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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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114 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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| Medical
Leaders |
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| The “Decent Nazi”: Karl Brandt |
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Of the leaders of the “euthanasia” program, Karl
Brandt (1904-48) must come first, as the Führer’s choice to initiate
the program — that is, as the Führer’s conduit for it — and
its ultimate medical authority, even if he came to have relatively little to do
with its day-by-day operation. More than any other Nazi doctor, Brandt
epitomizes the élite, highly educated, and dedicated healer joining
actively in the medical killing.
Brandt came from a lower civil service
family in Alsace, trained under surgeons Georg Magnus and Ferdinand Sauerbruch
and was himself, in his twenties, already emerging as a gifted surgeon and
authority on head and spinal injuries.4 He
was also a fervent nationalist who embraced the Nazi movement as “the
avenger, the party of hope,” as part of what a friend and fellow medical
student called Brandt’s “fantastic dream” of Germany regaining
the Alsace area he had been forced to leave in order to be a German national.
Yet the same Karl Brandt had been strongly drawn to Albert Schweitzer, a fellow
Alsatian, and was said to have been prevented from joining him in medical
missionary work in Africa only by French requirements (Lambarene was in
French-controlled Africa) of military service and citizenship. According to
Brandt’s old friend, “Schweitzer and Hitler were the two most
influential figures in Brandt’s life. They were his two models, his two
mirrors.”5
Brandt joined the
Nazi Party and the Nationalist Socialist German Physicians' League in 1932; was
introduced to Hitler that same year by his fiancé, a German swimming
champion; and by 1934, at the age of twenty-nine, had become Hitler’s
personal “escort doctor.” Within the inner medical circle surrounding
Hitler, Brandt was the scientific figure and reliable traditional physician
— as opposed to Theodor Morell, the Führer's personal physician since
1939, who was considered (accurately) a quack and a charlatan (see page
132).6 While Morell retained his hold on
Hitler, it was Brandt who developed what some called an “adopted son”
relationship with Hitler similar to that of Albert Speer, Hitler’s
personal architect and later minister for armament and war production. Both
young men were tall and elegant, came from respectable families, and were well
connected in German academic and professional circles — advantages that
Hitler himself lacked but was drawn to and exploited.
Other Nazi
doctors also held Brandt in unusually high regard both professionally and
personally. They spoke of him as decent, straightforward, and reliable. One
doctor who knew him quite well described him as “a highly ethical person,
. . . one of the most idealistic physicians I have |
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* The origins of certain
mythologies concerning Brandt’s alleged social and cultural distinction
and family background are unclear. His father was in fact a policeman. I would
like to thank Michael H. Kater for clarifying Brandt’s background.
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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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