Ellie Midwood's Reviews > The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

I read this a few years ago for research purposes but as it turns out, I never wrote a review for it. This study is absolutely fundamental for understanding the phenomena of medical killing and the psychology of the nazi doctors performing euthanasia and graduating to becoming the main perpetrators in the Auschwitz genocide. After conducting multiple interviews with the surviving nazi doctors, Dr. Lifton completed an unparalleled study that allows a rare glimpse into a psyche of a healer turned killer following the nazi indoctrination and succumbing to its pseudo-scientific goals and methods. By explaining how the idea of “healing” the German nation by turning it against “the enemy” - the Jews - gradually led to an experimental phase (euthanasia T4 program) and later, to the actual industrial scale annihilation of millions, Dr. Lifton paints a truly terrifying picture of a similar transformation that the nazi doctors were undergoing. Explaining their coping mechanisms from a psychiatrist’s POV, Dr. Lifton explains how seemingly decent men could turn into sadistic monsters experimenting on human beings as though they were guinea pigs and performing selections on the Auschwitz ramp under the pretext of the medical - and ideological - necessity. Some adapted astonishingly quickly and even thrived in the hell of Auschwitz (Dr. Mengele); the rare few refused to have anything to do with the atrocities and tried their best to remain healers. But each doctor underwent a similar transformation, the doubling as Dr. Lifton calls it, in order to preserve their psyche and protect it from self-destruction as the sense of guilt would be far too overwhelming. I could go on and on about this study, but you really should read it for yourself to truly appreciate its historical and scientific value. A must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the Holocaust and the doctors’ role in it.