Introduction To Nazi Euthanasia

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines euthanasia as “the action of inducing a quiet and easy death.”  This grant of a “mercy death” may occur with the consent of the individual concerned, is then termed “voluntary” “euthanasia” and was the meaning originally given to the word. However, euthanasia also came to be termed “involuntary”, as for example when a patient is suffering from an incurable and painful disease, or is in a coma and is considered unlikely to regain consciousness. In such circumstances, a third party or parties may determine to put an end to the patient’s suffering. 

The circumstances are, in general, that the person involved is no longer capable of making up his or her mind and/or to express his or her ultimate wish. But Nazi ““euthanasia”” was quite different in conception and practice from the dictionary definition, old or new. For it was derived, not from humanitarian or compassionate reasoning, but from pseudo-scientific theory and ruthless economic policy. The Nazis destroyed “life unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben) as they termed it, not as an act of mercy, but as part of a strategy to murder that part of the population least able to defend itself.

That policy was directed not only at German citizens, but at those of other eastern European countries which fell under Nazi hegemony, particularly Poland. The ““euthanasia”” programme formed an essential part of the evolving Nazi policy of extermination on a massive scale. That policy reached its apogee with the murder of the Jews, but had the programme arrived at its intended conclusion, the eventual death toll would have been immeasurably greater.  

The Nazis did not create this twisted version of euthanasia. Its roots lay in a selective reading of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, and the distorted “scientific” thinking to which this gave birth. The term "eugenics", a thesis which has no scientific basis, was coined in 1881 by the British naturalist and mathematician Francis Galton. It was described as "the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding." 

This took the concept of “survival of the fittest”, a fundamental element of Nazi ideology, to its logical conclusion. Eugenics developed within the larger movement of Social Darwinism, which applied Darwin's "struggle for survival" to human affairs. The fundamental tenet of the eugenics movement was that restricting the ability of “inferior” people to procreate whilst maximizing that of “superior” individuals, would benefit society. Attention was focused on the feebleminded (an inaccurate term covering everything from mental retardation to alcoholism), labelled as idiots, imbeciles, or morons. It was suggested that there existed a relationship between low intelligence and both immorality and crime.

The cause of the social problems of the time was deemed to be inherited feeblemindedness and the resulting poverty by hereditary degeneracy. It was concluded "Not all criminals are feebleminded, but all feeble-minded persons are at least potential criminals. That every feeble-minded woman is a potential prostitute would hardly be disputed by anyone." Racism too, was not far from the minds of the eugenicists. The "darker peoples of southern Europe and the Slavs of eastern Europe are less intelligent than the fair peoples of western and northern Europe" wrote one, adding that the "Negro lies at the bottom of the scale" of intelligence. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, director of the Eugenics Record Office in the United States, compared” human racial crossing with mongrelisation in the animal world" and argued that "immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Jews, were racially so different from, and genetically so inferior to, the current American population that any racial mixture would be deleterious."  

The eugenics movement was international, (the world’s first professorial chair in eugenics was established in 1909 at University College London), but was particularly influential in Germany, where in his 1895 book, “The Right to Death” (Das Recht auf den Tod), Adolf Jost argued that if the state demanded the sacrifice of thousands of individuals in wartime, it had the same “right” in times of peace to demand the sacrifice of the impaired and non-productive, who were draining the state of its resources.  Twenty five years later in a book entitled “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life” (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Leben), Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche proposed that “unworthy life” included not only the incurably sick, but many of the mentally ill and feebleminded, as well as retarded and deformed children. Killing such people was “an allowable, useful act.” To the eugenicists, such people appeared to have less intelligence, higher levels of antisocial behaviour, and, accordingly, less human value than worthier individuals, such as, naturally, the eugenicists themselves. They were “burdensome existences” (Ballastexistenzen).

For Binding and Hoche, the right to live was not an entitlement but was to be earned, and it was earned by being a useful economic contributor to society. Writing of those with disabilities, and advocating “involuntary euthanasia”, they continued: “Their life is absolutely pointless, but they do not regard it as being unbearable. They are a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole. Their death would not create even the smallest gap--except perhaps in the feelings of their mothers or loyal nurses.” The unimaginable had occurred; physicians were being encouraged, not to save life, but to take it.

Against such a background of pernicious nonsense masquerading as legitimate scholarly research, it is hardly surprising that Adolf Hitler became an early and enthusiastic supporter of this ““euthanasia”.” In Germany the term "Race Hygiene" was in use long before the label of “eugenics” became common, and the German Society for Race Hygiene (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) was to eventually represent all eugenicists.

In 1931, two years before Hitler’s assumption of power, Fritz Lenz, professor of race hygiene at the University of Munich, declared: "Hitler is the first politician with truly wide influence who has recognized that the central mission of all politics is race hygiene and who will actively support this mission." And support it he did. In 1934 Ernst Rüdin, psychiatrist and author of the 1933 Nazi sterilization law stated: "The psychiatrist and the healthy person are allies against the genetically defective. The psychiatrist must render his service to the ultimate aim of a hereditary pure, able and superior race." It took Samuel Beckett to point out the irony in this Nazi obsession with the creation of a race of “supermen.” An `Aryan’, he wrote, must be blonde like Hitler, thin like Göring, handsome like Goebbels, virile like Röhm – and be named Rosenberg. 

At the 1929 party rally, Hitler had suggested that countless lives could be eliminated by racial measures:

“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 even be an increase in strength. The most dangerous thing is for us to cut off 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 strongest people… As a result of our modern humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy.”

After attaining power in 1933, the Nazis began an extensive propaganda campaign with the object of acquainting the German people with the benefits of ““euthanasia”.” Via newspapers and magazines, radio and film, the suggestion was made that life could be so much better for the productive many if the non-productive few, who were such a burden to the nation, were simply eliminated. Would it not be better for them if an end was put to their misery and suffering?

But the road to state sanctioned murder was to be a gradual one. With the early introduction of legislation (the 'Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service' of 7 April 1933), the Nazis thoroughly purged long-established ethical and administrative public supervisory bodies. Less than 6 months after his election in 1933, Hitler introduced the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring.” It decreed compulsory sterilization for persons characterized by a wide variety of disabilities. It has been estimated that by 1939, 200,000-350,000 persons had been sterilized, many of whom subsequently became victims of the ““euthanasia”” programme. In the same year the Nazis enacted the “Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals”, which further blurred the distinction between actual criminal behaviour and the inappropriate social behaviour that characterized many people with disabilities.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/index.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

Publications Listing

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

See all publications at: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/publications.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010