Sheila Weiss modestly writes that she wants to provide a synthetic account of human genetics in this period that will be accessible to undergraduates as well as interested scholars beyond specialists' circles. In fact she has done more than that, adding to basic knowledge of the topic and establishing the broader relevance of this case for a more general understanding of politics and science.

Weiss describes her analytical framework succinctly in her introduction. The approach, pithily summarized in the words, “science and politics as resources for one another,” was initially proposed by the author of this review. The central claim is that even in dictatorships, far from being passive respondents to political circumstances, scientists actively enter into complex, changing agreements with political authorities by mutual consent to advance one another's interests. In a more literary mode, Weiss speaks here of a “Faustian bargain.” The case at hand is indeed well suited for an analysis of this kind.

In the first part of the volume, Weiss focuses on the two leading German institutions for research in human genetics: the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWIA), headed by Eugen Fischer, and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Psychiatry, particularly its “Genealogical Department” headed by Ernst Rüdin. Both were founded before 1933, and both were committed, though in different ways, to basic research in human heredity in the belief that such work would put eugenical policies on a scientific foundation. Both Fischer and Rüdin and their coworkers actively supported early Nazi eugenical measures, in particular the compulsory sterilization law of July 1933. Weiss, author of a pioneering study of the early history of “race hygiene” in Germany, effectively pulls together existing work on these institutes and the roles of their directors before and after 1933. Significant is her emphasis on interactions of both institute directors with Nazi party and state officials, most notably Arthur Gütt in the Interior Ministry. While it is well known that Rüdin and Gütt coauthored the official commentary on the sterilization law, Weiss shows here for the first time that Gütt actively recruited Fischer as well, supporting him even when he was attacked by party radicals because he saw Fischer's international standing as an asset to assure the credibility of Nazi policies. Weiss makes the differences between the two cases clear, however. Fischer and Rüdin remained bitter rivals; Rüdin got the upper hand in the Society for Race Hygiene and in the parallel effort to gain financial resources. Funding for both institutes rose rapidly under Nazism, but only Rüdin dared to write to Hitler himself, twice, to ask for even more. And only Rüdin made overtures to the SS Ahnenerbe in the late 1930s. Weiss implies that his involvement in the so-called “euthanasia” program was greater than he admitted after 1945. Fischer's successor Othmar von Verschuer's route to collaboration with the SS was different, leading to his infamous cooperation with Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz. Weiss provides a clear, nonsensationalist account of that murderous research program.

In the second part of the volume, Weiss focuses on two lesser-known aspects of this story: the public activities of these and other geneticists, including lectures in Germany, international congresses, and official talks in German-occupied countries; and the mobilization of genetics as a resource for the propagation of “race hygiene” in German schools. In her chapter on conferences, Weiss shows how scientists worked within the complex regulatory framework established by three ministries in the Nazi state to control international scientific activity in order to advance German (meaning: Nazi racial) science in the public sphere, while also advancing themselves. In the chapter on the schools, Weiss shows how the symbiosis of (apparent) genetic science and Nazi politics worked for educationists at the official level. She then combines analysis of published biology textbooks and handbooks with previously unstudied results from high-school final examinations. The comparison of official goals for universal indoctrination, particularly of Gymnasium students, with what can be learned about actual practice in the schools yields a complicated, ambivalent picture.

In the final part of the volume, Weiss summarizes international reactions to Nazi-era human genetics, including antiracist positions, scientific critiques from “reform” geneticists, and the persistent alliance of American “main line” eugenicists with their German counterparts. She concludes with a thoughtful discussion of why human genetics took the path to murder only in Nazi Germany. Her answer is clear: “The symbiosis that ensued between human heredity and the broad political context of Nazism served to radicalize them both” (p. 306, emphasis in the original); radicalization led to “moral numbing,” which enabled scientists to grasp with no qualms unique opportunities in wartime for access to human subjects without their consent.

I have only minor criticisms to make. Weiss accepts an interpretation of the history of the KWIA that states that Fischer started a research program in “phenogenetics” (unfolding of hereditary traits over time) in the late 1930s that allegedly formed the background for the Verschuer-Mengele collaboration. This interpretation is untenable: Fischer articulated the “phenogenetics” program in 1931 and used it to justify the establishment of a “Department of Hereditary Psychology” at the KWIA as early as 1935. Of course it would have been good to have more detailed accounts of actual basic research in human genetics during this period, and a separate chapter on the fates of the actors after 1945. In the effort to make the text more widely readable, the writing gets a bit awkward in some places. But none of this detracts from the overall assessment: this is a fine overview of human genetics in Nazi Germany that should circulate widely.