"Man is becoming god. Those who see in national socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion. It is the will to create mankind anew."
—— Adolf Hitler"National Socialism is nothing more than applied biology."
—— Rudolph Hess"They were all doctors."
—— Auschwitz survivor.
During the industrial revolution the authority of established institutions such as the church and the aristocracy, particularly in Europe and Germany, is called into question. The strides made in the physical sciences and the breakneck advancement of industry cause an upheaval in everyday life. Traditional beliefs and hierarchies are shaken. Religious beliefs, long held without question, are examined from the new "modern" scientific viewpoint. In Germany, traditional culture is perceived as being threatened, partially by the Catholic church, which is seen as favoring slavic interests. German- speaking Austria yearns to reunify with Germany. The Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement and other groups promote the return to the soil and to ancient Germanic folklore, meditation and the occult. Various concepts of race and ancient Germanic history/destiny are extant throughout the German speaking lands.
In an effort to delve deeper into the mysteries, various people
journey to Tibet, long held to be a center of mystical and occult
knowledge. One such person is Madam Helena Petrova Blavatsky. She
says that while in Tibet, she saw a secret doctrine that outlined the
future of mankind and the secrets of the universe. In this doctrine,
she describes various races as having played key roles throughout the
history of the world. She describes one race, calling it the Aryan
race, that founded Grecian culture and was supposed to have possessed
paranormal powers. According to Blavatsky, the Aryans are destined to
lead mankind out of the darkness that has befallen him and usher in
the next phase of human evolution. The sign of the Aryans is the
swastika.
Blavatsky's followers introduce the doctrine of the Aryans to the German people and around 1888, she publishes The Secret Doctrine, which describes all this. She is the founder of an America occult society that publishes the first publication in Germany to carry a swastika on its cover. Later, other mystics promote the myth of the Aryan man, even going so far as to propose an outline for a society that would embody the principles of these occult teachings. These teachings go hand in glove with the new science of eugenics. Key figures in the Nazi hierarchy, such as Himmler, are avid pupils of these occult teachings. Darwinism, eugenics and the occult racial principles that proceeded them will enhance traditional beliefs about the German aristocracy and its inherent superior characteristics being founded in ancient times by teutonic divinities. This will form the cornerstone of the Third Reich and eventually lead to the wholesale slaughter of millions. Two belief systems, psychiatric eugenics and the occult, will merge and become virtually indistinguishable to make Europe a nightmare. They will also be embraced and promoted elsewhere in the "civilized" world.
"In science all that really matters is getting interesting, accurate results as quickly as possible; there is simply no time to talk to patients...the introduction of machines in no way eases the situation, for the more expensive and complicated the machines, the more the investigator distances himself from the person who is being investigated. This attitude reduces the person to a subservient depersonalized object. Such a process formed the bond which held the psychiatrists, anthropologists, and Hitler together."
— Benno Muller Hill
Murderous Science.
In modern times, killing people to achieve the ideal of eugenics (racial purification) really took hold in central Europe in the 30's and 40's. This concept had its roots in certain beliefs held by the schools of anthropology, biology and physiology. These ideas were poised for use by the acceptance of earlier mystical concepts concerning race and destiny and given a platform on which to be organized and implemented by the political power structure of the Nazis. The belief systems of eugenics and mystical concepts provided the environment for the legitimization of mass murder. Psychiatry provided the methods.
People are exterminated for being, among other things, Jewish. They are attacked and killed on a genetic basis. As psychiatrists view mental illness as physical and hereditary, the ideas of genetics, the brain and physical/mental illness are inextricably entwined. The holocaust was essentially a medical/psychiatric incident.
After working with key Nazi party officials to subject the SS,
other officials of the German Reich and the German public to an
effective PR campaign which included using concepts of genetics,
physiology and psychology to legitimize existing occult beliefs to
view the killing of human beings as a necessary evolutionary step,
psychiatrists and other "scientists" expanded the ongoing
slaughter of Germans (they had been killing thousands of mental
patients since WWI) to include political undesirables and, eventually,
"non-Aryans." This resulted in the murder of millions of
men, women and children. Much attention is given here to the
psychiatric/eugenic holocaust for a number of reasons:
- The political regime at the time in Germany gave psychiatrists the license to actually carry out on a broad basis what they had previously been permitted to execute only selectively on individual helpless mental patients. German psychiatrists were not ordered to murder people; they were simply given the right to do so, which they did, with enthusiasm. Through a gradient approach, these "mental hygienists" were able to expand their definition of "undesirable" people until the wholesale slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people could be accepted as necessary to "purify the race."
- These ideas were not limited to Central Europe. Throughout the world, long before the holocaust, psychiatrists, psychologists and other "scientists" developed the ideas that led to murder, sterilization and experimentation. Those responsible for developing sterilization legislation in the U.S. disseminated their support to German's burgeoning laws. Later in France, over 40,000 mental patients were starved to death in a covert killing program without any orders from the Nazis.
- It provides an excellent example of how far people will go in accepting false data cloaked in "scientific authority" and then stand by and witness the most outrageous acts, simply accepting them as a logical outgrowth legitimized by a progression of ideas. That the acts are contrary to every law of decent behavior and moral/ethical principals is overlooked. Even today, psychiatry is still allowed to shock, drug and otherwise torture psychiatric inmates.
- German psychiatrists provided the scientific basis for the
ideology of racial superiority and helped develop and forward the
pseudosubject of "eugenics." All that was necessary to be a
medical doctor in Germany at that time was to have a license that
could be obtained by taking an examination. An actual doctorate was
not necessary.
- The ratio of SS affiliations among doctors was seven times that of
teachers.
- Mental illness, specifically "schizophrenia" was viewed by German psychiatrists as a physical disease, resulting in inevitable deterioration. German psychiatrists also saw themselves as servants of the state, rather than individual doctors.
"...you are incapable of believing, you don't believe it. And the things that went on in Auschwitz...the gas chambers—nobody would have believed that. And then the houses that the crematoria had—you know, brick houses, windows, curtains, white picket fences around the front. And people never thought of anything—regardless of chimneys smoking. They could not believe it...There was a touch of diabolic genius."
——An Auschwitz survivor.
One survivor details the extent of the doctor's involvement in the
killing process.
"...none of them, not a single former Nazi doctor I spoke
to — arrived at a clear ethical evaluation of what he had done,
and what he had been part of." — [there] was no
tendency to defy the overall killing program, as it was viewed as a
necessary biological purge. "Dangerous Jewish characteristics could be linked with
alleged data of scientific disciplines, so that a 'mainstream of
racism' formed from 'the fusion of anthropology, eugenics, and social
thought.' The resulting 'racial and social biology' could make
vicious forms of anti-semitism seem intellectually respectable to
learned men and women....One can speak of the Nazi state as a
'biocracy'....The Nazi biocracy differed from a classical theocracy
("government or political rule by priests or clergy as
representatives of God" - Websters) in that the biological
priests did not actually rule....In any case, Nazi ruling authority
was maintained in the name of the higher biological principle. As it
was stated by one survivor, 'Auschwitz was like a medical
operation...the killing program was led by doctors from beginning to
end'. "The Jews were a lower species of life, a kind of vermin,
which upon contact infected the German people with deadly
diseases."
"The state organism...(is) a whole with its own laws and
rights, much like one self—contained human organism...which, in
the interest of the welfare of the whole, also—as we doctors
know—abandons and rejects parts or particles that have become
worthless or dangerous."
"The most effective race—preserving measure is that
which gives the greatest support to the natural defenses....We may -
and we must - rely on the healthy instincts of the best of our
people...for the extermination of elements of the population loaded
with dregs. Otherwise, these deleterious mutations will permeate the
body of the people like the cells of a cancer." "I have employed definitions that are good enough to
distinguish cults from genuine religious sects, but rather than
undertaking a semantic discussion of it beyond what I've already given
you, I prefer to ask myself within the medical model how one
distinguishes malignant cells from healthy ones in the human body for
the purpose of treatment. A good approach if you were interested in
curing a cancer is to find a chemical that kills the malignant cells
and spares those that are healthy. What would be the effect of a
device or technique which, when applied by society to any organization
calling itself religious would have no untoward effect upon bonafide
religions, but would be deadly to the fakes?"
"He went on to list the series of steps in SS
doctors' involvement in the killing: first, the chief doctor's
assignments to his subordinates concerning duty schedules and
immediate selections policies; second, the individual doctor's service
on the ramp, performing selections 'in a very noble (seemingly kind)
manner'; third, the doctor riding in the ambulance or Red Cross car to
the crematoria; fourth, the doctor ordering 'how many (pellets) of gas
should be thrown in...these holes from the ceilings, according to the
number of people, and who should do it...There were three or four
Desinfektoren'; fifth, 'He observed through the hole how the people
are dying'; sixth, 'When the people were dead...he gave the order to
ventilate...to open the gas chamber, and he came...with a gas mask
into the chamber'; seventh, 'He signed a (form) that the people are
dead...and how long it took'; and eighth, 'he... observed...the
teeth...extraction (from) the corpses.' This was the survivor who
concluded that 'the killing program was led by doctors—from the
beginning to the end. In fact, doctors in the camps made selections at
the moment people arrived at the camps, separating those who were to
die to those who were to be allowed to live a while to labor in the
camp. "
——Jay Lifton
The Nazi Doctors
——Robert J. Lifton
——Hans Frank,
jurist and General Governor
of Poland under the Nazis
——Alfred Hoche,
psychiatrist, Nazi Germany
—— Konrad Lorenz,
lecturer in general psychology,
University of Konigsberg,
1940, Nazi Germany
—— Louis Jolyon West,
Psychiatrist, 1983, USA