"Life Unworthy of Life" and other Medical
Killing Programmes

Introduction
Source Materials
Other Relevant Pages

During the Third Reich a minority of medical practitioners and public health officials in positions of authority, following an authorization decreed by Adolf Hitler in August 1939,directly  implemented a policy of extermination respecting segments of the population who were diagnosed as suffering from severe mental and/or physical dysfunction.  A much larger percentage of these groups were complicit directly or indirectly in the programme.  Scholars habitually refer to this as the 'Euthanasia' programme, the term appearing with some regularity in the titles of academic treatises on this thrust of Nazi demographic policy. Two examples are Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance, subtitled 'Euthanasia' in Germany 1900-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), and Dick de Mildt's more recent In the Name of the People...  which carries the sub-subtitle The 'Euthanasia' and `Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases (Martinus Nijhoff, 1996)

Although both Burleigh and Mildt  necessarily refer to killings and extermination, the consistent use of the term 'euthanasia' in this context is somewhat misleading.  The Chambers Dictionary includes in its definitions "the act or practice of putting painlessly to death, esp in cases of incurable suffering." The Shorter Oxford Dictionary refers to "a quiet and easy death," and the "action of inducing" the same.  However, the "incurable suffering" that the underlying ideology that rationalised the killings referred to was not that of the patient-victims, but that of the policy originators, their willing bureaucratic assistants, and those who directly handled the victims, whether transporting them, channeling them into gas chambers, injecting them with morphine-scopolamine, or managing their slow and agonising starvation; an efficient synergy of those Lifton referred to as the "killing professionals" and the "professional killers". Their demise was not painless, quiet or easy. Many were not suffering from any mental or physical dysfunction aside from the physical consequences arising from having fallen into Nazi hands, as was the case with respect to those Poles and Russians who were exterminated in some of the same institutions used for eliminating those with mental or physical handicap.  The dying rituals and procedures applied under the auspices of this "programme" were invariably identical to those that obtained in the extermination camps. The underlying objective was the same-the eradication of unwanted segments of the populace. In both instances no term other than murder is congruent with the circumstances. Nazi legal experts had held that:

unless a "law for annihilation of valueless lives" "("Gesetz zur Vernichtung lebensunwürdigen Lebens") was promulgated, these killings were illegal because a law against killing was still on the statute books of Germany, which provided that whoever killed somebody else with premeditation should be punished by death." (Alexander, p.34-see below)

The fact that the enveloping conceptual framework was medico-demographic rather than xenophobic-racist, as it was respecting the Jews, should not obscure the fact that both derived sustenance from the same source, a desire to be rid of unacceptable others, a socially induced drive that was given free reign in a political framework that placed no limitations on goal attainment, and where those classified as being outside the framework of moral consideration were considered unworthy of being treated as anything other than expendable and replaceable objects. This same environment permitted medical experiments on individuals with no consideration as to the impact that these might have on their wellbeing or longevity.

Acknowledging some situational and ideological commonalities underlying the diverse killing projects undertaken by the leadership corps of the Third Reich, does not amount to identity.  As Katz has recently noted, a distinction needs to be drawn between those programs designed "to protect the health of the Aryan race" [those covered by the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, amendments to the criminal code relating to sexual dysfunctions and the extermination of the mentall and physically afflicted], and those programs designed to protect  the Aryan "bloodstock" against the external threat of racial poisoning:

The threat that [inferior racial groups represent] is not that of a "diseased gene" within the otherwise "healthy" Aryan body, but rather that of a racial admixing that will-if enacted-eventuate in the disappearance of a "pure" Aryan biological community, with all the sociopolitical and normative consequences that such racial "pollution" would produce." (The Holocaust: A Very Particular Racism. Steven T Katz. In M Berenbaum and A J Peck (eds.) The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, p.59)

Source Materials

Fuehrer Euthanasia Authorization

Public Mental Health Practices in Germany: Sterilization and Execution of Patients Suffering from Nervous or Mental Disease. Leo Alexander, CIOS Item 24 (Medical), for the Combined Intelligence Objective Sub-Committee, G-2 Division, SHAEF, APO 413, August 1945  

Table of Contents, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII

In this very useful investigation Leo Alexander reports on the extermination of Jews, Germans, Russians and Poles in medical institutions in the Third Reich, under the auspices of a programme inspired by the desire to be rid of "life unworthy of life.".  The information was gleaned through interviews of key personnel, the examination of the files of leading proponents of the programme, especially those of Dr Hermann Pfannmüller, Director of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt hospital for the insane, in Eglfing-Haar, Nr. Munich, and visits to some of the killing establishments. This is a key document on the programme that was implemented throughout the years 1939-1945.

The United States vs. Karl Brandt et al. The "Medical Case". Nuremberg, December 1946

The Hadamar Trial. Trial of Alfons Klein and Six Others. United Nations War Crimes Commission, 1947

Letter from Dr. Rascher to Himmler Requesting use of Prisoners for High Altitude Experiments 15 May 1941

Petition of Bishop of Limburg to the Reich Minister of Justice Concerning Killing of Patients at the State Hospital for the Mentally Ill at Hadamar 13 August 1941

Report on Euthanasia in Germany and Occupied Countries Submitted by Dr B Ecer, December 1941

Intermediate Report by Dr Rascher on Intense Chilling Experiments in the Dachau Camp, Started on 15 August 1942, dated 10 September 1942

Secret Letter from Himmler to General Rauter concerning Procurement of Medico-Physiological Appliances and Dr Rascher's Original Request. 12 November 1942

Letter from Himmler to General Field Marshal Milch Concerning Transfer of Dr Rascher to the Waffen-SS, 13 November 1942

Letter from Dr. Rascher to Himmler Concerning Freezing Experiments 17 February 1943

Affidavit of Fritz Ernst Fischer, 21 November 1945

Fischer, a doctor of medicine, was assigned in 1942 to the SS Hospital at Hohenlychen, where he was an assistant to Professor Gebhardt, who was a Gruppenfuehrer SS, supreme clinical physician on the staff of the Reichsarzt der SS and Polizei, and was director of the hospital. He was "ordered" to conduct experiments on patients to establish the curative parameters of sulfanilamide. Later, he participated in experiments on plastic surgery and the "free transplantation of bones." The information in the affidavit provides details of these experiments and on the medical professionals who directed and carried them out.

Other Relevant Pages

Crimes, Trials and Laws

SS, Security Services and the Police

War Crimes and Criminals