The Men Behind Hitler 1: Surplus People

"Patently RIDICULOUS, That PSYCHIATRISTS CAUSED The HOLOCAUST"

Nada Stotland: President: American Psychiatric Association


Ed: some of the Links in this 9 post series will be duplicates as refreshers since the scope of the atrocities committed by the criminals cannot be comprehended and retained at a single reading. Furthermore; This article is by No means all inclusive: but merely a brief introduction to the mindset.


CHAPTER I
SURPLUS PEOPLE

• Malthus
• Darwin
• Galton
• Social Darwinism
• Racism and Racial Hygiene

The basic reasoning behind the state of mind we are about to see in action has its origins in the theories of Malthus, Darwin and Galton and the development of their ideas by their "scientific" disciples.

Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was an English political economist and historian who in 1798 published a book called "An Essay on the Principle of Population". This document started a reaction against the earlier writings of Godwin, Condorcet and others, who reinforced the principles of emancipation and enlightenment which ensued after the French Revolution. Malthus' theories put forward here and in later works have a surprising influence even today.

He proposed that poverty, and thereby also vice and misery, are unavoidable because population growth will always exceed food production. The checks on population growth were wars, famine, and diseases. Malthus proposed "sexual abstinence" for the working class as a means by which the population excess could be diminished and a balance achieved. In this way, the "lower" social classes were made totally responsible for social misery.

This solution was based on the hypothesis that population increased in geometric progression (2, 4, 8,16, 32, 64, 128 and so on) while food production increased in arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on). The situation already existing in his time would get worse, according to his claims and would reach alarming proportions. His basic idea can be shown pictorially in the following diagram.

Malthus was one of the earliest, but not the last, to turn away from the economic solutions of that period, and seek to solve social problems, such as poverty, through the use of biological measures. His premises, presented as facts and his figures with an air of mathematical authority, were impressive and convincing, although his ideas were based solely on some small travels and minor observations. However, despite the grand display and presentation, some of his critics realised the absurdity of it all. Both of the growth-rates were arbitrary, for there were no statistics on population increase or food production, before or during this time, which would have permitted a forecast for the future. Apart from this, no one knew just how much land was actually cultivated or partially cultivated and how much was barren.

Malthus' presentations had the impact of a bomb; his mathematical and geometrical explanations and diagrams had a hypnotic effect, and only a few asked on what his claims were actually based. His theory has retained its persuasive power to such an extent that many of our present authorities use it as a basis of operation. Yet neither Malthus nor his later disciples ever managed to put forward any scientific proof for his theory, and in fact excellent scientists have at various times disproven Malthus' theory and the ideology resulting from it.

However, with the book, Malthus created an atmosphere which not only prevented a real solution to the social problems, but also promoted the repressive legislation which worsened the conditions of the poor in England. It was reasoned that better conditions for the poor would only encourage them to further propagate, putting those who were capable of work at a disadvantage. Malthusianism then moved forward to achieve its greatest triumph in 1834 with a new law providing for the institution of workhouses for the poor, in which the sexes were strictly separated to curb the otherwise inevitable over-breeding. This type of thinking has an inherent devaluation of human life through fear that the ever increasing population of lower classes will devour the more civilised or "better" people. This kind of philosophy, of course, urged the calling forth of drastic measures to handle the problem. The first resurgence took place a hundred and fifty years after his death, resulting in the birth-control movement, a principle which is based on Malthusianism. Following the Second World War, the idea was again taken up and today receives new momentum in the "population explosion" campaigns.

Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin [1809-1882], English naturalist. After years of research work formulated in 1859 his theory of evolution in his book "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Race In the Struggle for Life". Without at that time going into a study of mankind, he tried to explain the development of life-forms in terms of a struggle for existence. The result of this struggle would be a natural selection of those species and races who were to triumph over those weaker ones who would perish.

During his research he came across Malthus' essay and suddenly saw that his own theory could be expanded to include all life in the struggle for existence that would be inevitable if food production was to lag behind the growth-rate of the population. And so Darwin took over the false doctrine of Malthus and made it a cornerstone of his own theory. In 1871 he published his next large work entitled "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex" which was based on his earlier book but which dealt almost exclusively with man. In it he came to the reasonable conclusion that both in physical structure and physiological behaviour, there was no difference between man and other mammals. However, the idea that this was also applicable to mental and moral qualities, shows that he was on unsound ground. Although Darwin was an excellent naturalist, he was not a very good philosopher. In his attempt to explain the social development of Man as a struggle for existence and selection through natural means, he compounded the error that Malthus had made by yet another attempt to apply a biological solution to philosophical and social problems. Darwin's speculations, to be found in his "Notebook", that thought was a brain secretion, (chemical/serotonin imbalance?) is completely without basis.

Modern theories of evolution finally succeeded in clarifying this confusion by separating the development of man into two different steps, animal and psycho-social. Despite this, Darwin's theses and those of his followers have been very influential over a long period. They caused a significant shift in the social thinking of that time, the consequences of which can still be felt today.

Galton

Francis Galton [1822-1911] was an English psychologist and a half-cousin of Darwin. Very erratic in his thought processes, he was unable to complete research in even one area. Hardly would he begin a research project before throwing out a theory and then move on to a new field leaving the proof of the theory to others. He was so fascinated with Darwin's theory, that he spent an unusually lengthy period of years trying to prove that mental abilities were hereditary. In 1869 he published his book "Hereditary Genius" and in 1883 "Enquiries into Human Faculty". In his "Enquiries" he undertook to transfer his hereditary theories from the individual to the whole race.

Galton extended Darwin's theory of natural selection into a concept of deliberate social intervention, which he held to be the logical application of evolution to the human race. Galton was by no means satisfied to let evolution take its course freely. Having decided to improve the human race through selective breeding, brought about through social intervention, he developed a subject which he called "Eugenics", the principle of which was that by encouraging better human stock to breed and discouraging the reproduction of less desirable stock, the whole race could be improved.

Social Darwinism

The pseudo-science resulting from the fusion of Darwin's evolutionary theory with social and political theories.

Charles Darwin was a very humane man, who probably would have been greatly enraged at the extremes to which his theories were taken. He had made a tragic error in attempting to extend the biological law of the struggle for survival to the social life of man. In so doing he played into the hands of "experts" of later generations, by giving them the impressive scientific justification for their barbaric actions of "natural selection", "preservation of favoured races" and the "struggle for life". It was passages of the following type in "The Descent of Man" that would have been most welcomed by them:

"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Social theories based on the "survival of the fittest" had been circulating before the publication of "Origin of Species", and even before Darwin himself. Herbert Spencer, a social theorist and scientist had already propounded the social implications of this theory some years before the appearance of Darwin's book:

"The well-being of existing humanity, and the unfolding of it into this ultimate perfection, are both secured by the same beneficent, through severe discipline, to which the animate creation at large is subject; a discipline which is pitiless in the working out of good; a felicity- pursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and temporary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong... are the decrees of a large far-seeing providence..."

or, in plain language, the fittest survive. In a later edition of "Origin of Species", Darwin himself described Spenders "survival of the fittest" phrase as being more accurate than his own "natural selection". Finally, in Darwin's work the social theorists had found the scientific rationale that lent respectability to their arguments. This fusion came to be known as Social Darwinism, a movement that gained increasing momentum with its demands for social legislation in accordance with the principle of "the fittest must survive", and its effects were calamitous for later generations.

Racism and Racial Hygiene

Although the beginnings of racism lie far back in history, its actual modern development really begins with the Frenchman, Arthur Count de Gobineau [1816-1882] who published his classic racist pronouncement "Essay on the Inequality of Human Races" in 1853-1857. Greatly misinterpreted by others, he wrote in a romantic fashion of a fair-haired Aryan race that was superior to all others. Gobineau maintained that remnants of this race could be found in various countries in Europe constituting a tiny racial aristocracy decaying under the overwhelming weight of inferior races. He made no special claims for the superiority of German Aryans, nor markedly denigrated other races. His racialism embraced not so much the races as the classes, the aristocracy versus the proletariat. Nevertheless, his ideas were widely distorted to fit the racial superiority theories of others. Hardly noticed in his own country, he enjoyed great popularity in Germany.

As we have already seen, an amalgamation of ideas occurred shortly before the turn of the century. Darwinism, united with social theories, became Social Darwinism, which in turn included Eugenics. In 1890 Gobineau's book was revived and in 1894 the Gobineau Association was founded in Germany. His writings were popularised at this time by the Pan-Germans, an extremely nationalistic and anti-Jewish group who, though small in numbers, were very strong, their members including a high proportion of teachers.

In 1899, Gobineau's disciples Houston Stewart Chamberlain [1855-1927], an Englishman holding German citizenship, published his two volume work, "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century", in Germany. It proved immensely popular and ran into many editions. Departing from Gobineau's rather flowery ideas, he upheld the German race to be the purest form of Aryanism and damned the inferior races, the Jews and Negroes, as degenerate.

Chamberlain combined the scientific fact of the existence of different races with an enriched mystical significance attached to one race, the Aryans, who had supposedly existed since the dawn of time. These mystical Aryans were held to be responsible for all the great cultures of the past, each of which had declined because the Aryans allowed other races to intermix with them resulting in the fall of that civilisation-Egypt, Greece, Rome all perished.

Eugenics, Social Darwinism and Racial Hygiene now join hands, although Eugenics is the only one of these that one could manage to call a science. It is a movement which has attracted many medical men, and these have given the scientific means of assisting Social Darwinism in its endeavours to favour the fittest, and Racial Hygienists in their efforts to improve the race.

From this point on, Eugenics, Social Darwinism and Racial Hygiene fused so strongly that it would prove a useless endeavour to try to differentiate between them.

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The Men Behind Hitler 2: The Survival Of The Fittest

"Patently RIDICULOUS, That PSYCHIATRISTS CAUSED The HOLOCAUST"

Nada Stotland: President: American Psychiatric Association


CHAPTER II
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

• Eugenics Societies
• Eugenics Becomes a Mental Therapy
• Mental Hygiene
• Sterilisation
• Euthanasia

In 1900 the founder of racial hygiene in Germany, Dr. Alfred Ploetz, participated in an essay contest. It was sponsored by the industrialist Alfred Krupp, who gave a prize for the best essay on the subject "What can we learn from the principles of Darwinism for application to Inner Political development and the laws of the state?"

Many people entered, and most essays agreed that a biological blue-print and a group of biologically fit must maintain a pure strain to ensure the further existence of the state.

Wilhelm Schallmeyer, who won first prize, interpreted culture society, morality, and even "right" and "wrong" in terms of the struggle for survival. He wanted all laws brought into line with these concepts to prevent the white races from degenerating to the level of the Australian Aborigines. Such a degradation would be unavoidable if society continued to pander to the physically or mentally weak. His colleague, Dr. Alfred Ploetz, endorsed the whole essay and supported the superiority of the Caucasian race from which, of course he excepted the Jews' while the Aryans were claimed as the apex of racial perfection. For instance, he suggested that in times of war in order to preserve the race, only racially inferior persons should be sent to the front. As the soldiers in the front lines are usually the ones who are killed, this would preserve the purer part of the race from being unnecessarily weakened. He further suggested that a panel of Doctors be present at the birth of each child to judge whether the child was fit enough to live, and, if not, kill it.

Eugenics Societies

In 1901 Galton delivered a lecture to the English Royal Anthropological Society stressing the various possibilities of improving human breeding under the present social, legal and moral conditions. In 1904 the first chair in Eugenics and working society in Eugenics were instituted at University College, London, and these led to the establishment of the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics in 1907. Soon Eugenics groups began to spring up all around the world.

In 1908 the Eugenics Education Society (renamed the Eugenics Society in the 20's) was founded in England and in 1910 the Eugenic Record Office in the United States. Both institutes used the research results of the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics to propose practical applications, and they made it their task to intensely propagandise the eugenic idea to the public.

Dr. Alfred Ploetz, the same man who had assisted Schallmeyer with his prize essay, in 1905 founded the "Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene" [Society for Racial Hygiene] in Germany. Later it changed its name to "Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Eugenik)", which means the Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics). This change of name took place after Galton's announcement that racial hygiene and eugenics were in fact synonymous terms. These terms used in the German language were not only interchangeable, but racial hygiene was taken to be the German translation of eugenics. As racial hygiene was closely connected with political anthropology - a pseudo-science developed by Gobineau - eugenics was used as the scientific basis upon which racialist and political ideas, especially those of the Nazis, were based.

In 1904 Dr. Alfred Ploetz founded the journal "Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie" [Archive for Racial and Social Biology] which after one year of existence became the official organ of the "Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene" [Society for Racial Hygiene], which Ploetz had created. A co-founder of this society was the later world-famous psychiatrist and racial hygienist, Professor Dr. Ernst Rüdin.

Eugenics Becomes a Mental Therapy

Psychiatry already had a strong physical, biological and organic foundation by this period. Emil Kraepelin, a pupil of Wundt, had earlier and in agreement with contemporaries suggested that mental and physical illnesses could be divided into two categories, those which are hereditarily caused and those due to the environment.

Psychiatrists Dr. Benedict Morel, Wilhelm Griesinger, Emil Kraepelin and Henry Maudsley in the 19th century had stressed the hereditary, biological and organic causes of mental illnesses. Their "scientific" principles had considerable influence on psychiatry and are found echoed throughout the psychiatric texts of the nineteenth century.

With the beginning of the 20th century the more brutal forms of psychiatric treatment had begun to be abandoned. The whirling stools, head-beating machines, whips, clubs and similar instruments had not proven successful, as so far no one had been healed. As more and more methods of treatment were being discarded, the profession suddenly became aware that no adequate treatment could be found to justify the existence of psychiatry as a profession. Who first had the brilliant idea is lost in the untraceable annals of endless psychiatric journals and texts, but the whole discipline gradually turned to the subject of heredity, as well as eugenics as a possible method of eliminating mental illness even if mental illness could not be cured.

Various principles developed from an attempt to prevent further mental illness, some championed by one group, others by another, but all of them attempts to solve the problem of mental illnesses while maintaining the facade of scientific theory and practice.

"The mentally ill should not breed with non-mentally ill." This slogan led to the establishment of colonies which separated the insane and mentally defective from the rest of society.

The supporters of eugenics also believed that the result of procreation of a mentally-ill person with a mentally healthy person would be mentally-ill offspring. If the offspring were not mentally ill, the danger of a recessive gene causing a mental defect in later generations was a much too serious a danger to be tolerated.

"The mentally-ill element in the population is increasing". This slogan led to measures which were directly intended to inhibit the birth of mentally ill children. This led to a series of principles, escalating in the force of their application: separation from society, restraint, separation of the sexes in defective colonies, and sterilisations.

Mental Hygiene

Clifford Beers, a former mental patient, campaigned heavily in America for better treatment of the mentally ill. A Swiss-German professor operating in America, Adolf Meyer, coined the term "Mental Hygiene".

In 1908 the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, the starting point of the Mental Hygiene movement as an organised body, was founded. Its aims were: improved treatment for the insane, and the safeguarding of the public's mental health.

In the 1920's groups were formed in other countries-Canada, France, Belgium, England, Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Russia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia. By 1930 twenty-four countries had Mental Hygiene Associations.

Routinely these associations had as their medical specialists psychiatrists who espoused eugenic medicine and lay members who were simultaneously active in the Eugenics Societies which had by this time become very numerous.

In France one of the leaders of mental hygiene was Dr. Edouard Toulouse, in Great Britain it was Miss Evelyn Fox, Secretary of the Central Association for Mental Welfare. She had been an active member of the Eugenics Society before the foundation of the National Council for Mental Hygiene, of which she was an officer and founder, and finally was recognised as leader of the Mental Hygiene movement as a whole. Among the board members of the National Council for Mental Hygiene was Sir Cyril Burt, who had been a member of the Eugenics Society for eleven years before the foundation of the National Council. Later he was founder of MENSA, a high l.Q. group which espouses eugenic principles. From the annual reports of the National Council for Mental Hygiene one can see many names that are also common in the Eugenics Society, including:

Dr. E. Mapother- active Eugenicist
Major Leonard Darwin - Officer of the Eugenics Society
Dr. A. F. Tredgold - Psychiatric Member of the Eugenics Society
Dr. Adolf Meyer - Member of the Eugenics Society.

The Mental Hygiene movement drew strongly from the Eugenic movements of whatever country they were in, and in fact the Mental Hygiene Movements were permeated with Eugenic thought. In 1931 the publishing firm Walter de Gruyter and Co. published the "Handwörterbuch der Psychischen Hygiene und der Psychiatrischen Fürsorge" [Handbook of Mental Hygiene and Psychiatric Care] as an official psychiatric reference work containing a high proportion of eugenically-oriented contributors. Frequent references are made throughout the book to Eugenics, Planned Marriages, Heredity, Degeneration, etc. and under the heading "mental hygiene" we find the following:

"Therefore the hereditary constitution of a personality is the first and most effective point of prophylactic intervention: in the sense of eugenic psychiatry it is necessary to hinder unfavourable hereditary combinations and bring about favourable ones, and especially to prevent the propagation of the hereditary traits of physical illness and the socially inferior psychopathies."

The principle that prevention of birth of the mentally-ill would eradicate mental illness became an operating principle for every mental hygiene group in the world.

In Germany, as in other countries, the theoreticians and practitioners of Mental Hygiene recruited mainly from eugenically oriented groups. Among them was the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, a close friend of Dr. Alfred Ploetz and Dr. Ernst Rüdin, Professor of Psychiatry at Munich University, co-editor with Ploetz of the "Archiv for Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie" and co-founder of the Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Eugenik) [Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics)]. In 1933 the Nazi Reichsminister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, nominated Rüdin as his honorary representative on the board of directors of two German racial hygiene unions. It is even more significant that Rüdin was appointed by Frick to work together with the Ministry in the reconstruction of the German race.

On the occasion of Rüdin's 65th birthday, Ploetz honoured his achievements in the Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie:

"so just recently he received the Goethe Medal for Art and Science from the Führer `in recognition of his achievements in the development of German Racial Hygiene.' The Reichsminister of the Interior Dr. Frick sent him the following telegram:

`To the indefatigable champion of racial hygiene and meritorious pioneer of the racial-hygienic measures of the Third Reich I send my sincerest congratulations on his 65th birthday. May you be granted many more years to continue your research for the welfare of mankind'

The Congress of German Psychiatrists, Neurologists and Internists at Wiesbaden awarded him the Heredity Medal."

Also Dr. Luxenburger, a well known racial hygienist and colleague of Rüdin's in the Genealogical Department of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie (German Research Institute for Psychiatry) at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Munich, and Dr. W. Wlassack, racial-hygienist and exponent of the Swiss Mental Hygiene movement, both mental hygiene theorists with a racial hygienic background.

These extreme views were not, however, limited to German Psychiatrists and Racial Hygienists. In the following examples an Englishman and Swiss Frenchman are representative of this type of thinking in other nations.

The English eugenicist Karl Pearson, first Professor for Eugenics at London University, published his thoughts at the turn of the century:

"This dependence of progress on the survival of the fitter race, terribly black as it may seem to some of you, gives the struggle for existence its redeeming features; it is the fiery crucible out of which comes the finer metal. [When wars cease] mankind will no longer progress [for] there will be nothing to check the fertility of inferior stock; the relentless law of heredity will not be controlled and guided by natural selection."

and also

"History shows me one way and one way only, in which a high state of civilisation has been produced, namely the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. If men want to know whether the lower races of man can evolve a higher type, I fear the only course is to leave them to fight it out among themselves."

In his book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain quoted the Swiss professor August Forel with great admiration and approval:

"Professor August Forel, the well-known psychiatrist, has made interesting studies in the United States and the West Indian Islands, on the victory of intellectually inferior races over higher ones because of their greater virility. `Though the brain of the Negro is weaker than that of the white, yet his generative power and the predominance of his qualities in the descendants are all greater than those of the whites. The white race isolates itself (therefore) from them more and more strictly, not only in sexual but in all relations, because it has at last recognised that crossing means its own destruction'. Forel shows by numerous examples how impossible it is for the Negro to assimilate our civilisation more than skin-deep, and how so soon as he is left to himself he everywhere degenerates into the `most absolute primitive African savagery'. (For more detail on this subject, see the interesting book of Hesketh Pritchard, `Where Black Rules White', Hayti, 1900; any one who has been reared on phrases of the equality of mankind, etc., will shudder when he learns how matters really stand so soon as the blacks in a State get the upper hand). And Forel, who as a scientist is educated in the dogma of the one, everywhere equal, humanity, comes to the conclusion: `Even for their own good the blacks must be treated as what they are, an absolutely subordinate, inferior, lower type of men, incapable themselves of culture. That must once for all be clearly and openly stated'. (See the account of his journey in Harden's `Zukunft', February 17, 1900)".

Sterilisation

Eugenics had been formulated and made known by Galton in 1883. During the following years the subject was popularised and shortly after the turn of the century eugenic organisations were set up throughout the world. The movement attracted an increasing number of supporters and adherents particularly in America and Germany. And to the extent that the organisations grew, they enlarged their sphere of political influence. The legislation of various countries started to orient itself to eugenic principles and parliaments began to enact many new laws of a purely eugenic nature. Although they varied in form and execution, they all were aimed at the same objective - the mentally deficient and the mentally ill.

Laws of a general nature provided for the establishment of institutions and colonies, enabling the mentally deficient or mentally ill to be segregated from the rest of the population, thus facilitating the control and prohibition of the procreation of the insane. Two such laws were Great Britain's Mental Deficiency Act, passed in 1913 and the South African Mental Disorders Act, passed in 1916.

Other laws were much more definite and aimed directly at the sterilisation of the insane. It should be noted here that the term "sterilisation" in the legislation of many American States includes castration and hundreds of such emasculations have already been carried out.

An examination of the dates of this legislation in the case of America shows it to have occurred in two waves. The first one began with the passing of a sterilisation law in Pennsylvania in 1905, which the Governor immediately vetoed. However, other states followed this example and had more success. This first wave reached its peak in 1913, and then declined soon after [the War probably taking attention off domestic matters to some extent], and little activity can be traced until 1920. At this point it would appear that the pure eugenically-inspired "push" exhausted itself.

However, with the growth of the mental hygiene movement [starting in 1908 in Connecticut and spreading throughout the world in the 1920's] a second more vigorous phase was entered. The Mental Health movement in each country became the primary lobbyist for the Eugenic cause, frequently doing the front-line work of the Eugenics movements and generally acting as an authoritative pressure group with the result that eugenic principles began to appear again in legislation.

Gaining momentum throughout the 20's a second wave of enactments and amendments passed through the legislatures under the combined pressure of the interlocking eugenic and mental hygiene movements. By 1929 this had also reached its peak in America but with the added influence of the more broadly-based mental hygiene movement the surge continued throughout other parts of the world. As a result many countries had passed or were considering the passage of laws providing for compulsory and occasionally voluntary sterilisation of the mentally ill or defective, alcoholic, or socially undesirable. Amongst these were Germany, Australia (various states), New Zealand, Canada (various provinces), Finland, Sweden and many of the American states. In addition Norway, Sweden and Switzerland included castration in their measures.

In 1932 the Minister of Health in England set up a committee to look into the whole question and the findings were published in 1936. However no law was passed probably because the public after seeing first-hand the glorious achievements of a eugenically and racially based state in Nazi Germany would have raised a tremendous outcry. With no popular support and often considerable opposition at the best of times it proved more difficult to get laws passed after 1935. As the original supposed purpose of the mental hygiene movement was improved care of the mentally ill, it is strikingly odd that the first laws passed on an international basis at the instigation of the mental hygiene movement were laws to sterilise the mentally ill and prevent them from reproducing.

Euthanasia

While the whole world was being prepared by propaganda tot the sterilisation of the insane the adherent of mental hygiene and eugenics were preparing their next step.

Euthanasia by definition means an easy death. It is usually understood that it should be in a painless peaceful fashion for someone who is incurable and dying. It is also known as "mercy-killing".

In 1895 Alfred Ploetz had, as we have seen, introduced Social Darwinism into Germany and founded Racial Hygiene. In his book "Fundamental Outline of Racial Hygiene" he calls for the elimination of counter-selective processes i.e. those processes which eliminate the strong and favour the weak. Amongst these he includes war and the protection of the weak and the ill. As an illustration he gives the example of a newly married couple who give birth to a weak or malformed child who would be given an easy death with a small dose of morphine by a Board of Doctors.

In 1922 Karl Binding a Jurist and Alfred Hoche a psychiatrist wrote: "The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value". (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens). They argued in favour of euthanasia that the unfortunate are a burden to themselves and society and their parting would cause no great loss, the cost of keeping these useless people was excessive and that the State could better spend the money on more productive issues. They felt that the physically and mentally defective should be painlessly eliminated and demanded the nullification of the religious and legal barriers which stood in the way. Hoche was an influential, authoritative psychiatrist and argued that the moral attitudes towards the preservation of life would soon drop away and the destruction of useless lives would become a necessity for the survival of society.

At a German medical conference in Karlsruhe in 1921 a proposal was put forward for the legalisation of Euthanasia but was rejected. At a psychiatric congress in Dresden in 1922 the same motion and report that had been presented in Karlsruhe was brought up again and again rejected. At about the same time the Monist League [one of its founders was Ernst Haeckel convinced supporter of Social Darwinism] made a similar suggestion to the Reichstag again without success. In the U.S.A. Dr. Alexis Carrel a French-American Nobel Prize winner who had been on the staff of the Rockefeller Institute since its inception published his book "Man the Unknown" in 1935 its message cannot be said to have been limited to home consumption for within three years it had been translated into nine other languages.

In his last chapter "The Remaking of Man", Carrel repeatedly looks to Eugenics as the solution to the ills of society. He suggests the removal of the mentally ill and the criminal by small euthanasia institutions which were to be equipped with suitable gases:

"There remains the unsolved problem of the immense number of defectives and criminals. They are an enormous burden for the part of the population that has remained normal. As already pointed out, gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect the public against gangsters and lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? The abnormal prevent the development of the normal. This fact must be squarely faced. Why should society not dispose of the criminals and the insane in a more economical manner? We cannot go on trying to separate the responsible from the irresponsible, punish the guilty, spare those who although having committed a crime, are thought to be morally innocent. We are not capable of judging men. However the community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements. How can this be done? Certainly not by building larger and more comfortable prisons, just as real health will not be promoted by larger and more scientific hospitals. In Germany the Government has taken energetic measures against the multiplication of inferior types, the insane and criminals. The ideal solution would be to eliminate all such individuals as soon as they proved dangerous. Criminality and insanity can be prevented only by a better knowledge of man, by eugenics, by changes in education and in social conditions. Meanwhile criminals have to be dealt with effectively. Perhaps prisons should be abolished. They could be replaced by smaller and less expensive institutions. The conditioning of petty criminals with the whip or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts. Modern society should not hesitate to organise itself with reference to the normal individual. Philosophical systems and sentimental prejudices must give way before such a necessity. The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilisation."

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The Men Behind Hitler 3: The Fuhrer Appears

"Patently RIDICULOUS, That PSYCHIATRISTS CAUSED The HOLOCAUST"

Nada Stotland: President: American Psychiatric Association


CHAPTER III
THE FUHRER APPEARS

Hitler and his life have been dealt with by various authors. I refer the reader who is interested in more information to these. It is however necessary to briefly recount some of his early history in order to better understand events which took place later.

Adolf Hitler was born on the 20th April 1889 the son of an Austrian customs official in the upper Austrian town of Braunau close to the Inn river. Various family moves resulted in the young Hitler attending a number of different schools. At one of these in Linz from 1900 to 1904 he fell under the influence of Professor Leopold Poetsch an extremely outspoken Pan-German (he supported the Pan-German movement). In addition to Poetsch several of the other teachers were strongly anti-Jewish and Hitler at this impressionable age undoubtedly absorbed their ideas and those of a Linz anti-Jewish newspaper which he began reading regularly at this time.

After leaving school he spent the next four years doing whatever he pleased spending most of his time at Linz with the occasional visit to Vienna. In early 1908 he moved to Vienna where he rented a room and made a second unsuccessful attempt to gain entry to the Vienna Academy of Art.

Before leaving Vienna in 1913, as Hitler reveals in his "Mein Kampf", he spent much of his time in the Hofbibliothek (City Library) where he claims to have studied the history of a number of subjects particularly, and increasingly, politico-economic theories and military-political works. Because he rarely mentioned the title of anything he had read it is difficult to determine what the actual titles of the books were but there are clues to these. The similarities between Hitler's ideas and those of Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) the French psychologist, are so striking that one can definitely draw the conclusion that he studied Le Bon's book "Psychologie des Foules" which was translated into German in 1908 under the title "Psychologie der Massen" [Psychology of the Masses] and was acquired by the Hofbibliothek in the same year.

Hitler, as we have already seen was well steeped in Pan-German literature and must have been familiar with Gobineau. Also, Dietrich Eckart, an intimate friend and early supporter, claimed in a crudely written brochure published in 1924, that amongst other works Hitler had studied the Frenchman Vacher de Lapouge's "L'Aryen Son Role Social" published in 1899. This was later translated into German in 1939 and published in Frankfurt under the title "Der Arier und seine Bedeutung für die Gemeinschaft" [The Aryan and His Role in the Community]. Lapouge seems to have had a wide field of interest. Apart from being a leading eugenicist he also found time to engage his attention with crude social Darwinism and racism. It might have almost been Hitler speaking when Lapouge stated in his book "the idea of justice... is an illusion. There is nothing but force". And "the race, the nation, is everything."

In addition to these topics Hitler was also certainly familiar with the subject of geo-politics as formulated by its English originator Sir Halford Mackinder and German exponent Karl Haushofer. Geo-politics, a relatively unknown subject, was based on the theory that the foreign policy of a country was determined by its location natural resources raw materials and opportunities rather than its political development or outlook. Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) who was later to become teacher, adviser and friend of Rudolf Hess, visited Hitler in Landsberg prison.

When Hitler left Vienna he was, as he declared later, an absolute anti-Semite a sworn enemy of the Marxist ideology and very Pan-German in sentiment. His view of life was strongly Social Darwinist, Society being seen as an arena in which individuals and groups were engaged in a ceaseless struggle to assert their superiority by force and cunning.

Hitler having been declared unfit by the Austrian Army moved to Munich applied there for the German Reichswehr and was recruited and inducted as an infantryman in August 1914. At the end of the war he returned from a military hospital to his regiment in Munich where he performed various menial tasks. In June 1919 he received political indoctrination in "national thinking" at Munich University from the Educational or Propaganda Department of a local Group Headquarters of the Bavarian Reichswehr.

During the course his fanaticism and vehemence attracted the attention of the organisers who recruited him as a V-man (someone charged with special assignments). Shortly after this, in July, he was made a member of an Enlightenment Commando for the Lechfeld transit camp, whose duty it was to organise psycho-political instruction for the returning soldiers in anti-socialist, national thinking, while at the same time being a training ground for the Commando personnel themselves in agitation and public speaking. In addition to his psycho-political duties he also performed the task of being a confidential agent and spy for the Group H.Q. which was keeping a careful watch on local political groups. To accomplish this, Hitler was instructed to attend meetings of the tiny German Workers Party (D.A.P.). At first he was bored with the meetings, but as he continued to attend and was enrolled as a member, his interest increased steadily, and his involvement and activities grew. At a public meeting in February 1920 he announced the twenty-five point party programme and about this time the name of the party was changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) known in its more familiar form as the Nazi Party.

Released from the army in March 1920 he threw himself wholeheartedly into party activity and proceeded to make a bid for the leadership in which he was successful. In 1921 he went to Berlin in order to give a speech there to the ultra-conservative National Club, and here established the first contacts with industrialists and business circles. During the following years these increased to an ever-widening circle of supporters including Fritz Thyssen, Alfred Hugenberg (newspapers), Alfred Krupp (heavy industry), and others. There is also some evidence for the belief that Hitler visited Switzerland during the summer of 1923 in order to receive financial support. Also in 1923 the abortive Munich Putsch, staged by Hitler, carried his name for the first time beyond the borders of Germany and earned him a short term in Landsberg prison, where with the assistance of Rudolf Hess he wrote "Mein Kampf". As an excellent illustration of the degree of his absorption of Social Darwinism, eugenic and racial ideas it makes fascinating, if turgid, reading. Here we meet the familiar arguments of these three groups; the merciless struggle of all life forms; the victory of the strong over the weak; the ruthless disregard for the rights of others; the Jewish menace; the advocacy of techniques for breeding of superior citizens, and so on.

Upon his release from prison in December 1924 Hitler busied himself with re-asserting his control over the party. Successes followed over the next few years and, despite various setbacks and difficulties, the seizure of power came in the year 1933.

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The Men Behind Hitler 4: The Secret Seizure Of Power

"Patently RIDICULOUS, That PSYCHIATRISTS CAUSED The HOLOCAUST"

Nada Stotland: President: American Psychiatric Association


CHAPTER IV
THE SECRET SEIZURE OF POWER

• The Nuremberg Laws

Apart from the pseudo-scientific falsehoods, myths and aggrandizement of the author, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" also contains the explanation of his plan of action. Here he deals in detail with propaganda, the leadership principle (Führer prinzip), organisation of the movement and its structure, and after the seizure of power his plans for the nation. And, after leaving Landsberg prison, Hitler proceeded to lay the foundations for his shadow state.

Within the structure of the party, bureau offices and institutions were established which closely paralleled the actual organs of the existing government. Party officers were appointed for a wide range of offices including legal policy, health and racial matters, education etc., and Nazi organizations for the professions, members of the press, teachers, doctors etc. also came into being.

In 1933 with so much preparation behind it the Nazi Party was in an excellent position to rapidly consolidate its control of power. Other groups saw the chance to extend their control and influence as well, and they too were prepared and ready. The blueprint was to hand, all that was needed was to move the programme into top gear to achieve the desired result. The magazine of the Eugenic and Racial Hygiene Society welcomed Hitler's accession to power as a major gain for them, as he was so much in accord with their own thinking.

In June of that year, at a scientific gathering dealing with eugenic problems, Wilhelm Frick (Minister of the Interior) described the number of feeble-minded and defective children born to German parents as being huge. According to him some authorities regarded one in five of the German population as biologically unsound. These should be prevented from reproducing because their offspring were no longer desirable.

A signal victory was scored by the eugenic and mental hygiene movement on July 14, 1933, only four months after the March elections which brought the Nazis to power. Before this date it had, according to the interpretation of a majority of judges, been illegal to perform sterilisation for eugenic reasons. This was now totally reversed by the passage of the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease in Posterity" or as it was better known the Sterilisation Law. The chief architect of this was Professor Ernst Rüdin, Professor of Psychiatry at the Munich University, Director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography, and of the Research Institute for Psychiatry. Rüdin was also among the German delegates to the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene which was held in Washington in 1930 and at which he urged and intensified integration of eugenics and mental hygiene.

A short time after the passing of the Sterilisation Law, he published a commentary about the meaning and purpose of the Law together with the lawyer Dr. Falk Ruttke, director of the Reich's Commission for the Public Health Service of the Interior and Arthur Gütt, the Nazi population expert and head of a government department in the Reich s Ministry of the interior.

The law itself was to take effect from 5th January 1934. Very comprehensive in scope its main purpose was to cleanse the nation of impure and undesirable elements toward the realisation of the Germanic ideal.

The categories of people covered by Law were:

(1) Anyone suffering from a hereditary disease could be sterilised by means of a surgical operation if it could be expected with some certainty, according to the experiences of medical science, that his posterity would suffer from serious physical or mental hereditary disease.

(2) Persons would be considered as hereditarily diseased in the sense of this law if they suffered from any one of the following diseases:

(i) Innate mental deficiency
(ii) Schizophrenia
(iii) Manic-depressive insanity
(iv) Hereditary epilepsy
(v) Hereditary (Huntington's) chorea
(vi) Hereditary blindness
(vii) Hereditary deafness
(viii) Severe hereditary physical abnormality.

(3) Further persons could be sterilised who suffered from severe alcoholism.

The law provided for an application from the person seeking to be sterilised and if he were unfit to act or declared incapable of managing his affairs on account of mental deficiency or not yet completed his 18th year, the legal representative was entitled to apply.

Sterilisation could also be applied for by the official doctor or, in the case of an inmate of a hospital sanatorium nursing home, or prison, by the head of the Institution.

A whole legal system was set up. Courts for the prevention of hereditary illnesses were instituted called "Erbgesundheitsgerichte" (Hereditary Health Courts) and attached to the existing district courts as well as the Higher Courts. Sitting on these were always one judge and two doctors (usually psychiatrists) present in court hearings of this nature. Witnesses and specialists could be called upon and the rules for civil procedure were to be normally applied.

The Act went on to order that if the Court finally decided on sterilisation it should be carried out even against the person's will, provided that the application had not originated from him alone. The official doctor had to request the police to take the necessary measures. If other methods proved of no avail the application of force was permissible.

In his book "Into the Darkness - Nazi Germany Today", Lothrop Stoddard, an American Social Darwinist, Racist and pro-Nazi had the following comments to make after a visit to Germany where he had looked into socialised health (Ed: Single Payer) and the eugenic courts. He states that in a conversation with an earnest young man who was officially in charge of the tuberculosis section of the public health service headquarters, he was told that:

The treatment given a tuberculosis patient is partly determined by his social worth. If he is a valuable citizen and his case is curable no expense is spared. If he is adjudged incurable he is kept comfortable of course but no special effort is made to prolong slightly an existence which will benefit neither the community nor himself. Germany can nourish only a certain amount of human life at a given time. We National Socialists are in duty bound to foster individuals of SOCIAL and biological VALUE".

Stoddard was apparently impressed by the health measures taken by the Nazis and later in the book recounts his visit to the Upper Court for Hereditary Health in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Having long been interested in the practical applications of biology and eugenics he had studied much along these lines. He made first-hand investigations whilst in Germany which included discussions with outstanding authorities on the subject. These included official spokesmen such as Frick and Darré and leading scientists Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, Hans Günther and others. It was through their recommendations that he was able to sit beside the judges during a session of the Eugenic High Court of Appeals. He also quoted Professor Günther who wrote:

"The Nordic ideal becomes for us an ideal of unity. That which is common to all divisions of the German people is the Nordic strain. The question is not so much whether we men now living are more or less Nordic; the question put to us is whether we have the courage to make ready for future generations a world cleansing itself racially and eugenically."

Stoddard went on to say-

"Without attempting to appraise this highly controversial racial doctrine (regarding the Jews), it is fair to say that Nazi Germany's eugenic programme is the most ambitious and far-reaching experiment in eugenics ever attempted by any nation."

Stoddard went on to describe various aspects of Nazi eugenic population policies but before closing his survey noted the psychological aspects of these. He had found that the rulers of the Third Reich did not stop at legal and economic measures. They were aware that ideology had to be mobilised in order to completely reach their goal. So the German people were systematically propagandised for the upbuilding of what may be described as racial and eugenic consciousness.

As if the eight categories of the sterilisation law, by which one had the privilege of being sterilised, had not been enough, it was decided on the 24th of November 1933 that "habitual offenders against public morals" were to be castrated. The Nazi definition of offences against public morals also included "racial pollution".

The occurrences of the following years make it evident, that the national socialist experts had far more thorough measures in mind than simple sterilisation and castration as the final solution to social problems.

The Nuremberg Laws

Germany in 1933 was a unique example of the type of political climate in which a eugenic-mental hygiene movement could thrive. Economic conditions were not so markedly different from various other countries in the world but nowhere else was the political situation so conducive to the rapid and unfettered realisation of a eugenic paradise. Although the Sterilisation Law marked a major victory in the establishment of a mentally pure community, action was still needed in order to ensure racial purity. This came in 1935 with the so-called "Nuremberg Laws".

Prior to 1933 anti-Jewish acts by the Nazis had no legal basis under the Constitution. After the seizure of power a stream of anti-Jewish legislation commenced. Initially these were concerned with compulsory retirement of "non-Aryan" government employees, attempts to define "non-Aryan", and questionnaires to civil servants for details of their racial background. Also during this period "spontaneous" harassment of the Jews continued but this was largely disapproved of by the Party leaders who preferred to solve the question legally. Even Julius Streicher, the notorious and obscene Jew-baiter publicly condemned the use of non-legal methods going so far as to accuse the perpetrators of being Jews themselves !

The climax of the initial steps was reached in the Nuremberg Party Day celebrations on September 15th 1935 when Goering, to the acclaim of the assembled Nazi officials, read out what have become known as the "Nuremberg Laws". Already preceded by an assortment of citizenship laws beginning in 1933, the two new laws were sharply to the point. The first, the Reich Law of Citizenship, divided the German nation into classes of citizens, those who were merely subjects of the State and those who possessed full citizenship including political rights. Based on racial and ideological grounds this law, with one stroke, placed all Jews into the category of second-class citizens.

The law "For the Protection of German Blood and German Honour" [the second of the Nuremberg laws and called the "Blood Protection Law" for short] was intended to ensure the racial purity of the nation for all time. Fundamentally it made criminal any sexual intercourse between both these new groups the "Reich Citizens" and the "Subjects" but it was aimed specifically at the Jews. Apart from that, this law also served as a basis for further isolation of the socially undesirable in the following years.

It goes without saying that Ernst Rüdin unblushingly claimed for the German Racial Hygiene and Eugenic Movement a measure of responsibility for the inspiration of these Laws. The aim of racial hygiene was to create a fictitious Aryan race. In accordance with this all "non-Aryan" elements had to be rooted out. Apart from having a wrong combination of chromosomes, it also seems to have been a "non-Aryan" trait to have or to be of a different opinion. Consequently, all minorities fell into this category, and liquidation, with the exception of the Jews who were declared scapegoats, started with the smallest groups and worked up from there. Because of this, the larger minorities were left with the belief that it never would be their turn.

If the Nazis had started from the other end, everyone would have known that it was to be everyone's neck and they could have united themselves against this procedure when the Nazis were not yet firmly established. *****

Amongst the minorities that were considered "non-Aryan" were included the Gypsies, Free-masons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews and Christians. A common denominator of these religions and ideological minorities is that they all strongly believed in something spiritual and mental and oriented their lives according to this belief. They were unlikely to respond to a psychiatric dreamworld and therefore found no place in the psychiatric view of life.

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***** 1 in Every 5 Americans are 'Incurably Mentally Ill' and the whole Psychiatric Non-$cience Scam is Authorized & Funded by Politicians who don't read, or know, what they're authorizing.

The Men Behind Hitler 5: Useless Bread Gobblers

"Patently RIDICULOUS, That PSYCHIATRISTS CAUSED The HOLOCAUST"

Nada Stotland: President: American Psychiatric Association


CHAPTER V
USELESS BREAD GOBBLERS (SS SLANG)

If we look back at the numerous paths the various currents of activity took in the first three decades of the twentieth century, we see that in the Thirties they gradually amalgamated and a trend emerged in a certain direction [sterilisation of the mentally ill, Nuremberg Laws etc.] which was striving to "even greater heights". The German racial and mental hygienists had prepared the ground for an all-embracing project which they called the "Euthanasia Programme", but would more accurately have been called "Mass murder of mental patients".

In 1921 the Professors Dr. Erwin Baur, Dr. Eugen Fischer, and Dr. Fritz Lenz jointly published the first edition of their two volume book "Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene" which was internationally recognised as a standard text-book and soon was even used in universities abroad.

In the second volume by Dr. Lenz, first Professor for racial hygiene in Germany (the chair was established in 1923 at the Munich University), entitled "Human Selection and Racial Hygiene (Eugenics)", he wrote:

"A real restoration to health of the race cannot be begun without generous measures and the organisation of social-racial hygiene; but these are mostly only introduced when the racial hygienic idea has become the popular knowledge of the population or at least of the mental leaders. These must first develop a feeling for the senselessness of a civilisation which allows the race to decay, an order of society and economics which has no regard for the interests of eternal life, which in fact is often detrimental. The introduction of racial hygienic education in the secondary schools (high-schools) and universities could effectively counter this illiteracy (lack of education); unfortunately this will only be possible when the importance of racial hygiene has become known in the right places. As long as this is not the case, the most important practical duty of racial hygiene is the private promulgation of racial hygienic ideas. As soon as racial hygienic conviction has become a living ideology, then the racial hygienic organisation of life, even public life, will happen by itself... Anyone who loves his race cannot wish for it to fall into decadence. He must realise that the industriousness of the race is the first and unrelenting condition for the thriving of the race. Even the fight for freedom and self-assertion of the race must in the final instance serve the race. When in a fight for power the best blood is sacrificed without substituting it then it is senseless... And when racial damage has been caused through war, be it through error or because it was inevitable, it must be the first concern of those who do not want to see the race blind but seeing, to even out these damages. This is not just the substitution in number, much more important is the substitution of racial fitness. Even this requires the spirit of sacrifice and fortunately there is no lack of this -- there is only a lack of understanding."

A brief look at the professional and ideological background of both of the authors of the first volume proves very interesting. Baur and Fischer had both worked devotedly in the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Eugenics, in which Rüdin first acted as curator.

Baur, the biologist, later became the first Nazi Rector of Berlin University, where Fischer later lectured as a Professor for Anthropology. In his debasement of knowledge, Fischer sank to the depths of praising Hans F.K. Günther, the author of "Racial Knowledge of the German Race" who was a popular target for general ridicule even in Germany, before the Nazis promoted him to a university professorship.

Later, in 1941, Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, Nazi professor and former colleague of Baur, Fischer and Rüdin in the above mentioned Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, supported the Baur-Fischer-Lenz textbook with warm recommendations.

Verschuer was the founder and first director of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Research at Frankfurt University opened in 1934. Even if it produced nothing else it brought a further star into the Nazi sky; Verschuer's former assistant Dr. Joseph Mengele. From this position he later advanced to be one of the most infamous doctors in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he conducted experiments with living and fully conscious prisoners and tortured the camp-inmates for the benefit of "scientific advancement". After the war, Mengele succeeded in escaping the Allies and the law, he left Germany and fled via Italy to Paraguay, settled there, acquired citizenship in his new home country and apparently lives there to this day. The time of his peaceful existence however, will hopefully soon be over; the well known Nazi criminal hunter, Wiesenthal, is on his tracks and will not rest until he has caught up with him.

At the 12th meeting of the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations, held in 1936 in Holland, Verschuer appeared as the representative of his Institute together with Ploetz, Rüdin and Fischer. One of the papers read to the meeting was by fellow delegate Professor Karl Astel from Himmler's SS "Race and Resettlement Office" (RuSHA).

In 1923 Lenz took a further step forward in his endeavours to find a solution to racial hygienic problems by stating that Euthanasia definitely had its place in the racial hygiene plan. The propaganda drums beat without pause, but it was only in the Thirties that the fatal Euthanasia propaganda campaign broke loose and went far beyond Germany's borders.

In July 1931 the Union of Bavarian Psychiatrists held a Congress at Munich University. V. Faltlhauser, psychiatrist and active proponent of the mental hygiene movement, who was striving towards yet greater achievement of the euthanasia programme, laid bare the basic thoughts behind the campaign for sterilisation and euthanasia with the following words:

Here we will only discuss sterilisation. Basically it represents only one of the paths which lead towards the goal. You know that these measures are heavily opposed. Not only is the unjustified claim, that the question of heredity has not been clarified enough, the obstacle; the obstacles lie rather as already stated in ideological moral and ethical considerations, they lie in the idleness of the broad masses and in obsolete views which I do not wish to go into here. This outlook must cause us to advance carefully but steadily. What primarily seems to be needed is educational work and propaganda for the broad masses, and the facts have to be constantly hammered into them. And this is also one of the many duties of our public welfare section, which should point out this fact in private life and in lectures. It will also be our imperative task to research and make more exact the laws of heredity and their final consequences. And herein again a special task will fall to our public welfare section. At this point I cannot suppress the comment that it must have other methods than those at its disposal today. Today the welfare doctors are swamped in their social tasks especially when you consider they have to do their work in a subsidiary office. If the public welfare section is to do justice to the requests for research made of it, then it should be provided with the means and the personnel. I know what I am demanding at this time of scarce means. But it must be said to prevent the blame being put on public welfare, as it has failed to fulfil demands put on it.

When demanding sterilisation, compulsory action is at present to be avoided; on the other hand voluntary sterilisation is to be promoted by any means. For this a clear unequivocal legal safety precaution must be created. It is quite evident that even voluntary sterilisation must be based on certain prerequisites and safety precautions and that clear, flawless, medically-determined indicators must be present. What these safety precautions are to look like, whether it is to be a commission or not, whether the commission should consist of doctors, civil-servant doctors or be mixed etc. is a question to be considered and is not relevant to the principle. The clear indication will be in the cases of the gravest strain, which with today's knowledge we must now recognise will have a high probability of heavy hereditary defects in the descendants. It need only be mentioned incidentally that sterilisation is only to occur in the form of severing the spermatic duct whilst preserving the gonads or the operative interruption of the Fallopian tube. Also the question of possibly demanding compulsory sterilisation in the cases of criminal tendencies and high-probability hereditary insanity should also be considered. This however should occur only when the broad masses have intensively been worked over in the ways mentioned earlier, and have become mature enough to accept such ideas.

Many have said that internment is the only sound measure against the bearers of very bad hereditary mass. But quite apart from the fact that it is the most expensive preventive measure, is it really more humane and a lesser violation of the principle of personal freedom? Do we not forcibly prohibit the party concerned from procreation for their whole life?

We Germans cannot totally neglect events which occur outside our borders. A whole series of nations have positively accepted that the laws of heredity do affect the development of mental abnormality and have understood the consequences of that and created sterilisation laws. The Americans have been reproached with reckless pluck because of laws they have passed in 22 of their states. But when we see that an otherwise cool and calculating race such as the Danes pass a sterilisation law, how the canton Waadt has also done this, when the Swedish ministries are seriously dealing with this problem, then this must really give us something to think about.

Before I end, I must permit myself a few short comments which are forced upon me by an objective conscience. I believe that we must beware of exaggerated expectations of the success of sterilisation. Sterilisation, even compulsory, will not be able to plug all the fountains of bad hereditary mass.

The principle used here to hoodwink the public into accepting enforced sterilisation is to first start a propaganda campaign for voluntary sterilisation. This same rule also applies for compulsory euthanasia where propaganda starts with the introduction of voluntary euthanasia. Both Germany and England were literally flooded with Euthanasia campaigns.

In England, Dr. Charles Killick Millard, President of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, brought up in his 1931 Presidential speech the question of voluntary euthanasia and proposed a suitable law. A few years later, he became a fellow founder of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legislation Society and its Honorary Secretary.

In 1935 Lord Moynihan, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, founded the Euthanasia Society. A year later this Society handed its recommendations for a Euthanasia project to the House of Lords. Among other things, it provided for the possibility of incurably ill persons being able to petition a Euthanasia Office of the Ministry of Health to let themselves be delivered from their sufferings. It suggested that the applicant should, after consulting his close relatives, handle his estate and choose two medical advisors and a doctor. The Ministry could give its consent for the mercy death to take place after a period of seven days, time allowed for the chance of a change of heart, or an appeal if the relatives so desired. This proposal was fortunately turned down.

However, as early as 1923, a step in this direction was taken in Switzerland and a draft for such a law was presented in Denmark in 1924. In the U.S.A., The Chamber of Doctors of the State of Illinois even requested the approval of mercy death. The year 1938 was marked by the establishment of the American Society of Euthanasia, and on similar lines, a society for voluntary euthanasia was founded in Connecticut and drafts of laws were presented to the parliaments of Nebraska and Canada in 1937. In Germany, the activities in the field of euthanasia, reached their climax. In 1934 Baur, who had long advocated the sterilisation law, foretold that such a law would only be a start.

The actual campaign for euthanasia in Germany took many forms. Films were produced (among others "I accuse") which were to make obvious that there were useful and less useful members of society, and were intended to cause astonishment on the part of the viewer as to why anybody bothered to prolong these unproductive human lives at all. Articles in newspapers informed the reader about costs caused by the mentally ill. and showed plainly how the money could be used for more productive and creative things. The campaign was so extensive that it even reached school books, in which the nature of the problems were to direct the attention of the pupil to this subject. One such example is the arithmetic textbook written in 1935 by Alfred Dorner, whose series of distorted and disguised questions were to have the desired influence.

So we see that sterilisation and euthanasia were not the ideas of the Nazis and never had been. They were ideas which were supported and promoted throughout the whole world by groups with a strong interest in the progressive development of mental hygiene and mental health. There is no doubt that euthanasia was supported in many countries, among them America, Finland, England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. Germany however was the only country in which the political climate was such as to allow materialisation of the final goal of the supporters of sterilisation and euthanasia.

Sterilisation laws at the same time were preparing the ground in other countries such as U.S.A. (some states) for much larger endeavours. However the step from sterilisation to murder is great (though apparently less great for someone who has fully absorbed the state of mind of the mental hygiene movement). Therefore it seems only logical that one tried to win the politicians to the new ideals, to manipulate them and to appoint them in the right places, in order to bring about the desired goal. In Germany the politicians were ideal for this purpose, and consequently the action moved much faster there. But, as we will see later, because of the German activities, the attitude towards the subjects of sterilisation and euthanasia changed shortly after the Second World War.

The next step, towards the end of 1938 and the beginning of 1939, was publicly tested in Germany after endless discussions and propaganda moves. A letter addressed to Adolf Hitler written by a man called Knauer from Leipzig asked for permission for a doctor to shorten the life of his child who was born blind, seemed to be an idiot and had only parts of its arms and legs. The child itself was at this time at the Children's Clinic in the University of Leipzig, which was headed by Professor Werner Catel, Professor for Neurology and Psychiatry at the same university.

At that time Catel was already an exponent of euthanasia and has remained one to this day which fact he acknowledged in his book "Border Situations of Life - Contribution to the Problem of a Limited Euthanasia". it was Catel who made the suggestion to the father, or at least focused his attention in that direction, to write a letter to the Führer. As an answer to this letter, Hitler sent his physician, Professor Karl Brandt, to Leipzig and after consultations with Catel, put the child to sleep.

Several months later, Hitler signed a document authorising Dr. Karl Brandt and Reich-leader Philipp Bouhler to permit euthanasia in special cases. This authorisation was supposedly signed in October 1939, but was backdated to the beginning of September of the same year. The document was really nothing more than an authorisation and formulated in such a way that a doctor who truly felt bound to the Hippocratic Oath could interpret it in such a way that no-one would have to die. The "Führer-order" as it was generally called, had apparently come about after a lively discussion between Dr. Karl Brandt, Dr. Leonardo Conti and Philipp Bouhler and was as follows:

"Reichsleader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt M.D. are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who according to human judgement can upon most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness be accorded a mercy death.

Signed - A. Hitler".

In spite of this, the document was regarded not only as a "legal" basis for the crimes committed by the psychiatrists of Nazi Germany, but later at the Nuremberg trials and in other court cases, it was used as a justification where the accused attempted to interpret this authorisation as an order.

The question about the so-called "Führer-order" is usually done away with by stating that Hitler wanted to achieve one of his goals with this document. However, several facts contradicted this widespread theory and should be mentioned in this context. Obviously Hitler agreed or at least sympathised with the arguments of the eugenically-oriented groups, which were trying to defend sterilisation and euthanasia. This we know from his earlier studies and activities, but one cannot charge him with having voiced his opinion in this direction very often. On the contrary, he seldom remarked on it. The actual document was very vague, and it is not even clear that the victims were to be hopelessly mentally ill, but only referred to incurably sick generally. The previously mentioned Knauer case is a typical example of the psychiatric way of thinking and their tactics.

The Third Reich is usually looked upon as a monolithic state, a pyramid structure with Hitler at the top followed by the administrative machinery of government and its subordinate organisations, which form a wide basis, the whole system unified and dynamic. In actual fact, the Third Reich was a system of agencies, departments and branches of government all in competition with each other. All endeavoured to play each other off against each other for reasons of prestige, in order to win the favour of the Führer or to increase their power. Hitler himself issued different versions of the same order to keep his subordinates divided and in competition with each other. This way there was less chance of their becoming dangerous to him.

Hitler had purposely disarranged the "whole" structure of the Reich, with the aim of achieving a shift of emphasis of function, a tactic which proved successful in ensuring his own position of power. Apart from the actual government offices the NSDAP committees established before the seizure of power remained in existence, so that Hitler had two organisations at his disposal with greatly overlapping functions. The administration of the Third Reich was, therefore, a chaotic confusion of conflicts, jealousies and duplication of actions. An order which was not taken up by someone and worked on or passed on, just remained an order and ended up in a desk-drawer, never executed. Actually a great deal of effort was necessary to get a lot of things moving at all.

Additionally, after the seizure of power, Hitler was only interested in activities for which he had a special affinity and he neglected other activities. Ministers and functionaries often did not see him at all for long periods of time. To the degree that Hitler engrossed himself in the plans for the expansion of the Reich, he had to deal more and more with the solution of military problems and with diplomatic matters. His interest in non-military matters and initiatives declined.

Thus because Hitler's attention was unequivocally on other matters, the "experts" who were continuously exerting pressure on internal affairs, such as initiating the mass-murder of mental patients, also assumed responsibility for it. This is affirmed by the two well known and informed American journalists William L. Shirer and Joseph Harsch both active as foreign correspondents in Berlin in those years.

Shirer collected his impressions in his "Berlin Diary" published in England in 1941. Towards the end of his diary notes the author deals with his experiences with the euthanasia programme. He writes:

"What is stilt unclear to me is the motive for these murders.
Germans themselves advance three:

1. That they are being carried out to save food.
   
2. That they are done for the purpose of experimenting with new poison gases and death rays.
   
3. That they are simply the result of the extreme Nazis deciding to carry out their eugenic and sociological ideas."

Shirer continues with his views and comes to the conclusion:

"The first motive is obviously absurd, since the death of 100,000 persons will not save much food for a nation of 80 million. Besides, there is no acute food shortage in Germany. The second motive is possible, though I doubt it. Poison gases may have been used in putting these unfortunates out of the way, but if so, the experimentation was only incidental. Many Germans I have talked to think that some new gas which disfigures the body has been used, and that this is the reason why the remains of the victims have been cremated. But I can get no real evidence of this".

And now he comes to a very interesting section in which he writes:

"The third motive seems the most likely to me. For years a group of radical Nazi sociologists who were instrumental in putting through the Reich's sterilisation laws have pressed for a national policy of eliminating the mentally unfit. They say they have disciples among many sociologists in other lands and perhaps they have.

Paragraph two of the form letter sent the relatives plainly bears the stamp of this sociological thinking: "In view of the nature of his serious, incurable ailment, his death, which saved him from a life long institutional sojourn, is to be regarded merely as a release.

Some suggest a fourth motive. They say the Nazis calculate that for every 3 or 4 institutional cases, there must be one healthy German to look after them. This takes several thousand good Germans away from more profitable employment. If the insane are killed off, it is further argued by the Nazis, there will be plenty of hospital space for the war wounded should the war be prolonged and large casualties occur."

This information which Shirer for some reason does not consider or puts aside as being absurd or unimportant, when examined proves to be rather useful. Of the motives the Germans propagate as their reason for these murders, three seem to hold up under examination.

The first motive, however, that they were committed to save food, originated before these measures were brought in, and thus seems quite a logical conclusion. However when one looks at the result and when one compares 100,000 patients with eighty million as Shirer had done, the whole thing stands out as absurd.

The second reason, that the murders had been committed in order to experiment with new poisonous gases, also makes sense. In the beginning stages of the euthanasia programme, many experiments were carried out to find the most effective and fastest method of exterminating the victims.

The third motive which the Germans propagated themselves, was that these murderous actions were the result of extreme National Socialists who wanted to materialise their social-hygienic and social ideas. As the whole programme was kept strictly confidential and therefore was known only by a very few people, it seems as though the Nazis had carried it out themselves. However, from the history of the preparations for these murder actions, it is obvious [and in the following chapter we will go into this in detail] that it was the extremist psychiatrists and the Nazis who together put these ideas into action.

The fourth motive offered to Shirer by some Germans that new gases were used which deformed bodies and that this was the reason for the cremation of the mortal remains is also worth examining in more detail. The new gas which was used in the beginning was not so new. In fact it was simply carbon monoxide from combustion engines which did indeed deform bodies. The patients usually died under circumstances which caused deformations [some of the bodies discoloured and excrement and other fluids ran out]. It is evident that they were often in a condition which did not permit them to be put in a coffin and to be transferred. A further point which must be considered is that such a corpse, if returned to relatives would hardly have stood up to an examination to confirm the cause of death, should the family have wanted it.

The distressing thing about Shirer's Diary is that he received his information from Germans not as a rumour but as fact, and obviously obtained it first hand. He describes the Nazis as sociologists and probably uses this term as a collective term which includes psychiatrists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociohygienists and mental hygienists. And his conclusion is correct. They were racial, they served as tools to pass the Sterilisation Laws, they exerted pressure to direct the national politics towards the elimination of the mentally ill and they were very successful in all these. Shirer's claim that German sociologists had many supporters abroad was also valid.

Joseph Harsch the second American journalist in Berlin, confirms Shirer's information in his book "Pattern for Conquest".

"Those who proposed it (the plan for euthanasia) are understood to have asked Hitler for a written edict, or law which would officially authorise them to proceed with the "mercy killings". Hitler is represented as having hesitated for several weeks. Finally, doubting that Hitler would ever sign the official order the proponents of the project, drafted a letter for him to sign which merely expressed his, Hitler's, general approval of the theory of euthanasia as a means of relieving incompetents of the burden of life. While this letter did not have the character of law it was adequate in Nazi Germany. The Führer had expressed approval of the practice. It went ahead."

Following the Knauer case, a group of competent specialists were called to the Reich Chancellery to form a Euthanasia Committee. Psychiatrist, and ministerial adviser for health in the Reich Ministry, SS Oberführer Dr. Herbert Linden, was appointed as its head. Later Linden was to act as liaison between the Chancellery and the Reich Health Service, which was attached to the Ministry of the Interior and led by Reich Doctor Führer Leonardo Conti. The founding of this committee was the first of what were to become regular meetings of the medical advisers for the purpose of better estimating the necessary administrative and technical facilities.

Lindens committee consisted of:

Professor Hans Heinze, Chief of the Brandenberg Mental Institute.
Professor Werner Catel, Lecturer in Neurology and Psychiatry at Leipzig University and head of the Paediatric Clinic in Leipzig.
Dr. Helmut Unger, Ophthalmologist, author of a novel on the euthanasia question ("Mission and Conscience") and Press liaison officer for the Reich Doctor Führer Dr. Wagner.
Dr. Ernst Wentzler Paediatrician.

Linden rapidly expanded the committee with the following additional specialists for neurology and psychiatry:

Professor Max de Crinis, Lecturer in Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin University, secret agent and friend of Waiter Schellenburg-who held a high post in the Nazi Secret Service. [Dr. Crinis was involved in the Venlo Incident staged shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in which two British and a Dutch Intelligence agent were kidnapped by the Germans].
Professor Berthold Kihn, Lecturer in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Jena.
Professor Carl Schneider, Lecturer in Neurology and Psychiatry at Heidelberg University.
Dr. Hermann Pfannmüller, who was Dr. Faltlhauser's assistant in the Asylum at Kaufbeuren and as of 1938 Director of the Mental Hospital Eglfing-Haar.
Dr. Bender - director of the Buch Mental Hospital near Berlin.

A short time later the special advisers to T4 were attached:

Professor Werner Heyde, Lecturer in Neurology and Psychiatry at Würzburg University.
Professor Paul Nitsche, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Halle University up to 1939. Director of the Sonnenstein institute near Pirna, which became one of the murder schools.

Now having the necessary advice from the "experts" about the size of the problem, of numbers, where, when, how, who, etc., the administrative machinery of T4 was put together. The programme had been drawn, the task could commence.

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