How is it possible? What are the personal, professional and political contexts that allow physicians to use their skills to torture and kill rather than heal? What are the psychological characteristics and the social, cultural and political factors that predispose physicians to participate in human rights abuses? What can be done to recognize at-risk situations and attempt to provide corrective or preventive strategies? This article examines case studies from Nazi Germany in an attempt to answer these questions. Subjects discussed include the psychology of the individual perpetrator, dehumanization, numbing, splitting, omnipotence, medicalization, group dynamics, obedience to authority, diffusion of responsibility, theories of aggression, training, cultural and social contexts, accountability and prevention.
What was discontinued was only the visible dimension of the project: the large-scale gassing of patients. T4 officially ceased as a program, but that turned out to be still another deception. Widespread killing continued in a second phase, sometimes referred to in Nazi documents as “wild euthanasia” because doctors — encouraged, if not directed, by the regime — could now act on their own initiative concerning who would live or die.
But then instead of doing it for medical purposes, it was for killing …. It was very much like a medical ceremony …. They were so careful to keep the full pecision of a medical process — but with the aim of killing. That was what was so shocking.
The objection of the army medical inspector Anton Waldmann weighed more heavily. A personal decision of the "comrade" when vaccinating would contradict "the leader's principle" and thus increase the risk of epidemics "among the people", which "in the event of a future war forced upon us [...] would prevent the army from freedom of movement". At the end of the meeting, these military-political reasons led to the realization that there were still reservations about the abolition of compulsory vaccination. The commission therefore did not come to a conclusive conclusion, from which an important finding can be gained: in 1933 there was no concept ready for a main instrument of modern population policy. After the "seizure of power", an unusually open discussion was held about the modern precautionary measures. The fact that the self-responsibility of the “national comrade” was an important argument, and that state coercion was even seen as a contradiction to National Socialist ethics, shows two things: the programmatic contradictions of health policy and the ambiguity about the legitimacy of state coercion vis-à-vis “national comrades”. One could summarize that vaccination mutated into a litmus test for the “consent dictatorship” in the early phase of the “Third Reich”*. After all, when it came to vaccinations, it was the “completely normal Germans” who were wanted to win for the “ Volksge-meinschaft” [national community].
It goes without saying that with this preventive practice quite a few practical problems arose. In fact, the interaction of the actors, especially between those of the health authorities and the NSV, developed again and again into a competition between state and party departments for supremacy in preventive care 93. In addition, reports from the municipalities indicate that the interaction under wartime conditions brought about further frictional losses 94. Those responsible were all the more interested in the beautiful appearance that mass vaccinations developed as an example of the preventive “national community”. As early as 1935 there was evidence that mass vaccinations were always intended to fulfill a propaganda function. During the first diphtheria vaccinations, value was placed on the fact that "private vaccinations" for "children of 'prominent personalities'" 95 were forbidden and that all vaccinates were treated equally in both senses of the word.
In the long term, the expansion of the range of vaccinations in the "Third Reich" paved the way for health policy since the 1950s, with the Federal Republic and the GDR proceeding differently. Smallpox vaccinations were compulsory in both Germanys. However, while in the West all further vaccinations were voluntary, in the East they soon went back to compulsory. Prophylaxis was too deeply enshrined as a basic principle of a new society in the GDR for people to want to take the risk of careless immunizations. The ubiquitous motto "Socialism is the best prophylaxis" also applied in reverse.
Vaccination in the "Third Reich" can therefore be understood as forced modernization and individualization against one's will. The worsening hygienic state of emergency, the increasing migration movements, the return of wartime epidemics all increased the attractiveness of vaccination protection in the Reich. Added to this was the lack of doctors and medicines, so that more and more Germans almost inevitably had to take their immunization into their own hands and in this way found their “preventive self”.
This isn't the first time this has happened.
Why teach all of this Holocaust history if in the end it doesn't matter anyway?
— Auschwitz prisoner doctor
Oddly enough, West Germany [nazis] eased off compulsory vaccination while East Germany [commies] began compulsory programs after a break: