" So are you. "
No, you just aren't going back far enough.
The intelligentsia of the late 19th and early 20th century took the idea of Survival of the Fittest (no, this is not a discussion of Darwin) and embraced it. They saw nothing wrong with the idea of helping to weed out the weak among society.
Then the socialists, communists, and fascists pounced on that idea and took it to another level, justifying mass killing and genocide.
But the truth still stands that even people in this country had no real problem with the concept of getting rid of the weak and unfit in society. This allowed them to turn a blind eye toward what was happening in many parts of the world. Teddy Roosevelt, certainly no communist, said, "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." George Bernard Shaw believed that only eugenics could save mankind. Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood based on the concept of eugenics, abortion rights for convenience was a later addition for PP. All of these ideas were firmly in place before the pogroms and exterminations of the 20th century.
Of course Germans fell into Hitler's arms, but one of the reasons they did so was because of his views on the "Master Race", an extension of eugenics theories.
Oh where should we start then? Malthus? How about Amalek?
I'm well aware of the history of the eugenics movement. It may explain why the Germans had no qualms about exterminating classes of people (such as the mentally or physically non-productive), but it doesn't explain Germany's direction of that philosophy toward exterminating Jews.
Of course Germans fell into Hitler's arms, but one of the reasons they did so was because of his views on the "Master Race", an extension of eugenics theories.
Allow me to quote you again: He is missing a whole lot of the background which helped to cause the Holocaust.
At which point you expounded upon eugenics. I did not dispute those facts, nor the role that the Darwinist philosophy that precipitated eugenics played in permitting the extermination of classes of people. I merely pointed out that you were "missing a whole lot of the background which helped to cause the Holocaust." You missed the reason that the philosophy which justified the means (genocide) had the end of exterminating Jews in particular.
The great German/Jewish poet Heine said that it is Christianity which is the bulwark of justice, freedom and tolerance. He predicted the Holocaust and other disasters.
When people stop to sing carols they will sing The Internationale or Horst Wessel Lied. The actual first step (presumably favority of NYT guys) is Lennon's Imagine.
"The concluding passage of [Heine's] Religion and Philosophy in Germany [1832] is one of the most remarkable prophesies in all literature. [...]
Christianity -- and that is its greatest merit -- has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. ... The old stone gods will then rise from long ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will leap to life with his giant hammer and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ...
[Philip Kossoff, Valiant Heart: A Biography of Heinrich HeineCornwall Books, NJ and London, 1983]
Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder ... comes rolling somewhat slowly, but .. its crash ... will be unlike anything before in the history of the world. ... At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in farthest Africa will draw in their tails and slink away. ... A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.