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 Dr Robert Jay Lifton THE NAZI DOCTORS:
                        Medical Killing and the
                            Psychology of Genocide ©
 
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AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE 
 
in the process of naming names at the top of the Nazi medical hierarchy and that, consequently, medical colleagues helped bring about his death.20

It would be too easy to attribute Clauberg’s criminal medical behavior to his physical appearance and resulting “complexes.” While there is no doubt that he could be seen as a classical case of what Alfred Adler described as seeking extreme forms of compensatory behavior for deep-seated feelings of bodily inferiority, 21 I would also stress his intense relationship to Nazi ideology (stemming from a more or less typical historical experience beginning with the First World War) along with his extraordinary ambition within the Nazi system. A former student of his told how Clauberg, though “a frightfully ugly dwarf” and “full of complexes,” nonetheless was friendly to students and took them on weekend trips, and added, “I liked him a lot then.” Even with his psychological aberrations, that is, Clauberg might under a different regime have found a life pattern with a manageable mixture of accomplishment, arrogance, and corruption. Or, to put the matter another way, just as there are always Klehrs available for direct killing, so are there always Claubergs available for ideological and professional criminality and killing. Nazi institutions provided the ideal climates for nourishing Clauberg’s compensatory grandiosity and psychopathic tendencies. Auschwitz drew also on his research talent, which was radically corrupted in the service of the “negative eugenics” of the biomedical vision. 
 
 
X-Ray and Surgical Castration: Biomedical Patron and Political Doctor 
 
Horst Schumann differed from Clauberg in being not a renowned specialist but a reliable “old Nazi doctor” (he joined the Nazi Party and the SA in 1930) who was available for ruthless medical enterprises. Schumann had been a leading figure in the “euthanasia” program as the director of the killing center at Grafeneck. When that center closed, he took over the one at Sonnenstein, subsequently became active in project 14f13 as a member of the medical commissions visiting the camps, and in that capacity had come to Auschwitz on 28 August 1941, and participated in the selection of 575 prisoners sent to the Sonnenstein killing center (see pages 142-43). His qualifications for Auschwitz X-ray castration were more political than medical.

In this case, Himmler played an even greater role in formulating the experiments, together with Viktor Brack, the Chancellery official active in both the “euthanasia” project and the establishment of the death camps. In early 1941 Himmler and Brack were already exchanging memos in which they shared a vision of  “sterilization or castration … by means of X-rays” on a massive scale (see pages 274-76). Brack later claimed that the idea originated with Himmler for application to Jewish populations, especially in Poland, and also implicated Reinhard Heydrich, the most ruthless voice around Himmler, but at the same time
 
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of Genocide

Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
© 1986
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