Brain Science under the Swastika: Ethical Violations, Resistance, and Victimization of Neuroscientists in Nazi Europe

by Lawrence A. Zeidman

Overview

Eighty years ago the largest genocide ever occurred in Nazi Europe. This began with the mass extermination of patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders that Hitler's regime considered "useless eaters".

The neuropsychiatric profession was systematically "cleansed" beginning in 1933, but racism and eugenics had infiltrated the specialty long before that. With the installation of Nazi-principled neuroscientists, mass forced sterilization was enacted, which transitioned to patient murder by the start of World War II. But the murder of roughly 275,000 patients was not enough. The patients' brains were stored and used in scientific publications both during and long after the war. Also, patients themselves were used for unethical experiments. Relatively few neuroscientists resisted the Nazis, with some success in the occupied countries. Most neuroscientists involved in unethical actions continued their careers unscathed after the war. Few answered for their actions, and few repented.

The legacy of such a depraved era in the history of neuroscience and medical ethics is that codes now exist to protect patients and research subjects. But this protection is possibly subject to political extremes and individual neuroscientists can only protect patients and colleagues if they understand the dangers of a utilitarian, unethical, and uncompassionate mindset.

Brain Science under the Swastika is the only comprehensive and scholarly published work regarding the ethical and professional abuses of neuroscientists during the Nazi era. The author has crafted a scathing tour de force exploring the extremes of ethical abuse, but also ways that this can be resisted and hopefully prevented by future generations of neuroscientists and physicians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198728634
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/26/2020
Pages:	784
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 6.90(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Lawrence A. Zeidman, Associate Professor of Neurology and Bioethics, Loyola University Medical Center, USA

Dr. Zeidman is from Chicagoland and is a board-certified clinical neurologist and neuromuscular specialist, along with being a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, with joint appointments in the Department of Neurology and the Neiswanger Institute of Bioethics. In addition to being Neuro-history Associate Editor for the Journal of Child Neurology, Dr. Zeidman has taught seminars on historical-ethical issues in neuroscience. He has been awarded the prestigious Rockefeller Archive Center Grant-in-Aid, has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, and has presented his works internationally. He also was instrumental in naming two neuroscientists as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Yad Vashem Museum for resistance against the Nazis.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: "The secret to reconciliation is remembering." Historiography, challenges, and relevance of neuroscience in the Nazi era to modern neuroscientists2. The origins of Nazi persecution and victimization of neuroscientists in Germany, Austria, and Poland3 "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Neuroscientists help advance scientific racism and adopt eugenics and racial hygiene theories.4. Setting the stage for mass murder and human experimentation: the Nazification of German neurology5. Gleichschaltung and "de-Jewification" in German university neurology departments6. Neuroscience becomes "Aryanized" at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Germany7. Austrian and Czech neuroscience becomes "coordinated" under National Socialism8. Forced sterilization under the Nazis: preventing people with neuropsychiatric disorders from polluting the German gene pool9. Hitler wages war on Europe, and on neuropsychiatric patients: neuroscientists introduce the ultimate negative eugenic measure10. "Beautiful mental defectives" and "lovely idiots": Neuroscientists collaborate with mass murder and collect thousands of brains11. Just "rabbits": Unethical neuroscientific experimentation on euthanasia victims12. "Protesting against an avalanche": resistance by neuroscientists inside and outside Germany demonstrating the ordinariness of goodness over the banality of evil13. "Washing the black sheep white again": Was German neuroscience rehabilitated after the collapse of the Third Reich? 14. Epilogue: Neuroscience in the Nazi era meets the modern age - ongoing legacies and controversies

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Alain Touwaide, PhD (Ronin Institute)
Description: Ethical considerations have always haunted medicine, from the most remote times to present day. This book is about this crucial question in the particularly difficult time of Nazi Germany. It is a meticulous examination of how Nazi Germany, including German physicians and scientists in that time, coped with an ideology that ignored ethics.
Purpose: The goal of the book is clearly expressed since the very beginning: "The secret to reconciliation is remembering," or, "There can be no prevention without remembering." The agenda is set: whatever the horror, it should never be forgotten, not only to possibly look at the future, but also (if not more than anything) avoid repetition of inconceivable practices. Even though this might be seen as a biased use of history, historical ethics requires one to delve into any topic no matter how difficult it might be.
Audience: This is almost a scientific report about the program for "race cleaning" promoted by Nazi Germany. It is an extremely well documented sum of information supported by a vast apparatus of scientific literature, photographic material, documentary evidence, and any other supportive data. It is not a book to be read, but a work to be studied, pen in hand, going back and forth between the presentation of data and the endnotes (footnotes would have been much better).
Features: Although this massive sum of information is about the practice of Nazi Germany, it is also, in an indirect way, about the neuropsychiatric profession and the way it behaved during the German Nazi years. The book shows how members of the profession not only enacted the Nazi program, but also built on it, collecting data, preserving biological material, and pursuing research. The history here is double: on the upper level, it is that of the practices of Nazy Germany for a supposed betterment of population; but, at a subterranean level, it is also the history of the complacency of a profession, which illustrates the fragility of medical ethics, the relativity of codes, and the possibly constant threat of politics.
Assessment: This is a cumbersome yet necessary mass of information. A model of historical investigation into a painful territory, way beyond horror. The totally inconceivable that could become a reality thanks to complacency. Not a book to be read, but a dossier, a piece of archive to be studied upon, and for several reasons: reading the past to possibly try to understand the un-understandable, being informed so as to co-exist with an unbearable past, and, possibly more than anything, to become aware of the dangers of political intrusion(s) into a profession to possibly preempt any future repetition of the unthinkable.

Doody's Review Service

"The history here is double: on the upper level, it is that of the practices of Nazi Germany for a supposed betterment of population; but, at a subterranean level, it is also the history of the complacency of a profession, which illustrates the fragility of medical ethics, the relativity of codes, and the possibly constant threat of politics." — Alain Touwaide, PhD, UCLA, Doody's Review Service

"And this book is timely: despite the appalling abuse of human life by doctors in the Third Reich, the clash between the demands of research and medical ethics is as relevant today as it has ever been..." — Giles MacDonogh, Brain

"Encyclopaedic yet profoundly humanistic - never has such a profound analysis been presented on the little-known history of neuroscience and medical ethics during the Nazi era" — Hendrik van den Bussche, author of Medical Science in the Third Reich and Hamburg University Medicine in National Socialism; Former Director, Institute of Primary Medical Care and Health Services Research, University Medical Center, Germany

"Drawing upon his years of research, Zeidman provides a detailed overview of the involvement of neuroscience in Nazi medical crimes, the persecution of Jewish neuroscientists, and the resistance of individual neuroscientists both inside and outside Germany. Anyone who wants to deal with this topic in the future will not be able to do without this book" — Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Faculty for History, Philosophy, and Theology, Bielefeld University, Germany

"Zeidman details the biographies of German-speaking psychiatrists with Jewish roots, revealing their disproportionate contributions to their specialty. At the same time, he shows the viciousness with which the Nazi regime persecuted these experts after January 1933. This book is a milestone in the historiography of the medical profession in modern times" — Michael H. Kater, author of Doctors under Hitler; Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of History, York University, Toronto

"Zeidman explores critical facets of epistemology, ethical changes, as well as adversities in the medical research community during National Socialism, 1933 to 1945. In our current climate of global political upheavals and forced migration movements, this is a very timely and cautioning book" — Frank W. Stahnisch, AMF, Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine and Health Care, The University of Calgary, Canada

From the Publisher