This is a list of notable Nazi medical doctors (M.D. or physicians).
When the Nazi government came to power it purged Germany of its 6,000 to 7,000 Jewish doctors. Reportedly more than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi party during World War II, a far higher percentage than the general population. In 1942 more than 38,000 German doctors, half the total number of doctors, had joined the Nazi party. While most of these doctors were physicians, some were psychiatrists, and some held doctorates (PhD.'s) in biology, anthropology, or similarly related fields.
Psychiatrists/Doctors who were working for the state, and not for their patient, saw extermination of their patients as the correct solution to the problem of mental illness and the genetically defective.
"The participation in the ‘betrayal of Hippocrates’ had a broad basis within the German medical profession. Without the doctors' active help, the Holocaust could not have happened." wrote E Ernst in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
Psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin was the founder of the psychiatric genetics field and was also a founder of the German racial hygiene movement.
Killing and experimentation became medical procedures as they were performed by licensed doctors. A doctor was present at all the mass killings for legal reasons. The excuse that there wasn't any international law to differentiate between legal and illegal human experimentation, was used in the Doctors' trial. Due to the lack of international laws to govern doctors, the Nuremberg Code (1947) was created.
After the war the German Medical Association blamed Nazi atrocities on a small group of 350 criminal doctors.
Doctors such as Werner Heyde and Robert Ley, changed their name after the war to avoid responsibility. Dr Walter Schreiber first used by the Soviets was later taken into Operation Paperclip in 1951.
Alphabetical List of the Nazi physicians.
(Text) CC BY-SA
