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Good Death” Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945–1953 Michael S Confronting the “Good Death” NAZI EUTHANASIA ON Trial, 1945–1953 Michael S. Bryant CONFRONTING THE “GOOD DEATH” Confronting the “Good Death” NAZI EUTHANASIA ON TRIAL, 1945–1953 Michael S. Bryant University Press of Colorado © 2005 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in Canada The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Met- ropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bryant, Michael S., 1962– Confronting the “good death” : Nazi euthanasia on trial, 1945–1953 / Michael S. Bryant. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87081-809-0 (alk. paper) 1. People with disabilities—Nazi persecution. 2. Euthanasia—Germany—History—20th cen- tury. 3. Trials (Genocide) I. Title. D804.5.H35B79 2005 940.53’18’0874—dc22 2005017419 Design by Daniel Pratt Support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the Uni- versity of Colorado. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open access ISBN for this book is 978-1-60732-708-0. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. To my son Reed For whom I wish a world free from the events described in this book. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Emperor of Ice-Cream: Nationalist Socialist Euthanasia, 1933–1945 19 2. Constructing Mass Murder: The United States Euthanasia Trials, 1945–1947 63 3. First Reckonings: The German Euthanasia Trials, 1946–1947 107 4. Lucifer on the Ruins of the World: The German Euthanasia Trials, 1948–1950 145 5. Law and Power: The West German Euthanasia Trials, 1948–1953 177 Conclusion 217 Notes 227 Glossary 247 Bibliography 251 Index 259 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study is the child of a gestation period that stretches back into the late 1980s, when I encountered the bizarre phenomenon of Nazi euthanasia for the first time as an exchange student at Göttingen University. Ernst Klee’s Euthanasie im NS-Staat was my guide through the apocalyptic landscape of Nazi violence against the mentally handi- capped. After a five-year career as an attorney, I returned to this grim subject out of a conviction of its importance for all of us today, dedicating my doctoral studies to its representation in postwar trials. Many people have been involved in one way or another with the project, both within the United States and abroad. I would like to thank my wife, Patty, for her support throughout the research and writing of this study. She provided not only encouragement and as- tute readings of the manuscript, but bore up under periods of separa- tion that lasted for several months as I conducted research in foreign archives. Thanks go also to my mother, Elizabeth Bryant, who pro- vided invaluable childcare for our infant son, Reed, that enabled me to finish the manuscript. A special debt of gratitude is owed to my adviser, Dr. Alan Beyerchen, for his thoughtful comments on my chapters, as well as for planting the inspiration years ago to pursue my interests in Nazi euthanasia via a study of postwar criminal trials. Throughout my training as a graduate student, Dr. Beyerchen was a tireless supporter of my project. I would also like to express my appreciation for the superb feedback from my second and third readers, Professors Steve Conn and John Rothney. I am grateful for the guidance and inspiration given me by Dr. Raul Hilberg, whose seminar in teaching Holocaust history at the college level was one of the formative moments in my scholarly career. Dr. Hilberg’s receptive attitude toward the stumbling efforts of a junior historian has been an example to me of graceful collegiality. The same may be said of Dr. Erich Loewy, a renowned bioethicist from the University of California at Sacramento. Dr. Loewy sup- ported my applications for grants to underwrite the research and writing of this project. He generously placed me in contact with his colleagues in Ger- many and Austria, whose considerable knowledge of Nazi euthanasia enriched my project enormously. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the staffs of the World War II Records Division at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. Thanks should also be given to the staff of the Dokumen- tationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands in Vienna, Austria. I would like to express my deep appreciation for the warmth and tutelage of Dick de Mildt and C. F. Rüter of the Institute for Criminal Law in Amsterdam. Without their pioneering work in assembling the texts of the postwar German verdicts, the present study would assuredly have never come into existence. Thanks are also due to the assistance rendered by three dear friends, Eckhard Herych, David McEvoy, and Robert Kunath, for their insightful comments on my research. I greatly appreciate the advice given me at the beginning of the project by Christopher Browning to focus on a specific Tatkomplex rather than the sprawling and unmanageable spectrum of Nazi criminality. Gerhard Weinberg encour- aged my efforts and furnished me with excellent materials concerning the post- war prosecution of Nazi war crimes. Finally, I would like to give my profound thanks to the two organizations that provided generous financial support of my research and writing: the Na- tional Science Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (through the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship). A specific debt of gratitude is owed to John Perhonis of the National Science Foundation’s Eth- ics and Value Studies section for his helpful guidance and encouragement. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS But I’ll tell you here . it is the nature of villainy to absent itself, even as it stands before you. You reach for it and close on nothing. You smash your hand on the mirror. Who is this looking back at you? Perhaps you’re aware by now of the elusiveness of my villains. This is a story of invisible men, dead men or men indeterminately alive . of men hidden, barri- caded, in their own created realm. You have not seen them, except in the shadows, or heard them speak, except in the voices of others. They’ve been hiding in my language . powerful, absent men. —E. L. DOCTOROW, THE WATERWORKS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi LAW AND POWER INTRODUCTION We can only speculate about the thoughts that raced through the head of Dr. Alfred Leu in December 1953 as he awaited the verdict of the Cologne state court (Landgericht) presiding over his criminal case. Leu was charged with the murders of hundreds of adults and seventy children in 1941 during his tenure as a physician at the Sachsenberg mental hospital near Schwerin, Germany. The state’s evidence against Leu was impressively incriminating. Numerous eye- witnesses had stepped forward to attest to their observation of mur- ders committed in Leu’s wards through lethal injections of veronal and luminal. Others testified about Leu’s admission during the war that he was a confirmed advocate of euthananizing the mentally ill. His connections with the Berlin office entrusted with the mass kill- ing of handicapped patients were well documented. Whatever anxiety Leu experienced as the court prepared to an- nounce its verdict could only have been accentuated by the recent history of West German prosecution of physicians for their partici- pation in killing the mentally ill. Leu was assuredly aware of the 1946 case of Dr. Hilde Wernicke, convicted of murder by the Berlin state court for her role in passing on the names of selected patients to her nurses for extermination. Wernicke was executed for her crimes. Other euthanasia personnel in the late 1940s were, like Wernicke, convicted of mur- der and sentenced to death or lifelong prison terms. To make matters worse for Leu’s equanimity, these earlier physicians were convicted even though they had not directly administered the coup de grace to their patients. By contrast, Leu had not only transmitted patient lists to his nurses for killing but had himself personally participated in the murders. Although the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany had abolished capital punishment in 1949, Leu faced the possibility of life in prison if convicted. Leu’s fears proved to be unfounded. The Cologne state court acquitted Leu of all charges on the ground that he had participated in the destruction of patients only to oppose it from within. His choice to follow his conscience rather than the law of homicide justified his actions, even if it did involve him in killing handicapped children who, in the court’s words, were “completely below the zero line.” With this legal benediction, Dr. Alfred Leu, the proven killer of patients at the Sachsenberg
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