By Robert Meinsma
GLOBAL EUGENICS AND THE
PSYCHIATRIC/EUGENIC HOLOCAUST
"Man is becoming God.
Those who see in national socialism nothing more than a political
movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a
religion. It is the will to create mankind anew".
Adolf Hitler
"National Socialism
is nothing more than applied biology." Rudolph Hess
"They were all
doctors." Auschwitz
survivor.
During the industrial revolution the
authority of established institutions such as the church and the
aristocracy, particularly in Europe and Germany, is called into
question. The strides made in the physical sciences and the
breakneck advancement of industry cause an upheaval in everyday
life. Traditional beliefs and hierarchies are shaken. Religious
beliefs, long held without question, are examined from the new
"modern" scientific viewpoint. In Germany, traditional
culture is perceived as being threatened, partially by the
Catholic church, which is seen as favoring slavic interests.
Germanspeaking Austria yearns to reunify with Germany. The
Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement and other groups promote the
return to the soil and to ancient Germanic folklore, meditation
and the occult. Various concepts of race and ancient Germanic
history/destiny are extant throughout the German speaking lands.
In an effort to delve deeper into the
mysteries, various people journey to Tibet, long held to be a
center of mystical and occult knowledge. One such person is Madam
Helena Petrova Blavatsky. She says that while in Tibet, she saw a
secret doctrine that outlined the future of mankind and the
secrets of the universe. In this doctrine, she describes various
races as having played key roles throughout the history of the
world. She describes one race, calling it the Aryan race, that
founded Grecian culture and was supposed to have possessed
paranormal powers. According to Blavatsky, the Aryans are
destined to lead mankind out of the darkness that has befallen
him and usher in the next phase of human evolution. The sign of
the Aryans is the swastika.
Blavatsky's followers introduce the
doctrine of the Aryans to the German people and around 1888, she
publishes The Secret Doctrine, which describes all this. She is
the founder of an America occult society that publishes the first
publication in Germany to carry a swastika on its cover. Later,
other mystics promote the myth of the Aryan man, even going so
far as to propose an outline for a society that would embody the
principles of these occult teachings. These teachings go hand in
glove with the new science of eugenics. Key figures in the Nazi
hierarchy, such as Himmler, are avid pupils of these occult
teachings. Darwinism, eugenics and the occult racial principles
that proceeded them will enhance traditional beliefs about the
German aristocracy and its inherent superior characteristics
being founded in ancient times by teutonic divinities. This will
form the cornerstone of the Third Reich and eventually lead to
the wholesale slaughter of millions. Two belief systems,
psychiatric eugenics and the occult, will merge and become
virtually indistinguishable to make Europe a nightmare. They will
also be embraced and promoted elsewhere in the
"civilized" world.
"In science all that really matters
is getting interesting, accurate results as quickly as possible;
there is simply no time to talk to patients...the introduction of
machines in no way eases the situation, for the more expensive
and complicated the machines, the more the investigator distances
himself from the person who is being investigated. This attitude
reduces the person to a subservient depersonalized object. Such a
process formed the bond which held the psychiatrists,
anthropologists, and Hitler together."
Benno Muller Hill "Murderous
Science."
In modern times, killing people to achieve
the ideal of eugenics (racial purification) really took hold in
central Europe in the 30's and 40's. This concept had its roots
in certain beliefs held by the schools of anthropology, biology
and physiology. These ideas were poised for use by the acceptance
of earlier mystical concepts concerning race and destiny and
given a platform on which to be organized and implemented by the
political power structure of the Nazis. The belief systems of
eugenics and mystical concepts provided the environment for the
legitimization of mass murder. Psychiatry provided the methods.
People are exterminated for being, among other things, Jewish.
They are attacked and killed on a genetic basis. As psychiatrists
view mental illness as physical and hereditary, the ideas of
genetics, the brain and physical/mental illness are inextricably
entwined. The holocaust was essentially a medical/psychiatric
incident.
After working with key Nazi party officials to subject the SS,
other officials of the German Reich and the German public to an
effective PR campaign which included using concepts of genetics,
physiology and psychology to legitimize existing occult beliefs
to view the killing of human beings as a necessary evolutionary
step, psychiatrists and other "scientists" expanded the
ongoing slaughter of Germans (they had been killing thousands of
mental patients since WWI) to include political undesirables and,
eventually, "nonAryans.î This resulted in the murder of
millions of men, women and children. Much attention is given here
to the psychiatric/eugenic holocaust for a number of reasons:
I
The political regime at the time in Germany gave psychiatrists
the license to actually carry out on a broad basis what they had
previously been permitted to execute only selectively on
individual helpless mental patients. German psychiatrists were
not ordered to murder people; they were simply given the right to
do so, which they did, with enthusiasm. Through a gradient
approach, these "mental hygienists" were able to expand
their definition of "undesirable" people until the
wholesale slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people could
be accepted as necessary to "purify the race."
II
These ideas were not limited to Central Europe. Throughout the
world, long before the holocaust, psychiatrists, psychologists
and other "scientists" developed the ideas that led to
murder, sterilization and experimentation. Those responsible for
developing sterilization legislation in the U.S. disseminated
their support to German's burgeoning laws. Later in France, over
40,000 mental patients were starved to death in a covert killing
program without any orders from the Nazis.
III
It provides an excellent example of how far people will go in
accepting false data cloaked in "scientific authority"
and then stand by and witness the most outrageous acts, simply
accepting them as a logical outgrowth legitimized by a
progression of ideas. That the acts are contrary to every law of
decent behavior and moral/ethical principals is overlooked. Even
today, psychiatry is still allowed to shock, drug and otherwise
torture psychiatric inmates.
IV
German psychiatrists provided the scientific basis for the
ideology of racial superiority and helped develop and forward the
pseudosubject of "eugenics." All that was necessary to
be a medical doctor in Germany at that time was to have a license
that could be obtained by taking an examination. An actual
doctorate was not necessary.
V
The ratio of SS affiliations among doctors was seven times that
of teachers.
VI
Mental illness, specifically "schizophrenia" was viewed
by German psychiatrists as a physical disease, resulting in
inevitable deterioration. German psychiatrists also saw
themselves as servants of the state, rather than individual
doctors.
"...you
are incapable of believing, you don't believe it. And the things
that went on in Auschwitz...the gas chambers nobody would have
believed that. And then the houses that the crematoria had you
know, brick houses, windows, curtains, white picket fences around
the front. And people never thought of anything regardless of
chimneys smoking. They could not believe it...There was a touch
of diabolic genius."
Auschwitz survivor.
One survivor details the extent of the
doctor's involvement in the killing process. (From
The Nazi Doctors by Jay
Lifton): "He went on to list the
series of steps in SS doctors' involvement in the killing: first,
the chief doctor's assignments to his subordinates concerning
duty schedules and immediate selections policies; second, the
individual doctor's service on the ramp, performing selections
'in a very noble (seemingly kind) manner'; third, the doctor
riding in the ambulance or Red Cross car to the crematoria;
fourth, the doctor ordering 'how many (pellets) of gas should be
thrown in...these holes from the ceilings, according to the
number of people, and who should do it...There were three or four
Desinfektoren'; fifth, 'He observed through the hole how the
people are dying'; sixth, 'When the people were dead...he gave
the order to ventilate...to open the gas chamber, and he
came...with a gas mask into the chamber'; seventh, 'He signed a
(form) that the people are dead...and how long it took'; and
eighth, 'he... observed...the teeth...extraction (from) the
corpses.' This was the survivor who concluded that 'the killing
program was led by doctorsfrom the beginning to the end. In fact,
doctors in the camps made selections at the moment people arrived
at the camps, separating those who were to die to those who were
to be allowed to live a while to labor in the camp. "
"...none of them, not a single former
Nazi doctor I spoke to arrived at a clear ethical evaluation of
what he had done, and what he had been part of." Liftonere
was no tendency to defy the overall killing program, as it was
viewed as a necessary biological purge.
"The state organism...(is) a whole
with its own laws and rights, much like one selfcontained human
organism...which, in the interest of the welfare of the whole,
alsoas we doctors knowabandons and rejects parts or particles
that have become worthless or dangerous."
Alfred Hoche, psychiatrist,
Nazi Germany
"The most effective racepreserving
measure is that which gives the greatest support to the natural
defenses....We may and we must rely on the healthy instincts of
the best of our people...for the extermination of elements of the
population loaded with dregs. Otherwise, these deleterious
mutations will permeate the body of the people like the cells of
a cancer." Konrad
Lorenz, lecturer in general
psychology, University of Konigsberg, 1940, Nazi
Germany
"I have employed definitions that are
good enough to distinguish cults from genuine religious sects,
but rather than undertaking a semantic discussion of it beyond
what I've already given you, I prefer to ask myself within the
medical model how one distinguishes malignant cells from healthy
ones in the human body for the purpose of treatment. A good
approach if you were interested in curing a cancer is to find a
chemical that kills the malignant cells and spares those that are
healthy. What would be the effect of a device or technique which,
when applied by society to any organization calling itself
religious would have no untoward effect upon bonafide religions,
but would be deadly to the fakes?"
Louis Jolyon West, Psychiatrist, 1983, USA
CHRONOLOGY
1923
The Director of the health institutions in
Zwickau writes to the Minister of the Interior urging passage of
a eugenic sterilization law. He says, "In a cultured nation
of the first order, in the United States of America, that which
we strive toward was introduced and tested long ago." The
Minister of the Interior subsequently writes to the German
Foreign office, asking for information regarding eugenic
legislation in the United States. The Foreign Office contacts its
embassy in Washington and requests are sent from there to German
consulates throughout the United States. Data is forthcoming from
US mental institutions, state governments and prisons. This
information is forwarded to Washington and over to Berlin.
Adolf Hitler and General von Lootendorf
lead an aborted coup to overthrow the Bavarian government. von
Lootendorf says worship of an ancient Norse god is necessary for
national salvation and that he is in psychic communion with the
Nordic race soul.
Hitler, while in prison, reads a book by
Drs. Fischer, Lenz and Baur, The Principals of Human Heredity and
Race Hygiene. He explores the principals of eugenics and
geopolitics which go hand in glove with his earlier exposure to
mystical writings. He incorporates these ideas in his own book,
Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he writes, ..."anyone who
wants to cure this era, which is inwardly sick and rotten, must
first of all summon up the courage to make clear the causes of
this disease."
Carl Brigham, assistant professor of
psychology at Princeton, publishes A Study of American
Intelligence, working from a research grant from the Committee on
Scientific Problems of Human Migration, part of the Division of
Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council. He
found that IQ of immigrants increased in proportion to the number
of years of US residence. He decides this is due to a lower
proportion of Nordic blood over the years, rather than an
increased familiarization with cultural and educational factors.
He goes on to develop the SAT test (still used to screen students
for college) and is elected secretary of the American
Psychological Association in the late 1920s.
1924
Madison Grant is the principal signatory
on a report by the Committee on Selective Immigration of the
Eugenics Committee of the United States of America. The report
states,..."Had mental tests been in operation
(previously)...over 6,000,000 aliens now living in this country
...would never have been admitted..." Also on the committee
is Edward L. Thorndike, professor of psychology at Columbia
University and the most influential figure in shaping American
elementary school education during the first half of the 20th
century. Harry Laughlin delivers a lecture as a member of the
committee, describing the desirable American traits of love of
truth, inventiveness, common sense, artistic sense, love of
beauty, responsibility, etc., as being "of a biological
order."
Otto Rank develops the idea of
"primal anxiety" stemming from separation of the child
from the mother. He sees this as the basis for all subsequent
"separation anxiety.î He develops "will therapy,î
stressing reexperiencing birth. These ideas precede Janov's
"primal therapy,î Orr's "rebirthing" and other
similar socalled "pop psychology" methods of the late
60s and 70s.
Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf which
contains statements such as, "Those who are physically and
mentally unhealthy and unworthy must not perpetuate their
suffering in the body of their children." In this book,
Hitler praises the American Immigration Restriction Act of 1924.
1925
The Edder Society is founded by Rudolph
Goolslaben. He attempts to decipher ancient Islandic texts known
as the Edder that are said to contain the secrets of the ancient
Aryan godmen.
April, 1925 SS formed.
1926
Dr. Cameron (see 1953-67) tries camphor,
carbon dioxide gas, insulin and Metrozol to induce comas and
convulsions in patients at a Canadian hospital.
1927
1927-1933 Insulin shock is developed for
use on psychiatric inmates.
Oliver Wendell Holmes writes a US Supreme
court decision upholding the State of Virginia's decision to
sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18 year old woman in an institution, to
prevent her from having any more children.
Amphetamine sulphate is synthesized in
America. The patent is sold to the Smith, Kline & French drug
company.
1928
E.K. Wickman writes Children's Behavior
and Teacher's Attitudes, in which he points out that what
teachers pass off as normal behavior is regarded by psychiatrists
as signs of maladjustment and vice versa.
Hans Berger publishes the discovery of the
EEG.
1929
Eugene Gosney and Paul Popenoe write
Sterilization for Human Betterment.
International Congress of Eugenics in
Rome. Dr. Davenport of the USA, President of the International
Foundation of Eugenic Organizations, sends Mussolini a telegram
on the vital need for eugenics. He says "Maximum speed is
necessary; the danger is enormous." Davenport later asks
Fischer of Berlin to become Chairman of the Committee on Racial
Crosses of the Foundation. In 1933, he asks him to become his
successor. Fischer declines, and Rudin (Berlin) takes over.
1920s30s As a forerunner of the holocaust,
mental hospitals in Germany are used as forced labor camps
("work therapy"), causing them to become profit centers
(one hospital made 222,505 RM in profits in one year). These
institutions are very much like concentration camps. If inmates
are uncooperative, a series of shock treatments are prescribed
(post 1938). If the patient views these shocks as punishment and
not as therapy, this is viewed as evidence of insanity, so more
shocks are prescribed. Courses of 60 shock treatments are not
uncommon. With the help of the SS, the psychiatrists later simply
expand these operations elsewhere to create the larger camps
which include Gypsies, Jews, other "nonAryans" and
other undesirables.
1930
W. R. Hess devises a procedure to implant
fine wires into the brains of cats, enabling him to selectively
stimulate portions of the brain.
As a starting point for the lobotomy,
Fulton and Jacobsen demonstrate that destruction of the frontal
lobes of the brain results in diminishing "neurotic"
behavior.
Ernst Rudin, professor of psychiatry at
Munich and Director of the Department of Heredity at the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute, visits the US and is praised by leaders of the
Carnegie Foundation. Later, using a U.S. model, he is the
architect of Nazi Germany's sterilization law, and is supported
in his work by a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
1931
Raymond Fuller and Mary Johnson conduct a
study of New York mental hospitals covering three periods
(190911; 191416; 191921. For every 100 patients, 35 were
discharged (reported as improved); 7 remained unchanged; 42 died
in the hospital; 16 remained in the hospital for the duration of
the 16 year study.
1932
Third International Congress of Eugenics
is held in New York. The paper "Selective Sterilization for
Race Culture" is presented, in which Dr. Theodore Russell
Roble of the Essex County Mental Hygiene Clinic calls for the
sterilization of at least 14,000,000 Americans who received low
intelligence test scores since World War I.
Frankwood Williams seeks to redefine
mental hygiene by claiming it should address infantile sexuality
and the mental development of infants. He condemns the treatment
of mental illness by "lay practitioners" such as
psychologists, social workers, etc. (Up until the 1930s, any
physician could, on request, be listed in the AMA directory as a
specialist in psychiatry. When General Pershing, during WWI,
requested something be done about the mental condition of
replacement troops, sixweek "crash courses" in
psychiatry were organized at several leading universities.)
Professor Fischer tells a member of
National Socialist party "Your party has not been in
existence nearly as long as our eugenic movement."
Smith, Kline & French introduce the
benzedrine inhaler.
1933
Thousands of European
"undesirables," fleeing the Nazi eugenic death machine,
attempt to find asylum in the United States. They are denied
entry and returned to Germany because of US laws based on the
same principals in use by the Nazis.
Sakel publishes the results of insulin
shock "therapy."
30 Jan., 1933 Adolf Hitler becomes
Chancellor of the Reich. Ernst Rudin, professor of psychiatry,
praises Hitler, saying it is thanks to him that "the dream
we have cherished for more than thirty years of seeing racial
hygiene converted into action has become reality."
The Council on Medical Education calls a
meeting between psychiatrists and neurologists to work out their
differences. The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology is
established. They eventually decide that to be certified in both
fields, separate examinations must be passed, and a physician
must be "Board certified" to work in the field of
mental illness in medical schools and large hospitals.
Dr. M. H. Goering, cousin of Marshal
Hermann Goering, states that psychotherapists should make a
serious scientific study of Hitler's Mein Kampf and recognize it
as a basic work. This statement is published in Germany's
"Journal of Psychotherapy," of which Carl Jung is the
editor.
Madison Grant publishes Conquest of a
Continent, a "racial history of the US." He sends
copies to Mussolini, Nazi professor Dr. Eugen Fischer at the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for the Study of Anthropology, Human
Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg (Hitler's
chief scientific advisor) and Nazi race hygienist Dr. Fritz Lenz
at the University of Munich.
Himmler creates Dachau in Germany on 20
March, 1933 as a place to send Communists, Social Democrats, etc.
Dr. Hyde's first psychiatric patient,
Theodor Eicke, becomes commandant of Dachau and then overall
inspector of concentration camps. Hyde is consulting
neuropsychiatric expert for the Gestapo and conducts
"psychiatric/neurologic and heredity research" on
concentration camp inmates.
Dr. M. H. Goring (relative of Hermann
Goring, Nazi leader) founds the New German Society for
psychotherapy. Jung assumes the presidency. The society
officially adopts the Nazi viewpoint on race, mental hygiene and
psychiatry. The journal states, "This Society has the task
of unifying all German physicians in the spirit of the National
Socialistic government...particularly those physicians who are
willing to practice psychiatry according to the 'Weltanschauung'
of the National Socialists." Jung writes in the journal,
"...The Jew, a cultural nomad, has never and probably will
never create his own cultural forms because all his instincts and
gifts depend on a more or less civilized host nation. The Aryan
unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish..." On
June 21, 1933, Jung states on the Radio Berlin that, "Only
the selfdevelopment of the individual, which I consider to be the
supreme goal of all psychological endeavor, can produce
consciously responsible spokesmen and leaders of the collective
movement. As Hitler said recently, the leader must be able to be
alone and must have the courage to go his own way."
14 July, 1933 Hitler puts into law the
Nazi Act for Averting Descendants Afflicted with Hereditary
Disease, which is based on H. H. Laughlin's US Model Eugenical
Sterilization Law of 1922. Laughin receives an honorary degree
from a German University (major Nazi research center on race
purification) for his contribution to eugenics. Some figures of
people who were slated to be surgically sterilized:
Congenital feeblemindedness: 200,000
Schizophrenia: 80,000
Manic depressive: 20,000
Epilepsy: 60,000
Hereditary blindness: 4,000
Hereditary deafness: 16,000
Grave bodily malformation: 20,000
Hereditary alcoholism: 10,000
Fritz Lenz suggests sterilizing people
with only slight symptoms of "mental disease," which at
that time included about 20% of the German population (about
20,000,000 people). Martin Borman instructs in a directive that
the person's moral and political behavior be taken into account
when determining whether sterilization should take place.
Estimate of people eventually sterilized under this law:
approximately 375,000.
1933-45 According to the Central
Association of Sterilized Persons in Germany in 1945, the total
number of people sterilized under Hitler between 1933 1945 is
2,000,000. (The Journal of American Medical Association stated,
regarding Nazi sterilization methods, that America had a
"more gradual evolution of practice and principals"
where sterilization was concerned.)
1934
Beginning of metrazol convulsive treatment
(25% camphor in olive oil).
Rudolph Hess says "National Socialism
is nothing more than applied biology."
Dr. Lenz states "As things are now,
it is only a minority of our fellow citizens who are so endowed
that their unrestricted procreation is good for the race."
1934-1938 Mental hospitals in Germany are
encouraged to neglect patients. Funds are reduced. Courses
showing repulsive behavior of some inmates are given first to
government officials and then to SS, party leaders, police,
prison officials and the press. A PR campaign is run heavily to
prepare for the upcoming mass killings. About 20,000 civilian and
military personnel see indoctrinatory films and "case
demonstrations."
Dr. Fischer gives the first course on
eugenics for SS Doctors at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
As a prelude to theories about
"hyperactive children" with "minimal brain
dysfunction," a team of U.S. researchers publish an article
in the New England Journal of Medicine, wherein they stress that
short attention span, distractibility, etc., can be observed in
people with no known brain damage or illness. They call the
problem "organic drivenness" and decide it is due to
something being wrong with the central nervous system.
A film is released called Tomorrowís
Children, dramatizing the plight of a woman about to be
involuntarily sterilized before marriage to prevent bad
characteristics from being passed on to her children.
American eugenics doctors tour the German
Hygiene Museum in Dresden.
California eugenics movement organizes an
exhibition of the Nazi's eugenics program in Pasadena,
California. Their newsletter describes the exhibition (called
"The New Germany") as follows: "It portrays the
general eugenics program of the Nazi government, giving special
attention to the need for sterilization. Those who have seen this
exhibit say it is the finest thing of the kind that has ever been
produced. Take the opportunity to see this while in Los Angeles.
Tell your friends about it."
1935
Dr. Gerhardt Wagner, head physician of the
Reich, discusses euthanasia with Hitler at the Nazi party
congress in Nuremberg.
Hitler first tells Gerhard Wagner (chief
physician of the Reich) of his plans for the official euthanasia
program. Wagner is regarded as the "godfather of the
euthanasia program."
Leo Kanner writes the first book in
English on child psychiatry, "Child Psychiatry".
Metrozol shock therapy used by Joseph von
Meduna, after experimenting with camphor.
Germans adopt a law requiring a medical
examination before marriage and forbidding marriage between
"Aryans" and Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc.
The SS Race and Resettlement Bureau is
given the authority to control the marriages of the entire German
civilian population. Himmler predicts that in 120 years the
entire German population will be pureblooded Aryans.
French American Nobel Prize winner Dr.
Alexis Carrel publishes "Man the Unknown" in which he
advocates killing the "mentally ill and criminals" in
"euthanasia" institutions. He writes, "Those who
have murdered, robbed while armed...kidnapped children, despoiled
the poor of their savings, misled the public in important
matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small
euthanasia institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar
treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty
of criminal acts."
Dr. Egaz Moniz, neurosurgeon, drills two
holes in a woman's head (the first of seven) and injects alcohol
directly into her brain. On the eighth patient, he uses a cutting
device, severing the nerves. After 20 patients, he calls his
operation lobotomy or, more formally, psychosurgery.
International Congress for Population
Science in Berlin.
The Statistical Manual for the Use of
Institutions for the Insane by The American Medico-Psychological
Association is incorporated into the American Medical
Association's Standard Classified Nomenclature of Disease.
1936
A decree is issued from the German
Ministry of the Interior that records be kept containing
hereditary information on all patients in mental hospitals/
institutions.
1936-1965 Psychiatrist Franz J. Kallmann,
born and educated in Germany, is a researcher at New York State
Psychiatric Institute from '36 to '65, having worked for two
years under the Nazis before coming to the U.S. in 1936. He is
chief of psychiatric research at New York State Psychiatric
beginning in 1952, when the CIA did LSD and Mescaline experiments
there. Like Mengele, Kallmann is interested in twins and their
genetic disposition. He focuses on this area concerning what he
calls the "genetics of schizophrenia." Kallmann says in
a lecture .î.it is desirable to extend prevention of
reproduction to relatives of schizophrenics who stand out because
of minor anomalies and, above all, to define each of them as
being undesirable from the eugenic point of view at the beginning
of their reproductive years."
University of Heidelberg stages a 550 year
jubilee and invites delegations from all over the world.
Representatives from eight American universities attend. Harry H.
Laughlin and Foster Kennedy are among the guests who are
sympathetic toward Nazi sterilization methods. Germany is invited
to send representatives to Harvard for its 200th anniversary
celebration.
In the first German sterilizations
strictly on grounds of race, 500 children (the offspring of black
soldiers) are sterilized.
Walter Freeman and James Watts introduce
the lobotomy in the US.
Dr. Glueck is one of the first to urge the
elimination of psychiatry from the courtroom.
1937
Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton, neurologist,
writes Reading, Writing and Speech Problems in Children stating
that various language development problems in otherwise
intelligent children result from the child's failure to develop
"unilateral brain superiority" (total dominance of one
side of the brain, indicated in part by left or right handedness
righthandedness being preferable).
Blood from schizophrenic and melancholic
patients is withdrawn and injected into other patient's frontal
lobes.
Harry H. Laughlin and Frederick Osborn,
American scientists who played leading roles in the American
eugenics movement and supported Nazi racial policies, establish
the Pioneer Fund, the primary beneficiary of which is textile
magnate Wickliffe Draper. The Fund's purposes include
encouraging, among other things, increased reproduction on the
part of "white persons who settled in the original thirteen
colonies" and research on "race betterment."
(Today, the Pioneer Fund continues to support research into
eugenics, immigration, race and heredity.)
All German "colored" children
are ordered sterilized.
Onset of insulin therapy, broadly used in
Germany. Suggested as an alternative to "fear therapy,"
i.e., the "surprise bath" and "swinging bed."
Amphetamines used to treat
"hyperactive" children (US). A precursor to Ritalin,
Charles Bradley of Rhode Island reports that Benzedrine causes a
"spectacular change in behavior."
Dr. Earnest Hooten, Harvard, is quoted in
the New York times as saying "compulsory sterilization alone
would serve in the case of the insane and mentally deficient, but
it is very difficult to enforce such a measure in a democracy,
unless it has been preceded by an educational campaign...a
biological purge is the essential prerequisite for a social and
spiritual salvation."
Madison Grant's Conquest of a Continent
("Racial History of the US") is published in Berlin. It
is greeted by Dr. Eugen Fisher with "No one has as much
reason to note the work of this man with the keenest of attention
as does a German of todayin a time when the racial idea has
become one of the chief foundations of the National Socialist
State's population policies."
In America, the Eugenics Record Office and
the Eugenics Research Association send a filer to 3,000 U.S. high
schools, encouraging the screening of an English version of the
Nazi propaganda film Erbkrank ("Hereditary Defective").
The film plays 28 times in 1937-38.
Leading government personnel and
psychiatrists discuss elimination of the mentally ill (Germany).
Leading psychiatrists Max de Crinis (professor and chairman of
the department of psychiatry at Berlin University and later
supervisor of killing center at Sonnenstein), Mau, Kihn, Pohlisch
and Schneider get together with anthropologists and two directors
of mental hospitals to draft a formal law concerning euthanasia.
1938
Cerletti and Bini develop ECT and do the
first actual ECT on a human in Italy, after learning that pigs in
slaughterhouses were not killed but merely stunned by electric
current before they are slaughtered.
German born and educated US psychiatrist
Franz Kallman calls for the "legal power" to sterilize
"tainted children and siblings of schizophrenics" and
to prevent marriages involving "schizoid eccentrics and
borderline cases."
Hitler asks Carl Brandt, his personal
physician, to appoint an advisory board to devise a program for
the killing of disabled children. The program is administered out
of Hitler's private chancellory.
An interview with Carl Jung is published
in Hearst's InternationalCosmopolitan. In it, he calls Mussolini
a man of style and good taste who was "warm and human."
About Hitler, he says, "There is no question but that Hitler
belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. As
somebody commented about him at the last Nuremberg party
congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been
seen in this world. This markedly mystic characteristic of
Hitler's is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical,
inexplicable, curious and unreasonable...So you see, Hitler is a
medicine man, a form of a spiritual vessel, a demidiety or, even
better, a myth."
In July most of the heads of psychiatry
departments in German universities and almost all heads of German
mental hospitals are formally briefed at the Chancellery in
Berlin. They are instructed by the current head of the SS, Viktor
Brack, that all insane people in Germany are to be killed by
"euthanasia." Those in attendance are asked to
participate and agree to do so, except for Professor Ewald of
Gottingen. The general response of the psychiatrists present is
recorded as: "Nobody mentioned any misgivings." Ten to
fifteen doctors, with other SS personnel, organize the
"National Group for Study of Sanatoria and Nursing
Homes," the "Foundation of the Care of Institutions in
the Public Interest," and the "Limited Company for the
Transport of Invalids in the Public Interest" to begin
execution of the killing program. Hitler's advisors calculate
initially that out of 1,000 Germans, 10 are mentally ill. 5 will
enter a psychiatric hospital and of these 5, one must die. The
number calculated is between 65,000 and 70,000.
In August, Hitler's chancellory issues a
statement saying children up to age 3 who are retarded or
deformed must be registered by midwives or physicians. A
questionnaire is to be filled out describing their disability. 3
physicians decide the life or death of the child without
examining them. At over 30 special clinics, selected children are
killed by injection and starvation.
September 1st: Hitler begins the second
World War and backdates a letter concerning euthanasia to the
same date. He writes, "Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt
are entrusted with the responsibility of extending the rights of
specially designated physicians, such that patients who are
judged incurable after the most thorough review of their
condition which is possible can be granted mercy killing." A
panel of experts is appointed to review the death applications.
The panel of at least 20 includes Drs. Heyde, Mauz, Nitsche
(editor of the Journal of Mental Hygiene), Panse, Pohlisch,
Reisch, Schneider (professor of psychiatry at University of
Heidelberg and teacher of killing procedures to younger
psychiatrists), Werner Villinger 7 (professor of psychiatry at
the University of Breslau) and Zucker all psychiatrists. They are
paid a certain amount per application. There are 283,000 initial
applications to be processed. At least 75,000 are marked for
death.
Spring: Hitler sets up the Reich Committee
for Scientific Research of Heredity and Severe Constitutional
Diseases for the purpose of selecting and killing children who
are "mentally ill," "mentally deficient," and
physically deformed. (Later, in 1948, the director of one
institution was convicted of killing at least 120 children, some
personally. He is sentenced to six years in prison, of which he
serves two.) Fredric Wertham writes in his book, A Sign for Cain,
"The children slated for death were sent to special
'children's divisions', first Goerden, then Eichberg, Idstein,
Steinhof (near Vienna), and Eglfing. They were killed mostly by
increasing doses of Luminal or other drugs either spoon-fed as
medicine or mixed with their food. Their dying lasted for days,
sometimes weeks. In actual practice, the indications for killing
actually became wider and wider. Included were children who had
'badly modeled ears', who were bed wetters, or who were perfectly
healthy but designated as 'difficult to educate'. The children
coming under the Reich Commission were originally mostly infants.
The age was then increased from three years to seventeen
years..."
Nazi psychiatrist Herman Pfanmuller (a
Sturmbannfuehrer (major) in the SS) develops a method of starving
infants to death slowly, rather than killing them with
medication.
Inmates of mental hospitals are shot to
make room for German troops. This practice continues until these
hospitals are effectively cleaned out by 1941. Psychiatric
extermination facilities are set up in Pomerania. People are
killed by gas, shooting, drugs, injections and starvation.
Werner Catel, professor of psychiatry at
Leipzig clinic, Hans Heinze, Ernst Wentzler, pediatric
psychiatrist and others form a committee to decide which children
should be put to death. They emphasize putting newborns to sleep
"as soon as possible." This project is referred to as
the "Special Psychiatric Youth Department." Included in
the category of children to be killed are "juvenile
delinquents" and "minor Jewish Aryan halfbreeds."
After the war, Dr. Catel works as professor of pediatrics and
head of the pediatric clinic at the University of Kiel until the
1960s.
Through the Reich Chancellery and the
Ministry of the Interior, Hitler officially extends killing to
adult mental patients, choosing prominent psychiatrists to run
the program called T4. "T4" is the code name for the
project located at 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin. In May, the
Committee for the Scientific Treatment of Severe and Genetically
Determined Illness is formed at 4 Tiergartenstrasse to study how
to set up a euthanasia program. Dr. Herbert Linden, commissioner
of all the psychiatric institutions in Germany, represents the
Ministry of the Interior. This program eventually involves
virtually the entire German psychiatric community. Four
categories are specified for killings:
1. Patients suffering from specified diseases...schizophrenia,
epilepsy, senile diseases, therapyresistant
paralysis...feeblemindedness from any cause...other neurological
conditions of a terminal nature.
2. Patients who have been continually institutionalized for at
least five years.
3. Patients in custody as criminally insane.
4. Patients who are not German citizens, or are not of German or
kindred blood.
Six main killing centers are established,
using converted nursing homes or hospitals. Hitler decides to use
carbon monoxide on the advice of Dr. Werner Heyde, psychiatrist.
Fourth International Congress for Racial
Hygiene and Eugenics in Vienna.
1940
In January, gassing of mental patients
begins, using carbon monoxide gas in fake showers in a
psychiatric hospital near Berlin. By Sept., 70,723 have died. A
nurse involved in these proceedings testifies later
that..."Herr Schwenninger was in charge of our convoys and
kept lists of the names of patients who were to be
transferred.... The patients we transferred were not the worst
cases.... but very often in good physical condition....On the
arrival of the patients at Grafeneck, they were taken to the huts
there and briefly examined by Drs. Schumann and Baumhardt on the
lines of the questionnaires. These two doctors gave the final
decision whether a patient was to be gassed or not. In certain
cases gassing was postponed. But the majority of the patients
were killed within twentyfour hours of arriving at Grafeneck. I
was there nearly a year and know of only a few cases in which
patients were not gassed. As a rule they were given, before
gassing, an injection of 2 c.c. of morphine and scopolamine.
These injections were given by the doctor. The gassing was
undertaken by certain picked men. Some of the corpses were
dissected by Dr. Hennecke. Some idiotic children between 6 and 13
years old were also included in the program. After Grafeneck was
closed I went to Hadamar and remained there until 1943....About
seventyfive patients were killed daily. From Hadamar I was
transferred to Irrsee, near Kaufbeuren, where I continued with
this work...This program was carried on until the collapse of
Germany." Horst Schumann headed the killing center at
Grafeneck. He also assisted in extermination and experiments on
Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.
Approximately 30,000 people are killed at
Hartheim, Austria, one of the betterknown killing centers. Simon
Wiesenthal describes these kind of centers as "regular
schools for mass murderers," producing "special cadres
of technically skilled and emotionally hardened
executioners." Of Hartheim, he writes, "Hartheim was
organized like a medical school except that the 'students' were
not taught to save human life but to destroy it as efficiently as
possible. The deaths of the victims were clinically studied,
precisely photographed, scientific-ally perfected. (At later
trials in Germany it was proven that at the death camps of
Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka special photographers also made
pictures of people being killed.) Various mixtures of gasses were
tried out to find the most effective one. Doctors with
stopwatches would observe the dying patients through the peephole
in the cellar door at Castle Hartheim, and the length of the
death struggle was clocked to one tenth of a second. Victims'
brains were photographed to see exactly when death had occurred.
Himmler receives a report that 6,400
Germans and Polish mental patients have been shot in one
extermination program.
In July, Dr. Jaspersen of Bethel tries to
get the heads of departments of psychiatry in German universities
to make a protest against euthanasia. He receives no support.
In May, 1,558 mental patients are gassed
in vans in a two week period in Soldau. SS officers wear white
coats and carry stethoscopes (a common practice to medicalize the
slaughter.)
1930s-1940s The term "mental
hygiene" is gradually replaced by "mental health"
because of the public equation of "mental hygiene" with
"mental illness." Stress is put on "health"
which includes prevention as well as treatment of
"illness." This expands psychiatric influence into
virtually all areas of society. The fact that there is no
agreedupon definition of "mental health" causes
conflict within the mental health groups.
Dr. Schaltenbrand, German neurologist,
reports the transmission of monkey encephalitis to mental
patients.
1940s Hydrotherapy is in use since the
1800s. Dipping in cold water, restraining a person in a canvas
covered bathtub for 1 to 12 hours with continuously flowing
water; pouring buckets of water over a person's head; submerging
the chair-bound person under water repeatedly; directing jets of
water at the person; wrapping a person in sheets and blankets for
several hours at a time, either cold (60 f or hot 130 145 f);
alternating jets of hot and cold water; enemas.
1940s-1950s U.S. "Mental
hygiene" groups begin using the media to publicize their
viewpoint and advertise the need for increased funding for
psychiatry. After the posting of the first full time PR person in
1944, mental health subjects are covered in radio, TV, films and
plays.
Bennett introduces the use of curare
during ECT to minimize fractures.
Intense strobe lights on sedated subjects
are introduced to produce convulsions. Called
"photoshock," it involves producing a convulsion from
intense flashes of light at 15 times per second.
1940s Electronarcosis used as a treatment
for mental illness. Current in convulsive or subconvulsive
amounts is applied to the head for about 30 seconds. When natural
breathing is resumed, current in reduced amounts prolongs the
relatively brief coma that always follows shock treatment to 5 to
20 minutes or longer.
1940s Approximately 40,000 mental patients
in France starve to death. The French psychiatrists readily
follow the German example of covert euthanasia without being
ordered to do so.
Lothrop Stoddard, American eugenicist and
author of "The Rising Tide of Color against White World
Supremacy", praised by President Herbert Hoover, meets with
Himmler and other top Nazi officials. He states that the
"Jews problem" is "already settled in principle
and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the
Jews themselves from the Third Reich." He says the Nazis are
"weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a
scientific and truly humanitarian way."
1941
German psychiatrists train the Nazi SS on
mass murder techniques they learned from experimenting on mental
patients. The program is extended to Dachau and other camps under
the code name of 14f13. Himmler uses experienced psychiatrists to
go to camps and eliminate "asocial elements"
"excess prisoners." This was officially called
Operation 14f13. Physicians push for widespread extermination of
inmates, while some concentration camp personnel try to keep
people alive to help the war effort. Doctors have the
responsibility for killing at the camps, using methods they
perfected on mental patients. "Medicalization"
legitimizes widespread extermination. Reich Interior Minister
orders that all Jews in German mental hospitals be killed. Roving
bands of T4 commissions select those too ill to work & Jews
and Gypsies in camps and send them to gas chambers at the
psychiatric hospitals.
Hadamar (psychiatric killing institution)
has a special celebration to commemorate the cremation of
"mental patient" number 10,000. The entire staff
participates and each receives a bottle of beer.
In Massachusetts, inmates are placed in
"mummy bags" which are refrigerated to lower their body
temperatures in hypothermia experiments.
Viktor Brack, one of the heads of the
euthanasia program, sends a report to Himmler stating how XRays
can be used to sterilize people.
I.G. Farben Industries (manufacturer of
synthetic oil and rubber) chooses a site near Auschwitz because
of the accessibility of slave labor. The overall operation is
known as I. G. Auschwitz. Other large firms follow suit. I.G.
Farben controls the firm that produces gas used by medical
personnel in the camps. This begins the use of gas for mass
exterminations outside of psychiatric hospitals. I.G. Farben pays
the SS a labor fee of 3 Reichsmarks a day for each inmate; 1
Reichsmarks a day for children. By September, 1942, I.G. Farben
is running its own concentration camp. At Auschwitz, gassing is
initially tested on 600 Russian prisoners of war and 200 hospital
patients. Labor camps are converted to killing centers. Gas
chambers are dismantled and reassembled at these camps. T4
personnel accompany them, their salaries paid by Hitler's private
chancellory.
90,000 German psychiatric patients are
murdered; 71,000 in hospital gas chambers.
Blowing up mental patients with explosives
is tried. This method is abandoned as needing too much cleaning
up.
Hitler officially orders the general
euthanasia program terminated due to an outcry from churches and
public, but it in fact increases, with more and older children
being killed. Over 5,000 children are killed. Various psychiatric
methods are used to "treat" children including beatings
and electric shock for bedwetting. In August, the killing of
mental patients by gas stops and death by starvation, drugs and
failure to treat infectious disease begins (covert euthanasia).
Approximately 300,000 mental patients are eventually killed by
gassing, injection and starvation under this official program.
Many thousands were murdered previously by covert means. Many
institutions in Germany (e.g., Berlin, Silesia, Baden, Saxony and
Austria) are closed entirely, as all the patients are liquidated.
Approximately 100,000 German mental patients starve to death
after the "end" of the euthanasia program. No
resistance is voiced to the killing program from the psychiatric
community. A killing center is dismantled and reassembled in the
East. The murder continues but more quietly, up until and even
briefly after the German surrender. 10
December 10, Himmler orders the Doctors
involved in the euthanasia campaign to "comb out"
prisoners in concentration camps for killing. Among those
involved are psychiatrists Heyde, Nitsche and others.
1942
U.S. psychiatrist Foster Kennedy writes in
the journal of the American Psychiatric Association that retarded
and "utterly unfit" children should be killed to save
money and emotional trauma for the parents.
Psychiatrist Eberl is appointed as the
head of Treblinka concentration camp.
U.S. psychiatrists experiment with
hypothermia or "refrigeration therapy" on mental
patients, publishing their results in the Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases. 16 people are placed in cabinets on a mattress
covered with sheets for up to 120 hours (5 days), with their body
temperature as low as 81.8 F. The authors describe the treatment
results as, "...prolonged mental retardation and physical
decay bordering on cachexia (general ill health, with emaciation)
occurred in the survivors." Two deaths occurred from
pneumonia. Another patient died 2 months after the treatment.
These experiments predate the German ones cited in the Nuremberg
trials.
In December, Psychiatrist Schneider runs a
research ward where idiots and epileptics are marked for death
and their brains studied.
1940s Electroshock is given to mentally
ill and nonmentally ill alike in German camps. Experiments are
done on men, women and children, with some prisoner physicians
assisting. Mengele performs experiments with twins, sometimes
killing the children at the conclusion. Other medical experiments
include: (from Nazi Doctors by Lifton) "artificially induced
burns with phosphorous incendiary bombs; experiments on the
effects of drinking sea water; experiments with various forms of
poison, by ingestion as well as in bullets or arrows; widespread
experiments on artificially induced typhus, as well as with
epidemic hepatitis and with malaria; experiments in cold
immersion ('in freezing water') to determine the body's reactions
and susceptibilities; experiments with mustard gas in order to
study the kinds of wounds it can cause; experiments in the
regeneration of bone, muscle, nerve tissue, and on bone
transplantation, involving removal of various bones, muscles, and
nerves from healthy women."
January 14: a team from the mental patient
euthanasia program (2030 people) move into the extermination site
at Chelmno and activate a killing program for Polish Jews and
Gypsies. Methods used in T4 and 14f13 euthanasia projects are
extended to expand the genocide. The killing of the weak and
diseased or mentally incompetent in camps is simply expanded to
include anyone viewed as undesirable, setting the stage for the
"final solution" in an attempt to eliminate all Jews
and other "nonAryans." Interestingly, suicide in these
camps is forbidden and considered a serious breach of discipline.
Approximately 1,000 prisoners in Germany
are subjected to Xray castrations.
In May, the policy of exterminating people
unable to work begins with an order from the camp physician of
Auschwitz.
First autopsy report of brain damage from
ECT.
Bini suggests the repetition of ECT many
times a day, naming the method "annihilation therapy."
1943
Greenburg and Spiegal use sodium pentothal
on North African pilots and call it "narcosynthesis."
A. Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, develops LSD,
lauded by many psychiatrists as being useful in understanding
psychosis. (Later, in the 1980s, many psychiatrists will view the
drug "ecstasy" in the same light).
Nazi psychiatrist Pfannmuller establishes
two starvation houses for adults.
1944
German chemists develop a substitute for
morphine, called dolophine (now known as methadone).
Sir Cyril Burt, a British psychometrician,
is convinced that intelligence is genetically transmitted. He
uses his influence to help establish the English General
Education Act which requires a school system whereby children are
channeled according to test performance. Large numbers of English
school children are denied higher education and thus middle class
occupations because of this system, which holds with Burt's
theory that intelligence is fixed and innate.
Dr. Gelny, director of the MauerOhling
institution in Austria, kills many mental patients with
electroshock, including one at a demonstration at a psychiatric
congress.
1945
Lancet, a major British medical journal,
publishes "Sterilization of the Insane in the USA." The
article, based on information from the Journal of the American
Medical Association, cites roughly 42,000 cases of sterilization
between 1941 1943. California leads all states with 10,000. Among
the victims: "Insane" 20,600; "Feeble Minded"
20,453. 1945 To date, at least 400,000 Germans have been
sterilized.
May, 8: (quote from Murderous Science by
Benno MullerHill) "The war comes to an end. The survivors of
the concentration camps are saved. Five to six million European
Jews are dead. The number of European Gypsies who have been
murdered is unknown. In German mental hospitals, the fifteen per
cent of patients who have survived continue to suffer from
hunger. The number of murdered psychopaths, asocial individuals,
and homosexuals is unknown. The anthropologists and psychiatrists
involved will say that they had not known anything about it. Some
are sentenced by courts, others commit suicide. The rest go back
to work rebuilding their science. The world goes on its
way." (At the German surrender, a Dr. Ewald hides some 50
psychiatrists in his hospital who were implicated in the killing
program, letting them work there under low profile.)
Psychiatrist G. Brock Chisholm, CoFounder
of the World Federation of Mental Health says "The
reinterpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of
right and wrong...these are the belated objectives of practically
all effective psychotherapy." "If the race is to be
freed from its crippling burden of good and evil, it must be
psychiatrists who take the original responsibility."
"Psychiatry must now decide what is to be the immediate
future of the human race. No one else can..."
1946
US National Mental Health Act signed.
1946-55: 100,000 people receive
psychosurgery, half of them in the US.
1947 Karl Brandt testifies at Nuremberg that many of the Nazi
ideas regarding sterilization were based on writings from the
United States, and France (i.e., Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown)
and points out that from 1899 to 1907 176 mentally deficient
people were sterilized in a prison in Indiana.
Life magazine article showing general bad
conditions in mental hospitals.
Doctor's trial at Nuremburg. Dr.
Pfannmuller, psychiatrist and director of the state institution
in Germany where many children were starved to death testifies
"...euthanasia... had, in my view, nothing to do with
National Socialism ....the ideas from which (euthanasia) arose
are centuries old."
1947
A child aged 34 months receives a series
of 20 electroshocks because of "distressing anxiety"
and for being "mute and autistic." He is discharged one
month later with "moderate improvement."
Psychiatrist Edwin Katzenellenbogen, a
former member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School, is
convicted and sentenced to life for war crimes he committed as a
doctor at Buchenwald. During the Nuremburg trials, he testifies
he "drafted for the governor the law for sterilization of
epileptics, criminals and incurably insane for the state of New
Jersey, following the state of Indiana which first introduced the
law in 1910."
Testimony at Nuremberg includes the
following by Dr. Mennecke regarding procedures at Dachau and
Buchenwald:
A. "I had to examine the prisoners brought before me to
determine whether they were psychotic or psychopathological
cases.
Q. So at first it was a matter of people of unsound mind?
A. It was a medical matter.
Q. Then later it became a political and racial matter?
A. Yes. But in addition to the political and racial aspects of
the matter I had also, even at this later stage, to take purely
medical decisions.
Q. So at that time you had two kinds of cases to deal with, those
of persons of unsound mind, who were judged on medical grounds,
and those who were to be judged on political and racial grounds?
A. It was not possible to make any distinction, learned Counsel.
There was no question of any definite separation between the two.
Q. Do you mean that when you examined a large number of Jews you
certified them all as being of unsound mind?
A. I have already expressed my view that they were neither at all
sick nor of unsound mind either."
In an affidavit signed by psychiatrist Dr. Muthig, Senior doctor
at Dachau, he states, "four psychiatrists occupied four
separate tables in two huts and interviewed several hundred
prisoners. The incapacity of the prisoners for work and their
political activities were checked and they were registered
accordingly....The examination consisted merely of checking their
papers in their presence. The men registered during these
proceedings were of German and other nationalities or else Jews.
I can state with absolute certainty that (psychiatrist) Professor
Heyde directed the proceedings and was present at them."
The Chairman of the German Medical
Committee of American Tribunal I at Nuremberg collects
documentary evidence concerning doctors' involvement in medical
atrocities in Nazi Germany. A pamphlet is published concerning
this called The Cynical Dictatorship, of which 10,000 copies are
printed and distributed to the medical/psychiatric profession.
The only response to the pamphlet is from the World Health
Organization, which found "(the) records showed German
doctors as a profession to have been unconnected with the crimes
committed by the dictatorship. The Organization therefore
readmitted them to its ranks." At these trials, Nazi racial
hygienists are not tried for the forced sterilization of over
400,000 Germans. A group of prosecutors attempts to show the mass
killings of handicapped people and concentration camp experiments
were completely separate from "genuine eugenics" and
that the US military tried to recruit some of the German doctors
involved for military research
ECT reported used on children as young as
4 years old.
Electrodes are placed at specific
locations in the brains of mental patients to produce lesions in
an attempt to more precisely localize the destruction of brain
tissue in psychosurgery.
Doctors are found guilty of conducting
tests on inmates in Nazi Germany (freezing, etc.)