Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) [Paperback]

Paul Weindling (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052142397X | ISBN-13: 978-0521423977 | Publication Date: July 30, 1993

Based on a wealth of hitherto neglected archival sources, this study analyzes the origins, social composition and impact of eugenics in the context of the social and political tension of the rapidly industrializing Nazi empire. Until recently, historians of German racism have limited their analysis of the origins of the Holocaust to a handful of völkisch racial ideologies, overlooking the effects of racial ideas on biology, on the rapidly expanding medical profession and on public health services. Historians of medicine and social and political historians of modern Germany will be interested in this important book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...the book deserves praise as a major presentation of a truly social history of medicine." ISIS

"...combines intellectual, social, and political history....Weindling's story is a broadly familiar one of scientists and professionals seeking social power through shifting alliances with state officials, mediated by a shared technocratic ideology and the widespread belief that biology was destiny....an outstanding contribution to scholarship in modern German history and a source of provocative theses on the politics of science and medicine."

"...Weindling's book is a major contribution to an important subject. It brings a mass of fascinating and illuminating detail to bear on the medical origins of Nazi exterminism." The Times Higher Education Supplement

"an impressively researched contribution to an important subject." Social History

"he has clearly helped to illuminate the shadows that historians of medicine have tended to avoid in their focus on the brighter side of their subject." Nature

"...a massive and important history text." Morton S. Rapp, Canadian Medical Association Journal

"Paul Weindling's superb historical analysis of health, race and politics in Germany provides nonspecialists and medical scholars alike with a thorough grounding in the origins and politics of bioethical questions. This is a tour de force of research drawn from individual papers, institutional and public archives, and primary literature." American Journal of Sociology

"...the book deserves praise as a major presentation of a truly social history of medicine." Isis

Book Description

Based on a wealth of hitherto neglected archival sources, this study analyzes the origins, social composition and impact of eugenics in the context of the social and political tension of the rapidly industrializing Nazi empire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 660 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 30, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052142397X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521423977
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,937,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dangers of a Technocratic Elite, September 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) (Paperback)

Paul Weindling's work will take it's place with the best descriptions of pre-Nazi and Nazi policies leading to genocide. But be prepared to have your preconceived notions challenged. Weindling clearly portrays pre-Nazi Germany as a nation already in the grips of a racist and social elitist ideology-an ideology searching for the perfect man. He traces the growth of a national health movement bent on remolding man into the image of the bureaucratic technotronic elites which managed the programs. Ideas of Racial and Social Health merge with the slippery slop of Social Darwinianism to produce one of the most frightening pictures of modern history. As German researchers and medical officials plunged headlong on their reckless pursuit for perfection, no stone was left unturned. Every avenue of approach, no matter how strange or twisted, was explored. Every institution in Germany was gradually brought under the total manipulation of government health and social bureaucrats determined to transform society. By the 1920s the machinery was in place which would allow the Nazis to rule as they did. This work is not for the timid reader. It is a serious piece of scholarship and must reading for anyone trying to understand how average Germans could submit to the Nazi horror.