The Attitude of German Emigre Doctors Towards Medicine under National Socialism

摘要

The attitudes of emigre doctors provide some insight into whether Nazi medical atrocities were something peculiar and unique or whether they were an extreme consequence of widespread thinking and scientific concepts in medicine at the time. Doctors of the sexual reform movement and the political left partly welcomed the Nazi sterilisation law as an implementation of their eugenic ideas. Some labelled Nazi medicine plainly as charlatanism which is a protective claim by those who dream the dream of the genetic improvement of humanity. Others saw in it a cold-blooded utilitarianism, symbolising the triumph of a soldierly spartan life over the intricacies and agonies of the human soul. For those, the most important lessons of the past lay in protecting the chronically ill, the handicapped, the psychologically ill and the poor from radical Utopias aimed at 'making the national body healthy'.