development of Nazi racial thought. Born British, he would eventually become a naturalized German citizen and a German supremacist, marry Wagner’s daughter, have his birthday celebrated as a holiday in Germany, and become an early member of the Nazi party.
Chamberlain was an important proponent of the idea that civilizational success was largely a function of the degree to which a civilization was managed by Aryans, and that the degradation of Aryan bloodlines and, therefore, civilizations, was often the fault of Jews.
Chamberlain was also an advocate of a “moral” definition of race whereby he labeled Jesus, Shakspere, and Dante, among others, “Germans”. Chamberlain was radically anti-positivist and regarded over reliance on science to be one of the greatest problems with the thinking of his time.
It is worth noting that the German and non-German speaking world had increasingly divergent schoolf of thought following the First World War. This was evident when, for instance, Germans were barred from attending the Second International Eugenics Congress of 1921 (an event which was attended by Winston Churchill and Herbert Hoover). In the 1930s, population geneticists in America helped form organizations which denounced Nazi uses and understandings of racial science.
An especially clear area of difference between the Germany and the Anglo world concerns IQ testing. The most important people in the early development of intelligence testing were probably Franci Galton (British), Charles Spearman (British), Alfred Binet (French) and Lewis Terman (American). By the first world war, the American military was mass administering IQ tests. By the second world war, IQ testing was being utilized in schools in America, England, and France.
