World War I ended in November 1918, at the end of a wave of influenza epidemics among soldiers. It is possible that the German political and military leadership saw the epidemic, which drastically reduced the number of able soldiers, as the main factor for which surrender should be declared. The plague intensified around the world after the war, causing losses and suffering to dimensions that overshadowed the war itself. A state of weakness is typical of the post-war period. In this case it caused suffering on a scale that overshadowed the war itself. The social impacts of the epidemic were worldwide. They have led to general weakness of the international political system. Hiding information from the public about the extent, military significance of the epidemic, its severe social impact and the danger of psychiatric complications, constituted the habitat for the far-right and Nazi party in Germany.
Support for the Nazis reached a peak among German doctors. Three-quarters of German doctors were members of the Nazi party. There was no social group in Germany that joined them on such a large scale. A significant number of them joined the SS. The Nazi party promised health care reforms and doctors saw the need for an immediate change in the national medical system so that new tools such as X-rays and statistical records of the entire population, would help prevent the spread of epidemics.
X-ray was a state-of-the-art technology that allowed anyone to take part in the Nazis' new social experiment. X-rays have a transparency similar to that of the air element. Statistics cards were another component of health care reform. The doctors' new motto was to keep documents and numbers. The medical computing of the entire German population began. Racial theory was seen as complementary to the reform of the German public health system. Racial theory ensured the efficiency of the system, both by eliminating hopeless patients and by eliminating in any way the non-Nordic minority, the Jews and the rest of the dark-skinned, whose presence in Germany was inconsistent with the new and severe health norms. The "gracefull killing" and the "killing of the Jews" complemented each other, within the framework of Nazi medicine. They reflected the Nazi political schizophrenia. They were bound together under the value of the Supreme Man.
According to Gaston Bashelar, in the infinite air the dimensions are erased and we come into contact with a dimensionless substance that gives us a sense of complete inner purification. Having arrived with the help of the air so far and high, the mind is carried on uncontrollably. Eager to try the reality of the upper air, the imagination in its entirety will double any impression by adding a new image to it. In this transformation, the imagination expresses one of its ambiguous flowers, blurring the colors of good and evil and violating the most stable laws governed by the values of humanity. The end result of this longing may be a moral ambiguity.
On January 30, 1933, the Nazis came to power, by a large majority of the German people. Hitler promised "a healthy Germany" and the doctors sent a letter of congratulations to the new Chancellor: "The German doctors are very pleased to be in the service of patriotism, and swear to fulfill their duty with maximum loyalty, as servants of the nation's health''. Their motto became: "Work for the Fuhrer". On June 2, 1935, the ''Nazi School of Leadership in the Medical Professions'' was opened in a picturesque village in northern Germany. Physicians were trained in it to apply the laws of racial theory: heredity, reproduction, selection, the survival of the strong. The participants in the courses were doctors from various fields, as well as nurses. They lived in barracks and underwent a training regime similar to that of soldiers. The culmination of each course was the ceremonial swearing-in at the end, in which the students declared: "We will be honest, faithful and friends only to our brothers in blood, and to no one else''. The school trained the leaders of Nazi medicine to carry out euthanasia effectively and for their roles in the extermination facilities and concentration camps.
A flood of laws cancelled the Jewish doctors' rights. Their registration in the German health system was initially denied, which was in effect an economic sentence. They were then required to hang a Star of David on the office sign and to use the middle name "Israel" to identify themselves as Jewish. They were allowed to treat only Jewish patients. About 9,000 Jewish doctors lost thetr career. Most of them left Germany. Very few have succeeded in re-establishing themselves. The ban on engaging in their profession pushed many of them into desperate acts of suicide. Others were murdered at the extermination facilities. Established and profitable clinics of Jewish physicians were taken by non-Jews and became "Arian", as it was called.
Among many Nazi doctors there were some whose teachers, students, colleagues, friends and even family members were Jews. Physicians, more than any other sector of the population, could and did appreciate the intellectual and human level of the Jews and their importance to Germany. They became criminals, as they gained a huge direct profit when they took the place of the many Jewish doctors.
Dr. Eugen Fischer was one of the founders of the race theory and the founder of the Genetic Institute in Berlin in 1927. Fischer was in the life sciences for the Nazis what Carl Haushofer was in the social sciences. Fisher gave the Nazis the appearance of scientific legitimacy. Fischer's writings were incorporated into "Main Kampf" and he was quoted by Hitler in many of his speeches, already the world authority on the subject.
Dr. Karl Brandt was Hitler's personal physician, who was asked by him to run the "euthanasia" program in the period before World War II. What began as solutions to the plight of a few citizens who had severly disabled family members, became an industry in which hundreds of thousands of patients were murdered on the basis of superficial judgment. The methods and teams employed under this program were transferred during the war to the extermination facilities of the Jews.
Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on humans, stood for about two years, almost daily, on the ramp in Auschwitz and classified those who came to "right - left" according to their ability to work. He is the embodiment of the monster in man, which is the inevitable development of race theory.
After the war, senior members of Nazi medicine were tried in what became known as the "Doctors' Trial" in Nuremberg, which was conducted after the better-known "Nuremberg trials" of senior Nazi officials and in the same courtroom. A total of 23 doctors were on trial, six of them from the Nazi Air Force. The Minister of Health of the Reich, K.Venetti, committed suicide before the trial in his cell in Nuremberg. During the trial, the full scope of the role of physicians in the Holocaust was revealed. The aversion to them led to the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on Medical Ethics.
This is what the chief prosecutor in the trail, Talford Taylor, said about the defendants' responsibility: ''Doctors were pioneers who paved the way for the Holocaust. They defined the ''Jewish race'' and they wrote the racial reports that sent Jews to the extermination camps. Doctors stood on the platform in Auschwitz and selected twins, dwarves and others, for medical experiments. They tore up families. Everyone had to appear before a doctor. Children under the age of 14, all women and the elderly, were immediately sent to the gas chambers. The test lasted 2-3 seconds, then the doctor pointed his thumb. Doctors implemented the fanatical racial policy of the Nazis, whether as their executors or as executioners. Doctors determined the lethal gas dose. Doctors monitored the killing process. Doctors ordered the stripping of the bodies and the search for gold fillings in the teeth. Doctors were masters of life and death, co-responsible for the murder of millions. Some may have been sadists who killed and tortured for pleasure. But not everyone. They are not ignorant people. Most are skilled doctors and some are respected scientists. We must clearly state the ideas and motives that motivated the defendants to treat humans as inferiors to animals. The distorted thoughts and distorted perceptions that caused these atrocities did not perish. Cannot be killed by force of arms. The distorted thoughts and distorted perceptions that led to the trial did not develop in neighborhood bars, but in well-known scientific institutions.''
The verdict in the trial of the Nazi doctors was given on 20/8/1947. The execution of six of them, led by Brandt, took place on June 2, 1948. The prosecution does not appear to have succeeded in clarifying the motives of the Nazi doctors. Despite the clear proof of their crimes, in the face of the firm determination about the quality of their personality and sanity, their motives have remained a mystery so far. Similar to what happened to Rudolf Hess, Nazi doctors became one of the symbols of neo-Nazi Germany. They, too, became an unsolved riddle. The human imagination failed to unite their personalities with their exploits and they remained a '‘fascinating riddle'’. The only explanation is that they arrived with the help of the air so far and high, that their mind was carried on uncontrollably.
The Nazi regime had two systems of operations. There were two types of orders and directives: the official and accepted and the ideological and voluntary. The official system behaved according to the accepted norms of cultural society, the rule of law, individual freedom and the like. The unofficial system did not recognize any norms or laws. It was arbitrary and uncontrolled, untidy. The two systems overlapped, and acted side by side. This means that in the official system the norms gradually became invalid and at the same time, in the unofficial system a normal-looking code of laws was built. Anyone who was interested in improving his socio-economic status volunteered for the informal system.
Joseph Mengele was the epitome of the satanic evil of the Nazi regime. Mengele's conscience acted as a scientist. He was a scientist who justified what he did by thinking that purpose sanctifies means. His split personality is the individual end of the process that began with Nazi ideological dualism and continued with the splitting of the implementation systems in the regime. The absence of a humanity has become his only certainty. The irony is that while modern-day genetics researchers are trying to find the genes that causes schizophrenia, the most prominent schizophrenics in human history have been genetics researchers with pagan moral hygiene.
