Essay on Nazi Doctors: an Insult to Humanity

Submitted By derland
Words: 1879
Pages: 8

Nazi Doctors: An Insult to Humanity There are many aspects that contributed to the Holocaust. In the 3rd Reich, there was avid anti-Semitism and the unstoppable spread of it. Nearly the entire population of Germany had joined the Nazi party as well as bought into their propaganda and idea of racial hygiene, it was an unstoppable force. The Nazi Doctors had a great deal to do with the racial hygiene programs such as the T-4 and euthanasia programs. They, I believe were a main contributor in the murder of over 6 million people. The Nazi Doctors took the title of Doctor and completely abused the trust that people had put in them, by performing inhumane experiments and exterminations. I will explain a little about the propaganda of the Nazi party and how and why it started as explain certain situations why my thesis is correct. Arthur de Gobineau created the idea of racial purity, or racial hygiene. Gobineau claimed that race created culture, and said the mixing of undesirable races with good races would be the destruction of a culture. The Nazi Propaganda adopted these ideas, and it was key in the Nazi Doctors’ concepts that these experiments, exterminations, and inhumane acts were deemed acceptable. Experiments not only were deemed acceptable, but also were greatly encouraged for military purposes. During the time of the Weimar, Nazi propagandists took fundamental ideologies and turned them into narrative events, as a story of good and evil. Hitler was the main advocate for this propaganda, and was appointed chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. His speeches were everywhere; in the press, broadcasted over the radio, and plastered over thousands of posters, which vastly bred avid anti-Semitism. In June of 1933 the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was put into order. The goal was to rid Germany of any genetically non-pure Aryans, those who have genetic flaws were to be sterilized. They included people with schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, blindness, and alcoholism. In paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code states that
“A male who commits a sex offense with another male or allows himself to be used by another male for a sex offense shall be punished with imprisonment.”

The Nazi party thought this to be degenerative to the race and population, which was linked to crime and racial impurity. The law was changed by Nazis to outlaw even minor homosexual acts after the “Night of the Long Knives”, when famous Nazi sympathizer and homosexual Ernst Röhm was killed. On October 4, 1933, The Editorial Law formulated by Reich press chief Otto Dietrich made it certain that all newspapers and periodical editors were controlled by the government, thus ending freedom of the press. Any breaking of these laws is punishable by the government, which made the new German press a state monopoly. This raised the morale of the Gleichschaltung, being the totalitarian control of all of Germany. This wartime media spread this idea that the Germans were being attacked by an international conspiracy, and were convinced that the measures against these groups of people was a defensive act to ensure the purity of the Aryan race. Nearly the entire population of Germany bought into these ideas, and anyone publically opposed to the ideas of the Nazis, in violation of these laws, or deemed a “sub-human” was sent to concentration camps.

There were dozens of concentration camps, which had a number of types. Some used solely for concentration of the masses, others were there specifically for extermination as well as transit and labor camps. Though all of them had a different purpose, all were for the same unethical cause. The extermination camps are the most unethical part of the Holocaust, because this is where many of these experimentations also happened. Physicians were key in the euthanasia and sterilization programs. They organized and instructed nearly every part of these, including the decision making