The origins of Nazi genocide : from euthanasia to the final solution

Tracing the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies, Henry Friedlander explores in chilling detail how the Nazi program of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled evolved into the systematic destruction of Jews and Gypsies. He describes how the so-called euthanasia of the handicapped provided a practical model for the later mass murder, thereby initiating the Holocaust.

The Nazi regime pursued the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped based on a belief in the biological, and thus absolute, inferiority of those groups. To document the connection between the assault on the handicapped and the Final Solution, Friedlander shows how the legal restrictions and exclusionary policies of the 1930s, including mass sterilization, led to mass murder during the war. He also makes clear that the killing centers where the handicapped were gassed and cremated served as the models for the extermination camps.

Based on extensive archival research, the book also analyzes the involvement of the German bureaucracy and judiciary, the participation of physicians and scientists, and the nature of popular opposition.

出版社周刊评论

Friedlander's study tracks the Nazi program of genocide back to 1940 with the murder of some 5000 handicapped children, euthanasia that was subsequently expanded to include disabled Jews and Gypsies. The targeting of these three groups was based on the Nazis' belief in human inequality and their determination to ``cleanse the gene pool of the German nation.'' Thus began the euthanasia program in which debate over the most efficient method of mass murder led to the construction of killing centers where crippled children were gassed and cremated. Friedlander shows that the success of the program convinced the Nazis that mass murder was technically workable, that ordinary citizens were willing to slaughter large numbers of innocent people. The killing centers became models for the extermination camps of the Final Solution. ``When all is said and done, we are still unable to grasp the reasons that seemingly normal men and women were able to commit such extraordinary crimes,'' concludes Friedlander, a history professor at Brooklyn College. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus评论

An exhaustively researched account of the ``opening act of Nazi genocide'': the murder of approximately 70,000 physically and mentally handicapped German citizens. Friedlander (History/Brooklyn College; coeditor of the 26- volume Archives of the Holocaust series) notes how Nazi political leaders, bureaucrats, physicians, and scientists believed in and brutally practiced eugenic beliefs and extended them to the conviction that there is ``life unworthy of life.'' He spells out how the so-called ``euthanasia'' program first initiated in 1939 evolved from forced sterilization of the disabled to the establishment of killing centers disguised as hospitals. As news of the program leaked out and protests mounted, Hitler ordered a halt to the program, code-named T4, in August 1941; by then, it also encompassed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and others. However, T4 continued and served as a model for the Holocaust, in which many T4 personnel participated. Friedlander's book is particularly valuable in noting the methodology of T4 and its strong parallels with that of the ``Final Solution'': the use of secrecy and deception, including sinister euphemisms (those murdered were referred to as ``decontaminated''), meticulous record-keeping by a vast bureaucracy, the technology of gas chambers, and the plunder of the victims and their families. The whole grisly story generally is told well, although Friedlander nearly buries the reader under a mountain of detail, particularly in writing about the bureaucracy of murder and in providing countless mini-profiles of the killers. However, the latter do demonstrate how the doctors active in T4 tended to be younger than their uninvolved colleagues and were motivated by ``a mixture of ideology, careerism and greed.'' This somewhat daunting work at times makes for very tough reading but as the one of first English book-length studies of the ``euthanasia'' program to date, it unquestionably is a most valuable contribution to the history of Nazism and of the Holocaust. (History Book Club selection)

Choice 评论

Friedlander has written a book of great importance for understanding the Final Solution. He argues that there was a connection between the killing operations used against the handicapped in the euthanasia program implemented by the Nazis at the start of WW II and the later extermination programs that were directed toward Jews and Gypsies. The element linking these exterminations was the Nazi belief in human inequality, which deemed certain groups unworthy of living and supported the subsequent effort to cleanse the gene pool of the German nation. Friedlander breaks new ground in his examination of how the machinery of the euthanasia program was duplicated in death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. The author makes clear that the role of the euthanasia program in the Holocaust was more than providing personnel of the T-4 programs with the experience used later in the death camps. Rather, the entire apparatus of subterfuge associated with the death camps was already developed by the staffs of the euthanasia killing centers for the purpose of deceiving their patients. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. Fischel; Millersville University

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Abbreviations	p. xix
Note on Language	p. xxi
Chapter 1 The Setting	p. 1
Chapter 2 Excluding the Handicapped	p. 23
Chapter 3 Killing Handicapped Children	p. 39
Chapter 4 Killing Handicapped Adults	p. 63
Chapter 5 The Killing Centers	p. 86
Chapter 6 Toward the Killing Pause	p. 111
Chapter 7 The Expanded Killing Program	p. 136
Chapter 8 The Continued Killing Program	p. 151
Chapter 9 The Handicapped Victims	p. 164
Chapter 10 Managers and Supervisors	p. 187
Chapter 11 Physicians and Other Killers	p. 216
Chapter 12 Excluding Gypsies	p. 246
Chapter 13 Killing Handicapped Jews	p. 263
Chapter 14 The Final Solution	p. 284
Notes	p. 303
Bibliography	p. 385
Index	p. 403

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