Thursday, January 30, 2020
The Nazi Doctors Essay Example for Free
The Nazi Doctors Essay Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors is a book that summarizes and explains the lives of both prisoner doctors and Nazi SS doctors during the Holocaust. Lifton discusses their roles in the attempt of the Nazis to present their plan for a perfect race as a medical practice and a sort of euthanasia for what the Nazis considered imperfect human beings. Through the interviews of both Nazi and prisoner doctors, I can determine the struggle that faced these doctors and also realize the pressure on Hitler to make the world see his views and actions of both genocide and â€Å"the perfect race†as acceptable.            Basically, Lifton is telling us that the Nazis knew that the world would be against the plan to murder anyone with an imperfection. So, the Nazis tried to use what could be disguised as medical means and mercy killings to accomplish this dream. What the world thought made a difference because the world could and would try to stop the Nazis if it appeared that they were conducting mass murders.            In The Nazi Doctors, Lifton brings to my attention that the Nazis constantly faced a struggle to keep what they were truly doing from the world. One example was the use of sedatives in great amounts to kill impaired children, attempting to make it look, upon investigation, as if the child was merely overmedicated (Lifton, p.54-55). When the world realized what the Nazis were doing, the reaction was basically World War II.            The weltanschauung or â€Å"philosophy of life†is examined in The Nazi Doctors in several ways. The Hitler philosophy that it is the state’s responsibility to â€Å"declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on.†(Lifton, p.22), is evident throughout the book. It is portrayed as an evil philosophy. Lifton relates more to Martin Buber and Leo Baeck who were both Jews and both supported the Jewish community during World War II. Like Buber who opposed Hitler’s regime and lectured against the Nazis, Lifton remarks several times that the Nazis tried to hide the evil they were doing from the world, proving they knew it was evil and unacceptable. Lifton even states that Buber saw one of the most powerful SS doctors, Josef Mengele as a â€Å"wound in the order of being†(Lifton, P.381). This also leads to the assumption that the book takes the views of Leo Baeck whose philosophy, from my point of view, was basically that ethical acts are a response to experiencing God and that the Nazis’ unethical acts are all from a decision to choose to perform these unethical acts.            Jane Elliot and The Nazi Doctors share the same philosophy on life. As Elliot opposes white supremacy, so does this book expose another racial supremacy. As Elliot opposes supremacy over blacks and tries to show the world its hidden prejudices through bold faced lectures and the Blue eyes/Brown eyes exercise, this book exposes Hitler’s prejudices over many races he insisted were inferior. And it was not just races but people with any impairment, whether it be mental or physical, that Hitler and his Nazis opposed. By reading Lifton’s point of view, I can see how he related to Jane Elliot’s view of life.            According to The Nazi Doctors, the Nazis began experimenting in their hospitals, but eventually spread their â€Å"euthanasia†to their concentration camps. The book explains how the whole killing plan came about in five basic steps: first came sterilization of impure human beings, the killing of impaired children, the killing of impaired adults, then the move to killing of impaired inmates in the concentration camps and prisons, and finally the mass murders of whole races and peoples. Always the Nazis tried to disguise these mass murders and killing of the innocent behind medical practices. This is why doctors were used to determine who should be put to death.            Even as they arrested those who opposed or spoke against the Regime, the Nazis also realized how important the resistance was. This is proven by the fact that they responded to resistance to direct medical killing by trying to disguise many deaths as results of pneumonia or accidental overmedication. The anti-Semitism in Europe, especially in Germany with their history of anti-Semitic stories and myths, made an easy target for Hitler and his Nazis. Because the people misunderstood the Jews, it was easy to make them fear the Jews. This made it easy to create a following to exterminate all Jews and later the Poles and gypsies and anyone the Nazis felt were impure to the human race.            Although in the United States there was not a strong sense of anti-Semitism, and we were fighting to destroy Hitler’s regime, anti-Semitism did exist and many Jews here felt isolated. However, without the history of fears of different races, since we are a melting pot of races, it would be difficult to focus on so many races as impure. Not to say that the United States does not hold prejudices, but the basis of our Constitution is the freedom to live and provides us with certain rights. So, much of America would be outraged by the Nazis and their methods of racial purification.            Thus leading to the reason why Hitler’s Holocaust plan needed worldwide indifference as well as a police state. The police state was necessary to control the extermination selection and the secrecy of what was really going on, and the people themselves. Worldwide indifference was necessary to what they were doing in order to squelch all protests and opposition to their plan. In other words, so no one would try to stop them. Lifton makes this clear throughout the book.             My personal reaction to this book, other than the horror to the truths it reveals, is that Lifton did a thorough job of delving into the minds of both the prison doctors and the Nazi doctors. He tries to show his readers how each side felt and what they lived through. He reveals the ways the prison doctors overcame great horrors and shocks to help the best way that they could. He explains how the Nazi doctors rationalized their part in the Regime’s plan and how they dealt with their evil responsibilities by drinking alcohol. Lifton makes it clear that he disagrees with this idea of a pure race and sees none of this as medical euthanasia, but as mass murder. I agree with Lifton and appreciate his great attempts to find the truth through his interviews. The book was interesting as well as stirring since it brought a sickness to my soul to understand how these massive killings and injustices could have ever occurred. Work Cited  Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors. New York, NY, USA: Basic Books, Inc.,1986.
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