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and who might be able to work in factories; early on they (still) signed
death certificates; later on they coerced prisoner doctors to do their
dirty work, to "help" them by acting as go-betweens, and to provide
lists of names for the next batch to be gassed. They were reversing
the Hippocratic oath, were forcing the imprisoned doctors to do so as
well, and were taking life instead of preserving it. The Nazi doctors
"were neither brilliant nor stupid, neither inherently evil nor partic–
ularly ethically sensitive automatons"; they were run-of-the-mill phy–
sicians whom ideology had transformed from healers into killers, from
therapists into mass murderers. This sobering discovery alone justi–
fies Dr. Lifton's extraordinary labor. But, by elaborating so exten–
sively on the psychological factors, I believe, he underestimates the
social and political realities which allowed the death camps to come
into existence in the first place - soon after Hitler came to power.
We know that the die was cast when the German government
started to implement Hitler's ideas of "racial leadership" and to encode
the superiority of the "Aryan race"; and that soon after the Nurem–
berg Laws were passed in September 1935, to "protect German blood
and honor," persons with "defective genes" started to be sterilized.
Their "impairments" included "hereditary influences," from blind–
ness, deafness, congenital defects and clubfoot, to harelip and a ten–
dency to promiscuity. From here it was but a small step to induct
doctors as "biological soldiers," to consider them the "cultivators of
genes," and the "caretakers of the race."
Ultimately, the profession was reorganized in line with Nazi
ideology - under the principle of
Gleichschaltung.
Now, doctors acted
on the belief that "the Jews were Germany's misfortune"; and they
cooperated in eliminating all others they deemed racially inferior.
(Some doctors opposed these policies, but they quickly were silenced.)
As Dr. Lifton demonstrates, they were taking "life unworthy oflife" to
save the Fatherland. Experiments on impaired children, and later on
adults, led them to advocate euthanasia as mercy killing. Typically,
Dr. Lifton notes, "the order to implement the biomedical vision came
from the political leadership; it then was conveyed to a leading doctor
within the regime, who combined with high-ranking administrators
to organize a structure for the project." At first, some psychiatrists,
hospital workers, clergymen and relatives of victims whose deaths had
come unexpectedly, asked questions. But later, "wild euthanasia,"
practiced by individual physicians who starved their patients, and
who experimented with all sorts of drugs, injections, and diets, no
longer brought overt protests. By the time Auschwitz, the "model" of
