Synopses & Reviews
Scholars exploring the history of science under the Nazis have generally concentrated on the Nazi destruction of science or the corruption of intellectual and liberal values.
Racial Hygiene focuses on how scientists themselves participated in the construction of Nazi racial policy. Robert Proctor demonstrates that the common picture of a passive scientific community coerced into cooperation with the Nazis fails to grasp the reality of what actually happened--namely, that many of the political initiatives of the Nazis arose from within the scientific community, and that medical scientists actively designed and administered key elements of National Socialist policy.
The book presents the most comprehensive account to date of German medical involvement in the sterilization and castration laws, the laws banning marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and the massive program to destroy "lives not worth living:' The study traces attempts on the part of doctors to conceive of the "Jewish problem" as a "medical problem," and how medical journals openly discussed the need to find a "final solution" to Germany's Jewish and gypsy "problems."
Proctor makes us aware that such thinking was not unique to Germany. The social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century in America and Europe gave rise to theories of racial hygiene that were embraced by enthusiasts of various nationalities in the hope of breeding a better, healthier, stronger race of people. Proctor also presents an account of the "organic" health movement that flourished under the Nazis, including campaigns to reduce smoking and drinking, and efforts to require bakeries to produce whole-grain bread. A separate chapter is devoted to the emergence of a resistance movement among doctors in the Association of Socialist Physicians. The book is based on a close analysis of contemporary documents, including German state archives and more than two hundred medical journals published during the period.
Proctor has set out not merely to tell a story but also to urge reflection on what might be called the "political philosophy of science"--how movements that shape the policies of nations can also shape the structure and priorities of science. The broad implications of this book make it of consequence not only to historians, physicians, and people concerned with the history and philosophy of science, but also to those interested in science policy and medical ethics.
Review
Proctor's carefully argued book not only forces us to reassess the dynamics of Nazism but also challenges pervasive notions about the political neutrality and objective value of science and the moral innocence of scientists...[A] provocative study. Mary Nolan
Review
A chilling indictment of the pre-war German scientific community which legitimized Nazi racial theories. New York Times Book Review
Review
It is a deeply disturbing book, concerned as it is with how fine scientific minds, many of which were at least formally committed to the practice of healing, not only "sold themselves to the devil" but, through their own theoretical musings and prejudice-tinctured social concerns, anticipated his arrival. It is an at times passionate exegesis on how "value-free" science is a disingenuous contradiction in terms and, more important, on how people who believe in so chimerical an enterprise could and can contribute to social pathology...The lessons for our own age are baldly obvious. Jewish Chronicle
Review
A valuable, disturbing treatise on the darkest chapter of modern medicine. Robert A. Pois - Science
Review
The best that has been written...A well-crafted, seminal work. Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Scholars exploring the history of science under the Nazis have generally concentrated on the Nazi destruction of science or the corruption of intellectual and liberal values. Racial Hygiene focuses on how scientists themselves participated in the construction of Nazi racial policy. Robert Proctor demonstrates that the common picture of a passive scientific community coerced into cooperation with the Nazis fails to grasp the reality of what actually happened--namely, that many of the political initiatives of the Nazis arose from within the scientific community, and that medical scientists actively designed and administered key elements of National Socialist policy.
About the Author
Robert N. Proctor, author of Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis, is Professor of History of Science at Stanford University.
Stanford University
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Origins of Racial Hygiene
2. "Neutral Racism": The Case of Fritz Lenz
3. Political Biology: Doctors in the Nazi Cause
4. The Sterilization Law
5. The Control of Women
6. Anti-Semitism in the German Medical Community
7. The Destruction of "Lives Not Worth Living"
8. The "Organic Vision" of Nazi Racial Science
9. Medical Resistance: The Association of Socialist Physicians
10. The Politics of Knowledge
Epilogue. Postwar Legacies
Appendix A: German Medical journals under the Nazis
Appendix B: University and Research Institutes Devoted to Racial Hygiene
Bibliography
Notes
Index