Medical Films, Ethics and Euthanasia in Nazi Germany: The History of Medical Research and Teaching Films of the Reich Office for Educational Films/ Reich Institute for Films in Science and Education, 1933-1945 (review)

This analysis of medical films in Nazi Germany opens with a story of sunken treasure: During the summer of 1993, children playing along the shores of Lake Stössensee in the district of Berlin-Spandau kept discovering film clips. The children, and later professional divers, ultimately retrieved 161 reels from the muddy lake bottom. Not all were salvageable, but enough viewable fragments were recovered to reveal that these black-and-white silent films were a product of the Reich Institute for Film and Images in Science and Education (RWU), founded in the summer of 1934. Contained in the clips were numerous images of medical experiments, particularly relating to the Nazis' child euthanasia program. Ulf Schmidt uses these images as the basis for an examination of the history of the RWU and medical educational filmmaking under the Third Reich. He illuminates how the regime used such filmmaking for political, ideological, and propaganda purposes, and what legacy this left after 1945.

Although Schmidt centers his densely packed study around the years 1933–45, he also establishes the broader historical context of discussions on health, medicine, and ethics in Germany going back through the Weimar Republic and into the Imperial period. Likewise, while he is principally interested in the role of the RWU, he also articulates the complex interrelationships between other governmental, medical, and educational organizations during the Nazi period, and the issues surrounding the consolidating and controlling of the production of educational and medical films.

After outlining the institutional structure, Schmidt moves to the particulars of using medical films to educate about racial hygiene. Again, he begins with broader contextual issues: the RWU's distinction between "instructional" and "educational" films, the power of visual images, and ethical questions such as the role of informed consent. He then outlines the two dominant approaches to producing neuropsychiatric films: that of Karl Kleist and his followers in Frankfurt, and that of Maximinian de Crinins at the Charité in Berlin.

Schmidt also seeks to highlight the importance of the so-called children's euthanasia program, both as part of the larger T-4 action and as an undertaking in its own right. After providing an overview of the children's program, he focuses on the specific case of Valentina Z, whose image also graces the front cover. Here, he juxtaposes the tests performed on her with more humane alternatives. One of the strengths in Schmidt's presentation is his discussion of the manipulative filming techniques employed—such as forced nakedness, the withholding of medications, and physical abuse—to elicit the desired patient response. He concludes this section with a discussion of using children in films and research, as well as the postwar careers of the medical personal involved.

The book's final chapter begins with a look at the postwar denazification process for educational films and the formation of new agencies to oversee their administration. Drawing a parallel to the Vicar of Bray, another historical figure who retained his position through a series of regime changes, Schmidt highlights continuities that persisted after the war. Some of these films, for example, were still used for teaching purposes into the 1980s. Schmidt provides less contextual background here than in earlier sections of the book, a deficit that may make it difficult for those less familiar with debates in the 1980s and 1990s to follow the reasons for the shift in thinking. What he chooses to do instead is to place this narrative of film production and rediscovery within a framework of transnational moral and ethical questions (What should be done with such footage? How does one remember the victims?), and...