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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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34 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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out of the movement itself”38: that is, all
political, social, and cultural institutions were to be totally ideologized and
controlled by trusted Nazis. Gleichschaltung could be a euphemism for
eliminating all possible opposition, whether by exclusion, threat, or violence.
Certainly for anyone looked upon with disfavor by the regime,
Gleichschaltung was experienced as persecution. But it also expressed
the vision of absolute unity, of the totalized community (Gemeinschaft),
of making all things and people one.
Gleichschaltung, then, was
the metaphor uniting visionary, idealism and terror. And the expectation of
Gleichschaltung, once the process was initiated, created everywhere
— in government, universities, and all other institutions and professions
— the expectation of coercive unification according to Nazi ideological
requirements. In medicine as elsewhere there was widespread “voluntary
Gleichschaltung” — one might even say anticipatory
Gleichschaltung — by people who embraced Nazi ideology in varying
degrees.
The Gleichschaltung of the medical profession was
completed via the Nazi-dominated Reich Physicians’ Chamber
(Reichsärztekammer) and its various local branches, to which all
practicing physicians had to belong. Pre-Nazi medical societies were either
disbanded or “coordinated” into the Reich Physicians’ Chamber,
whose leaders were drawn from the “old medical fighters” who had
marched and fought in the streets in the early days. The latter had formed the
National Socialist German Physicians’ League (Nationalsozialistischer
Deutscher Ärztebund) at a Party rally in 1929 and were involved as
well in medical infighting with such rival groups as the Socialist League of
Doctors.
In medicine as in other professions there was perpetual
conflict between old fighters emerging from the early Nazi movement who tended
to be militant and ideological, and the newer bureaucrats, who tended to be
concerned with questions of organization and of integration of the existing
medical profession.39 This conflict implicit
in the dual authority of Party and government, plagued the Nazi regime
throughout its existence. This vanguard of medical leadership, more notable for
Nazi militance than scientific attainment, was nonetheless effective in
pressuring its medical betters to fall in line with Nazi policies. And fall in
line they did, to the extent that doctors had one of the highest ratios of
Party members of any profession: 45 percent. Moreover, their ratio in the SA
and SS was respectively two and seven times that of teachers.40* This medical movement toward the Nazis and
toward self-Gleichschaltung was related both to strongly authoritarian
and nationalistic tendencies within the medical profession, including “the
underestimation of politics and the overestimation of order”,42 and to their special attraction as a group to
the Nazi stress on biology and on a biomedical vision of national cure. |
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* But according to Michael
Kater, their enthusiasm seems to have lessened after 1935 and again after the
war began, and declined thereafter.41
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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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