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The Church’s Response to the Nazi Germany Euthanasia Program
Joel Gillespie
for Ian Rennie
Church History II
1985
For almost every day which has passed in this the late winter of 1984-85, there has been somewhere in Europe or in the world at large, a commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of liberation from the clutches of Nazi Germany. This commemoration may have involved joyful celebration, or merely sober reflection and speeches, whereby someone of sound judgment exhorted his listeners to learn from the mistakes of the past. Yet, in spite of the continuing stench which rises from the memory of German crematoriums, where the bodies of Jews, and the mentally and physically handicapped were sacrificed to the Nazi gods of racial purity and usefulness to the State, genocide is still being practiced by the so-called democratic liberators of World War II. In 1984, for example, over 1,500,000 abortions were performed in the United States alone. Countless “imperfect” or unwanted children were allowed to die in their first few days of life, while the government fought in vain to protect these children from their parents (What an interesting switch!). Mercy death bills faced the legislators of several states. Historical precedent for getting rid of those deemed unworthy to live is relatively easy to establish. Between 1939 and 1945, over 300,000 people with varying degrees of mental and physical handicaps met their death by means of the Nazi “mercy death” programs. The writer of this paper would like to concentrate on this program in particular, as it seems to have more in common with the present day practices than does the Jewish Holocaust. In this paper, the following will be examined: the ideological and historical roots of the German euthanasia program; the implementation of the program; the resistance of several major church leaders to the euthanasia program, including the bases for their opposition as well as some historical background regarding these leaders’ resistance efforts; and the similarities and differences between the response of the church then, and the church’s role now in our own present day holocaust.
The Nazi euthanasia program did not involve the arbitrary command of a few sadistic leaders, nor did it arise free from historical, ideological foundations. Rather, several key streams of thought converged in the 1930’s to produce the stimulus for what Frederic Wertham has called the “…model of the most bureaucratic mass murder in history”(1). These streams of thought, to be discussed in turn, are the following: the application of biological Darwinism to the socio-economic and political realm; the development of the concept of life devoid of value; the concept of the superior Nordic race; and the development of the relationship between mental disorders and heredity.
In reference to the “secret book” of Adolf Hitler, which embodied in a particularly clear way Hitler’s developing world view, biographer John Toland states that “…an essential of Hitler’s conclusions in this book was the conviction drawn from Darwin that might makes right”(2). In Hitler’s view, modern civilization had unnaturally interfered in the role of natural selection as the regulating force in society. Thus, the unfit and the weak, that is, the insane and the handicapped, absorbed valuable resources better suited to strengthening the position of the fit and strong. Social Darwinist theorists such as Shallmayer, who heavily influenced the medical profession, held that in the social political sphere, the nation was analogous to the species, and must do all in its power to ensure its own permanent viability(3). This, of course, included elimination of the unfit and impure from within (holocaust) and the attainment of lands and resources without (war). Human feelings of compassion, which would be inclined towards the rights of the individual, were to be replaced by the ideal of subjugation of individual rights to that of the national state(4). Thus it was only rational to eliminate the superfluous ones in the most economical and efficient manner as possible(5). Speaking to this issue, Hitler stated in a 1944 address to officer cadets the following, summarizing the Nazi position:
Nature is always teaching us…that she is governed by the principle of selection: that victory is to the strong and that the weak must go to the wall. She teaches us what may seem cruel to us, because it affects us personally or because we have been brought up in ignorance of her laws, is nevertheless often essential if a higher way of life is to be attained Nature knows nothing of the notion of humanitarianism which signifies that the weak must at all costs be surrounded and preserved even at the expense of the strong. Nature does not see in weakness any extenuating reasons…on the contrary, weakness calls for condemnation(6).
Developing in the fertile ground laid by social Darwinist theory and appealing especially to the medical and legal professionals was the concept of “life devoid of value.” In 1920, a very influential book was published by jurist Karl Binding and eminent psychiatrist Alfred Hoche entitled The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value, wherein the authors advance the notion that laws against murder should not be extended to the killing of “worthless people”(7). These “worthless people” are the insane, those who have “neither the will to live not to die” whose deaths are “urgently necessary,” who are “mentally completely dead” and who “represent a foreign body in human society”(8). As with the social Darwinist, the psychiatrist warns against “shows of sympathy” as being irrational and unheroic, and stresses the economic drain of care to the retarded(9). According to Wertham, there is no evidence that Hitler ever read the book, even though both Hitler and the “life devoid of value” slogan appeared on the public scene at about the same time. “Evidently,” writes Wertham, “there is such a thing as a spirit of the times which emanates from the depths of the economic-historical process”(10).
As if these factors alone were not enough to seal the fate of the weak in German society, the development of the theory of German racial superiority would leave no doubts. Appealing to the deep and frustrated nationalistic and racial sentiments of the German people, this theory extolled the Nordic man, characterized by a party theorist as “tall, with long head, narrow face, well-defined chin, narrow nose with a very high root, soft fair hair, receding light (blue or grey) eyes, pink-white skin color”(11). It was the job of the SS race examiners, headed by Heinrich Himmler, to establish “an order of good blood to serve Germany”(12). Although Social Darwinism did not inherently offer support to the concept of race superiority, the two would be sufficiently wedded by Nazi theorists that the denial of individual equality for the purpose of improvement of the race, and the evaluation of the individual in light of certain biological standards, would serve both interests simultaneously(13). The program for achieving the goal would involve the elimination of all those considered as racially inferior (Jew, Gypsy) and those who could not contribute to the building up of sound genetic lineage (the insane and physically handicapped). Once again, no one put it better than Hitler himself, who said in 1934:
It is an untenable position when the relationship between the efficient and the ineffective in a state assumes an unhealthy form. The nation has to spend a great deal of energy and money in dealing with the feeble-minded, the criminal and the anti-social. If theses examples of poor heredity were eliminated, large sums of money would be saved and could be diverted to other, more productive ends. A responsible State leadership should devote all its attention to plans for maintaining and increasing those of sound stock. In primitive societies, the community rids itself of its weaklings. In so-called civilized nations, a false attitude of brotherly love, which the church has been especially assiduous in fostering among the broad masses, operates in direct opposition to the selective process (14).
It is no wonder that once the relationship between heredity and mental disorders was established, the state would act to eliminate the possibility of reproduction of these inferior types. Interestingly, the real driving force behind the sterilization program implemented in 1933 was a highly respected professor of psychiatry, Dr. Ernst Reudin. As a scientist, he was highly recognized, particularly for his studies on the nature of heredity. Yet it was he who was the chief formulation of the compulsory sterilization law of 1933. The policy of the Reich in relation to this law was aptly summarized by the Minister of Public Health, Arthur Guett:
The ill-conceived “love of thy neighbor” has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures. It is the supreme duty of a national state to grant life and livelihood only to the healthy and hereditarily sound portion of the people to secure the maintenance of a hereditarily sound and racially pure fold for all eternity. The life of an individual has meaning only in the light of that ultimate aim, that is, in the light of his meaning to his family and to his national state(15).
Of course, in time the best way to retard the reproductive capacity of handicapped or insane people would simply be to remove them altogether.
Adolf Hitler never signed into law any measure allowing for “mercy killing.” On the contrary, euthanasia was in fact illegal under Nazi laws, and Hitler feared public outcry against an overt program. Yet from the beginning, his intent was clear. In 1935, he confessed to the leader of the Doctor’s Association that he would implement a euthanasia program in case of war(16). His first act in preparation for this was to set up a program guaranteeing as exempt from the law the mercy killing of incurably sick babies with deformities, and abortions when either parent had a hereditary disease(17). Nevertheless, Hitler never ordered mental patients to be killed(18). From the outset, the program was the brainchild of the psychiatrists, who were merely given freedom by Hitler to pursue their plans. The only statement of authorization of any type of euthanasia from Hitler was an informal notice written in October of 1939, but dated September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland, which reads:
Reichleader Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt are responsibly commissioned to extend the authority of physicians to be designated by name, so that a mercy death may be granted to patients who according to human judgment are incurably ill according to the most critical evaluation of the state of their disease. Adolf Hitler(19).
As Fredric Wertham succinctly states “the note does not give the command to kill, but the power to kill”(20).
The Euthanasia program had already in fact been worked out by psychiatrists in a Berlin conference early in 1939, participation in which included most chairmen of departments of psychiatry at major German universities and medical schools(21). Questionnaires were prepared, to be sent out to all institutions, public or private, containing mental patients and handicapped people, inquiring as to the condition of the patients kept under care. The completed questionnaires were then to be directed to a team of four “experts” in Berlin, who classified each patient as a “+” or a “–”, that is worthy to be helped or not worthy to be helped. This made a mockery even of Hitler’s request to make “critical evaluation,” as each expert was required to render judgment on up to one thousand cases per week(22). Scheduled to be eliminated in the first round of the program were some 70,000 schizophrenics, epileptics, and those with multiple sclerosis, polio, encephalitis, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s chorea, brain tumors, as well as the clinically insane(23). Eventually, the criteria was expanded to include patients suffering from even mild tuberculosis or senility, and veterans who had suffered serious head injury, or the loss of a limb in war(24).
Those patients unfortunate enough to receive a (–) vote were transferred by the SS to one of six state-sponsored psychiatric hospitals containing gas chambers and crematoria built just for the purpose by the “General Welfare Foundation for Institutional Care”(25).” Since the program was top secret, relatives were notified that the patients had died of some sudden natural ailment, such as heart attack or pneumonia.
A similar commission independent of the one just outlined was one concerned with child euthanasia. Children were sent to special “children’s divisions” and put to death mostly by the use of drugs or by the more passive method of starvation. The children were selected on the basis of similar criteria as that which was applied to their elders, although in time, chronic bed wetters and children unfortunately orphaned by allied bombing raids also suffered the fate of death(26).
From early 1940 on, SS buses regularly appeared outside the public and private institutions to transport the helpless victims to the death hospitals. Alarm spread as the workings of the programs became known, and as protestors, especially those churchmen whose actions will be examined next, aroused public opinion. Alarm grew so intense that SS Chief Himmler began to question the whole operation:
I hear that there is considerate disturbance about the hospital at Grafeneck. People recognize the grey buses of the SS and believe that they know what is going on when they see the chimney of the crematorium burning continuously. What is happening there should be a secret, but it is no longer so; so the worst suspicions have been aroused. In my view it will be necessary to end this use of the institution and at the same time to institute some propaganda in a clever way of showing films about mental or hereditary illness in that region(27).
As a result of the particularly brave opposition of Bishop Galen and other church leaders, word spread even to the front lines. Afraid that the morale of the soldiers would be lessened in light of the possible fate of relatives, or even of themselves were they to return wounded, Hitler ordered in August of 1941 a change in the operation. The public was informed that “mercy death” procedures had taken place, and was presented with propaganda films showing the wretched plight of the hopelessly insane. The program itself was not stopped, but continued in a more secret form until the end of the war. The tried and tested extermination centers were set up in remote areas, particularly in Poland, to be used on Jews and prisoners of war. At the local hospitals, formal procedures were abolished, and individual doctors were left both to select who would die and to carry out the sentence(28). No longer were notifications of death sent to relatives(29). Massive extermination of children, however, continued until the war’s end(30).
As has already been established, those men including Hitler who had helped establish the ideological foundations for the Euthanasia program, had also ridiculed the humanitarian role that churches played in caring for the weak and insane. The concept of the sacred value of the individual had been replaced by the concept of the good of the state. The truth of the innate equality of all men had been replaced by the lie that the Nordic men should have ultimate supremacy. The final authority of God had been challenged, and in its place was the authority of the Fuhrer. The rightful place of God as the One who should choose life or death for each man on earth had been usurped by the psychiatric doctors of Nazi Germany.
It is of particular note that it was in fact the German churches who had for so long led the way in caring for the mentally ill in institutions that were international models of their kind. Many were run by Lutheran or Catholic clergy(31). Yet so passive had the church been in general in opposing Hitler on other issues, that Hitler predicted, to a great extent correctly, that the church would not offer substantial resistance to the euthanasia killings(32). As Wertham points out, a top level bureaucrat in the Euthanasia program would later say, that in his understanding “…the church was willing to tolerate such killings under certain conditions”(33). For example, when Pastor Schlaich was requested to return his completed patient questionnaires, he did protest, not on moral or biblical grounds but on the grounds that there was no legal basis for the Euthanasia program(34). Many such pastors simply acquiesced in fearful passivity. However, there were many cases of extreme bravery by churchmen who made significant attempts to expose and call a halt to the program. True, the efforts were not coordinated, but rather were isolated and sporadic(35). Still, these efforts had a significant effect in terms of pressuring the Nazi government to put an end at least to the worst first phase of the program. These efforts of several church leaders will be examined in turn.
Word of the transfer of certain classes of patients to other institutions and the subsequent death by “natural causes” spread not only amongst the people but also amongst the church leaders – bishops, pastors, and directors of the church-run institutions. One pastor, Paul Gerhard Braune, director of the evangelical Huffningstal Institution near Berlin, who after hearing the report, from all over Germany, gathered together as much concrete evidence as possible and protested strongly to four key ministers in Berlin(36). His investigative work was very thorough, and he outlined to the Justice Minister all of the details of the selection and killing process(37). He was, of course, threatened severely for interfering in top secret political matters, yet he succeeded in winning the sympathy of Justice Minister Gurtner(38). Unfortunately, Braune was arrested in August of 1940 and kept for three months, being “freed on his promise not to undertake further actions against the measures of the state or party”(39). On can only imagine the measures taken to illicit this promise.
Another leader who managed an even more effective protest was Pastor Fritz von Bodelschwingh, a highly respected pastor and chief of the Bethel Institutions, who proved that stubborn opposition could in fact have significant results. In June, 1940, Bethel Institution received some three hundred of the questionnaires to be filled out by August 1. Bodelschiwingh, aware of the ultimate fates of those whose names were sent out on the questionnaires, refused to allow the forms to be filled out, and somehow managed to get Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician, to come to Bethel for an interview. Although Dr. Brandt tried to convince Bodelschwingh that the program was needed to save the nation, Bodelschwingh replied that no one had the right to be inhumane(40). The pastor made a favorable impression on the doctor, and, as a result, not one of Bethel’s patients was ever sent to the death hospitals(41).
Well before the Euthanasia program had been implemented, the Nazis had tried to enforce a ruling that would have had all mentally ill patients from the church-run hospitals transferred to hospitals run by the state(42). This had met with fierce resistance, for although the church proved to be silent on many issues, she always resisted strongly direct State control of her organizations. In the face of this resistance, the government backed down, only to resume this pressure during the implementation of the Euthanasia program(43). Every church-run institution lived under this threat of state takeover, particularly if any resistance was given. This, of course, makes Bodelschwingh’s victory even more amazing. Unfortunately, not all of the institutions were so lucky. The director of the institution at Kückenmühle refused, as had Bodelschwingh, to cooperate, but suffered the total takeover of his institution by the state(44). His patients obviously were not spared.
This put tremendous pressure upon the bishops, who faced the loss of all of the church institutions if they resisted. Many bishops proved terribly passive(45), but some, however, were not, even amidst the terrible circumstances. South German Evangelical Bishop Wurm provided one of the rare examples of a ConfessingChurch leader speaking out against the Euthanasia program. Bishop Wurm, like Pastor Braun, prepared a factual report and sent a strong protest to the Interior Minister, Frick, stating the impossibility of Christians condoning these measures(46).
“…we understand well that certain circles in the Party, whose voice is primarily to be heard in the Schwarze Kerps, want to get rid of not only the churches, but of Christianity entirely because it is a barrier to such measures…But in fact right up to the present the Führer and the Party have publicly taken their stand on the bases of positive Christianity, which regards as self-evident the merciful and humane handling of suffering fellow men”(47).
Getting no response, he penned a second letter wherein he asked the Minister: “Must the German nation be the first civilized people which in the treatment of the weak returns to the customary practice of primitive peoples?…I plead not to leave me without an answer in this extremely serious matter”(48) The answer he did secure was that everything was in order and that there was a legal basis for the program(49). Although his letters never achieved the desired result, copies were spread far and wide over Germany, and, as a result, Bishop Wurm became a leading spokesman for the Evangelical church and an inspiration to churchmen of both Catholic and Protestant faiths.
The encouragement that Bishop Wurm was to his Catholic brethren is attested to in a statement made by resistance leader Ulrich von Hassell in 1940, where he wrote with joy that “Bishop Wurm of Wurtlenburg had had the admirable courage to take a firm stand…[against the] unrestrained mass slaughter of the so-called incurably insane”(50). Thankfully, Bishop Wurm did not stop with the Euthanasia program, but also leveled stiff opposition against the persecution of the Jews, which he regarded as a violation of the “God-given right to live as human beings”(51). Perhaps most significant in Bishop Wurm’s actions, at least in the eyes of von Hassell, was that they placed the Protestant church on record against the policies of Hitler(52). This is an intriguing statement considering the fact that it was in Bishop Wurm’s cathedral at Ulm in 1933 that members of the resistance to the German Christian Church formally announced the formation of an alternate church government, thus giving birth to the ConfessingChurch and the famous Barmen declaration. This opposition at an early date to the expressed views of the Nazi state did constitute a form of challenge or resistance, but only resistance to the imposition of an external rule over the church. In general, the ConfessingChurch did not participate in active political protest nor take a strong stand in regard to non-church related political issues. According to J.S. Conway, whose Nazi Persecution of the Churches is one of the more important English accounts of the German church struggle, this was for three main reasons. First, members of the ConfessingChurch were theologians whose primary concern was the integrity of the Gospel. Second, the majority of the members simply refused to commit themselves to political involvement, being primarily concerned with spiritual matters. Third, the Lutheran tradition of respect for ruling authority was deeply ingrained. Even for the average member of the Confessing Church, national loyalty dictated outlook, and churchmen like all other men were carried away by nationalistic, anti-communist emotions, and were too starry-eyed at the rise of power of Adolf Hitler to stand firm for the cause of individual rights(55).
Thus it was significant that Bishop Wurm spoke out not only for governmental non-interference in the church but also in defense of the “natural” right of the individual person – whether insane, handicapped, or Jewish, and thus was against the very heart of Nazi ideology and policy.
Two important Catholic church leaders who spoke out clearly and loudly against the Euthanasia program were Bavarian Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and Bishop Clemens August Galen of Münster, both of whom will be dealt with in turn.
Although a part of the compromising Catholic hierarchy which had made easy peace with Hitler in the famous 1933 Concordat, von Faulhaber was able to see early on that the Nazis never intended to abide by the Concordat’s regulations. For example, on Advent Sunday of 1933, von Faulhaber spoke out against the nationalistic-racial neo-paganism program being glorified by the Nazis, as well as by many of the German people. Here he laid the ground work for his public opposition to these programs based on racial theories which elevated nationalistic goals over revealed truth:
What is the relation of Christianity to the German race? Race and Christianity are not mutually opposed but they do belong to different orders. Race is of the natural order; Christianity is a revealed religion and therefore of the supernatural order. Race means union with the nation; Christianity means union with God. There is no need to turn our bricks on Christianity and to set up a Nordic or Germanic Religion, in order to profess our nationality. But we must never forget: we are not redeemed with German blood. We are redeemed with the precious blood of out crucified Lord(56).
In 1937, von Faulhaber spoke out against the arrest of an anti-Nazi preacher, at which time he called for consideration of civil disobedience “…based on obedience to the law of God”(57).
When word of the so-called “mercy deaths” reached the offices of the Catholic hierarchy, the outcry was particularly loud. Many Catholic bishops from all over Germany wrote formal letters of protest which attacked the Euthanasia program and the sterilization laws, as well as racism and German paganism in general(58). Cardinal Faulhaber supported his undercharges, and denounced the so-called Euthanasia program as a clear violation of the law of God, appealing particularly to the fifth commandment. In one letter he stated that even in wartime, one may not discard the everlasting foundation of the moral order, nor the fundamental rights of the individual(59). In addition, he appealed to the government to abide by its obligations under the Concordat, but, like most charges submitted to the Nazi officials, his remained unanswered.
Late in the war, when the American forces appeared at the outskirts of the city of Münster, Bishop Galen went out to surrender the city to the oncoming American army. Incensed over this treasonable act, Hitler exclaimed, “If I ever lay hands on that swine, I’ll have him hanged”(60). The fact is that Hitler had had ample reason and ability to do just that on countless occasions, for Bishop Galen had proven himself a thorn in Hitler’s side in many ways for a full ten years prior to the fall of Münster to the Americans. But in no case did Galen have greater effect or cut more deeply into the core of Nazi policy as he did in response to the Nazi euthanasia program. The immediate historic background was significant in setting the tone of Galen’s protests. Early in 1941, heavy bombing raids leveled much of the city of Münster, giving the Nazi’s middle leadership a reason to seize church property under the pretext of needing more school and hospital space, but really doing so in order to “get even” with Bishop Galen. For, as Mother Gallin puts it “…untiring opposition and open condemnation of the Nazi program came from the pulpit of…Bishop Galen”(61). Yet once again, Galen stood firm and bitterly protected the confiscations, calling his people to become “…hard as stone and as unbreakable as the anvil, which would last longer than the hammer”(62) Hitler, fearing public unrest when united support was needed for the Russian campaign, ordered a halt to the takeovers(63). Many of the middle level officials, angered at the policy turn around, set themselves even more against Galen, calling for his arrest(64). The situation for Galen grew exceedingly grave. Yet, even at this time, ignorant of Hitler’s order concerning the seizures, Galen continued to press, turning his attention to the reports concerning the transfer and subsequent deaths of patients of the Diocesan mental hospitals(65). Like Wurm and Braune, he did his homework. He exposed in detail the entire process, from questionnaires to patient transfers to bogus death notices, and emphasized that those who were sick, senile, or even badly wounded did indeed have a lot to fear if their productive capacities proved insufficient(66). Copies of his sermons were distributed far and wide at great risk to those who smuggled them out of the country and to the soldiers at the front lines. As a result, the entire program was laid bare to the public eye. High Nazi officials described his treasonable acts as “the strongest attack against the German political leadership for decades”(67). His immediate death was demanded.
Hitler decided not to proceed against Galen, fearing a major back lash with the church and not wanting to make a martyr out of the very popular bishop. Yet, his ultimate intentions were clear, as spoken a few months later: “I am quite sure that a man like Bishop von Galen knows full well that I shall extract retribution to the last farthing”(68).
Galen and Faulhaber, involved as they were in open struggle using political methods to fight political-moral issues, were not part of a vast campaign. Rather, as von Hassell noted in 1941: “The majority under the leadership of the old pacifist cardinal Bishop of Breslau was opposed to an open struggle and against ‘political’ rather than religious methods. The proponents of action, Galen and Preysing, were therefore in the minority”(69) As J.S. Conway describes it:
The steadfastness of those Churchmen who sought to oppose the mobilized power of a police state was all the more remarkable because of the small numbers involved. This was not a mass movement of protest but only the isolated and courageous voice of conscience witnessing in a situation totally unexpected and unsought for. Yet it was the witness of these men which prevented the total apostasy of the church(70).
What Galen did have operating in his favor in the Euthanasia issue was a mobilized public opinion(71). Outrage existed over the extermination of the sick and infirm. The challenge then of the Bishops carried with it the backing of people desperately needed by Hitler in the war efforts, people upon whom Hitler, even at the height of his power and ability to terrorize, was ultimately dependent. Unfortunately and tragically, this same weight of public opinion never existed to force Hitler’s hand on the Jewish policy. This is pointed out by Guenter Lewis:
The large majority of the very people who had been outraged when their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, had been put to death, failed to react in the same manner when their Jewish neighbors were deported and eventually killed in the very chambers designed for and first tried out in the Euthanasia program(72).
The ideology which produced the Euthanasia program and the ideology which motivated the response of the church leaders could not have been more diametrically opposed. Where the Nazis ridiculed the humanitarian works of the church, labeling them as being both opposed to natural biological law and economically impractical, the church proudly accepted its role as guardian of the weak whatever the economic cost. Where Hitler called for profound subjugation of the individual’s most basic rights to the greater needs of the state, Faulkhaber denounced totalitarian rule over the individual and upheld the individual’s basic rights to live and to live unoppressed. Whereas the final authority and basis for law for the Nazi was the will of the Führer, the final authority for their opponents was the revelation of God. Whereas the Nazi denounced or punished every intrusion of church leaders into “political” areas, courageous leaders such as Braun and Galen refused to limit their efforts to purely “spiritual” issues.
It is hard to judge what impact may have been made on Nazi policies had Galen and Braun and Faulhaber been part of a majority rather than a minority. Certainly without public opinion behind them, they would each have met with the same violent end as those whom they were trying to defend. And it is hard to judge what the true impact of these men’s courageous challenges was on the morale and confidence of the Nazi leadership at each level of authority. But what can be amply concluded is that concerning the Euthanasia policy itself: “The Church’s responsibility to uphold the worth of every individual in the sight of God and to be guardian of the sanctity of human life, was here, at least in part successfully defended and upheld(73).
Appendix
It would be revealing to point out some of the differences and similarities that exist between he present day abortion and infanticide issues and the euthanasia issue in Nazi Germany. This will serve as both an indirect analysis and review of the efforts outlined above by this writer of the perpetrators and opponents of Nazi euthanasia.
In Nazi Germany, the political and religious right wing was responsible for the “mercy death” programs. In present day American, however, the political and religious right wing is opposed to our equivalent of those programs.
In Nazi Germany, the common people, while maybe supporting the government in general, were in opposition to the Euthanasia program. In present day America one finds, however, that the average man on the street favors abortion, and infanticide in cases of severe defects.
In Nazi Germany, euthanasia advocates held that the well-being of the individual was secondary to that of the state. In modern America, abortion and infanticide supporters decry the economic drain which results when unwanted and deformed children are allowed to live.
In Nazi Germany, the people fought in vain against the “official” policy of the government. In America at present (1985) the converse is true: the executive branch of the government fights for the rights of the helpless who are suffering under the oppression of their fellow people, whose “rights” to oppress are protected by the courts.
In Nazi Germany, the church, once informed, stood against the Euthanasia program. In the United States, however, the American Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches stand behind the abortion and infanticide rights of the people.
In Nazi Germany, the medical profession planned and implemented the Euthanasia program. Similarly, in the United States, the medical profession performs the abortions and fights against government intervention into “family-physician” issues.
In Nazi Germany, church spokesmen immediately spoke out at great risk in support of the unique value of all human beings before God. In America, only the Catholic church has spoken out from the outset in defense of the value of every human person.
In Nazi Germany, as a rule, the church was intimidated into yielding its influence in the political realm. In America, the church did the same without intimidation.
Endnotes
(1) Frederic Wertham, A Sign for Cain: an exploration of human violence (The MacMillan Company, New York, 1966), p. 169.
(2) John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, 1976), p. 2?.
(3) Helmut Krauswick, Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Anatomy of the SS State (Collins, London, 1968), p. 12.
(4) ibid., p. 12.
(5) Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World (Beacon Press, Boston, 1983), p. 32.
(6) James T. Burtchaell, Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion (Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1984), p. 151.
(7) Wertham, p. 161.
(8) ibid., p.161.
(9) ibid., p. 161.
(10) ibid., p. 161.
(11) Burtchaell, p. 151.
(12) ibid., p. 151.
(13) Krauswick, p. 12.
(14) Burtchaell, p. 151.
(15) ibid., p. 150.
(16) Ernest Christian Helmreich, The GermanChurches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1979), p. 310.
(17) ibid., p. 310.
(18) Wertham, p. 169.
(19) ibid., p. 169.
(20) ibid., p. 169.
(21) ibid., p.169.
(22) Burthchaell, p. 173.
(23) ibid., p. 173.
(24) John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-45 (Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1968), p. 268.
(25) ibid., p. 268.
(26) ibid., p. 268.
(27) ibid., p. 271.
(28) Wertham, p. 183.
(29) Conway, p. 273.
(30) ibid., p. 273.
(31) Wertham, p. 168.
(32) ibid., p. 170.
(33) ibid., p. 185.
(34) Burtchaell, p. 160.
(35) Wertham, p. 185.
(36) Conway, p. 270.
(37) Helmreich, p. 311.
(38) ibid., p. 311.
(39) ibid., p.311.
(40) Wertham, p. 186.
(41) Helreich, p. 314.
(42) Conway, p. 269.
(43) ibid., p. 269.
(44) ibid., p. 269.
(45) ibid., p. 283.
(46) ibid., p. 270.
(47) ibid., p. 270.
Notes 48 through 64 are missing.
(65) ibid., p. 280.
(66) ibid., p. 281.
(67) ibid., p. 281.
(68) ibid., p. 283.
(69) Gallin, p. 181.
(70) Conway, p. 175.
(71) ibid., p. 283.
(72) ibid., p. 283.
(73) ibid., p. 284.
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