Francis R. Nicosia - Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany: Origins, Practices, Legacies

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MEDICINE AND MEDICAL ETHICS IN NAZI GERMANY

Origins, Practices, Legacies

Editedby

Francis R. Nicosia

and

Jonathan Huener

Published in 2002 by

Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com

2002, 2004, 2008 The Center for Holocaust Studies at
the University of Vermont
First paperback edition published in 2004
Paperback reprinted in 2008
First ebook edition published in 2012

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

/
edited by Francis R. Nicosia and Jonathan Huener.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57181-386-2 (hbk.: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-57181-387-9 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-692-2 (ebk.)

(alk. paper: pbk.)

1. MedicineGermanyHistory19331945. 2. Medical ethicsGermanyHistory19331945. 3. World War, 19391945Atrocities. 4. National socialismMoral and ethical aspects. I. Nicosia, Francis R., 1944 II. Huener, Jonathan.

R510 .M385 2001
610'.943'09043dc21

2001037996

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-57181-386-2 hardback
ISBN 978-1-57181-387-9 paperback
ISBN 978-0-85745-692-2 ebook

PREFACE

THE FIRST FIVE ESSAYS in this volume are based on the lectures given by five internationally renowned scholars at the Miller Symposium on the theme of German Medicine and Ethics under National Socialism, held at the University of Vermont in April 2000. In the fall of 1998, several members of the advisory board of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont, most prominently Professor Emeritus Arthur Kunin, M.D., initiated plans for a symposium centered on issues and controversies related to the practice of medicine, the medical profession, and medical ethics in the years of the Third Reich.

Established with the goal of honoring the scholarly and pedagogical contributions of Professor Raul Hilberg, who served on the faculty of the University of Vermont for more than three decades, the Center for Holocaust Studies remains committed to furthering the cause of Holocaust education and serving as a forum for the presentation and discussion of new perspectives on the history of Nazi Germany and its crimes. As is so often the case, our exploration of controversial and insufficiently charted territory in the history of National Socialism and its crimes begins, and returns to, the orientation and compass that Professor Hilbergs pioneering work in the field provides.

The Miller Symposium was one such effort and, with the support and cooperation of the University of Vermont College of Medicine, was designed to address several of the most critical issues in the study of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Among these issues are the place of the Holocaust in the larger context of eugenic and racial research; the motivations and roles of some of the most important perpetrators of Nazi crimes, namely, the German scientific and medical establishment; the forms of racial and medical research undertaken with the support of and in the name of the Nazi state; the multiplicity of victims of Nazi persecution and murder; and the impact and legacy of the eugenics movement and Nazi medicine on physicians and the practice of medicine since World War II.

Confronting these issues from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, the individual essays contained herein are based on the authors original scholarship. They introduce the reader to the foundations of Nazi medicine in racial and eugenic research in Germany and elsewhere, and ground German medical practice and research in the regimes racial ideology. Moreover, they describe some of the murderous forms that medical practice took, accounting all the while for the motivations and complicity of the medical establishment in the crimes of National Socialism. Finally, these essays confront the complex and troubling legacy of medicine in the Third Reich, as they direct our attention to current debates over the nature and course of research in genetics and biotechnology. In its entirety, this volume is intended to offer the reader a brief, yet focused introduction to this controversial subject area, and is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students; for students in the fields of history, medicine, philosophy, ethics, and the sciences; and for the general reader interested in the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

Neither the symposium itself nor this volume would have been possible without Leonard and Carolyn Miller, whose generous support and engagement have helped to sustain and expand the programming of the Center for Holocaust Studies in recent years. It is therefore only fitting that this symposium bears their name. Recognition and thanks are also due to the College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, the University of Vermont Department of History Nelson Grant for Faculty Development, Kathy Johnson of the Center for Holocaust Studies, Wolfgang Mieder, and the symposiums organizing committee, which included Nancy Gallagher, Martin Koplewitz, Roy Korson, Arthur Kunin, David Scrase, and the editors of this volume. Finally, the editors especially wish to thank Michael Burleigh of Cardiff University for his concluding essay. His path-breaking scholarly works on this topic are well known, and his observations here, the reader will undoubtedly agree, are both provocative and synthetic. They serve to guide and challenge us as we consider the historiographical relevance and moral implications of the issues raised in this volume.

INTRODUCTION

Nazi Medicine in Historiographical Context

Francis R. Nicosia and Jonathan Huener

IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, the category of perpetrators of Nazi crimes against Jews and other victims has evolved and expanded considerably during the decades since the end of World War II. Gerald Reitlinger's The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 19391945, focused attention on this quintessential SS bureaucrat.

These events expanded the definition of perpetrators to include those in the Nazi state apparatus who, like Eichmann, operated just below the top military, civilian, and SS officials named and prosecuted just after the war. This redefinition was followed by trials before a West German court in Frankfurt from 1963 to 1965 of SS personnel who had worked at Auschwitz during World War II. For almost twenty years thereafter, perpetrators of Nazi crimes were typically considered to be Hitler, his top military and civilian lieutenants, and some of their subordinates in the party, state, and police bureaucracy, all motivated more or less by Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism on the one hand, career opportunities presented by the regime and its policies on the other, or some combination of both.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the concept of Nazi perpetrators has expanded considerably. Historians have endeavored increasingly to write history from the bottom up, within a context of sociological, economic, and psychological analysis of ordinary Germans, their opinions and attitudes under Nazi rule, and their role in the persecution and extermination of Jews and other victims. Interest has turned to the extent to which ordinary and not so ordinary citizenspeople who were not Nazi ideologues or true believers, or individuals with positions of authority in the bureaucracy, the party, or the militarywere complicit in Nazi crimes. The effort over the past twenty years has produced a wealth of scholarship that has greatly expanded our understanding of the human catastrophe that was the Third Reich.

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