Doctors
Under Hitler
by Michael H. Kater
ALL the world knows of Adolf Hitler and the
atrocities committed under his leadership during the Nazi era. But were
he and his small band of accomplices alone? Psychiatrists supplied the
flawed theories and ideas of eugenics and biochemistry which provided the
justification for wholesale slaughter of the "inferior". Timely reading
because modern psychiatry is treading down the same path once again - forgetting
about healing and concentrating instead on biology, genetics, and brain
chemistry.
Synopsis
In this historical analysis
of the medical profession in the Third Reich the author "examines the career
patterns, educational training, professional organization, and political
socialization of German physicians. . . . {He argues that}, as a group,
German doctors devoted themselves to National Socialist ideology sooner
and more thoroughly than any other professionals and that, as Nazis, they
did more in the service of the regime than any of their peers." (Publishers
note) Bibliography. Index.
Reviews and Commentary
From The Publisher:
Doctors Under Hitler
is the first complete history of medicine and the medical profession in
the Third Reich. Michael Kater's discussion ranges widely, from doctors
who participated in Nazi atrocities, to those who actively resisted the
regime's perversion of healing, to the vast majority whose ideology and
behavior fell somewhere between the two extremes.
From G. Eknoyan - Choice:
{The author} covers the whole
spectrum of doctors: good ones who resisted political socialization, bad
ones who tended to do its biddings, and ordinary ones who continued to
care for their patients. Separate chapters are devoted to the dilemma of
women physicians, the crisis of medical faculties, and the persecution
of Jewish doctors. . . Extensively annotated, with one fourth of
its space devoted to notes, the book is demanding, requiring concentration
and meticulous study for full appreciation. It is, however, a comprehensive
documentary that should prove a useful resource to upper-division and graduate
students of history.
From Geoffrey Cocks - The American Historical
Review:
Kater is an indefatigable
researcher, and we are once more profoundly in his debt for scouring the
archives for invaluable new documentation. His analysis is equally admirable,
free of statistical jargon and showing a fine eye for differences over
time in doctors' affiliations with various Nazi organizations among age
cohorts, social classes, regional groupings, and medical specialties and
by sex. . . . On the other hand, his discussion of the fate of Jewish physicians
breaks little new ground, although Kater, typically, also brings to this
subject a wealth of illustration. And his treatment of medical resistance
falls short of that offered by Robert Proctor's Racial
Hygiene {BRD 1989}, especially with regard to the émigré
activities of the Verein sozialistischer Arzte.
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