Nazi Doctors: Disguised Nazi Criminals - Term Paper Example

Physicians played a significant function in the euthanasia murder operation in Nazi Germany. Many have witnessed how scientists and physicians supported the extermination of those regarded as undeserving of life and how their racial and eugenic assumptions were immersed and assimilated into the Nazi movement. Assigning scientists to justify their philosophy, the Nazi organizers awarded them partial regulation over the putting into effect of exclusionary course of actions. Physicians and scientists hence served the regime as scholars and specialists. At some point in the 1930s, the put into practice sterilization regulation against the disabled and offered specialist counsel on labeling Jews and Gypsies (Friedlander 1995). As people have witnessed, once the system shifted from segregation to annihilation in the mid-1930s, a conclusion settled on by political heads, not professional counselors, physicians assisted to supervise the exterminations, as scientists did not falter to gain profit from the endeavor. Scientists and physicians therefore suggested, rationalized and supervised the killings. Others joined the lines of the civilian murderers (ibid). Yet, some too became murderers on the scene. Several myths have been invented to justify the task of physicians in the killing operations of the Nazi. Scholars dealing with the atrocities of the Nazis have attributed to physicians as a faction a distinguishing dedication to serve the human race and have therefore perceived their involvement in these offenses as a specifically blatant fall from morality. The bewilderment of physicians began prematurely. On one aspect, they were portrayed as “angels of death” (Friedlander 1995, p. 217), an expression immensely applied to Josef Mengele, who as, nevertheless, merely one of the killers among numerous at Auschwitz, even though he had further scientific education and training than the majority and ruthlessly used the modern scientific tactics to obtain academic recognition from his transgressions. On the other aspect, an inclination emerged to weaken the felonies of the physicians through awarding them truthful however misled intentions (ibid). In his current investigation of the Nazi doctors, Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist, demonstrated a parallel examination that has been broadly recognized; distinguishing physicians as “healers who work at the border of life and death,” (Lewy 2000, p. 217) he identified those who joined in the Nazi killing activities as “healers-turned killers”. Lifton portrayed mass murder as “medicalized killing,” (ibid, p. 217) describing it as the medical technique of killing large populations through ways of a regulated technology consuming highly toxic gas. Lifton illustrates the intentions of the doctors as entirely ideological; they turned out to be killers since they trailed a biomedical dream, moving toward their mission as a healing necessity. In this manner, Lifton differentiated between referred to as optimist such as Karl Brandt, portrayed as a model of a respectable Nazi, and someone such as Werner-Heyde, illustrated as an “SS hit man” (Friedlander 1996, p. 103) with “psychopathic and sadistic tendencies” (ibid, p. 103). The life stories of the doctors who participated could, nevertheless, direct to conclusions that are considerably unusual. Physicians as a faction are no more committed than other specialists and do not oppose misdeeds any better than do lawyers, statesman, or historians. Their reputation during that time as individuals with high educational achievement was quite great, yet evaluated by family history and economic status, it did not vary from that of other specialized. As a matter of fact, following the First World War, the standing of medical specialists and students lessened in Germany, which could aid to explain the reason why they were satiated with anger and hatred against the actuality of the democracy of Weimar and joined the faction of the Nazi in considerable number (Baumslag 2005). Apparently, it is certainly true that the involved physicians trusted in the racial and eugenic objectives of the Nazi administration. According to Benno Muller-Hill, a geneticist, natural and social analysts, and their students, defended the principle of human discrimination and hence motivated, bolstered and advocated policies of segregation and annihilation. Yet like the organizers, doctors worked together in carrying out the killing operations for several personal motives not linked to their principled dedication. The instance of Gottfried Ewald has demonstrated that a doctor could decline to join in killings even though he pledged to the principle of racial discipline (ibid). Whatever perspective each upholds on racial and physical cleanliness, individual physicians had to settle on a well-informed choice to carry out the murders; in reality, barely some prefer to pursue their biomedical dream into the concentration camps. The intentions that motivated these doctors to participate in the killing operations perhaps varied from individual to individual. Yet the evidence does not substantiate a conclusion that makes a distinction between the intentions of optimists such as Brandt and storm troopers such as Heyde, specifically, between Brandt’s arrogant goals and Heyde’s vicious behavior. The dissimilarities between such individuals chiefly mirror social class and conducts and do not inform people a great deal concerning their intentions. In the similar manner, Heyde varied in history, education, training and respectability from his heir Nitsche, yet the two men did not vary in the manner they performed their killing duties (Lewy 2000). These duties include murder plain and simple, and doctors did not accomplish murder dissimilarly than did their inferiorly educated colleagues. The concept of “medicalized killing” (ibid, p. 217) is hence inaccurate. In the euthanasia concentration camps, the doctors controlled death, and in sites such as Auschwitz, other doctors followed the same step. However, the mechanism of mass murder through the making use of gas is unrelated with medicine. Mass murder did not turned out to be a preventive medicine merely because Nazi principles draw their medium from medicine to portray their extermination guidelines as obligatory surgery. Even though Hitler commanded that only physicians may carry out the killing, everyone is aware that death thru the gas chamber was not a medical protocol. As people have previously witnessed, Georg Renno who is a Hartheim doctor, entirely recognized this and informed Werner Heyde, “I did not study medicine to service a gas valve” (Friedlander 1995, p. 218). As a matter of fact, affiliates of the RSHA and on no account doctors initially put forth the idea of using gas, whereas overseers, primarily police officers, designed the method of gassing and burning human beings (ibid). When everything is accomplished, people are still powerless to understand the justifications that seemingly normal individuals were capable to carry out such revolting murders. Neither principle nor self-motive is a sufficient justification for such behavior. Those murderers exclusively fit in to that time and place. Endeavors to repeat their deeds in the laboratory should be frustrated, even though experiments appear to demonstrate that average men wherever can carry out such form of crimes. However, there is an essential disparity between the sterile experimental context and the gruesome fact of the killing sprees and the killing camps (Friedlander 1995). The T4 killers faced actual human beings as sufferers, witnessed their pain, and experienced the blood and cruelty of the killing operations. In the social science investigation of Milgram, the subjects could have been deficient of imagination, could not prevent being aware of what they were accomplishing (ibid). They could witness how their deeds impacted real people. They grasped the realities and consequences of their actions. References Baumslag, Naomi. Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Lewy, Guenter. The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Read More