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Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser: the Road to Medical Murder

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Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser: the Road to Medical Murder KARL GEBHARDT AND HERTA OBERHEUSER: THE ROAD TO MEDICAL MURDER CHRISTINE ELEANOR CLARKE Master of Arts in History Nipissing University 2013 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this Thesis or Major Research Paper. I authorize Nipissing University to lend this Thesis or Major Research Paper to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Nipissing University to reproduce this Thesis or Dissertation by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. Nazi doctors violated the inherent trust and intimacy of the medical profession by conducting experiments on non-consenting concentration camp prisoners. Focusing on Dr. Karl Gebhardt and Dr. Herta Oberheuser, it became clear that perpetrators of medical crimes shared sociological and biographical factors that affected their decision to join and participate in the violence of Nazism in spite of the demands placed upon them by their profession to heal and not harm. Furthermore, their work relationship, shaped by Nazi and gender ideology, had a significant impact on how they operated within the concentration camp system, and later, how they were perceived in an American military trial. By examining a male superior and a female subordinate, the influence of gender was revealed not only in the primary court documentation, but also in the current historiography. Connecting sociology with biography enables a more complete understanding of the historic individual that proves invaluable given that many more recent interpretations of Gebhardt and especially Oberheuser have been coloured by sentiment and moral judgment. Clarke 1 The relationship between doctors and patients is special in that it requires trust and intimacy uncommon to many professional relationships. Through this connection, doctors are able to identify, explain, and remove pain. 1 Among the many questions regarding the medical experiments to be undertaken at the behest of the Nazi regime, is the question of how doctors could cause pain and deliberately think up ways to cause pain, when it is their professional calling to diagnose and get rid of it. Though factors vary by individual perpetrators, in the cases of Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser, generational cohorts, gender, and biography provide significant indicators as to what would motivate successful, intelligent medical professionals to make of a healing art, a killing method. While the majority of doctors under the Nazi regime (1933-1945) led benign wartime existences, Dr. Karl Gebhardt (1897-1948) and Dr. Herta Oberheuser (1911-1978) participated in medical experiments sanctioned by the Nazi regime for the purposes of improving battle conditions for German soldiers. They used the inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, located north of Berlin, as test subjects in a number of these experiments between 1942-1943. For instance, to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide, a drug used to combat infections sustained on the front lines; Gebhardt and Oberheuser would inflict a wound on the patient’s leg and inject the healthy tissue with bacteria such as streptococcus, gas gangrene, and tetanus. Such wounds were deemed inaccurate to battle conditions. To better simulate wounds attained on the battlefield, blood flow was restricted to the area of operation and pieces of wood or glass were introduced to aggravate the infection. Some patients received sulfanilamide. Others received different drugs.2 Some received no medication. Patients did die as a result of this experiment. 1 Oliver Garceau, “The Morals of Medicine.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 363 (1966), 60-69, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1036469 (accessed July 28, 2013) 60. 2 Indictment, Count Two–War Crimes. October 25, 1946, Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, vol.1, 12, http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war- Others experienced severe pain and, in many cases, remained ill for extended periods of time afterward. In certain cases, additional reparative surgeries were required.3 In the case of Nazi Germany, doctors were among the earliest, most eager and in some instances, most zealous perpetrators of war crimes. Statistically, physicians joined the ranks of the Third Reich in large numbers very early on in the regime. Nearly 73 percent of male physicians between 1933-1945 were affiliated with the Nazis.4 Of that 73 percent, 35 percent were involved in the National Socialist German Doctors Association (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund or NSDÄB). For women, 52 percent of physicians were affiliated with Nazism, while 10 percent were involved in the NSDÄB, impressive given that many women were removed from or left practicing medicine and returned to their homes to practice domesticity.5 Where gender, generational cohorts and biography are key, is in methodology. Nazism, marked by fascist ultra-nationalism, anti-semitism, biological/racial tenets, and the desire to create a Utopian society made up of a racially superior citizenry, is also a very gendered political ideology.6 When applied to a society, Nazism creates very gendered roles for individual citizens. Herta Oberheuser and Karl Gebhardt were both working within this social system, not only as individuals, but in relation to each other. Using both Gebhardt and Oberheuser provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the differences experienced and exhibited by female and male perpetrators, as analyzing them separately, in accordance with Joan Scott’s notion that gender is relational, would provide an incomplete picture of the one, while sacrificing the other criminals_Vol-I.pdf (accessed August 6, 2012). 3 Selection from the Argumentation of the Prosecution, Extract from the Closing Brief Against Defendant Gebhardt. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, vol.1, 358- 360, http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war-criminals_Vol-I.pdf (accessed August 6, 2012),. 4 Michael H. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 252. 5 Ibid. 6 Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2002), 10. entirely.7 Gender then, is the relationship between the roles of men and women, in addition to how these roles developed within a Nazi cultural context. In the cases studied by Wendy Lower and Irmtraud Heike, the expectations of female perpetrators differed greatly from those of men. Women were treated more harshly than men in post-war and legal contexts. At the same time, present day historians have also been guilty of gendering subjects and creating character assumptions based on gendered material. Michael Kater is a principal offender when concerning Oberheuser’s portrayal as an evil, single-mindedly driven, cold woman. Meanwhile, when considering Gebhardt as a subject, his masculinity is often explained through his military experiences, or through his work relationship with Herta Oberheuser. In many ways, using a gendered approach inextricably links these subjects together. Gebhardt’s masculinity is in part tied to Herta Oberheuser as he was the one to seek her out and take her on as his assistant. Herta Oberheuser’s portrayal during and after the war has a great deal to do with her medical past, a past she could not have lived were it not for the experiences made possible by Gebhardt. A gendered approach is also important in order to establish a clearer understanding of gender identity, particularly concerning Oberheuser. Bonnie Smith has argued that the gender characteristics of female professional historians, though the same is applicable to medical sciences at a university and professional level, were more blurred and has suggested that the identities of these past women academics could not be as neatly defined by the feminine and masculine dichotomy.8 As Oberheuser steps outside of typical feminine norms of behaviour, it is necessary to analyze how, why and to what degree she deviated from gendered norms. 7 Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review, vol. 91. 5 (1986), 1053-1075, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1864376 (Accessed January 28, 2013) 1054. 8 Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000), 186. In terms of generational cohorts, it would be negligent to deny or ignore the impact of Gebhardt and Oberheuser’s upbringing on their medical crimes. Michael Wildt, Michael Mann and Hilary Earl have all clearly demonstrated that perpetrators, outside of their Nazi related killings, had ordinary lives with a few common, extraordinary factors that made entering the murderous ranks of the Nazi party less morally or ethically questionable. The frameworks expounded upon by Wildt, Mann, and Earl can be applied to the early lives of Oberheuser and Gebhardt. While Gebhardt can be considered an old fighter, a survivor of World War I, a student radical who attended the Nazi Putsch in 1923, and thus can easily be slotted into the existing framework, so too can Oberheuser, in spite of her gender and in spite of her lack of martial experience. Obviously too young to participate in the war, had her gender permitted, Oberheuser was old enough to witness her father leave for the front, she was old enough to recall the effects of the depression, and was just as vulnerable, via her relationship with her father and the result of the war, to fall victim to early Nazi propaganda. For the few reasons briefly listed above, biography is absolutely necessary to even begin understanding the motivations of perpetrators. Without biography, the actions carried out by Gebhardt and Oberheuser lack context. Regardless of deed, they are individuals who made decisions, were swayed, acted, reacted, and ultimately did so toward some end. For Gehhardt, the slide from healer to murderer was ideological. He bought into the ideology and as a result, he was able to carry out orders that moved him higher and higher in the Nazi hierarchy.
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