The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986)

This book is essential in any quest to understand how someone could murder and torture during the day only to return home to their nice families at night. ( )

This is a new take on the Holocaust. The thesis is that the policy of the "final solution" was evolutionary, growing out of prior programs, such as euthanasia. A haunting phrase is used to describe Jews (and other subhumans): "Life Unworthy of Life." Lifton's point is that from the very beginning--forced sterilizations--physicians were the point people for every subsequent escalation of death, culminating in Auschwitz. The author provides context and research gathered from multiple sources, including interviews with survivors and SS doctors. The role of Jewish and Polish doctors is examined as well. Nazi doctors believed that the Fuhrer oath supplanted the Hippocratic oath; their patient was deemed to be the German volk, rather than individuals. Given that mindset, it made selections at the death campus (conducted almost exclusively by physcians) an acceptable activity. Lifton notes the reversal of reality: from healing people to killing them. His perceptive psychological profiles of people like Mengele are alone worth the price of admission. The medical dimension of the Holocaust seems to be central to the entire Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews. Doctors were the ones, for example, who supervised the delivery of Zyklon B pellets into the showers. Lifton has done history a major service by plumbing this heretofore under-appreciated aspect of Holocaust studies. The last section is devoted to a rather difficult examination of links between psychology and genocide. I couldn't get through that, and it seemed too specialized for someone more interested in history. ( )

Wonderfully written and well informing. ( )

This book makes very sad reading ( )

This is a very frightening book about how ordinary people end up doing horrific things. If you think you could never be involved in an atrocity, I recommend reading this book and finding out just how hard it is to avoid given certain coercive circumstances. ( )