Terrible methods of psychiatry: idiots have no right to exist

Perhaps Nazi Germany accomplished more in this area. To improve the nation, the ideologues of the Third Reich sentenced tens of thousands of mentally ill patients to death. They were gas poisoned and burned in ovens.

In the early 20th century, eugenics became very popular with scientists. Social romantics believed that, in accordance with their principles, it was possible to create a “great new world” as soon as possible, inhabited by happy, highly intelligent and strong moral citizens, he writes slow.ru.

A practical method of achieving such a utopia would be a careful selection of human “raw material”. According to Eugenics, the principles that are effective in raising new and more productive cereals and improving livestock breeds can also be applied to humans: reproduction of the best species should be encouraged and defective individuals should be discarded and not they must be allowed to produce offspring.

If we allow the physically and mentally inferior to have children, our race will quickly degenerate.

The great thinkers of his time, Carl Gustav Jung, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Emil Kraepelin, were fascinated by the ideas of social hygiene and their practical application in life … Often in their most radical forms.

For example, Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist who developed the theory of schizophrenia, suggested mass sterilization of the mentally ill: “Those affected by a serious illness should not have offspring. If we allow the physically and mentally inferior to have children, our race will quickly degenerate. ”

Hans FK Günther, a well-known German anthropologist, similarly said: “Until sterilization is provided by law, state funds will be wasted on the education of the disabled and disabled, and as a result the level of education of the nation will be seen affected. Reducing their fertility would save a lot of money and could be given to children from poor families who, despite their good hereditary characteristics, live in poverty. ”

Two professors from the University of Freiburg proposed a solution to the problem of radical cleansing of harmful people. In 1920, they published a co-authored book, The Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life). In it, scientists argued that “idiots have no right to exist, and killing them is a legitimate and useful act.”

One of the book’s authors, Alfred Hoche, a professor of psychiatry, said that “some people are a drag that causes mere discomfort and is an economic burden on others.” Another author, law professor Karl Binding, recommended the immediate establishment of special commissions to liquidate these people.

Alexis Carrel, France’s Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, proposed “human and wasteful spending on people with mental illness in small euthanasia facilities using the right gas.”

All of these ideas were later implemented.

The hunt for “moral weaknesses”

The ideas widely discussed in society at the time seemed to be close to Adolf Hitler, who began his political career in the early 1930s. In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and on July 14, the The Reich government passed legislation on the forced sterilization of citizens who, according to medical records, should not have children.

At the same time, the Marriage and Marriage Act was passed, which states that brothers, sisters, and children of people with hereditary disabilities who are apparently healthy can only celebrate childless marriages. Furthermore, upon marriage, it was desirable that young people not only exchange health certificates, but also present certificates on the characteristics inherited from their families.

Since 1935, inheritance testing has become mandatory in marriage, and sterilization of “poor” people has become widespread.

Sterilization decisions were made by special hereditary health courts. Sterilization was automatically prescribed for people suffering from dementia, schizophrenia, manic depressive psychosis, epilepsy, blindness and congenital deafness, and a complete list of genetic diseases. Chronic alcoholics with tuberculosis, syphilis, and gonorrhea were not eligible for offspring.

Decisions to carry out forced sterilization were based on the concept of “moral insanity”, which could be applied to a large circle of people who did not meet the standards of National Socialist Germany.

Those who “failed to recognize accepted standards of behavior in society,” “failed to maintain profitable homes,” or “failed to realize the responsibility of raising children” could be considered moral weaknesses. Children could also be included in the category of weak habits, both chronically lagging in science and haunted by bedwetting.

An estimated 6,000 sterilization victims died on the operating table alone, and the same number of subsequent complications.

Following the decision, the police released the convicted person to the hospital for forced sterilization. If someone managed to hide, a national search was published.

Surgical interventions often resulted in complications. The Nazis made no exceptions even for children, whose sterilization before genital formation is very risky. An estimated 6,000 sterilization victims died on the operating table alone, and the same number of subsequent complications. Suicides were not uncommon.

In total, from 1933 to 1945, between 360 and 450 thousand people underwent forced sterilization. German. Surprisingly, they are not yet legally recognized as victims of Nazism. Furthermore, none of the doctors working in the hereditary health courts were punished for their actions after the war.

The time without the mentally ill

However, according to the Nazis, forced sterilization was only a mediocre measure.

“We all passionately want an era in which there are no mental illnesses or dementia in the world, both inside and outside of hospitals. How wonderful it would be to live in a world where everything is perfect and everyone is happy, “said Arthur Gütt, professor of medicine, head of the Board of Population Policy and Genealogy of the SS General Board of Race and Accommodation.

An effective way to make the world perfect and make everyone happy has been known for a long time. According to legend, it was invented in the 15th century by the Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes, also known as Dracula. Concerned about the appearance of too many poor, refugees and disabled in his state, Dracula ordered to gather them all in a specially built palace and serve them full of food and wine.

And when the poor, sick, and crippled had fun, Dracula asked them, “Don’t you want to miss nothing again and never have to cry for anything?” They all cried out hopefully, “We wish, my lord!” to close the palace and burn it with all the people, and then he said to the nobles: “Let there be no more poor, sick or crippled in my land, that they do not disturb people or torment themselves.”

A. Hitler did the same, only to save so much at the party.

In December 1939, Hitler concluded that terminally ill and mentally retarded inferiors should be exterminated not only to protect the purity of the Aryan race, but also for economic reasons. They don’t work and maintaining them requires a lot of budget money.

The euthanasia program was codenamed T4.

At that time, the trials had already destroyed the inhabitants of the shelters for the mentally retarded in the annexed territories of Poland. Since then, and in Germany itself, doctors have been tasked with “giving terminally ill people the opportunity to die in peace.” Toxic carbon monoxide was chosen for “silent death” in gas chambers that were specially installed in German psychiatric hospitals. The euthanasia program was codenamed T4.

Red cross victims

Hitler appointed Philip Bouhler, head of his chancellery, SS Obergrupenfiurer, and Karl Brandt, personal physician, responsible for implementing the T4 program. The new service was established in Berlin, in the fourth building on Tirgartenstraße. Hence the code name of the euthanasia program.

T4 staff calculated the number of German citizens subject to ‘disinfection’ (a term found in official documents along with euthanasia) according to a formula. 70 thousand left. The work was carried out in good faith and already in the first two years 72,000 were “disinfected”.

The selection of candidates was made by 42 experts from the Reich’s most respected team of psychiatrists. They did not personally examine patients, but relied on specially designed patient questionnaires, which doctors in German psychiatric hospitals had to complete.

Selection was based on the following criteria: inability to do manual labor (eg, glue boxes), more than five years in the hospital, criminal history, and non-Aryan descent. The most common victims of euthanasia were patients with a diagnosis of “schizophrenia”.

Three of the four patients with this diagnosis were sentenced to myriop. Although even the definition of this term itself had no clear limits (it still is these days), and doctors were perceived in a very subjective way. Both patients with unclear diagnoses and malignant offenders of the hospital regimen could become schizophrenic.

Disinfection has also been used in patients with epilepsy, encephalitis, congenital or senile dementia without further consideration. The lists also included the terminally ill, the paralyzed, and the inability to care for themselves.

Both patients with unclear diagnoses and malignant offenders of the hospital regimen could become schizophrenic.

In case of a positive decision, the experts crossed the red cross, in the case of a negative: a blue minus sign. However, since the problem was responsible and resulted in life, much less in the eyes of National Socialism, but still human life, the initial findings were passed on to three high-level experts for approval.

They reviewed the questionnaires and marked their comments in the lower right corner: “yes”, “no” or “doubtful”. All doubtful cases were referred to the lead expert, who made the final decision. There should have been no errors. Neither the patients convicted of myriop nor their relatives could influence the decision in any way, and in many cases they did not even know it.

The psychiatric hospital staff who completed the questionnaires also did not know about the true purpose of the questionnaires. An order from the German Ministry of Health stated that this information was necessary for budget planning. Understandably, hospital staff were interested in obtaining better funding, so they often exaggerated their patients’ level of work disability.

Furnaces near Elba castle

Serious discussions have started among German academics about the most reliable and humane technologies to kill the mentally ill. Options such as intravenous administration of toxic drugs, barbiturate overdose, injection of air into the circulatory system to cause gas embolism, slow diet reduction, etc. Finally, the use of carbon monoxide has been identified as the most effective method of euthanasia.

A tender was announced for the development of low-cost, high-quality gas chambers and cremation ovens that could be installed in a simple psychiatric hospital at no additional cost. Correspondence between the client (T4) and the companies involved in the design of such devices was made public during the “doctors’ case” of the Nuremberg Trials.

Gas chambers and cremation ovens in psychiatric hospitals became prototypes of larger complexes that the Nazis later used in the death camps. The experience of its use was also useful. Seven medical centers in various parts of Germany were selected and equipped accordingly to implement the “measures” of the T4 program. Each of them had their own network of smaller “clinics”.

Zonenstein Castle in Saxony became one of the largest euthanasia centers. Between 1940 and 1941, 13,720 mentally ill and mentally retarded patients in German psychiatric hospitals were destroyed in gas chambers.

The office employed more than 100 people: doctors, nurses, drivers, administrative staff, and security guards. Patients from psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes were taken to Zonenstein by bus several times a week. They were examined by a doctor in the reception department. The diagnosis was recorded in the medical history, which was later cited as the cause of death.

After the examination, the victims gathered in groups of 20-30 people and were accompanied by nurses to the basement to “bathe.” The gas chamber was tiled and looked like a bathroom. Staff closed the steel door and the doctor on duty began to release carbon monoxide into the room. Depending on the composition and resistance of the victims, the marinating process took 20 to 30 minutes.

The creators burned their bodies in two ovens. The ashes were collected in urns and sent to their loved ones, with testimonies that the patient had died of one or another serious somatic disease. The unused ashes were dumped in a landfill on the banks of the Elbe, near the castle.

“A nation, a state, a commander!”

During the “disinfection”, a powerful propaganda campaign was carried out in Germany at the same time, justifying the need to remove the “second type” of people from a brilliant National Socialist future. Popular periodicals have published articles explaining the essence and benefits of eugenics programs that purify the German race.

Economists explained the huge savings taxpayers could save by healing inferior and useless members of society, and how those funds could be used for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

Mass culture actively participated in the propaganda campaign: newspapers, magazines, radio, cinema. Couplets and anecdotes were created, and huge editions of postcards and agitation posters were published. Students wrote essays on the benefits and value of euthanasia during the final exams.

Curious excursions to psychiatric institutions for the curious were organized, during which they were persuaded to explain the irreversible consequences of mental illness and the dangers they pose to inheritance.

Nazi psychiatrists enthusiastically extended the theory to the task entrusted to it by the government. “A nation, a state, a leader!” (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!) It was the motto of the Third Reich. And all those who did not go with the majority were automatically considered enemies, perverts, degenerates or madmen.

The framework for diagnosing mental illness was expanded and new diagnoses were invented and used in practice: “masked dementia”, “endogenous (innate) reluctance to work” and “sociopathy”. A sociopath and dementia in disguise could be proclaimed useless, alcoholic, homeless, beggars. And it was possible to be a communist, anarchist, pacifist or homosexual.

In this way, psychiatrists had the opportunity to act uncontrollably in their sphere of competence, medical diagnosis became a matter of political juncture, and “treatment” became a way to eliminate unwanted elements of power.

The T4 program was officially closed in August 1941. By then, it was no longer a mystery in the country and had received universal condemnation abroad. All the information about the T4 program that reached German opponents was successfully used to create anti-Nazi propaganda.

The formal closure of the centralized state program T4 did not mean at all that the physical extermination of the mentally ill, sociopaths and dissidents stopped. The mechanism continued to function, and its methodology and controls were perfected to perfection.

Now the cleansing of German society from undesirable and antisocial elements has been reduced to a lower level. The heads of medical institutions, most of whom were already members of the National Socialist Party, were subjected to mortality plans for the patients they were entrusted with. The execution of the plans was strictly controlled.

Exact data on how many people in Germany were slaughtered between 1941 and 1945 are not available. In various sources, this number ranges from one hundred thousand to one million.

The experience gained during the T4 program has been used not only in psychiatric hospitals. Gas chambers and crematoriums were soon installed and put into operation in death camps.

In the occupied territories, the same methods were immediately applied to the population of psychiatric hospitals, boarding schools, orphanages and shelters in the occupied countries. Destroy all who cannot be used as at least temporary labor. Patients were often destroyed along with institutional staff.

According to the laws of nature

It seems that after a massive long “cleanup” of the human gene pool, mental illness had to disappear or at least have decreased significantly. But none of that happened. The percentage of people with mental disorders in society remains constant.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis destroyed or sterilized more than half a million Germans with various mental aberrations. However, as early as the 1970s, the prevalence of mental illness and serious mental illness in Germany in no way differed from similar data in other parts of the world. It is obvious that man is not capable of changing the laws of nature.