I have just published a new book

This could well be one of the toughest jobs that I have ever tackled!

But now it’s done.

And I am glad!

“Hitler’s Female Physicians – Women Doctors During the Third Reich and Their Crimes Against Humanity” (nothing to do with SCAM, sorry) is a collection of biographical sketches of female doctors who committed crimes against humanity during the Third Reich.

The initial chapters provide some context by briefly reviewing some of the worst atrocities of the Nazis:

• the mass sterilisations of citizens who were deemed to be genetically inferior,
• the killing of disabled patients who were considered unworthy of life,
• the mass murder of Jews and other unwanted people.

The book highlights the central role of the German medical profession in all of these barbarities. It explains that, far from being bystanders, German doctors first adopted essential elements of the Nazi ideology, such as ‘race hygiene’, developed the necessary methodologies for mass murder, and later put them into action.

Studying the vast literature on the Third Reich, one easily gets the impression that the monstrosities that followed were an almost exclusively male affair. Many of the most famous Nazi villains were men. What is often forgotten is the fact that women were involved as well – and this is particularly true for medicine.

The main part of the book provides biographical sketches of 38 female physicians who committed highly unethical acts in the name of Nazi ideology. The actions of these women varied greatly; some murdered with their own hands, while others merely promoted or sanctioned such criminality.

When I studied medicine in Munich during the 1970s, some of the ‘doctors of infamy’ became my teachers (either in person or through their textbooks). As students, we had the option of ignoring all this by persuading ourselves that “it has nothing to do with me”. Most of us did exactly that. However, some took a different path, and it is not least thanks to their research that today we know more about the involvement of the German medical profession in the horrors of the Third Reich. My book summarises a hitherto much-neglected aspect. If it can make a small contribution to our understanding of the Nazi doctors’ crimes against humanity, the often depressing process of writing it will have been worthwhile.