"The Genetic Effects of WWII?" Topic

Germans are worriers. We can hardly go one day without suffering existential anxiety and we hate change. It's even got a name: "German angst."…

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt fingered the source. "The Germans have a tendency to be afraid. This has been part of their consciousness since the end of the Nazi period and the war," he said in 2011.

Science suggests he's right. Research has shown that trauma, stress and even nutrition can change the chemistry of the genetic code, making it possible to pass it to descendants. Can it be true that the cause of German angst really lies in the trauma suffered by our parents and grandparents almost 70 years ago during the Nazi era?…

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Reads like a load of cobblers. "Researchers presume …" "Researchers assume …." Not very scientific of them is it? Anyway, how come the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands come out much better than Germany? Did they not go through WWII as well?

The Germans don't have to be too worried though for the article has a cure for their problem.

They placed the animals in large cages for several weeks, let them live in social groups and provided them with a variety of opportunities for movement and play. This not only normalized their behavior but also that of the following generations.

I'm a bit skeptical too but once these scientists' 'studies' start gaining legitimacy in scienfic journals then maybe they'll catch on.

But here's a story about a person who can't feel fear that's fact:

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I know that science is starting to understand what is called "epigenetics," which studies how genes turn "on" or "off," depending on the environment. These effects can be passed on to offspring.

One simple example is that the children of women who experienced a famine grew up smaller than normal, even if the kid did not grow up under famine conditions.

There is established science around the effects and pervasive dna impacts of malnutrition and diet based on studies and research that looked at data from ww2, but I wouldn't go so far to say they looked at the war in itself but the nutrition conditions it caused amongst various groups of peoples at the time.

It should be easy enough to test for by comparing to results of other people in countries that suffered extreme hardships in war like Vietnam, Russia or France.

The science is not my field, but if I spent 50 years living in THE spot that was predicted to be the center of the next world war I'd be a worrier too.

"Once upon a time, when her amygdalae were still healthy"

Oooh. The beginnings of a great new tune there

Anyone who disbelieves the effectuality of breeding should view the PBS Nova episode on the domestication of dogs. The next question is whether war is perhaps an unintentional method of altering the incidence or relative proportions of certain human traits within affected human population groups.

Worth thinking about.

B

When I served in the army in Germany, I had a buddy that believed it was his mission to "rebuild the gene pool."

This was because all the aggressive Germans got killed off in the last war.

The stupidity is strong here.

Please, MJS, share your wisdom upon the subject at hand.

When I served in the army in Germany, I had a buddy that believed it was his mission to "rebuild the gene pool."

Sounds like most troopers throughout history, Otto. Determined to sow their wild oats, to use the old phrase.

Otto, was your buddy stationed in the Black Forest around 30 years ago?

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The science on this would have to be overwhelmingly convincing and rock solid and I don't see it. If we are to credit this that surrounding effects can have an effect on DNA the way the authors are talking about then it is a wholesale overturning of genetic theory and the enthronement of the theories of Lysenko, who thought that you could raise cold-resistant wheat in the arctic by breeding the shoots that survived a Siberian winter, and so forth.

IF TRUE, and that is a big IF it yields horrific visions where humans can be subjected to situations and circumstances to purposely alter their character and genetic propensities, and if you can do that, then you in effect create individuals without free will, or, individuality at all.

I think it far more likely that the effect on Germans Today is the result of the heavy weight of the Third Reich has not been lifted and I don't know if they will ever get out from under it. Almost no Germans today were even BORN in the Third Reich, which ENDED 75 years ago and few people left who had any but memories of it, and fewer still who had any meaningful role in the atrocities. But the history is there, the guilt is there, the "unsurmounted past" as the Germans call it is still there. These people will be saying "We're sorry" till crack of doom" and that can have an effect on what people say, and do.

This in no way the same thing, but when I was a wee lad of 9 or 10, with a name like Otto Schmidt, it was automatically assumed by all in the neighborhood that I was "German" and that I was therefore a Nazi. Didn't matter that I was born in Passaic NJ three years after peace broke out, I was still a Nazi. It didn't affect me much, but if you live under that constant drumbeat for 70 years… and you weren't even there…

I think that's a more likely explanation. It's just the way everyone is, so you are the way everyone is.

There's more truth in the Faulty Towers Episode "Don't talk about the War" than people imagine.

I think it's more cultural.

Bare in mind that 20% of the German population are immigrants or immigrant background and many more Germans come from Eastern Europe in 1945 or later where they didn't experience Nazism to the same level as those living in Germany at the time.

So how does that account for the 'German angst'?

It might explain the French experience between 1918 and 1940

The only thing it truly explains is how desperate some people are for another years worth of research funding.

There is also a long-held belief that Frenchmen are shorter than other western Europeans because of the Napoleonic wars.

His Guards had a minimum height requirement. A large portion of France's tallest young men were, for a full generation (not just 5 years, but 15 years), removed from the gene pool due to the high accumulated casualty rate suffered by the Napoleonic Guards.

Or so many of the short Frenchmen I met when I was 19 told me.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Why would the effect be different among Germans than among other European populations that also suffered the same trauma, stress and nutritional deprivations during the same time period?