From Darwin to Hitler?

Panda's Thumb has a interesting piece on Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler

Here's my comment there:

Attempting to defend Darwin from any direct link to Hitler is obviously only fair in what was a complex history. Also, practically everyone was influenced by Darwin and used him to justify their own views.
But when all is said and done the whole tone of cultural discourse was set into a tailspin by Darwin's (and Spencer's) work. I was looking at J.Barzun's _Darwin, Marx, and Wagner_ (from before the Synthesis!, 1941), and he noted just how dreary it was to research the literature of the late nineteenth century in the wake of Darwin's book, all the forgotten stuff packed off to the archives. The lead up to WWI was filled with pseudo-Darwin. To take it at the high end, compare Kant and Nietzsche (who was critical of Darwin, and yet...). The sudden vicious tone is unmistakable. BTW, even Nietzsche has been quite sanitized, cf. the recent _Nietzsche, Biology, and Metaphor_, dredging up his remarks on extermination.
So while Weikart's work shows still another important thematic coopted by the ID people, sure to discredit everything they touch, the often disastrous thinking induced in many by Darwin can never be taken lightly.

Any theory about survival of the fittest needs vigilance! Even now the genocidal lunatics are out there, and I have met a number, and they never appear in print. All they need is the wrong moment to get activated. Those underground lunatic Darwinians are always there.