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Henry Friedlander. the Origins of Nazi Genocide: from Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill and London: University of No

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Henry Friedlander. the Origins of Nazi Genocide: from Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill and London: University of No Henry Friedlander. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: FromEuthanasia to the Final Solution.Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xxiii + 421 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. $16.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8078-2208-6. Reviewed by JoergBottger,Independent Scholar. Published by H-Holocaust (May,2000) Foralong time, historians have scrutinized biological-social utopia were to be fulfilled. Nazi Germany’spolicyofannihilation( Friedlander makes it clear that a political regime Vernichtungspolitik )primarily with a focus on the bent on eradicating undesirables of all sorts was a mass murder of European Jews. Since the early necessary precondition for genocide. The 1980s, however, historical research has expanded bureaucracyinNazi Germanyand scholarly our knowledge by taking a closer look at other exponents of racial hygiene entered an informal victim groups which the Nazis targeted for division of labor: the scientists provided the decimation and extermination.[1] Henry definitions and public officials, who formulated Friedlander’saward-winning monograph can be decrees and laws, based their definitions on the rightly considered the first thorough and systematic writings of these race experts ( Rassenkundler ). analysis of the origins of Nazi Vernichtungspolitik The enthusiastic cooperation between from a broader perspective.Whereas earlier works scientists, scholars and Nazi officials beganin have viewed the mass murder of the handicapped, earnest with the program of forced sterilization. the so-called euthanasia program, and the mass From 1934 to 1945, German and Austrian murder of Jews as distinct and different physicians sterilized perhaps some 375,000 women phenomena, Friedlander argues that "euthanasia and men against their will, because theyhad been wasnot simply a prologue but the first chapter of allegedly diagnosed with a "hereditary disease" ( Nazi genocide"(p.xii). Erbkrankheit ). In addition to the handicapped, Friedlander places particular emphasis on manyAustrian and German Gypsies, whom linkages and similarities between the mass murder society had already marginalized before 1933, fell of the handicapped and the subsequent genocidal victim to compulsory sterilization. The Nazi killings of Gypsies and Jews. "I realized that the regime would not stop here, however. Far more Nazi regime systematically murdered only three radical, in fact, deadly measures were soon to be groups of human beings: the handicapped, Jews taken to rid the Volksgemeinschaft of what was and Gypsies"(p.xiii). called "life unworthyoflife" ( lebensunwertes The ideological underpinnings of the Leben ). annihilation of the handicapped, Jews and Gypsies As early as 1935, Adolf Hitler had as well as the mass killings of Slavic populations contemplated the realization of euthanasia once in German-occupied eastern Europe were based on warbrokeout. The first group of human beings widely accepted theories of the inequality of races. who became victims of organized mass killings Ideas of racial purity and purification had already were society’smost vulnerable and defenseless existed long before the Nazis came to power. members: handicapped children. The planning of Particularly in the Scandinavian countries but also this murder project originated in the summer of in the United States, manymembers of the medical 1939, and the machinery of death consisted of establishments and scientific elites supported three different agencies. The Reich Committee for compulsory sterilization of those population the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary groups deemed racially and socially inferior. Ailments ( Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen While the eugenic movement in the United Erfassung von erb- und anlagebedingten schweren States lost its impetus overtime, representativesof Leiden )was the preeminent body dealing with racial hygiene ( Rassenhygiene )inGermany racial hygiene and population policyinNazi ambitiously sawtoitthat their radical views of a Germany. Its members belonged to the creme de la H-Net Reviews creme of the medical establishment at the time. Charlottenburg. This address gav e the killing The Reich Committee planned, organized, and operation its infamous code name: Aktion T4.To implemented the mass murder of handicapped coverupregistration, transportation, and killing of children. handicapped adults, T4 managers created an Foradministrative support the Reich elaborate network of fronts ( Tarnorganisationen, Committee relied on the Subdepartment for table 4.3, p.74). The actual killings took place in Heredity and Race of the Reich Ministry’softhe six state hospitals and nursing homes which had Interior Health Department ( Unterabteilung Erb- been specially-equipped with gas chambers: und Rassenpflege der Abteilung Volksgesundheit im Grafeneck in Wuerttemberg, Brandenburgonthe Reichsministerium des Innern )headed by Havelnear Berlin[2], Hartheim near Linz in Ministerialdirigent Dr.Herbert Linden. The Austria, Sonnenstein in Pirna in Saxony, Bernburg Chancellery of the Fuehrer ( Kanzlei des Fuehrers, on the Saale in the Prussian province of Saxony, or KdF) under Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler and Hadamar in Hessen. assumed the political management of the Reich From January 1940 to August 1941 the T4 Committee. More importantly,Hitler named his perpetrators murdered some 70,000 handicapped personal physician ( Begleitarzt )Dr. Karl Brandt persons from Austrian and German psychiatric and Bouhler plenipotentiaries for the forthcoming institutions in the killing centers. Friedlander killing operation and gav e them oral authorization ( points out, however, that calculations by postwar Fuehrerermaechtigung )toproceed. German prosecutors arrivedatafigure of at least In October 1939 the planned killings of 80,000 killed (p.110). On 24 August 1941 Hitler handicapped children commenced. Between 1939 ordered the cancellation of further mass gassings in and 1945, some 5,000 infants, children and the framework of Aktion T4.According to juveniles fell victim to Nazi Germany’sfirst killing Friedlander a combination of growing public operation. In more than thirty children’swards of knowledge of the killings and subsequent popular state hospitals and nursing homes ( Heil- und disquiet led to Hitler’sdecision (p.111; p.151). Pflegeanstalten )inAustria and Germanythe Yetthe mass killings of handicapped persons perpetrators murdered their victims by were far from over. Onthe contrary,they administering lethal doses of medication or by continued albeit by other means. In numerous starvation. Tragically,the end of the Second World hospitals and nursing homes all overAustria and WarinEurope did not put an end to the murder of Germany, physicians and nurses killed large handicapped children. "Twenty-one days after numbers of patients by lethal medication or Germany’sunconditional surrender,Richard Jenne, starving them to death. This rather decentralized just four years old, became the last victim of the and uncoordinated killing operation has become euthanasia killers"(p.163). This happened on 29 known as "wild" euthanasia. Here Friedlander is May 1945 in the children’sward of the unable to give the reader exact figures or estimates Kaufbeuren-Irsee state hospital in Bavaria, more of victims murdered during this phase. However, than three weeks after U.S. troops had taken the he points to the case of the Meseritz-Obrawalde town! hospital in the Prussian province of Pomerania. In August 1939 Hitler also appointed Postwar German judicial authorities estimated the Bouhler and Brandt plenipotentiaries for adult number of persons killed there at perhaps 10,000 euthanasia. This time he furnished the go-ahead for (p.161). Wecan only assume then that the total the twoinwriting. Although dated 1 September number of victims of "wild" euthanasia must be in 1939, the written expression of the Fuehrer’swish the tens of thousands.[3] wasactually signed by him in October 1939. In Mass killings of the handicapped were not coordination between the KdF and the Health confined to the Reich proper.Friedlander shows Department of the Reich Ministry of the Interior a howwith the beginning of the Second World War killing organization was set up, supported by a the killing program gradually expanded eastward. staffofsome one-hundred functionaries, including In fact, mass killings of the handicapped had fifty physicians. already occurred before the Aktion T4 killing Since April 1940 the central agencyfor centers became operational, namely in the newly- implementing adult euthanasia had been located in annexedPolish territories of the Reichsgaue amansion on Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin- Danzig-Westpreussen and Wartheland. Also, -2- H-Net Reviews following the initiative ofthe Gauleiter of the literature because only fewsurvivedtocome Prussian province of Pomerania, transports of forward to testify or to write memoirs. Friedlander German handicapped were sent to killing sites in givesthe reader a number of biographical sketches the east where a local SS battalion ( of handicapped victims. Quite a fewrealized what Wachsturmbann )under the command of SS- wasinstore for them when theyarrivedatone of Sturmbannfuehrer Kurt Eimann shot them. the killing centers. Others did not display any Beginning in early 1940, a special unit, the pathological symptoms whatsoeverbut were Sonderkommando Lange,named after its murdered solely for some alleged deviant behavior commander SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Herbert Lange, that was not in accordance with the precepts of a started evacuating state hospitals
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