How America inspired the Third Reich
The Nazis learned about Zyklon B from the US treatment of Mexicans
A brilliant new book by a Mexican-American historian documents how, in the Twenties and Thirties, the Nazis were inspired by what the United States had been doing to their Mexican neighbours since 1917.
In Ringside at the Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, David Dorado Romo establishes the US Immigration Department's systematic brutality along the Rio Grande border.
Mexican visitors were forced to strip naked and subjected to 'screening' (for homosexuality, low IQ, physical deformities like 'clubbed fingers') and to 'disinfection' with various toxic fumigants, including gasoline, kerosene, sulfuric acid, DDT and, after 1929, Zyklon-B (hydrocyanic acid) - the same gas used in the Holocaust's death camps.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The ostensible reason for the US fumigation was the fear of a typhus epidemic. Yet in 1916, the year before such 'baths' were enforced, only two cases of typhus had occurred in the poorest El Paso slum.
"This is a huge black hole in history," Romo told me. "Unfortunately, I only have oral histories and other anecdotal evidence about the harmful effects of the noxious chemicals used to disinfect and delouse the Mexican border crossers - including deaths, birth defects, cancer, etc. It may well go into the tens of thousands. It's incredible that absolutely no one, after all these years, has ever attempted to document this."
What Romo does have is shocking proof of the influence of US immigration techniques on Nazi thinking. Romo (below) quotes Hitler writing in 1924, "The American union itself... has established scientific criteria for immigration... making an immigrant's ability to set foot on American soil dependent on specific racial requirements on the one hand as well as a certain level of physical health of the individual himself."In 1938, three years before the first death camps of the Final Solution, Nazi chemist Dr Gerhard Peters published a full account, in German science journal Anzeiger fur Sahahlinskund, of the El Paso 'disinfection' plant. He included two photos and diagrams of the machinery which sprayed Zyklon B on railroad cars. (Peters went on to acquire Zyklon B's German patent.)
It should be noted that while the Americans sprayed their victims with toxic chemicals, they restricted use of Zyklon B to freight and clothes. As the Nazis understood, spraying it directly on a human caused almost immediate death. We can only guess what effect it had on the thousands of Mexican men, women and children who, after a 'bath' in DDT or gasoline, were sent away in clothes drenched with Zyklon B.
Romo's book comes at a time when Mexican immigration is at the top of the list of US political issues. There are 12m illegals in the United States by official count, and certainly twice that unofficially. Among the solutions is the right wing's vociferous call to build a 'Berlin wall' 2,000 miles long across the entire Rio Grande border.
Unsurprisingly, Mexican Americans hate this idea. Their memories - the emerging truth of Mexican-American history - and their votes seem certain to undermine it.
Ringside at the Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez is published by Cinco Puntos Press.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Duchess of Gloucester: the hard-working royal you've never heard of
Under The Radar Outer royal 'never expected' to do duties but has stepped up to the plate
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Are 'judge shopping' rules a blow to Republicans?
Today's Big Question How the abortion pill case got to the Supreme Court
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Climate change is driving Indian women to choose sterilization
under the radar Faced with losing their jobs, they are making a life-altering decision
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Puffed rice and yoga: inside the collapsed tunnel where Indian workers await rescue
Speed Read Workers trapped in collapsed tunnel are suffering from dysentery and anxiety over their rescue
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Gaza hospital blast: What the video evidence shows about who's to blame
Speed Read Nobody wants to take responsibility for the deadly explosion in the courtyard of Gaza's al-Ahli Hospital. Roll the tape.
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Giraffe poo seized after woman wanted to use it to make a necklace
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Helicopter sound arouses crocodiles
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Woman sues Disney over 'injurious wedgie'
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Emotional support alligator turned away from baseball stadium
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Europe's oldest shoes found in Spanish caves
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Artworks stolen by Nazis returned to heirs of cabaret performer
It wasn't all bad Good news stories from the past seven days
By The Week Staff Published