50 Years Ago: The Nuremberg Doctors' Tribunal. Part 1: The Descent Towards Medicalised Murder

Abstract

This series of four parts is an attempt to summarise some aspects of medicine during the Third Reich. Its aim is not to provide a systematic review but to remind us of this darkest chapter in the history of medicine and its consequences. The paper summarises the complex evolution of "race hygiene" during the Third Reich and tries to show how politics were medicalised by this idea. On the basis of "race hygiene", involuntary sterilisation was a first step followed by involuntary euthanasia of (mostly) handicapped psychiatric patients. The know-how acquired during these activities was used in the "Final Solution". It presented a level of medical barbarism only to be exceeded by criminal medical research conducted in some concentration camps.