Read Army of Evil: A History of the SS Online
Authors: Adrian Weale
To some extent, the number of people who could potentially be affected by the Sterilisation Law was finite. For instance, there were only so many hereditarily blind or deaf people in Germany, and objective medical analysis was needed before they could be placed on the sterilisation lists. However, “congenital feeblemindedness” and “alcoholism” were far more open to subjective interpretation. “Intelligence tests” were introduced supposedly to determine the former, but in reality they were no such thing. Rather, they simply examined acquired learning. Moreover, many subjects passed the test but were still sterilised because they allegedly displayed “feebleminded appearance and behaviour.”
A popular joke in Germany in the 1930s summed up the paradox
of the senior National Socialists’ enthusiasm for eugenics and racial classification in its definition of an Aryan: “He must be blond, like Hitler; thin, like Goering; handsome, like Goebbels; virile, like Röhm—and called Rosenberg.” Discriminatory laws based on eugenics continued to be enacted throughout the decade and were eventually complemented by laws that confined
Asozialen
(antisocial individuals) to state hospitals or asylums, imposed protective custody on habitual criminals, and restricted the right of Gypsies to travel and trade. (The latter law effectively classified Gypsies as antisocial criminals purely on the basis of their race.) These measures brought all such individuals within the purview of the SS security apparatus, and eventually led many of them to suffer the same fate as the Jews.
The next groups to be targeted were those who were considered a drain on society. Just as the National Socialists’ faith in eugenics led them inexorably towards compulsory sterilisation of people with “hereditary” diseases, so their warped social theories soon led them to attack anyone with an incurable disease or a permanent disability.
The issue of euthanasia had been raised in Germany even before the First World War. Back then, liberal progressives had argued that scarce resources should be directed towards the healthy workforce rather than unproductive cripples. At the time, this argument garnered little support in a society that still espoused Christian values and conventions. However, the brutal experience of war soon changed that. The mass slaughter of the First World War had a devastating impact on the moral climate in Germany. By the end, the German people were all too familiar with death on an industrial scale, and in a sense they abandoned their traditional views on the sanctity of human life and adopted a much harsher view of the world. Karl Bonhoeffer, the chairman of the German Psychiatric Association and father of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian and prominent opponent of Hitler, said in 1920:
It could seem as if we have witnessed a change in the concept of humanity. I simply mean that we were forced by the terrible exigencies
of war to ascribe a different value to the life of the individual than was the case before, and that in the years of starvation during the war we had to get used to watching our patients die of malnutrition in vast numbers, almost approving of this, in the knowledge that perhaps the healthy could be kept alive through these sacrifices. But in emphasising the right of the healthy to stay alive, which is an inevitable result of periods of necessity, there is a danger of going too far: a danger that the self-sacrificing subordination of the strong to the needs of the helpless and ill, which lies at the heart of any true concern for the sick, will give ground to the demand of the healthy to live.
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In the same year as Bonhoeffer made this speech, Karl Binding, a lawyer, and Alfred Hoche, a psychiatrist with a morbid interest in the brain activity of recently guillotined criminals, wrote a pamphlet entitled “Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life.” Both men were right-wing German nationalists who put loyalty to the “national community” above any notion of individual rights. Binding died before their article was published, but Hoche went on to become an aggressive apostle of euthanasia.
In the article, they stressed that the Judaeo-Christian tradition of respect for human life was a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. To back up this claim, they cited the example of the Spartans, who had routinely killed weak infants and the Inuit, who had killed their ageing parents. Taking this argument further, they suggested that society should also kill off “incurable idiots,” the terminally ill and the critically injured. Perhaps in a feeble bid to display compassion, they said that the latter two groups should be given the right to choose to die on their own terms through a painless, medically administered procedure. (Then, as now, doctors routinely eased the final agonies of terminally ill cancer patients with overdoses of painkillers, but Binding and Hoche argued that such treatment should be enshrined as a right, and that the doctors who carried it out should never have to
worry about legal consequences for their actions.) However, the crux of the pamphlet was the claim that certain individuals were “unworthy of life.” By this, Binding and Hoche meant people who were so “inferior” that there was no value in their continued existence. The argument they put forward was rooted in both eugenics and economics:
If one thinks of a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youth…and contrasts this with our institutions for “idiots” with their solicitude for living patients—then one would be deeply shocked by the glaring disjunction between the sacrifice of the most valuable possession of humanity on one side and on the other the greatest care of beings who are not only worthless but even manifest negative value.
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It is easy to find the source of this fury: Hoche’s only son had been killed at the Battle of Langemarck, and he never recovered from his loss. But underlying his and Binding’s argument was something much more sinister than the death of a loved one: the suggestion that the “feebleminded” and “idiots” were not fully human. The claim was that their minds were so degenerate that they could not be said to have human personalities. In conclusion, Binding and Hoche argued that patients themselves, their relatives and/or physicians should be able to apply for euthanasia when the patient’s life had become “unworthy,” and that the state should then be the arbiter of whether it should be carried out.
This pamphlet was widely debated in inter-war Germany, but it received no official approval or acceptance during the Weimar era. It was only when the National Socialists came to power that euthanasia started to be seriously discussed as a state policy. Paradoxically, in part this was facilitated by a revival in mainstream psychiatry.
The psychiatric profession had lost a good deal of its prestige during and shortly after the First World War—partly because of the misdiagnosis of “shell-shock,” partly because of the appalling state of
Germany’s wartime asylums, in which around seventy thousand patients died from starvation, and partly because certain psychiatrists had been happy to label post-war revolutionaries “insane” with no basis in fact. However, during the 1920s, occupational therapy was introduced and proved highly successful in Germany’s asylums, and community clinics were established throughout the country. Leading these reforms were Gustav Kolb and Hermann Simon, who were quick to point out the economic—as well as the medical—benefits of what they were doing. For instance, the new community clinics could treat far more patients for much less money than the old, grim asylums. At the same time, great claims were being made, initially at least, for new types of treatment, such as electro-convulsive therapy and insulin coma therapy. All of this changed the mood in the psychiatric profession from pessimism to optimism in a few short years. Moreover, asylums and institutes for the mentally ill started to be widely viewed as hospitals with a range of treatments at their disposal, rather than as warehouses for the storage of the permanently handicapped.
However, all of these improvements in the care of many mentally ill patients started to draw attention to the few who remained stubbornly unresponsive to any form of therapy. This latter group was now pushed even further to the margins of what was already a very marginalised sector of society. They started to be criticised for their inability to work, and euthanasia started to worm its way back onto the agenda of the medical profession.
Hitler followed the euthanasia debate closely, as is clear from a speech he gave in 1929 at an NSDAP rally:
If Germany was to get a million children a year and was to remove 700–800,000 of the weakest people then the final result might be an increase in strength. The most dangerous thing is for us to cut ourselves off from the natural process of selection and thereby rob ourselves of the possibility of acquiring able people. The first born are not always the most talented or able people. Sparta, the clearest
case of a racial state in history, implemented these racial laws in a systematic way. As a result of our modern sentimental humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy.
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While at first sight this appears to be an argument for eugenic infanticide, another interpretation is that Hitler was actually suggesting a trade-off between healthy infants and the sick, weak and disabled.
Hitler returned to the subject on numerous occasions. For instance, Hans Lammers—an honorary SS officer—recalled that Hitler introduced the topic of euthanasia when he was being advised on the details of the Sterilisation Law in 1933. And Dr. Karl Brandt, one of Hitler’s personal physicians, remembered him saying two years later, “if war should break out, he would take up the euthanasia question and implement it,”
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because resistance from the churches and other bodies would be diminished in wartime. Notwithstanding these private conversations, euthanasia initially remained too controversial to form any part of the official National Socialist programme. But it was clearly on Hitler’s mind, and he had no problem in telegraphing his feelings to those subordinates who were in a position to do something about it.
T
HE START OF
the euthanasia programme can be traced to a specific event that occurred in Leipzig. In the winter of 1938–39, a baby was born to a family called Knauer. The infant was blind, missing one leg and part of an arm, and was, according to Karl Brandt, “an idiot—at least, it seemed to be an idiot.”
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Apparently encouraged by the baby’s grandmother, the Knauers petitioned Hitler to grant permission for their child’s doctor to perform a “mercy killing.”
This petition was submitted to the Führer Chancellery, which had been established as a forum for ordinary party members to present their problems directly to Hitler. This allowed him to play the part of
the conscientious leader, even though, of course, he rarely dealt with any of the letters personally. On this occasion, however, it seems that Philipp Bouhler
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did actually consult with Hitler before passing the case on to Brandt, who recalled:
[Hitler] ordered me to talk to the physicians who were looking after the child to find out whether the statements of the father were true. If they were correct, then I was to inform the physicians in his name that they could carry out euthanasia…I was further ordered to state that if these physicians should become involved in some legal proceedings because of this measure, these proceedings would be quashed by order of Hitler.
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There were at least two other appeals for euthanasia around the same time: a middle-aged woman dying of cancer; and a labour service official who was terribly injured in an industrial accident. These cases all seem to have been widely discussed (although there are no records of any of the meetings), and the end result was a directive from Hitler to Bouhler, dated 1 September 1939, in which he states that “authorised doctors” should be permitted to carry out “mercy killings.”
The first victims of the euthanasia programme were children. From the autumn of 1939, doctors and healthcare workers were ordered to register all children with Down’s syndrome, micro- and hydrocephaly, serious physical deformities (such as missing limbs and late development of the head and spine) and cerebral palsy. Once registered, these children—who ranged in age from newborn infants to teenagers—had their records examined by three “referees”: Werner Catel, the director of the University of Leipzig paediatric centre; Hans Heinze, director
of the asylum at Brandenburg-Görden; and Ernst Wentzler, an eminent paediatrician. Each man was paid an allowance of 240 marks a month for his contribution. If all three doctors agreed, the Reich Committee for Hereditary Health—a secret body that was subordinate to the Führer Chancellery—directed the relevant local public health authority to arrange for the child to be admitted to a designated regional clinic. Then the child was killed.
It is worth noting that Catel, Heinze and Wentzler assessed each case purely on paper, without conducting any physical examination of the children themselves. It is also worth noting that most of the children were killed by pseudo-medical means: they had their nutrition withdrawn or were given overdoses of sedatives in order to induce respiratory problems, bronchitis and pneumonia. The doctors and nurses who carried out these “procedures” swore an oath of secrecy and were paid extra to ensure their silence. Many of them undoubtedly found this work disturbing, and a number demanded transfers out of the designated clinics. Equally, however, many others simply got on with the job without complaint. It seems that they were prepared to accept that the good health of the nation required this slaughter of the innocents.
As in the case of the Knauer family, it is likely that a number of the parents welcomed, even if they did not actively seek, their children’s deaths. Nevertheless, the National Socialists never felt sufficiently confident about this policy to sanction it in German law, nor did they ever make it public. That meant the whole operation had to be carried out by subterfuge. Parents might be persuaded to part with their child after promises that they were being taken away to receive specialist medical treatment. Once the child was in a killing centre, spurious reports of their progress were often issued by doctors to reassure the parents. Then the tone of the reports would change, to indicate that the child had taken a turn for the worse. Shortly afterwards, inevitably, there would be a confirmation of death.