Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race [Hardcover]

US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0807829161 | ISBN-13: 978-0807829165 | Edition: 1

From 1933 to 1945, Hitler's Nazi regime attempted to realize its vision of a biologically healthy and ethnically homogeneous population through "racial hygiene" programs designed to cleanse German society of those perceived to threaten its biological health. Deadly Medicine examines the critical role German physicians, scientists, public health officials, and academic experts played in supporting and implementing the Nazis' program of racial eugenics, which culminated in the Holocaust.

Illustrated with many never-before-published photographs, images from rare Nazi publications, and historical artifacts, Deadly Medicine presents essays by internationally recognized authorities that provide the wider contextual framework for a compelling visual and documentary exploration of the origins of the Holocaust. This publication is an accompaniment to the exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum running from April 22, 2004, through October 16, 2005.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The adoption of eugenics as a guiding principle by German scientists and doctors was an important step on the way to the Holocaust, though the victims of eugenics were not necessarily Jews, since physically or mentally disabled Aryans were viewed as genetically "undesirable" to the "master race" as well. This well-edited and useful volume traces the progression from the reformist impulse underlying the original eugenics theory (which proposed to improve the human race) to the formation of theories about racial superiority and to the later justification of genocide. With chapters contributed by leading scholars such as science historian Daniel Kevles (author of In the Name of Eugenics), who provides an international context for German eugenics, and women’s historian Gisela Bock, on "Nazi sterilization and reproductive policies," this companion to an exhibit of the same title at the Holocaust Memorial Museum explains how the adoption of a false science ended in catastrophe. (The exhibit will show from April 21, 2004 through Oct. 16, 2005.) The editors add a useful chronology covering nearly a century, from 1859 to 1947, extensive period illustrations and a substantial list of further reading, making this an excellent starting place for anyone who wants to understand a key factor that contributed to the Holocaust.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

Myths often serve a protective role by providing comfort so that deeply held convictions are not challenged. With respect to medicine in the Third Reich, two such myths are the beliefs that only marginal physicians in extreme situations participated in crimes against humanity and that the practice of German mainstream medicine was not corrupted by the surrounding maelstrom. Scholarly, comprehensive works by Robert Lifton, Robert N. Proctor, Michael H. Kater, and Henry Friedlander, among others, have done much to lay to rest these myths. (Figure) Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race is based on the current exhibit of the same name at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is distinguished from earlier works on this difficult topic by its content and format. Seven essays by distinguished scholars in the field provide a contextual framework for the display of extensive reproductions of original archival materials from a vast array of primary sources. Nazi propaganda, medical documents, scientific instruments, transport lists, and photographs of sites, perpetrators, and victims are displayed. Most vivid and most important are the photos of the victims and documentary material from their lives (e.g., artwork, personal letters, and artifacts) that render the horrors they suffered very real and very tangible. It is this lavish illustration, beautifully (if one is permitted to use such an adjective in such a context) reproduced, that distinguishes this particular work. The essays themselves serve as an overview of the topic and consistently highlight several important themes essential to an understanding of the relationship between Nazi political philosophy and medical science. Race was at the core of Nazi social thought, with its vision of a racially pure, cohesive, and resurgent society through which racial degeneration would be reversed by the application of biologic principles. Heredity was granted a central role, with the notion of "biology as destiny" taken to its extreme. An innate inequality of individuals and, by extension, of racial groups was ascribed on the basis of an objectification of both intrinsic variables (physical, cultural, and genetic) and economic value to the collective. A natural extension of the assignment of unequal values to individual persons was their possession of unequal worth and rights before the state. A political philosophy that derived its origin from biology turned to biology both for an explanation of social ills and for possible solutions through the application of eugenic principles to population management. Sterilization and involuntary euthanasia, applied on a wholesale basis, provided a mechanism to reverse degeneration and counterselection. Essential to this applied biology were the physicians with the requisite training and authority to influence, formulate, and implement policy. What evolved was a medicalization of mass murder, facilitated by technological innovations that first occurred in health care institutions directed at the biologic threat posed by the unproductive and vulnerable members of society. Beyond being merely a training ground for personnel and techniques, these medical efforts would demonstrate the willingness of "ordinary" people to participate and the feasibility of widespread bureaucratic cooperation that would render the Final Solution of the death camps a harsh, and unfortunately inevitable, historical reality. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race amply illustrates the truths that should replace our myths regarding medicine in the Third Reich. It is left to the reader to determine whether such truths are unique to a particular historical era or can serve as a template to assist our informed medical choices now and into the future. Michael Shevell, M.D.
Copyright © 2005 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 226 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1 edition (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807829161
• ISBN-13: 978-0807829165
• Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 9.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #647,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitler's Professors, September 11, 2004

By 

Charles Patterson (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (Hardcover)

This important book examines the medical and biological roots of Nazi Germany's campaign to rid itself of those deemed to be a threat to its biological health. Consisting of seven essays and 270 illustrations--photographs, images from Nazi publications, and historical artifacts--it describes how the Nazi regime enacted "racial hygiene" programs designed to purge German society of those it considered physically, mentally, and racially unfit.

The first four essays are by Sheila Faith Weiss ("German Eugenics, 1890-1933"), Daniel Kevles ("International Eugenics"), Gisela Bock ("Nazi Sterilization"), and Benoit Massin ("The 'Science of Race'").

The fifth essay--"Nazi 'Euthanasia' Programs" by Michael Burleigh'--describes the secret campaign Hitler launched in 1939 to rid Germany of those it declared mentally and physically unfit ("life unworthy of life"). The campaign began with the use of sedative overdoses, morphine injections, and starvation to kill children in hospitals. The "euthanasia" program then expanded to include adults who were gassed in specially built chambers at six killing centers inside the Third Reich--Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, and Sonnenstein in Germany and Hartheim in Austria.

In the sixth essay--"From 'Euthanasia' to the 'Final Solution'"--Henry Friedlander writes about how the Nazi murder of Germans judged physically and mentally unfit paved the way for the extermination of Jews in Poland. When Hitler ended the official phase of the euthanasia program in 1941 (the killings continued unofficially), much of the program's personnel and equipment were sent to Poland to set up and operate the Operation Reinhard death camps--Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.

Many historians consider the mass killings of Jews in the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion as the beginning of the Final Solution, but Friedlander argues that the killing of Jewish disabled patients in Germany and German-occupied Poland in 1940 just because they were Jews was an even earlier starting point.

The book concludes with "Reflections of a German Scientist" by Benno Müller-Hill, who describes the "contagious mix of science with ideology that was so very destructive" during the Nazi era. He writes that after the war there was virtually total silence about what science and, more specifically, genetics had wrought under the Nazis. When Karl Saller's critical book about anthropology during the Nazi period was published in 1961, his German colleagues shunned him. The silence in German scientific circles continued until 1980. "Today, when most of the perpetrators are dead," writes Müller-Hill, "the history of eugenics under the Nazis can finally be written."

This book, written in conjunction with the current exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, shows how German doctors, scientists, public health officials, and academic experts entrusted with the responsibility of enhancing and protecting life came instead to be agents of persecution and death.

--review by Dr. Charles Patterson, author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DEADLY MEDICINE!, May 26, 2011

By 

DR. ROHE (SWITZERLAND) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (Hardcover)

THIS MUST HAVE HISTORICAL BOOK TELLS IN DETAIL MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN VIA THE TWISTED, WARPED, PSEUDO SCIENTIFIC EVIL PERSPECTIVES OF THE THIRD REICH'S MEDICAL 'MAD SCIENTISTS" AS NEVER EXPLORED BEFORE IN TRUE DETAIL & DEPTH! GREAT PICTURES & ILLUSTRATIONS!
NEVER AGAIN!