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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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120 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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pages 61-62) It is tempting to declare him a
“psychiatric thug” and let it go at that.
Gerhard Schmidt,
the anti-Nazi psychiatrist who took over Pfannmüller’s institution at
the end of the war, wrote a book on what he found there and elsewhere
concerning the “euthanasia” project. Schmidt stressed
Pfannmüller’s deep commitment to the ideology of “life unworthy
of life” and to a Nazi worldview that demanded the elimination of, as
Pfannmüller put it, “the pitiful patient” who exhibited only
“the semblance of a human existence.”19 And during talks I had with Dr. Schmidt he
described Pfannmüller, whom he met for the first time after the war, as
“a simple man [who) was strongly convinced that [the
“euthanasia” program] was urgently necessary,” and belonged to
the group who “thought they could make humanity healthier in this
way.” Schmidt also said that Pfannmüller had a reputation for being
“very soft — a soft depressive type,” who ordinarily “could
not hurt a fly.” It is likely that Pfannmüller was both a genuine
ideologue and an extreme example of the depressed person who overcomes his own
anxiety and death imagery by harming others. But when he had reached the point
of starving to death infants, children, and adults, it is likely that there was
operating within him a strong psychological brew of omnipotence and sadism. At
the same time, he could have continued to see himself as for the most part
idealistic and even decent. He later testified that he differed with Heyde in
wishing to consider as “capable of work” even those adult patients
who could perform only the simplest tasks. That testimony was undoubtedly
self-serving but could also reflect his effort to see himself, even at the
time, as a progressive and humane professional. In 1948, a Munich court
declared him medically unfit for trial. The next year he was sentenced to six
years’ imprisonment.20
Pfannmüller remains the epitome of the brutalized
physician-turned-killer. Contributing to his motivation is a mixture of
ideological (biomedical as well as political) and bureaucratic passion,
careerist ambition within the Nazi hierarchy, and tendencies toward depression
and powerlessness which could be overcome by means of omnipotent and sadistic
behavior. |
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| The Double Life: Max de Crinis |
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Professor Max de Crinis (1889-1945), probably
“the most outspoken and influential Nazi within the German psychiatric
establishment,”21 was striking in the
double life he attempted to lead. Appointed in 1939 to succeed Karl Bonhoeffer
to the psychiatric chair at Berlin and Charité Hospital, he was a
psychiatric consultant at the highest level of the regime. As mentioned
earlier, he was thought to have provided Hitler with the wording for the
original “euthanasia” decree, and was certainly active in all aspects
of the planning of that program and yet never identified as one of its leaders.
An Austrian, de Crinis had been active in anti-communist and
Freikorps |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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Page 120 |
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