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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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129 |
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| doctors to be developing within the SA something on the
order of a revolutionary medicine and, indeed, of a biologized state: “And
they were all doctors like me, who tried to think biologically, [of] biology as
the foundation of medical thought …. We didn't want politics — we
were critical of politics — but [were concerned] with the way human beings
really are — not just an idea or philosophy.” |
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| National Socialism as Applied Biology |
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The nation would now be run according to what Johann S.
and his cohorts considered biological truth, "the way human beings really are."
That is why he had a genuine “eureka” experience — a sense of
“That's exactly it!” — when he heard Rudolf Hess declare
National Socialism to be “nothing but applied biology” (see page 31).
Dr. S. felt himself merged with not only Hess (he told me, with some
excitement, “I was standing no more than ten meters from him at the
time!”) but with the Führer himself: “Hess knew exactly what
Hitler thought . . . . He was the only one closely involved with him all the
time.” S. quickly joined the Party and devoted himself to the realization
of that biological claim.
He pointed out proudly that these early SA
doctors formed the nucleus of the National Socialist German Physicians' League
(Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund), the doctors who, as
he put it, "were the first intellectuals to have complete confidence . . . in
National Socialism to march in the streets" - in effect, to put their bodies on
the line.
Now S.’s hero was Gerhard Wagner, who had served in the
First World War, the Freikorps, and the SA and was a founder and the head of
the Nazi Doctors’ League. Described accurately by one observer as “a
notorious public advocate of the anti-Jewish racial laws,”45 Wagner was to Johann S. “a fantastic person
— an all-around doctor from a medical family, [who] had a personal
influence on Hitler.” Wagner was a protégé of Rudolf Hess,
and Dr. S. understood both of these leaders to favor something on the order of
permanent revolution and to view the National Socialists “as a movement
rather than a party, constantly growing and changing according to the
‘health’ requirements of the people’s body
[Volkskörper]”: “Just as a body may succumb to illness,
the Volkskörper could do the same.”
S. worked closely
with Wagner in the Nazification of German medicine, the two men sharing
Hess’s Volk mysticism, advocacy of lay practitioners, a Nazi
version of holistic medicine that would “put in the foreground . . .
questions of the psyche that had been neglected” (see pages 40-41), a
broad medical outreach to all institutions (holding to medical authority so
that “employees of a factory knew that their boss could not give orders to
the doctors”), and “a new medical Weltanschauung ” This
worldview replaced two false doctrines — that of Christianity, which
understood human beings “only in a spiritual sense”; and that of the
French Revolution, which claimed that “all human beings are equal”
— both of which, |
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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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