Alexis Carrel had previously published in 1935 the best-selling book "L'Homme, cet inconnu" ("Man, This Unknown"). Since the early 1930s, Carrel had advocated the use of gas chambers to rid humanity of its "inferior stock", and endorsed scientific racism discourse. One of the founders of these pseudoscientific theories had been Arthur de Gobineau in his 1853–1855 essay titled "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races". In the 1936 preface to the German edition of his book, Carrel had added praise for the eugenics policies of the Third Reich, writing that: