The American eugenics movement was a major factor in Hitler's belief that he could create a superior race (Kelly). It is a bit daunting how so few Americans know about the American eugenics movement considering how consequential it was to the United States and the world. Eugenics reflects social and political ideas rather than scientific ones. Eugenics had dire effects in cultures of the twentieth century in many countries. During 1893, Sir Francis Galton started an inquisition on the genetic and heredity selection of desirable characteristics. Eugenics was created in the late nineteenth century designed as a way to protect the upper class from inferior people and cultures. America was a quarrelsome place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Many immigrants moved into large, already crowded cities such as Chicago and New York. Immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe brought drastically different philosophies with them such as anarchism, anarchism, and Marxism (Eugenics Movement Archive). These ideologies completely differed from the way of life in America. Along with their different ways of thinking, the immigrants brought an abundance of social problems.
During the eugenics movement, "Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes" (Eugenics Movement Archive). While this shocking and unusual process went on, this is not very first time that humans tried to control the genetic quality for their advantage. It has always been in the farmers' best interest to produce better livestock through a selective breeding process designed to weed out any unwanted traits from the animals under their care over time. As this process was adapted to be used on humans, there were many more conflicts. Humans selected the best humans based on non-scientific and very personal criteria.
