Nazi Extermination Process

This was far from the only role physicians played in camps, however; in both concentration and extermination camps other German doctors performed a multitude of tasks that facilitated the murder of millions of Jews and other undesirables. Many of them came directly from the T4 program, but again, it should be noted that participation was not forced; some doctors did refuse to take on these positions and experienced no consequences, while others requested and received transfers out of them (Friedlander 244). For doctors who complied, camp work involved the barbaric tasks of selecting who would be killed, supervising the use of Zyklon B in the gas chambers, pronouncing death, and providing advice on how to keep the extermination process running

smoothly (Baumslag 65-8).
Clearly, none of these tasks were overly medical, but they were extensive. In Auschwitz, for example, doctors performed multiple types of selections. The first occurred when shipments of Jews arrived; SS doctors would decide right on the ramp who survived and who went directly to the gas. Another type was conducted amongst Jews randomly in the camp in order to make way for healthier arrivals, and another still was performed in the medical block, where doctors sent to the gas chamber any inmate who would take more than two or three weeks to recover. These doctors operated based on rough criteria from superiors of how many Jews were to be killed, but there was also much personal initiative, clear in how doctors had to be told to cut back at one point. Beyond selection duties, doctors in Auschwitz killed many ill inmates by phenol injection, signed false death certificates, and advised on matters such as separating mothers and children and burning corpses (Lifton 147-9; 180). This was clearly quite a step up from euthanasia of the severely ill, but contextually, it made sense. As shown, the notion that it was acceptable to kill the ill and undesirables had already been established among physicians, and Jews fit into this category based on their racial inferiority. Moreover, through 14f13, such principles had already been extended to camps (Lifton 148). Thus, their earlier participation had already laid the groundwork for physicians to accept the extension of these principles on a mass scale.
Finally, no analysis of the complicity of doctors in Nazi atrocities would be complete without mention of the brutal experiments performed by German physicians on thousands of camp inmates.

Unlike normal experiments, these were conducted without consideration of subjects’ health, and were often even designed to end in death. Generally, these experiments can be divided into two categories: those aimed to assist Germany’s military, and those meant to further the Nazis’ ideological goals. The former included experiments on the effectiveness of vaccines for epidemics, the impact of altitude and hypothermia, ways of inducing bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and the best ways of treating wounds. Those of the latter type involved experiments on mass sterilization through injections and x-rays, on changing features, such as eye color, to be more Aryan, and on the production of twins. Many physicians also designed their own experiments, and as there were no ethical rules or subject shortages, opportunities were plenty (Friedlander 131-5). As a result, countless inmates were maimed or killed by German physicians, though not one vital cure or discovery emerged as a result (Baumslag

163).
Perhaps the best example of physician participation in these atrocities comes in the form of the infamous Dr. Mengele, who arrived at Auschwitz in May of 1943, having long been committed to fulfilling the Nazi vision of German purity through medicine. He went above and beyond the duties required of him, attending selections even when it was not his turn, and enthusiastically rounding up twins to conduct research on, the purpose for which he had come to Auschwitz. He performed endless experiments on these twins, usually keeping alive those residing in his two main bases in the camp, while killing the rest to study their corpses. Officially, his work aimed to generate information on heredity and relations between illness, race, and interracial breeding, but the prevailing belief was that he hoped to learn the causes of twin pregnancies in order to increase the number of Aryan births. Most likely, it was a combination of both (Lifton 337-59). In his ruthless pursuit of knowledge and lack of concern for ethics, Dr. Mengele embodied many of the doctors who worked in this field of the camps.
Once again, it is worth pausing to take note of several points pertaining to doctor participation in camp experimentation.

First, the involvement of the medical community in this area went beyond the doctors who actually performed the experiments, as results and specimens were sent to medical institutes outside of the camps, where they were examined and used by other doctors (Friedlander 135). Similarly, these patients were also used as dummies on which medical students could gain surgical experience in their area of focus, based on the justification that these victims were condemned to death anyway (Lifton 294). This leads to the second point, which is that the work of physicians in camp experimentation was highly reflective of Nazi Germany’s prevalent racial ideology, and even helped to further it. Whether a particular experiment was racially based or not, the choice of subjects always was (Boozer 86). Since the Jews were less than human, it was justifiable to sacrifice them in order to further Germany’s goals (Lifton 302). By participating in experiments of any sort, German physicians thus helped to implement the Shoah whether or not a single one of their subjects

died.
Thus far, it has been demonstrated that the German medical community played a central role in both the causation and implementation of the Shoah and other Nazi atrocities, beginning with their role in the ideology formation that the Shoah rested on, and culminating in their personal involvement in death camp activities and experimentation. While questions of ‘what if’ are always dangerous, it is possible that if German physicians had not acted as they did, events may have played out differently. Recognizing the centrality of the role played by German physicians, however, inevitably raises the question of why so many ordinary doctors, trained to preserve life at all costs, willingly participated in these atrocities. While it may not be possible to fully understand why they acted as they did, the remainder of this paper will attempt to shed light on the motivations of the many doctors involved.
Although it is not a sufficient explanation on its own, one important factor was the genuine commitment that many doctors had to the ideologies fueling Nazi atrocities. As Francis Drobniewski importantly notes, despite their education, physicians as a whole were no less vulnerable to Nazi propaganda than any other group, and the fact that many of their own members were at the front of such campaigns made them even more susceptible (542). The National Socialist German Physician’s League vehemently promoted Nazi ideology, for example, while changes were made in the education system. Medical Law, Medical History, and Professional Studies became mandatory medical school courses in 1939 to indoctrinate physicians in the proper ideology, established doctors had to complete an advanced training course for the same purpose, and only strong supporters of Nazi ideology were allowed to lecture to medical students (Bruns 216-7, 223-5, 231-2). Of course, such influence was all on top of the general propaganda physicians were exposed to, along with all other German citizens.
Through all of these channels, German physicians were informed of the threat that Jews posed to Germany’s health, the necessity of curing Germany by eliminating them, and the centrality of the medical community’s role in doing so (Baumslag 45). If they did not already believe it, they were taught that races had inherent differences that impacted their value, that the Aryan race was the best one, that it needed to be saved, and, that for various reasons, that there really was such a thing as life unworthy of living (Burleigh 147, 156). They were simultaneously educated that saving the nation’s health required putting national health interests ahead of those of individuals, such as the sick and the weak (Bruns 234). Saving Germany would require a hardening of the morals of every physician until they put compassion aside and accepted the need to put the healthy ahead of the ill (Lifton 32-3).
Of course, not all physicians strongly believed in every aspect of such ideology, but many did, and many others accepted elements of it to some degree. Although statistics do not necessarily reflect motivations, it is striking that 45% of physicians had joined the Nazis by 1942, making it the highest membership rate of all professions (Baumslag 48). What was especially appealing to doctors was the medical context in which all ideological constructs were framed, such as the sickness of Germany and the cure that eliminating the Jews and other undesirables would bring. Added to this was the alluring notion that their profession would be responsible for saving Germany from peril (Lifton 16, 438). Thus, many German doctors genuinely did believe in the necessity and justifiability of their actions.