The (translated) excerpt below was written by German medical historian Malte Thießen in 2013.

Notice anything strange about this window into history compared to the current circumstances?

From today's perspective, the "Third Reich" began with a surprise: in 1933, the vaccination practice, which had been liberalized shortly before, was not only retained, but even politically codified. Since the "seizure of power" there has been a noticeable skepticism about vaccination, even a rejection of coercive measures, which Winfried Süss rightly expressed astonishment about: "In a country [...] that [...] since the [...] seizure of power the individual rights to bodily self-determination in favor of the health of an imaginary 'national body' and thus increased the chances of such a vaccination being enforced, [...] this development can come as a surprise."60

How could the reticence in this important area of public health care be explained? Why was it that in 1933, of all things, were government claims to power abandoned when it came to providing for the “national body”? The ongoing debate about the Lübeck vaccination scandal offers an initial explanation for the concerns at the time. A second factor is rooted in the NS ideology itself, since vaccination raises serious problems from a “racial hygiene” point of view. Finally, immunization against disease is in sharp opposition to the idea of hardening and selection.

This was at least emphasized by numerous opponents of vaccination, who sensed the dawning of the dawn since the "seizure of power", especially since they were able to refer to authorities from the NS leadership in their criticism. The reference to a statement by Julius Schleicher, “Vaccination is a racial disgrace” 61, or the assertion that the Reich vaccination law “demonstrably was passed by the Jewish deputies Löwe, Lasker and Eulenburg, who called themselves the 'fathers' of this Law of April 8, 1974," 62 as the "German anti-vaccination medical association e.V." warned in October 1935. Rather unusual, however, was the rhyming form in which the “Vaccination research sheets” published at the end of 1933 declared the “elimination of compulsory vaccination” as a “basic condition [...] for the development and advancement of people and humanity”: “German people, have ' Nothing in common with vaccinations, / It is a mockery of all true health care, / And you don't want to be your gravedigger yourself, / Then you resolutely commit to the anti-vaccine nation!”63

The initial reluctance to vaccinate evidently reflected a programmatic contradiction in Nazi health policy: the contrast between “racial hygiene” ideas that aimed at optimizing hereditary biology on the one hand; and a prevention policy on the other, which envisaged population and defense policy goals. More than ever, vaccination raised the question of how the “national body” should actually be understood and treated. Therefore, in the discussions since 1933, medical considerations have by no means been in the foreground. Rather, it was about the weighting of the needs of the "national comrade" compared to the requirements of the "national body" as well as threatening dangers from which the "national community" had to be protected. Answers to these questions seemed more urgent than ever “in view of the […] low risk of smallpox” 64 and the growing criticism of vaccination, as observed by the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick therefore assumed at the beginning of 1934 that a "revision of the vaccination law [...] would probably bring the conscience clause" 65 . 66 This revision also makes sense because it takes “a far-reaching popular feeling into account” 67 so that previous measures against vaccination opponents “should be lifted as soon as possible” 68 .

Such considerations formed the starting point of a commission in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, which worked on a revision of compulsory vaccination in March 1934. In this meeting, Johannes Breger from the Reich Health Office summed up the fundamental dilemma. If the motto used to be that possible damage to the individual was “the price” “with which the German people pay for their protection against smallpox” 69, then after the “seizure of power” one had to “check whether it corresponded to state ethics to demand such a sacrifice”. An examination is all the more urgent because "a large part of the German population rejects compulsory vaccination", as Ministerial Director Arthur Gütt from the Ministry of the Interior added. His colleague von Kapff took another step further, when he stylized the compulsory vaccination as a touchstone of the National Socialist world view: "Should the compulsory vaccination continue", "the majority of the people will doubt that in medical policy [...] National Socialist principles are decisive". Kapff received support from the President of the Dresden State Health Office, Weber, who saw “limited voluntariness” as a contemporary answer to the vaccination question. After all, “the conditions today are very different than they used to be. Thanks to the education of the National Socialist government, the people's views had changed so that more could be achieved voluntarily than previously with repeated forced vaccinations. Not all members of the commission could agree with this view. From Hamburg, Professor Paschen protested that the state was carelessly giving up its powers. Vaccination should “not be left to the discretion of the individual” but should “be enforced by law”.

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 measures70. 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”71 in the early phase of the “Third Reich”. After all, when it came to vaccinations, it was the “completely normal Germans” who one wanted to win for the “National Community”.

Except endnotes:

• 60 Süss, "National Body" in War, p. 217 f.

• 61 BArch Berlin, R 1501/3647, letter from the Reich Health Office to the Reich Minister of the Interior, November 12, 193562 Ibid., letter from the German Association of Vaccine Opponents to the Reich Interior Ministry, October 25, 1935

• 62 Ibid., letter from the German Association of Vaccine Opponents to the Reich Ministry of the Interior at, October 25, 1935

• 63 StAOL, 136/5002, leaves for vaccination research, 4th quarter, H. 5, year 1933.

• 64 BArch Berlin, R 1501/3648, circular from the Reich Minister of the Interior, March 2, 1934.

• 65 StAOL, 136/5002, circular from the Reich Interior Minister Frick: “Regarding: Vaccination”, February 1, 1934.

• 66 Ibid., circular from the Reich Minister of the Interior to the state governments, April 4, 1934.

• 67 BArch Berlin, R 1501/3648, Appendix “Justification for the draft amendment to the Vaccination Act” to the circular from the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Reich Minister and the Robert Koch Institute, March 2, 1934.

• 68 StAOL, 136/5002, circular from Reich Minister Frick to the state governments, February 13, 1934. Two months earlier, a circular had declared a “ban on anti-vaccination propaganda”; BArch Berlin, R 1501/3121, circular of the Ministry of the Interior, December 20, 1933.

• 69 BArch Berlin, R 1501/3648, transcript of the provisional consultation in the Reich Ministry of the Interior on March 14, 1934, attachment to the circular from the Reich Minister of the Interior to all Reich Ministers, Reich Health Office, Robert Koch Institute, May 24, 1934 Here also all the following unsourced quotes.

• 70 Alfons Labisch and Florian Tennstedt emphasized that the NSDAP lacked "concrete ideas about the organization of the health care system"; Alfons Labisch/Florian Tenn-stedt, health department or public health department? On the development of the public health service since 1933, in: Norbert Frei (ed.), Medicine and health policy in the Nazi era, Munich 1991, pp. 35-66, especially p. 43.

• 71 On the "consent dictatorship" see Frank Bajohr/Dieter Pohl, The Holocaust as an open secret. The Germans, the Nazi leadership and the Allies, Munich 2006; Frank Bajohr, The consent dictatorship. Basic features of National Socialist rule in Hamburg, in: Hamburg in the “Third Reich”, ed. by the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg, Göttingen 2005, pp. 69-121.