| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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“escort physician and close confidant.” Probably
similar personal reasons determined his selection of Philip Bouhler, chief of
Hitler’s Chancellery and considered absolutely loyal to him, to run the
program with Brandt. An additional reason for this arrangement was said to be
the fear that radical district leaders (Gauleiter) might otherwise,
“ruthlessly and without medical consultation,” take over much of the
control of the project — as they indeed eventually did.39 For Hitler, this was a conscious choice of
“party discipline” over a state apparatus that still made some
demands for legal procedure and fiscal accountability; it was also a choice of
procedure most protective of secrecy. Above all, these arrangements suggest how
far the impulse toward killing mental patients had already taken hold among
Nazi leaders, and their determination to keep the project in medical channels.
Not only Brandt and Bouhler, but also Dr. Herbert Linden of the health
ministry and Dr. Grawitz, chief physician of the SS, were active in choosing
doctors for leadership roles. Their criteria included the closeness of these
doctors to the regime, high recognition in the profession, and known sympathy
for “euthanasia” or at least a radical approach to eugenics, probably
in about that order. Included were several doctors who had been associated with
the children’s program (Unger, Heinze, and Pfannmüller), but also a
group of psychiatrists of some prominence in academic circles, notably
Professor Werner Heyde of Würzburg, Professor Carl Schneider of
Heidelberg, Professor Max de Crinis of Berlin and Professor Paul Nitsche from
the Sonnenstein state institution. Others, like Friedrich Mennecke, were
primarily Nazified psychiatrists. Heyde became Brandt's representative and
directed the program, with Nitsche his assistant and eventual replacement.
40
At these early meetings, Brandt
was introduced as the medical leader of the project, and Hitler’s decree
was read and sometimes displayed (“I believe I saw Adolf Hitler’s
signature on it,” Mennecke later testified). It was carefully explained
that there was no official law, because Hitler thought such a law could only
feed enemy propaganda; that the authorization to Bouhler and Brandt in the
Hitler decree was the equivalent of a law; and that doctors participating would
be immune from legal consequences.* One participant later insisted that the
emphasis was on killing |
__________
* Because of various forms
of resistance, along with pressure from legal authorities, a law to legitimate
the program was seriously considered, and at least two elaborate drafts were
written. Those drafts, combined with the original Hitler decree, contributed to
a legal “as if” situation — the assumption that such a law had
actually been implemented. It was an assumption easily made because of the
authority of the original decree. Hitler was thought to fear that an official
“euthanasia” law would give a propaganda advantage to Germany’s
enemies, and also that it would increase German (especially Catholic)
resistance, as well as psychiatric patients’ resistance to entering
hospitals (as several “euthanasia” leaders pointed out). From this
experience, it is thought that the Nazis learned that, as a later authority
explained, “illegal mass killing could not be carried through in the
Altreich ["Old Reich," or Germany proper], where the net of normal
working justice and administrative machinery was much too tight, but rather had
to be transferred to the occupied areas [Osigebiete] where the executive
apparatus of the SS could work with less encumbrance and less
trouble.”41 |
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