Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:23:32.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ideology and ethics. The perversion of German psychiatrists' ethics by the ideology of national socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

L Singer*
Affiliation:
Clinique Psychiatrique, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, 1, place de l'Hôspital, F 67091 Strasbourg cedex, France
Get access

Summary

As soon as Adolf Hitler came to into power in 1933, four laws on racial segregation and race protection were edicted between 1934 and 1935. Schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychoses, epilepsy and alcoholism were regarded as hereditary mental illnesses. These laws were responsible for the sterilisation of 350,000 individuals who were thought to be at the source of the propagation of hereditary illnesses which might endanger the health and the future of the Aryan Germans. On September 1, 1939, Action T4 was launched: it required that all the mentally ill be exterminated. This action, which was run by the highest level of the Reich's chancellery with the help of psychiatrists coming from all backgrounds including university professors, was supposed to grant a serene death to all the mentally ill considered as untreatable. The death sentences were carried out by the medical staff in psychiatric hospitals specially equipped with gas chambers. Following protests, Action T4 was officially stopped on August 24, 1941, but, in reality, continued until the end of the war. The death sentences were carried out using either lethal doses of medication or food deprivation. One hundred and fifty thousand individuals fell victim to that therapeutic extermination which played an economic role as important as the one deemed to social protection. Many German academics, researchers, psychiatrists, geneticians and anthropologists played and active part in these murders which were carried out in the name of Nazi ideology based upon the supremacy of the Northern Germanic race and the necessity to protect it from miscegenation, especially from Jews. In the final part of this paper, the author gives an explanation of the perversion of ethics carried out by German psychiatrists.

Type
Original article
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier, Paris 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baud, JPGenèse institutionnelle du génocideIn:Olff-Nathan, JLa Science sous le Troisième Reich Paris: Le Seuil, 1993, 177195Google Scholar
Baader, GLe silence des pédagogues en allemagne, JAMIF 1997; 459: 1617Google Scholar
Bieder, JUn aperçu sur la psychiatrie allemande en 1934, Ann Med Psychol 1996; 154: 147151Google Scholar
Conseil de l'Europe Convention pour la protection des droits de l'homme et de la dignité de l'être humain a l'egard des applications de la biologie et de la médecine, Convention sur les Droits de l'Homme et la Biomédecin Strasbourg 1996Google Scholar
Frei, NL'état hitlérien et la société allemande 1933–1945 Paris: Le Seuil, 1994Google Scholar
Garrabé, J, Singer, LLes crimes contre les malades mentaux perpétrés par les Nazis in Traité de CriminologieAlbernhe, THCriminologie et Psychiatrie Paris: Ellipses, 1997, 381392Google Scholar
Gaupp, RLes tendances du développement de la psychiatrie allemande, Ann Med Psychol 1938, 96: 321359Google Scholar
Habay, M, Herberich-Marx, G, Raphael, FL'identité-stigmate. L'extermination de malades mentaux et d'asociaux alsaciens durant la seconde guerre mondiale, Revue des Sciences Sociales de la France de l'Est 1990-1991 3862Google Scholar
Häfner, HVolksgesundheitspflege Public Health in Geschichte und Gegenwart. HeidelbergerJahrbücher XL/1996 Berlin Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1996Google Scholar
Hofmann, W, Laufs, BCarl Schneider : sa personnalite et son influence sur l'euthanasie, Info Psychiatrique 1996, 72: 823825Google Scholar
Jaspers, KLa culpabilité allemande Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990Google Scholar
Kaupen-Haas, HLe troisième Reich a l'origine des technologies de la reproduction et de la génetiquep ln Olff-Nathan, JLa Science sous le troisième Reich Paris: Le Seuil, 1993, 287302Google Scholar
Leins, C, Foerster, KPoint de vue actuel sur Robert Gaupp, Fundamenta Psychiatrica 1994 8 8489Google Scholar
Massin, BAnthropologie raciale et national socialisme : heurs et malheurs du paradigme de la race In Olff-Nathan, JLa Science sous le troisième Reich Paris: Le Seuil, 1993, 197262Google Scholar
Rogers, A, Durand de Bousingen, DUne bioéthique pour l'Europe Strashourg: Les Editions du Conseil de l'Europe, 1995Google Scholar
Singer, LDu délire au genocide in Comptes rendus du 93e Congrès de Psychiatrie et de Neurologie de Langue FrançaiseSaint Malo, 12 juin 1995 Paris: Masson, 1997Google Scholar
Ternon, Y, Helman, SLe massacre des aliénés extrait, JAMIF 1997; 459: 12Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.