The Central Role of Neuroscientists Under National Socialism
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Neurology in Total War Tatu L, Bogousslavsky J (eds): War Neurology. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2016, vol 38, pp 168–183 (DOI: 10.1159/000442682) The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism Lawrence A. Zeidman Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Ill. , USA Abstract vating factors for collaborating neuroscientists. Some Neuroscientists played central roles in the victimization German and Austrian neuroscientists tried to resist Nazi of colleagues and their patients during the era of Nation- policies, although much more passively than their col- al Socialism from 1933 to 1945. After helping dismiss leagues in German-occupied countries. French, Dutch, Jewish and nonideologically aligned colleagues, Ger- Norwegian, and Danish neuroscientists actively resisted man neuroscientists were among the physicians and re- the Nazification of their profession from the beginning searchers who joined the Nazi Party and affiliated groups and helped to save some patients and colleagues, at in record numbers. Forced sterilization and then so-called great personal risk. Many German, Austrian, Czech, and ‘euthanasia’ of neurological and psychiatric patients Polish neurologists were murdered in the Holocaust, and were planned and executed by prominent German and hundreds of thousands of neurological and psychiatric Austrian neuroscientists. Other neuroscientists collabo- patients were sterilized or murdered in just 12 years. The rated indirectly by using patients for unethical experi- Nazis used the ‘successful’ techniques developed in the mentation to discover the cause of multiple sclerosis or ‘euthanasia’ programs to carry out the mass murder of to try to induce epileptic convulsions in a hypoxic state. millions in the Holocaust. Today’s neuroscientists are ob- Some merely used neuropathological material from mur- ligated to learn of the ethical violations of their predeces- dered patients for publications in scientific journals. In sors 70–80 years ago. No law will prevent abandonment the totalitarian state, research funding and academic ad- of the basic principles of ethical patient care and profes- vancement were awarded to physicians engaged in eu- sionalism that can occur in any totalitarian state, but neu- genics research. Opportunism and ideologically tainted roscientists can possibly prevent it. science without regard to medical ethics were the moti- © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel Downloaded by: Univ. of California Santa Barbara 128.111.121.42 - 6/22/2016 1:04:37 PM Introduction and Brief Historiography In the past 25 years, there has been a small but ac- celerating number of critical articles dealing with neuroscience1 under National Socialism (Na- zism) in Europe from 1933 to 1945. Several books on Nazi medicine and eugenics policies in gen- eral were published in the late 1980s or 1990s [1– 7] , but these primarily discussed the unethical brain research carried out by neuroscientists Ju- lius Hallervorden (1882–1965) ( fig. 1 ) and Carl Schneider (1891–1946) and did not comprehen- sively evaluate the roles of neuroscientists as part of the larger context. Actually, neuroscientists played central roles in Nazi medicine, since Nazi eugenics policies such as forced sterilization and so-called ‘euthanasia’ primarily targeted neuro- Fig. 1. Julius Hallervorden, unknown year. Reprinted logic and psychiatric (neuropsychiatric) patients with permission of the Archiv der Max Planck Society, [8] . The emerging body of work on Nazi medi- Berlin-Dahlem. cine in general, spurred by debates in the 1980s, and the discovery of Hallervorden’s brain collec- tion in the early 1980s [9] were motivating factors gap between the initial criticism in 1949 by neu- for the late Tübingen Emeritus Professor of Neu- rologist Leo Alexander (1905–1985) of the un- ropathology Jürgen Peiffer (1922–2006) to au- ethical activities of Hallervorden [16] and Georg thor a number of works mainly in German on the Schaltenbrand (1897–1979) in the Nazi era [17] involvement of neuroscientists in the Nazi period and the works of neuroscientists in the 1990s. Even [10–14] . Peiffer’s work was aided by the sudden as late as 1974, the major German scientific insti- availability of 30,000 ‘euthanasia’ victim files kept tute, the Max Planck Society (MPG – Max-Planck- by the former East German secret service and Gesellschaft ), a successor agency to the Kaiser-Wil- state archives after Germany’s 1990 reunification helm Institute (KWI), obtained a court injunction [15] . The availability of this new documentary in- to prevent publication of an article about Nazi eu- formation was paramount, given that many of the thanasia and neurological research at the KWI, collaborating neuroscientists destroyed incrimi- calling the attempt ‘slanderous’ [18] despite Ale- nating files after the war or that such files were xander’s earlier reports and works from the 1940s. destroyed during Allied bombing [12] . Many years later, in 2001, after an independent in- It was likely the attempted whitewashing of vestigation, the MPG president finally and formal- German neuroscience, fear of Nestbeschmutzung ly apologized for his society’s collaboration with (fouling one’s own nest), and avoidance of con- the Nazi euthanasia programs [19] . fronting the past [15] that caused a four-decade Montreal child neurologist Michael Shevell also published a number of works in the 1990s critically appraising academic neuroscience in 1 By convenience, many of the neurologists, neuropsychia- the Nazi era. After Shevell published landmark trists, neuropathologists, and basic neuroscience researchers in this paper are referred to as ‘neuroscientists’, though that studies on Hallervorden [20] and Schaltenbrand term did not emerge until the early 1960s. [21] , as well as an analysis of Alexander’s role in The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism 169 Tatu L, Bogousslavsky J (eds): War Neurology. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2016, vol 38, pp 168–183 (DOI: 10.1159/000442682) Downloaded by: Univ. of California Santa Barbara 128.111.121.42 - 6/22/2016 1:04:37 PM US Army medical reports [22] and the Nurem- tance of the Nazis and the ramifications of perse- berg Code [23] , he highlighted how academic cution of ‘non-Aryan’ (mainly Jewish) neurosci- neuroscientists were heavily implicated in Nazi entists. crimes. Neuroscientists played crucial unprofes- sional and unethical roles in the process that be- gan with the ‘de-Judification’ of German medi- The Nazification of German Neuroscience cine (the wholesale removal of Jewish doctors and researchers) and ended in the mass murder of By 1945, over 41,000 German doctors (45–50%) millions [24] . However, neuroscience was not had become Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Ar- merely a ‘microcosm’ [24] of Nazi medicine; it beiterpartei (NSDAP, the National Socialist Ger- was the central specialty in planning, enforcing, man Workers’ Party, or the Nazi Party) members and profiting from Nazi eugenics policies. In the [36, 37] , 26% joined the Sturmabteilung (SA, 2000s, Shevell further helped to elucidate the role Storm troopers, or the Nazi ‘brown shirts’), and of neuroscientist Heinrich Gross (1915–2005) in 7% joined the most exclusive and fanatical Nazi Nazi activities [25] and helped to dismantle the group, the Schutzstaffel (SS, the Nazi black shirts, Hallervorden-Spatz Disease (HSD) eponym in a paramilitary organization) [37] . It is uncertain 2003 in favor of pantothenate kinase-associated how many of the 41,000 Nazi doctors were neu- neurodegeneration [26] . Zeidman et al. in 2012 roscientists [38] , but this group and the neurosci- demonstrated the dramatic drop in the unquali- entists who joined the SA or SS comprised the fied usage of the HSD eponym from the 1990s to most basic category of collaborators. The fact that the 2000s [27] , largely because of Shevell’s and nearly half of doctors supported their criminal others’ work. government, or at least joined its ranks to protect For better organization and discussion of the themselves and their careers, facilitated the un- central roles of neuroscientists in Nazi eugenics ethical Nazi eugenics programs. As part of the programs, the neuroscientists will be divided into larger process of Gleichschaltung , or coordina- collaborators, resistors, and victims; however, tion of thought and ideology, all public and pri- these categories overlap significantly. For in- vate life was brought under totalitarian control in stance, the ‘banality of evil’ [28] among collabora- Nazi Germany. The medical profession under- tors was sometimes combined with the ‘ordinar- went Gleichschaltung , in which all medical asso- iness of good’ [29] more typically seen among ciations coalesced under the aegis of the Nazi resistors. Kondziella originally used this categori- Physician’s League, which ensured Nazi ideology zation for neuroscientists in 2009 [30] , adopting was implemented at every level [36] . the technique used by Holocaust historian Raul Not only Gleichschaltung of neuroscience but Hilberg (1926–2007), who separated groups in- also the ‘de-Jewification’ of the profession was re- volved in the destruction of European Jewry into quired to facilitate the sterilization, murder, and perpetrators, victims, and bystanders [31] . This subsequent neurological research in the Nazi era approach was later used for a comprehensive dis- [8, 24, 34, 39] . Consistent with the anti-Semitism cussion of neuroscientist collaborators [32] , resis- entrenched