As history soon would repeat itself the king used his army to coerce labor from Belgium's indigenous people to fuel his rubber fortune. Similar to the Holocaust massive amounts of people suffered their death, the population was cut in half due to violence, famine, and disease. King Leopold walked away with 1.2 billion from the rubber trade, making natural resources another driving mechanism in imperialism. Early imperialistic ideals and actions influenced the Nazi organization but were not the only contributing factors. "Scientific racism was central to justifying imperial violence." (Lindquist.) .
Geological finds changed the course of European thought and religion, soon biology spawned the generation of scientific racism. Exterminate evaluates 1800s-1900s European ideals about "others" through the scientific inquiry of European scientists. Sven Lindqvist explains how Darwin's theory of evolution was used as justification for imperialism and cultural extinction. Darwin puts the words in Hitler's mouth from his The Decent of Man: "The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world of savage races." Should the blame of the Holocaust be placed on the shoulders of Darwin? Or did Darwin foresee the Genocide to come? Pseudo-scientists Francis Galton, Lyell, Knox, and Howinson all used biological sciences to justify the elimination of undesirable races. Craniology and Eugenics were also used to justify imperial conquest by comparing skulls and genetics of undesirable races. Hitler's attitude about the Jewish people can easily be interpreted with his Reich citizenship Laws of September 15, 1935. Article 2 demonstrates Hitler's disposition about Jews, it states that A citizen of the Reich may be only one who is of German or kindred blood, and who, through his behavior, shows that he is both desirous and personally fit to serve loyally the German people and the Reich.