In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich by Sheila Faith Weiss
  • James F. Tent, Ph.D.
Keywords

Nazi medicine, genetics, human experimentation, bioethics

Sheila Faith Weiss . The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2010. 383 pp., illus., $45.00.

Dr. Weiss treats an important subject, namely the seduction of German medical specialists, i.e., geneticists, by Hitler's National Socialist movement. It led them from legitimate research in genetics down the path to forced sterilization, euthanasia, and ultimately collaboration in dubious, even atrocious medical experiments on human beings in concentration camps and extermination camps.

With considerable justification, she treats this subject at the outset as a "Faustian Bargain" reminiscent of Goethe and other great literati in treating Dr. Faustus as the intellectual/scientist who concludes a bargain to sell his soul for universal knowledge, a bargain the latter comes to regret. So too, did the German scientists of the early twentieth century who were seduced by seemingly scientific advances from the time of Darwin up to Germany's defeat in 1945 with subsequent revelations of mass murder of "undesirables."

Commendably, Weiss investigates the archival records of several prominent and representative German scientists who were intimately involved in the original eugenics movement that morphed into euthanasia, morally reprehensible medical experiments upon concentration victims, and ultimately the Holocaust. The author refers to their compromised scientific outlook with good reason as a "Faustian Bargain." [End Page 321]

Weiss concentrates upon select scientists, including psychiatrist and geneticist Ernst Ruedin, anthropologist and geneticist Ottmar von Verschuer, and zoologist and geneticist Hans Nachtsheim plus many other anthropologists, geneticists, and medical scientists who were concerned with inherited diseases, but who directed their research into more nebulously defined categories of "undesirables" in society.

Usually, the most prominent scientists did not actually get their hands dirty in examining the "lesser" human beings that came under Nazi scrutiny. After all, Ottmar von Verschuer left it to his "ablest" assistant, Joseph Mengele, to convey to him the results of his researches about twins at Auschwitz.

Just as important as identifying German scientists in the Nazi era who compromised their moral compass, the author points out a whole host of international scientists in the first half of the twentieth century who contributed to the international eugenics movement, some of whom seemed indifferent to the notion of euthanasia or at the very least indifferent to involuntary sterilization of the "unfit." Americans, Britons, Scandinavians, and other supposedly "pure" races had hosted their full share of scientists who enthusiastically adopted an attitude of hostility toward those whom they perceived as being inferior human specimens within society who must be isolated and prevented from reproduction. That outlook also led to such practices as forced sterilization and isolation from the rest of society if not outright murder as happened under the Nazis' "T-4" euthanasia program of 1939-41, followed by the mass murders associated with the Holocaust.

Weiss traces this "symbiosis"—or better yet "Faustian Bargain"—well as she places a spotlight on the activities of key individuals listed above plus their many associates, both domestic and international. She does so for good reason. Many—too many—of these prominent social behavioral/medical scientists evaded a postwar reckoning by reinventing themselves as simply geneticists. Thus, von Verscheuer, Doktorvater and enabler for his assistant, Joseph Mengele, reverted after 1945 to his prewar profile as a pious Catholic and retreated into the sanctuary of the strongly Catholic city of Muenster with its famed university for the rest of his career, unmolested right up to his death in an automobile accident in 1969. His connection to Mengele was conveniently forgotten.

Hans Nachtsheim faired equally well, capping a long career with a professorship at, of all places, the Free University of Berlin and emphasizing his anticommunist credentials up to his death in 1955. Ernst Ruedin had tried to flee back into his native Switzerland in May 1945 but was caught by American military authorities and imprisoned. An unsavory character who had been permitted to carry a gun for his personal safety under the Nazis, Ruedin nevertheless succeeded in avoiding lengthy imprisonment [End Page 322...

pdf

Share