Dissecting The Nazis' Perverse Scientific Practices

MURDEROUS SCIENCE:Elimination By Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany, 1933-1945. Benno Müller-Hillü Oxford University Press; Oxford 208 pages; $24.95 RACIAL HYGIENE:Medicine Under The Nazis Robert Proctor Harvard University Press; Cambridge; 414 pages; $34.95 REVIEWED BY FREDERICK H. KASTEN In the 40 years since the Holocaust, the deadly pseudomedical experiments carried out on involuntary human guinea pigs have been investigated by scholars, and so has the psychological profile of the Nazi physicians at the selection ramps in Auschwitz. Now historians and scientists are turning to study the role of other German physicians who helped construct Nazi racial policy and implement the compulsory sterilization and euthanasia programs. The two books reviewed here are the first to be published in English on these specific issues. Both are well-documented, scholarly volumes. The key to understanding the warped views of Nazi medicine lies in recognizing the historical rise of German eugenics or “racial hygiene,” the preferred German term. Starting with the social Darwinism of the late 19th century and the rediscovery of Mendel at the beginning of the 20th century, the groundwork was laid for the belief that human mental traits are largely inherited and that “inferior” non-Aryan groups as well as certain individuals within the Aryan race should be prevented from procreating and thus causing the decline of European culture. The Germans were not alone in pursuing genetic purification. In 1929, Charles Davenport, then director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and president of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, wrote a memoran dum to the German racial hygienist Eugen Fischer on the importance of encouraging eugenics. “Maximum speed is necessary," the danger is enormous,” Davenport proclaimed. With the advent of Hitlerism in 1933, the Nazi vision for the Aryan destiny became firmly planted on so-called biological principles. Some of Germany's most famous scientists (Astel, Baur, Fischer, Heyde, Lorenz, Ritter, Rüdin, von Verschuer) became partners and leaders in the Nazi cause. Physicians were regarded as “biological soldiers” and “cultivators of the gene." Sterilization Of ‘Asocials’ In 1933, a compulsory sterilization law was proclaimed in cases of congenital mental defects, schizophrenia, manic depression, hereditary epilepsy, and severe alcoholism. Later, so-called “asocials” were included. It is estimated that before the program ended in 1939, more than 35,000 Germans were sterilized. In 1939, the “euthanasia program” was organized as official policy to eliminate children with serious hereditary diseases and physical handicaps. Leaders then extended the program to mental institutions where older German incurables who could not work and all Jewish patients were deemed “useless eaters” and inferior beings “unworthy of life.” The policy was officially abandoned in 1941 following resistance from the churches and the German people, although some killings continued on the initiative of individual doctors; this became known as “wild euthanasia.” However the project led directly in 1941 to creation of the low-profile program code-named “14f13,” referring to destruction of “sick,” “degenerate,” and “asocial” undesirables at the concentration camps. Different Approaches Both Müller-Hill and Proctor give historical accounts of these matters, covering the rise of Nazi racial science and the parts played by key professional medical scientists in sterilization and euthanasia programs. The two books differ in several respects. Benno Müller-Hill, a professor of genetics at the University of Cologne, has written a slimmer volume, which nonetheless contains much information. The high point is interviews with 13 anthropologists and psychiatrists, some of whom were closely involved with medical leaders during the eugenics fiasco. In Racial Hygiene, Robert Proctor’s contribution goes deeper into this dark side of German medicine. He makes no secret of his intent to debunk the idea that the German scientific community reacted to Nazi political pressures simply in terms of “passive” or “apolitical” responses. Proctor, a faculty member at the New School for Social Research, documents how the German biomedical scientists played an active, even leading role, in the initiation, administration, and execution of Nazi racial programs. While Jewish intellectualism had low status in the racist state, Proctor feels that National Socialism was attractive to the remaining biomedical community. Proctor notes a number of attractions: the willingness of the Nazi authorities to “biologize” social problems (by emphasizing heredity over environment), the aid given to the sciences allied with racial biology, the international support for racial hygiene by eugenics movements abroad, the zeal with which public health reforms were pursued, and the relative impoverishment of the German medical profession in the pre-Nazi Weimar years. Proctor tends to downplay the fact that while certain sciences, such as psychology, anthropology, human genetics, and various forms of racial science flourished, they did so at the expense of mathematics, physics, and traditional medical education. A reader might question a few points. For example, Proctor reports that German medical journals of the Nazi period continued publication under essentially the same editorial boards of earlier years. However, this says nothing about the quality or kind of work published. Questions of emphasis aside, Proctor and Müller-Hill’s books make recommended reading for researchers and physicians interested in the doctor-scientist relationship to Nazi government policy. They also have bearing on contemporary ethical issues facing our medical-scientific community today. Frederick H. Kasten is a cell biologist, medical historian, and professor in the Department of Anatomy at Louisiana State University Medical Center, New Orleans.

Dissecting The Nazis' Perverse Scientific Practices

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