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“There is today one state,” Hitler wrote in his autobiography “Mein Kampf,” “in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.”

As the film “War against the Weak,” shows, the eugenics movement, whose ideology culminated in the Holocaust, was formed not by the Nazis in 1930s Germany, but rather by the scientific and political elite of turn-of-the-century America. The documentary, directed by Justin Strawhand, is based on a book of the same title by Edwin Black and will screen at this year’s New Jersey Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 13 on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick.

“The theme,” Strawhand summarized, “is the danger of putting science to prejudice.”

The film documents the disturbing story of the eugenics movement in America. The theory of eugenics was first developed by British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton was inspired by his cousin’s 1859 publication, “On the Origin of Species,” which articled the theory of natural selection. According to Darwin, a species evolves over successive generations by adapting the traits that best enable it to survive.

Galton reasoned that societies that protected those weak, ill, or generally deemed unfit undermine the process of natural selection and thereby threatened the survival of society as a whole. In 1883, Galton coined the term “eugenics,” a term he later described as “the science that deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.”

It was America, though, where eugenics first gained significant traction. In the wake of the massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the racial conflicts following Reconstruction, scientists and policy makers were drawn to the idea of producing a hereditarily-healthy and pure population. Even one instance of a defect or abnormality in a family tree would render all its members “infected.”

The goal of the American eugenicists was simple: The elimination of the lower 10 percent of society, or what they called the “submerged 10 percent.” This included the physically disabled, the mentally challenged, so-called “morons,” epileptics, albinos, and the otherwise impure. African-Americans and recent Italian, Russian, and Jewish immigrants were particularly vulnerable to being within that lower percentile.

As the film reveals, eugenics was hardly outside the mainstream of American science or politics.

Connecticut was the first of many states when in 1896 it enacted marriage laws in accordance with eugenics ideas, prohibiting the marriage of anyone who was “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded.” In 1904, the prominent American biologist Charles Davenport received research funding from the Carnegie Institution, which eventually led to the creation of the Eugenics Record Office in 1910.

In 1907, Indiana was the first of more than 30 states to allow for the forced sterilization of certain individuals.

In 1927, a challenge to a Virginia law that allowed for the forced sterilization of patients at state mental institutions reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The 8-1 majority decision ruled that the Virginia law was, in fact, constitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Holmes infamously concluded that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

In total, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized.

The later half of the film depicts how American eugenic ideas and policies directly influenced Nazi racial policy.

Hitler was well versed in the theories of contemporary eugenics when he developed the Nazi policies towards Jews. In “Mein Kampf,” he frequently cited the two-volume work, “Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene,” co-written by Fritz Lenz, Eugen Fischer, and Erwin Baur. The book, which provided the “scientific” basis for later Nazi racial policies, positively referenced, page after page, the authors’ American counterparts.

Hitler even wrote a letter to the American eugenic leader Madison Grant, in which he called his book, “The Passing of the Great Race” his “bible.”

The relationship between American and German eugenics was more than a mere intellectual exchange. Rather, both were part of the same international movement. Through World War II, American and German eugenicists supported each other financially, politically, and even occasionally worked alongside one another.

“What surprised me the most was the fact that [the American eugenicists] continued to support the Nazis well past the beginning of World War II. Their hubris and arrogance blinded them to what was essentially a theory,” said Strawhand, adding that they never acknowledged or repented for the horrific outcome their work brought about.