Swedish Eugenics during WW2

Below is an excerpt from the ‘official’ line. What I want to focus on in this thread though is the sinister sounding words ‘sterilisation was to prevent "unviable individuals” from spreading their undesirable traits’ as I have heard that during the WW2 years, Swedish authorities collaborated with the Nazis in researching and Promoting eugenics. Can anyone shed any light on the subject?
I Always wondered why there are so many blonde haired and blue eyed Swedes.

In 1997, following the publication of articles by Maciej Zaremba in the Dagens Nyheter daily, widespread attention was given to the fact that Sweden once operated a strong sterilization program, which was active primarily from the late 1930s until the mid 1950s. A governmental commission was set up, and finished its inquiry in 2000.[5]
The eugenistic legislation was enacted in 1934 and was formally abolished in 1976. According to the 2000 governmental report, 21,000 were estimated to have been forcibly sterilized, 6,000 were coerced into a 'voluntary' sterilization while the nature of a further 4,000 cases could not be determined.[19] The Swedish state subsequently paid out damages to many of the victims.
The program was meant primarily to prevent mental illness and disease. In 1922 the State Institute of Racial Biology was founded in Uppsala and in 1927 Parliament began to deal with the first legal provisions on sterilisation.[5] A new draft was produced in 1932, already taking into account sterilisation for general socio-prophylactic reasons, and even without the consent of the person concerned.[5] The draft was adopted in 1934.[5] Another law, passed in 1941, did not include any age of consent limit.
From 1950, the number of eugenic sterilisations under the 1935 legal provisions gradually decreased and between 1960 and 1970 voluntary sterilisations based on the wishes and in the interest of the persons concerned prevailed.[5] As in Canada and the US, racial politics also became involved, as there was a strong belief in the connection between race and genetic integrity among leading scientists and those carrying out the sterilizations. The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society had been founded in Stockholm in 1909, and the 1934 works by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal was very significant in promoting the eugenic tendencies in practical politics.[5] The authors theorized that the best solution for the Swedish welfare state ("folkhem") was to prevent at the outset the hereditary transfer of undesirable characteristics that caused the individual affected to become sooner or later a burden on society. The authors therefore proposed a "corrective social reform” under which sterilisation was to prevent "unviable individuals” from spreading their undesirable traits.[5] In the later decades it was primarily the mentally ill who were forcibly sterilized.

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reply to post by Mez353


Uhm, the fact that there are many blond and blue eyed Swedes is not due to eugenics 1935-1945. People have always been blond and blue eyed in Sweden long before that.

reply to post by Mez353


S&F. Good post.

Unfortunately, the Eugenics Movement is alive and well, repackaged as "Genetics" - and despite a mountain range of evidence proving its premises dead wrong. The last nail was pounded into the Eugenics coffin when the Human Genome Project was completed (10-odd years ago). There just are not enough genes in the human genome to explain the astounding range of human diversity - or to back up claims that "everything is genetic." Seems not much is, after all.

One of my favorite Venter quotes:

...we have, in truth, learned nothing from the [human] genome other than probabilities. How does a 1 or 3 percent increased risk for something translate into the clinic? It is useless information.

—Genomicist J. Craig Venter, explaining in a Der Spiegel interview (July 29, 2010) why the results of genome research have not yielded more medical applications

Background. If it's not genetic, what is it? Check out Epigenetics.

reply to post by abaddon6


I now, it was just a corny dig at Nazis and the Swedish collaborators.