The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

MICHAEL BURLEIGH
and Nazi Germany in this respect, as in many others. The psychiatrists (with
some exceptions) were neither cranks nor sadists. They initially wanted to reform
the system in favor of the patients, both by providing better conditions and by
coming up with better methods of treatment. At the same time they felt responsible
toward society as a whole, and therefore wanted to save economic resources,
and were frustrated as professionals when their methods failed to cure patients.
Exposed to the scientific and ideological rhetoric of eugenics and social-
Darwinism, and under pressure from the Nazi regime, they reverted to a role of
cleansing society from an economic burden and an allegedly racially polluting
segment of the population. In the words of another scholar, Robert Jay Lifton,
they were transformed from healers to killers. Those in charge of the murder of
mentally handicapped people were then transferred directly to organize,
administer, and carry out the genocide of the Jews. The experience they gained
in the “euthanasia” campaign proved of immeasurable significance in
unleashing the Holocaust.
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