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Germany�Psychiatry�s
Dark Past
CCHR�s national chapter in Germany conducted comprehensive research that established
conclusively that Germany�s leading psychiatrists provided both the �scientific�
justification and impetus for Hitler and the Nazi government to destroy
�life unworthy of living.�
They laid the foundation for the Holocaust by being primary drafters of and
contributors to the 1933 Sterilization Act and the 1935 Racial Purity
Law, which later became a death sentence for Jews and �inferior� peoples
in the concentration camps. German psychiatrists created the so-called
�T-4� Unit to eradicate �life devoid of value,� and in 1940 began killing
groups of mental patients to test efficient methods of mass murder and
disposal using shower-room gas chambers and ovens�a full two years before
the Final Solution conference determined to launch the Holocaust. While
German psychiatric institutions held 320,000 inmates in 1939, only 40,000,
a mere 12.5%, were still alive in 1945. Psychiatrists had no qualms about
boasting that the eradication of �impure� Jews and others so labeled,
was their plan all along and that Hitler was merely their execution arm.
Ernst R�din, the psychiatrist who helped spearhead the extermination effort
and co-wrote the Sterilization Act, proudly proclaimed in 1944: �Only
through the F�hrer did our dream of over 30 years, that of applying racial
hygiene to society, become a reality.�
Despite their active role in the killings, psychiatrists managed to evade public
attention and justice. Only four psychiatrists were convicted as a result
of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The others quietly slipped away,
to resume positions in German psychiatric institutions, the World Federation
for Mental Health or in the public health field. When CCHR and others
brought this injustice to public attention in the 1990s, the president
of Germany�s Society of Psychiatrists, Johann Meyer-Lindenberg acknowl
edged that it was true that the victims often �had to encounter the very
people who once inflicted their tortures.�
In 1978, Nazi psychiatrist Heinrich Gross was found working in the largest
psychiatric facility in Austria and acting as a �psychiatric court expert.�
Gross was forced to resign his position when CCHR exposed his involvement
in the killing of children during WWII. In April 2000, he was criminally
charged with the child murders, but psychiatric peer testimony claimed
Gross suffered from �dementia,� and was unfit to be tried or held accountable.
In 1980, CCHR and allied individuals forced the resignation of a former SS
member, Heinrich Harrer, from the �organizing committee� of a �World Conference
on Psychiatry.� During the war, Harrer had injected pig brain fluid into
the brains of human beings; his bizarre justification was that it might
�improve their intelligence.�
In 1997, CCHR Switzerland exposed how the face of the 1,000 Swiss franc bill
was adorned by one of the founders of the racist ideology that spawned
Nazism�Swiss-German psychiatrist August Forel. Eight months later Forel�s
face was removed from the currency.
Twenty years of in-depth research and documentation by CCHR resulted in the
publication of the acclaimed book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler,
which prompted the president of the German Society of Psychiatrists to
ask the government to silence CCHR�of course, to no avail.
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