Books - (subject:germany)and(subject:eugenics)

Product Description:




Customer Review: Excellent historical fiction:
Tall, blonde and beautiful Katrine lives the life of genteel Belgian society, one in which WWII hasn't darkened. The pregnant girlfriend of Henrick Schwartz, she loathes her current life. A year before she was Rebecca Lodz, a Jewess on her way to the camps. Her Aryan looks saved her from the concentration camps, but not the rest of her family. The guilt she feels how far she's gone to protect herself may, in the end, betray her.

Mary Kelly and Lee O'Donnell are rival newspaper reporters brought up in opposite worlds. Lee is the daughter of privledge, with connections Mary can only dream of. But Lee finds high society life stifling and longs to make her reputation as a reporter, not a socialite. Mary was raised by her mother. She has, by sheer grit and determination, carved out her niche in the male dominated world of newspaper reporting. She must think of novel ways to get interviews with some of the most important people in the world, while Lee uses her societal connections--a trait Mary loathes in her Lee. Their rivalry intensifies when both women are chosen to report the war from the front lines.

But both women are unprepared for war's realities. Confronted with dangers and horrors neither imagined, both are forced to re-align their personal and professional priorities, goals that may be short-lived when one of them goes MIA.

Tricia Goyer contines her excellent historical fiction writing in her forth WWII novel. She has the ability to flesh out lesser known aspects of WWII and give bring to life the time period through use of historical details, all without overwhelming the reader. Arms of Deliverance is a book that's earned a home on my bookshelf.

Customer Review: A Quick-moving, Interesting Novel:
You might be like me--sort of off-put by the genre of "historical fiction." I don't know why I've always felt that way, because I love to learn something while I'm gripped by a fictional account, whether it's about a time period, a profession, or a place . In Arms of Deliverance, I learned about each of these things--reporting, specifically the early roles of women, World War II and Germany.

The characters were believable and well-developed. The story was clean without being unrealistic.

Customer Review: Rich Read:


I'm impressed.

Not only has Tricia Goyer crafted a fine novel with an intriguing series of story lines, she didn't bore me to tears with the technical scenes in the plane.

I can't imagine how many hours of research she invested to write this story. She writes from the point of view of a high ranking Nazi officer, two women reporters driven by different desires, and a young Jewish girl who is given her freedom because she passes for Aryan, yet finds herself in another sort of prison.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to know the characters as well I prefer to know them, but this is just a technical and personal issue. The plot makes up for any lingering sadness over incomplete bonding with the characters.

The later chapters are very plot driven, and I wanted Tricia to slow down, but again, I tend to dig in to meaty characters.

I was pleased with the final chapter in the book. Deep and rich, it sewed all the loose ends in place leaving me hopeful and satisfied.

I'll be reading more of Tricia's books.


Customer Review: A Good Read:
Tricia Goyer continues her World War II series with a fascinating tale of two very different American female news reporters who find themselves on the frontlines of the war in Belgium and France.


Mary has clawed her way through the journalistic ranks with nothing but grit and determination to aid her while wealthy socialite Lee has shocked her family by leaving her job with Vogue and taking up news reporting. It is through these women that we glimpse the harshness of war and the resilience of those fighting for freedom. There lives become entwined with a young pregnant Jew who has hidden her true identity and is living as an Aryan and in love with a Nazi officer in charge of racial purity. Both Mary and Lee find themselves in life threatening situations as they pursue the real stories of civilians and soldiers caught up in a war that forever changed the world.


Tricia has penned an informative and interesting story of the war through the eyes of reporters, a secret Jew and the crew of a B-17 bomber. Their stories intersect well and although there is some predictability to the ending there is enough suspense to keep the reader enthralled. Lee was less developed as a character than Mary which was a bit disappointing but Tricia has otherwise written an accurate tale of the war and is well worth the read.


Customer Review: Arms of Deliverance:
Arms of Deliverance is a delightful book. Set during World War Two, it focuses on two women newspaper reporters, Mary Kelley and Lee O'Donnelly, who both want to get sent to the European front as war correspondents. They're rivals who get paired together as roommates on the ship and in England. You really couldn't pick women from more different backgrounds. Mary grew up in a single parent home, while Lee grew up in privilege with endless benefits as a result of her last name. They are similar in their passion to tell the stories from the war.

Then there's the plotline with Katrine, a Jewess who hides in plain sight in Belguim as the girlfriend of a German officer. When she becomes pregnant he sends her to Lebensborn. Another great focus of the book is the crew flying a B-17, Destiny's Child.

When Mary gets assigned to go with the Destiny's Child crew on a bombing raid, the multiple plots begin to intersect and weave together into a beautiful plot. I won't tell you more, because I want you to uncover this great story on your own.

Tricia's meticulous research shows in the details she incorporates into the story. As a lover of World War Two history, I can enjoy Tricia's books without worrying that she'll get key details wrong. Instead, the stories aren't disrupted by the history, but the history adds a richness and detail to the plots.

The characters are far from cardboard cutouts. Instead they stand in relief to each other and make the book more realistic as the sparks fly.

I thouroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!

Product Description:
From Darwin to Hitler elucidates the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. Weikart demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination. This thinking had its biggest impact on Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism as popularly believed.




Customer Review: Hitler drew from philosophers and intellectuals more than from Darwin:
This book reveals a lot about German intellectuals and their love of the "mad" philosophers who called for a superior race and a "Superman Leader." Weikart provides an interesting and detailed review of those intellectual currents leading up to the rise of the Nazi Party. Hitler's most vicious and racist ranting seemed to represent a mere paraphrasing of earlier intellectual arguments that had long-since seeped into the German psyche. Darwin's role by comparison was minor and less directly supportive of eugenicists' positions.

Most of the reviewers emphasize the importance of Darwin and the varied Darwinian theories--debating to what degree Darwin's theory of Evolution actually inspired Hitler's policies. Indeed the author is faulted for not making that connection either stronger or weaker. I suspect those who must connect Darwin with Hitler's theories are primarily motivated by a desire to bring some "science" into their pre-conceived ideas about racial differences. But, note that Hitler's policies and success were assured with or without Darwin and his Book.

For readers interested in this subject I would recommend the 4th chapter in William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Shirer had actually lived in Germany during Hitler's rise to power, and he documents the same intellectual history in Germany that had advanced the extreme hatred for other races, the worship of power, a lust for conquest, and dreams of a superman leader who, free of all moral constraints, would lead them to crush all weaklings and enemies of the Aryan culture. Such perverted intellectuals included Nietzsche, Wagner, Hegel,and a host of others from both within Germany as well as from France, England and America, who had set forth that inhuman agenda for over a hundred years before Hitler was born, and well before Darwin set pen to paper.

One of the first and most strident of these intellectuals was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a philosophy teacher at the University of Berlin. He delivered his "Addresses to the German People" in 1807 and set forth his dream that Germany create a new all-powerful state, led by a small elite of pure German blood, free of any moral restrictions. It would subjugate the inferior races, and consolidate power in a central national government that would lead the mighty in destroying the weak. Professors Von Trietschke and Hegel followed at the University, and like Nietzsche and Marx, they glorified the State--"the people, the subjects, are to be little more than slaves in the nation." It is extraordinary that the leading lights of "The Enlightenment" were instilling these ideas within the old European nations during the first century that the newly minted United States of American was demonstrating freedom and democracy and a constrained foreign policy. Talk about back-sliding!

I recommend Weikart's book for its gripping and easy to read coverage of that 19th and 20th century's backsliding of civilization. Much of Western Europe had for centuries been the cradle of democracy, human rights, Christian ethics, and personal liberty--and then there was this fascination with racism, power, and aggression, fueled by the new and deadly idea that man is descended from the apes, and that there is no moral law from God to guide us.

This book provides a thorough examination of the resulting impact that these intellectual and philosophical theories had on religion, morality and political organizations. And, in retrospect, those results underscore the dangers that all free societies face from their least suspected enemies--the intelligentsias within who wish to rule from the top, and experiment with their new visions, over and upon the common people.

Customer Review: The tortuous, convoluted path from Darwin to Hitler.:
This is an excellent overview of late 19th -early 20th century German `Social Darwinism', detailing the widespread politicisation of intellectualism and `science' in Germany, well before the Nazis and Hitler ever came to power. It reveals much of where Hitler and the Nazis actually got their views from; eg ideas on extreme militarism, race superiority and race determinism, human inequality and expendability, `might is right' policies and ideas, and various other extreme forms of eugenic/Social Darwinism, which were widespread amongst German intellectuals. Numerous German intellectuals and their ideas are detailed in his book (eg Forel, Ploetz, H.Chamberlain, Hellward, Schonerer, Haeckel, Dodel, Woltmann, Lenz, Fritsch, Ribbert, Kirchhoff, Peschel, Kaup, Jaeger, Buchner, Lehmann, Schallmayer, Luschan, Tille, and others), in the decades preceeding Nazism, many advocating Nazi-type ideas supposedly based on `science', before Hitler ever came to power, who followed a long trend of data distortion probably derived from the tenuous relationship between German political culture, and German science.

It is very surprising what various, highly respected German scientists/intellectuals of the time, well before the Nazis, actually believed or debated, as being `justified' by biology. Examples include:

-infanticide,
-euthanasia,
-suicide,
-marriage control,
-state-selected abortion,
-utopian societies,
-racial extermination,
-killing the disabled,
-killing off the old or weak,
-capital punishment,
-separation of the `unfit',
-sterilisation of the `unfit',
-`false humaneness',
-equating physical health with moral superiority,
-ascribing physical abnormalities as throwbacks to `lower' animals,
-confidence in the ability of scientists to categorise and physically measure `might', and `value';
- Aryan race ideas, (Nietzsche's `Dionysian'),
-`providence' equating with the `holy law of evolution'; (used by Hitler),
-the `inferior' `parasitising' the `superior',
-parasitic races
-anti-Semitism
-`struggle for space'
-`progress' through destruction,
-`living space' and population expansion with racial struggle,
-blonde hair-blue eye superiority,
-`struggle of annihilation',
-racial purity,
-`Teuton' superiority (Hitler preferred `Aryan' to `Teuton'),
-racial hygiene,
-medical experimentation of the 'unfit',
-the glorification of war for race,

the list goes on and on. All of these ideas, before Hitler and the Nazis ever came to power. This book is an excellent, careful and detailed analysis of the development of these ideas in late 19th-early 20th century Germany.

The presence of so many widespread Nazi-type ideas, well before World War 1 and the interwar years, also helps to explain how many ordinary Germans allowed the Nazis to get into power and get away with so much; the `soil was prepared' by intellectuals in Germany for decades, and Hitler read many of the works of these intellectuals.

However, in his claim that Darwinism led to Hitler and Nazism, one major criticism is that Weikart doesn't spend much time in attempting to make a connection between the actual Darwinian `data', and Nazism/Hitler. Weikart does say that the path from Darwin to Hitler is tortuous and convoluted, but he is of the opinion, that the idea of `Darwinian natural selection' and its implications, even a perverted/distorted form of it, ultimately led, one way or another, to Hitler and Nazi ideology. To repeat, he doesn't spend much time actually investigating the data or its distortions, either psychologically or scientifically, rather, he mostly limits himself to overviews of the development and beliefs of the various eugenicists themselves.

The distortion of biological data into Social Darwinism, eugenics, and ultimately, Nazism in the 19th -early 20th century is an age-old IS/OUGHT issue. Just because something happens in nature, such as lightning, radioactivity, cancerous cells, or wasteful death by `blundering' natural selection (as Darwin himself put it), doesn't mean we humans, or nature itself for that matter, somehow `condones' these things. This issue is barely discussed, but it is the KEY issue. Just because something IS, doesn't mean it OUGHT to be, promoted by humans, or otherwise. This was the mistake of German intellectuals, Weikart barely discusses this process, only describing how intellectuals in late 19th -early 20th century routinely equated `is' with `ought' in their ideology. Perhaps the problem then, was a widespread and accepted, extreme type of socialist-determinism, within both science and culture, rather than a problem with `Darwinism' itself (?).

The German Social Eugenicists infused the scientific data with politics, occasionally overturning the data with politics (eg Haeckel's 12 races diagram p107, which `shows' that `lower' humans are closer to the apes than `higher' humans are to `lower' humans). The data doesn't give any support for many of the ideas eugenicists/social Darwinists advocated, which shows how science can become so infused with the prevailing culture and politics, that it blinds even the best and most influential scientists. Science, with its connections to high culture and politics, its human vanity, its power by default, its need for special funding, and its innate careerism, is VERY susceptible to subtle political distortion and preconceived ideas, especially in cases where it is difficult to disprove or falsify paradoxes and data ambiguities, and society at large invariably suffers from this.

What was perhaps going on in late 19th -early 20th century Europe/Germany, was the development of unrestrained bureaucratic ideologies masquerading as science-a science distorted by prevailing assumptions which supported the interests of the bureaucratic/aristocratic elite. Both Bolshevik-communism, and Intellectual-Social Darwinism/Eugenics were examples of this, and both produced expendable death, since truth, and the individual, were `expended' by intellectuals well before WW1 and 2, and well before the Bolsheviks and Nazis came to power. One could argue, from the writing of the intellectuals themselves, that Nazism (and Bolshevism-which is not discussed here) was born in 19th century bureaucratic/aristocratic `convenient', unexamined, `assumptions'.

If one reads some of the late 19th -early 20th century German views detailed in this book, one shouldn't be all that surprised at what the Nazis eventually did: many of the worst policies of the Nazis were already formulated by intellectuals in the name of `science', dripping with distortion, vanity and expediency.

Overall a very good, detailed and intriguing book, but also a tortuous read, which reflects the very difficult and tortuous subject matter- that is-the intellectual origins of Nazi ideology.


Customer Review: Morality on its head:
From Darwin to Hitler is controversial because its author is associated with the Discovery Institute, an organization that advocates intelligent design and criticizes naturalistic evolution. From this it has been argued that the book is merely a hit piece on Darwin that argues two things: 1) the Holocaust was the inevitable result of embracing Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and 2) Hitler's worldview and his Nazi agendas were solely derived from evolutionary biology.

After reading the book I am honestly at a loss at how such distorted criticisms could have materialized. Perhaps it is because Weikart appears to believe this in the eyes of his critics because he is part of the Discovery Institute and was featured in Ben Stein's movie Expelled, which was rather reckless in its guilt by association tactics. Whatever the reason, the critics have it wrong as Weikart diligently and professionally handles a careful argument that merely suggests that Darwinism was a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for Hitler's ethic. The book's unfortunate title perhaps reduces things a bit too much, but the subtitle evokes a more judicious curiousity, "Evolutionary ethics, eugenics, and racism in Germany." These, no doubt, are the plot twists in a very grim view of humanity.

Ironically enough, Weikart doesn't spend a lot of time on Darwin and focuses more attention on Ernst Haeckel , Bartholomäus von Carneri, Christian von Ehrenfels, August Forel, Eugen Fischer, Theodor Fritsch, Friedrich Jodl, Friedrich Hellwald, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, Wilhelm Schallmayer, and Helene Stöcker. One could go on and on furnishing quote after quote from the German intelligentsia showing that they believed it was a scientific fact that humans were no more than animals in competition with one another, and that the humanitarian ethics of Christian morality which compels society to care for the sick and weak ought to be thrown off. In their view, there was no such thing as a human soul or human nature. There is no free will since everything is biologically determined. Humanity does not share a common ancestor as evidenced by the vast differences between racial categories. The the distance between the "higher" and "lower" human races is greater than the distance between apes and the "lower" races (!) making the belief that all persons are created equal a liberal fable. The superior are given the right to dominate, if not eliminate, the inferior from within their ranks. The mentally handicapped and the disabled are not only "worthless" to society but actually count as "negative worth" because they sap the strength of the "strong." It therefore, is a moral duty to the community to segregate the population and sift out the bad elements from the good.

After one reads through the litany of German scientists, eugenicists, ethicists, and political reformers one cannot help but see how morality was turned on its head. The strongest part of Weikart's book is that he provides an explanation for how German legal theorists, physicians, and scientists could have supported and carried out Hitler's policies. The mantle of evolutionary progress was so powerfully motivating that it captured the hearts and minds of Germany's intelligentsia long before Hitler arrived on the scene. In the wake of World War I the fear of biological degeneration (the "best" of German men dead on the battlefield, and the "worst" at home) and the economic oppression Germany experienced made Hitler's heinous vision one that was morally necessary.

To be sure, Darwinism was not the cause of Hitler's Germany, but it played no small part in re-imagining the human race in the German mind. Without a doubt, it helped prepare the way for some of the most inhumane treatment of humanity in history.

Customer Review: Eye opening view of western civ during the post enlightenment period:
This is a great book on post enlightenment Germany and the impact of enlightenment thinking on the German people. It explains the true causes of WWI and WWII the German belief in racial superiority. It shows how science becoming the new religion was able to be infused with politics. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys WWII especially Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Customer Review: Darwinisms Sinister Secrets:
I have just finished reading this brilliant book and was given a first rate educational experience by Dr. Weikart. From Darwin to Hitler is amazingly will researched and documented. The book clearly demonstrates the influence Darwinism had on German scholarship, education, and medicine in the days preceding Nazi Germany. I believe Dr. Weikart conclusively proves that Hitler could not have escaped Darwin's influence. After reading it the only honest conclusion one can make is that Darwinism was profoundly influential, if not responsible, for the Holocaust. This book should be required reading in ever public school in America.

Product Description:
When Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1924, he held up a foreign law as a model for his program of racial purification: The U.S. Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which prohibited the immigration of those with hereditary illnesses and entire ethnic groups. When the Nazis took power in 1933, they installed a program of eugenics--the attempted "improvement" of the population through forced sterilization and marriage controls--that consciously drew on the U.S. example. By then, many American states had long had compulsory sterilization laws for "defectives," upheld by the Supreme Court in 1927. Small wonder that the Nazi laws led one eugenics activist in Virginia to complain, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
In The Nazi Connection, Stefan Kuhl uncovers the ties between the American eugenics movement and the Nazi program of racial hygiene, showing that many American scientists actively supported Hitler's policies. After introducing us to the recently resurgent problem of scientific racism, Kuhl carefully recounts the history of the eugenics movement, both in the United States and internationally, demonstrating how widely the idea of sterilization as a genetic control had become accepted by the early twentieth century. From the first, the American eugenicists led the way with radical ideas. Their influence led to sterilization laws in dozens of states--laws which were studied, and praised, by the German racial hygienists. With the rise of Hitler, the Germans enacted compulsory sterilization laws partly based on the U.S. experience, and American eugenists took pride in their influence on Nazi policies. Kuhl recreates astonishing scenes of American eugenicists travelling to Germany to study the new laws, publishing scholarly articles lionizing the Nazi eugenics program, and proudly comparing personal notes from Hitler thanking them for their books. Even after the outbreak of war, he writes, the American eugenicists frowned upon Hitler's totalitarian government, but not his sterilization laws. So deep was the failure to recognize the connection between eugenics and Hitler's genocidal policies, that a prominent liberal Jewish eugenicist who had been forced to flee Germany found it fit to grumble that the Nazis "took over our entire plan of eugenic measures."
By 1945, when the murderous nature of the Nazi government was made perfectly clear, the American eugenicists sought to downplay the close connections between themselves and the German program. Some of them, in fact, had sought to distance themselves from Hitler even before the war. But Stefan Kuhl's deeply documented book provides a devastating indictment of the influence--and aid--provided by American scientists for the most comprehensive attempt to enforce racial purity in world history.



Customer Review: Interesting Book:
This is a valuable book that explores the role of American intellectual and psuedo-scientific policies and how the played an important role in the maturation of Nazi Germany. A must read.

Product Description:

"The chapters in this volume painfully drive home the point that certainly as far as Germany is concerned, the lessons of the Third Reich have not yet been learned... These significant attempts by younger recruits to the larger medical establishment to change things through eye-opening reflection and analysis, however uncomfortable, need support."--Michael H. Kater, author of Doctors under Hitler, in the foreword.

The infamous Nuremberg Doctors' Trials of 1946-47 revealed horrifying crimes --ranging from grotesque medical experiments on humans to mass murder--committed by physicians and other health care workers in Nazi Germany. But far more common, argue the authors of Cleansing the Fatherland, were the doctors who profited professionally and financially from the killings but were never called to task--and, indeed, were actively shielded by colleagues in postwar German medical organizations.

The authors examine the role of German physicians in such infamous operations as the "T 4" euthanasia program (code-named for the Berlin address of its headquarters at Number 4 Tiergartenstrasse). They also reveal details of countless lesser known killings--all ordered by doctors and all in the name of public health. Maladjusted adolescents, the handicapped, foreign laborers too illto work, even German civilians who suffered mental breakdowns after air raids were "selected for treatment." (One physician who persisted in speaking of "killings" was officially reprimanded for his "negative attitude.")

The book also includes original documents--never before published in English--that give unique and chilling insight into the everyday workings of Nazi medicine. Among them:

• Minutes from a 1940 meeting of the Conference of German Mayors, at which a Nazi official gives the assembled politicians detailed instructions for the secret burial of murdered mental patients.

• A pre-Nazi era questionnaire sent by the head of a state mental institution to parents of disabled children. (Sample question: "Would you agree to a painless shortening of your child's life after an expert had determined him incurably imbecilic?" Sample answer: "Yes, but I would prefer not to know.")

• The diary of Dr. Hermann Voss, chief anatomist at the Reichs University of Posen (and later a highly respected physician in postwar Germany), who delights in the flowers blooming outside his window and worries that the overstock of Polish cadavers from his Gestapo suppliers might cause his crematory oven to break down.

• Letters of Dr. Friedrich Mennecke, director of the notorious Eichberg Clinic, who writes with cloying sentimentality to the wife he calls "mommy" and comments offhandedly about visiting concentration camps to select "patients" for death.

Today, as reports of mass death in Europe are once again cast in terms of public hygiene, and as euthanasia is advocated--even applauded--on U.S. television, the relevance of what Michael H.Kater here calls "the lessons of the Third Reich" is perhaps greater than ever. Against this background, Cleansing the Fatherland sends a stark message that is difficult to ignore.

Customer Review: Viewing the beast:
This little book containing a collection of essays on the perpetrators of the Holocost, not the thugs who operated the camps or served in the mruder squads but the intellectual killers who developed the concept and implemented the programs that murdered first the disabled and the mentally ill before turning to other betterknown prey.

A must read for any interested in this subject.

Customer Review: "Nazi Economics of Therapeutic Extermination":
"Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine & Racial Hygiene," Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1994, ISBN 0-8018-4824-5 (PB) 296 pgs., 6" x 9" No index, a few notes & B/W photos.

In the foreword, Michael Kater warns despite passage of those Nuremberg, Helsinki & Tokyo convenants after WW-11 to safeguard medical ethical standards (& prevent hideous medical abuses as done by Nazis & Japanese during the war) that many countries of the world persist in violation of these codes of conduct & he mentions a few countries including India, Canada, Lebanon & Germany in Bavaria. Kater informs us the authors including Ernst Klee are of a "new generation of German Scholars" whose aims are to further rectify & uncover Nazi medical irregularities - & that some of the Aly & Pross writings have been declared controversial & "exaggerated or twisted out of all proportion." He details various ways the Jewish physicians were eliminated starting in 1934 & replacing them with "Aryan" doctors, noting some 4,500 to 6,000 Jewish doctors were expelled from Germany & several hundred committed suicide. Pross states crimes (persecution & Holocaust) were not only by "the tiny number of 350 black sheep among the German medical profession...involved in medical crimes, but... many more...directly or indirectly, ...the cream of German medicine, ...professors, ...scientists and researchers." The only plausible explanation to me is that some residuum of the "old generation of German scholars" remain in the medical citadels & refuse to leave their chairs for the likes of Aly & Pross.

The book contains 5 chapters: Introd. by Pross has information on recent attempts to introduce various types of euthanasia & a provocative discussion of Robert Lifton's neologistic "doubling" to account for Nazi physicians' mass murdering ("The Nazi Doctors"). Goetz Aly has 3 interesting chapters on medicine against the "useless" & discussion of Operation T-4, the Posen diaries of Dr. H. Voss, & "Pure & Tainted Progress" which examines economic forces driving "therapeutic extermination" including taking all of patients' possessions including dental gold, charging for meals during starvation & billing the mandated Insurance coverage after inmates were "treated" (code word for "exterminated"). The final chapter "Selected Letters of Doctor Friedrich Mennecke" by Dr. Chroust appear to have been added on as an after thought, offering one interesting Mennecke tidbit: "Your can tell by looking at the Russian people that they are born and raised right in the dirt, so they don't know any better. These paople are..."

Overall, the book is well-written, provides many details on ruminations of the Nazi mindset to evoke rules & regulations to promote active killing as "medical euthanasia" with the least amount of discussion & protest by the Volk. Aly is a freelance historian & political scientist with a personal agenda, but knowing that, it still makes a good read.

Customer Review: not for everyone:
This book is an exceptional survey of the development of a genocidal mentality among the doctors of the Third Reich. Of great interest to those doing research on this topic are the diaries of Nazi anatomist,Dr. Hermann Voss in Posen during the war. It demonstrates, among other things, a pervasive manichaean attitude that extended from Hitler on down- A tendency to view the world in all-or-nothing terms. The characters are largely repulsive (Dr. Friedrich Mennecke referring to victims as "portions")and it is sometimes hard to handle the intricacies of the history unless you have a background in this area. If you are looking for a general understanding of the doctors, try Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors. For more history of this type, try Death and Deliverance by Burleigh or The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code by Annas and Grodin. If you want to know about the experiments, go to a library and sift through the case of United States vs. Karl Brandt et al. (1947 - the Nuremberg "Doctors" Trial). This book is valuable to those initiated into the macabre studies of Hitler's Germany, but you might want to stay away if you're only a general reader.

Customer Review: Semi-descriptive book on Nazi bio-medical experimentation...:
While I have not purchased this book from Amazon.com, I have reviewed it at a local bookstore. The book itself speaks more on the psychiatric area of "Nazi-medicine" rather than on actual experimentation. For those interested in a more focused book on the Nazi's "bio-medical vision" they should read "The Nazi Doctors" by R.J. Lifton. It is an excellent and descriptive book, giving accounts from survivors. It is careful to give actual accounts instead of fabricated stories, at the same time not glorifying Nazi science. I disagree with the comment about this book being reviewed. In my personal opinion, it does not glorify Nazi science. I have read many books on this subject and say that this book deserves credit, but not enough for five stars.

Product Description:
A groundbreaking history of the Nazi research institute whose work helped lead to the extermination of millions

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler established a Nazi research institute called The Ahnenerbe, whose mission was to send teams of scholars around the world to search for proof of Ancient Aryan conquests. But history was not their most important focus. Rather, the Ahnenerbe was an essential part of Himmler’s master plan for the Final Solution. The findings of the institute were used to convince armies of SS men that they were entitled to slaughter Jews and other groups. And Himmler also hoped to use the research as a blueprint for the breeding of a new Europe in a racially purer mold.

The Master Plan is a groundbreaking exposé of the work of German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be warped to justify extermination, and who directly participated in the slaughter -- many of whom resumed their academic positions at war’s end. It is based on Heather Pringle’s extensive original research, including previously ignored archival material and unpublished photographs, and interviews with living members of the institute and their survivors. A sweeping history told with the drama of fiction, The Master Plan is at once horrifying, transfixing, and monumentally important to our comprehension of how something as unimaginable as the Holocaust could have progressed from fantasy to reality.



Customer Review: ......and then there was the Finnish connection:
Here's a review of the book from the website of Helsinki paper, Helsingen Sanomat. Review written by Pirkko Kotirinta and with a distinctly Finnish flavor.... thought I'd repost as it provides a slightly different look at the book.
Himmler was excited over Finnish Kantele .....Book reveals hushed-up cultural cooperation

Finnish anthropologist Yrjö von Grönhagen met German SS leader Heinrich Himmler in 1937 at Himmler's home, along with German music researcher Fritz Bose. The scientists were led into Himmler's study, and they were surprised at what they saw. Hanging on the wall of the study was a copy of a photograph that had recently been taken by Grönhagen, of Timo Lipitsä, a Karelian runonlaulaja, or "poem singer". The photo, which had been given to Himmler a year earlier, hung over Himmler's desk as if it were an icon. Von Grönhagen (1911-2003) and Bose (1909-1975) brought new gifts from Karelia. The Nazi leader was especially enthusiastic about the kantele, a traditional Finnish stringed instrument. Bose played for him, and the kantele was given to Himmler, who immediately ordered ten more for the SS.

Does this sound familiar in any way? The information is from a book by author Heather Pringle, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, which was recently translated into Finnish. The work by a respected Canadian writer of popular science touches upon Finland and the other Nordic Countries, especially the rock paintings in Sweden's Bohuslän Province, while describing in detail the activities of the Third Reich's Ahnenerbe research institute. The book is the most thorough account of the foreign expeditions of Ahnenerbe.

Ahnenerbe, or Deutches Ahnenerbe, Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte ("Study society for primordial intellectual history, German Ancestral Heritage"), was established in 1935 for the stated purpose of studying the legacy of Germany's Aryan forefathers. Its real purpose was to create myths. According to Pringle, its leading researchers dedicated themselves to falsifying the truth, and to churing out carefully tailored information to support the racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler. Pringle tells of the most imaginative arguments used to prove the glorious past of the Aryans. In addition to Northern Europe, expeditions were conducted in Tibet, Iraq, Greece, Libya, and Croatia. When the Second World War broke out, Ahnenerbe's work was co-opted for the war effort, and for solving "the Jewish problem". Especially chilling is the chapter on a skeleton collection, which tells about the mustard gas experiments by anatomist August Hirt (1898-1945) and his work for the establishment of a collection of Jewish skeletons.

Pringle met Bruno Berger (1911-2004), an expert in race research, who took part in the Tibet expedition of Ernst Schäfer, and also took part in the establishment of the skeleton collection, for which he was sentenced as a war criminal. During their three-hour meeting in 2002 Berger never showed any pity or sympathy toward the 86 Jews whom he was sending to the gas chambers. Ahnenerbe was interested in Finland and Karelia in the early phase of its activities - specifically through the activities of Yrjö von Grönhagen, who was born in St. Petersburg. The young aristocrat, who studied at the Sorbonne, had decided to travel on foot from Paris to Helsinki, and to practice "practical sociology" on the way, by collecting greetings in his diary from people whom he met on the way. During his hike, Grönhagen made it to Germany. For him Germany immediately seemed familiar, because Grönhagen spoke the language, and hated communists.

A Frankfurt newspaper published Grönhagen's article on the Kalevala, and soon a meeting with Himmler was arranged. Himmler also wrote a greeting into his travel diary: "Germans and Finns always remember that they once had the same fathers." It is from this common foundation that the young anthropologist soon got a job in Ahnenerbe, where he rose to the leadership of the recently established Indo-Germanic-Finnish Research Institute in two years, at the age of 26. Grönhagen and Fritz Bose made a research expedition into Russian Karelia in 1936, taking along the illustrator Ola Forssell. Grönhagen returned to Karelia again in 1937 and 1938, alone both times. On the first trip, Bose had a brand-new AEG tape recorder with him, with a sound quality that was far superior to previous recording devices. Finnish researcher Risto Blomster says that this was "apparently for the first time in the history of the world" that a tape recorder was used for collecting folk traditions. Tape recorders became more commonplace in the 1940s.

Grönhagen was among the directors of Ahnenerbe only for a few months. The new chairman of the institute, Dr. Walter Büst dropped him as incompetent. The focus of research moved from the north to the east, partly because Hitler preferred to emphasise the assumed connections between Aryan culture and ancient high cultures. The intense interest that Himmler felt toward the Nordic region as a target of research irritated Hitler: "It is bad enough that the Romans built magnificent buildings while our forefathers were still living in clay huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these clay hut villages, and gets excited about every fragment of a clay pot, and every stone axe that he happens to find", Hitler once said to Albert Speer.

Personally (and this is my own comment, not from the Helsingin Sanomat review), I find it interesting that, while there's so much criticism of the Nazi's and their "racial cleansing" and all the rest of it, very few readers and reviewers seem to realise that much of the Nazi's medical / eugenics theory and practice originated or was taken from from medical theory and practice in the USA in the 1920's. Much of what went on in the USA in the 1920's was almost as barbaric as anything that happened in Nazi Germany, the only difference being the industrial scale with which the Germans applied the theory during the war years.




Customer Review: M.L.:
Extremely interesting and thorough account of Ahnenerbe, Himmlers quasi-scientific organization that tried to prove their theories of human "history". Well written and entertaining while also historically accurate. I recommend this book to anyone, who wants to know where the roots of these theories really were. Nazis did not invent their racial theories but borrowed bits and pieces from several scientists and artists preceding the Nazi movement. You can also read it as a warning of how it is possible to twist science to political ends.

Customer Review: Good Read, but fails to deliver:
Although I enjoyed the read, by the end I was left somewhat disappointed by the content. The details of the Nazi occult belief system are glazed over. I understand that this is a difficult topic to get to the bottom of, and many have tried before, but the author seems more at home dealing with the external logistics of Himmler's strategy rather than explaining the ideology that lay behind. When reading of the primeval blond-haired master race I couldn't help thinking of the "Nordic" aliens who feature so regularly in UFO abduction stories and in alien conspiracy books, and how Nazi scientists appeared in Speilberg's "Taken" series working hand in hand with the little grey aliens on the operating tables. No doubt a respected journalist, such as Ms Pringle, would be disinclined to follow that line of thought, but I wouldn't put it past Himmler. He was also inhuman. But more to the point, why would Himmler, or Hitler for that matter, be so obsessed with tall, blond hair blue-eyed types when they so obviously did not resemble them? Did the thought not occur to the author? It must have.

Customer Review: Whoever Controls the Past, Controls the Future...:
Heather Pringle's "The Master Plan" gives an excellent history of the Ahnenerbe, the special branch of the Nazi SS made up of some of Germany's leading scientists and scholars whose purpose it was to document the history and prehistory of Germany and the Aryan race. These scientists, often hand-picked by Heinrich Himmler himself, were intended to provide the historical and scientific justification for the Nazi's ideology and conquests. Much of this story has remained largely unknown and Pringle's work is the first book that provides a comprehensive account of this fascinating subject.

Himmler was obsessed with the idea that he could validate the superiority of the Aryan peoples and the supremacy of the German "volk" by providing clear scientific evidence supporting these claims. Where such evidence was lacking, it could be invented. Thus was born the SS Ahnenerbe, a organization that operated under the guise of unbiased scientific inquiry by some of the leading German scholars of the day. The findings of the Ahnenerbe were used to justify the Final Solution and the sinister deeds of the Nazis as the German war machine steamrolled across the world. Pringle's book explores the lives of the many scientists who served the Ahnenerbe and the various expeditions that were undertaken in the service of the Reich. It was these very archaeological undertakings that partly served as the inspiration for the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Pringle's book also makes clear Himmler's agenda to alter the very fabric of German society, especially religion. Himmler was a passionate anti-Christian who believed that Germany should be returned to the pagan religion of their ancestors. To that end, he used the SS as a prototype for a future society that would embrace the beliefs and practices of their Aryan forbearers.

Himmler understood that if you can control what people know and understand about their past and their ancestors then you can control the future of that society. History is written, or often RE-written, by the victors for a reason. The Ahnenerbe was created for this very purpose. It is an important piece in the complex puzzle of understanding the motivations of the Nazis and why they did the things they did. Pringle's book is an excellent addition to that understanding.


Customer Review: Groundbreaking and a good read indeed:
This is not the first book about the mysterious branch of the SS called "Ahnenerbe". But it is the most well-written one and also the first book to present all the amazing Ahnenerbe expeditions abroad. These expeditions bring Indiana Jones to mind but are far more interesting than the "Indy" movies, as they took place in real life.

As Ahnenerbe was to a great extent about motivating the pagan faith of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and many early SS-officers the book is also about the relationship of the SS to the major religions. Both to buddhism (therefore the fascination with Tibet), hinduism (with its "Aryan" side), Islam (two SS divisions were largely Muslim) and Christianity (incompatible with true SS spirit according to Himmler).

Had Nazi Germany been victorious the SS would have dropped its wartime acceptance of Christianity and would have worked hard on replacing Christianity with its brand of pagan faith. "The Master Plan" gives a really fascinating insight into what was actually done in the SS to promote the new/ancient faith, and what the SS planned to do about religion, had the SS won.

Product Description:
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.



Customer Review: A well detailed view of the beginning of a nightmare:
A most insightful and highly detailed work concerning man's worst scientificly guided attrocities. And most releavent to those living in this very day.

This book covers the origins of Hitler's Nightmare. It did not begin with the Jews or the Gypsies, it began with the mentally ill and the disabled. Thie book begins here and gives us not just the crimes but insights into the minds of the criminals who perpetrated it. Men who were collage educated and socially quite liberal rather than the mercenary uneducated thugs who operated the death camps.

A must read for those interested in this subject.

Customer Review: Excessive detail; overall, worth your time:
An extremely detailed account of one of the worst human rights atrocities in recent memory. Unfortunately, the book is so thorough that it detracts from the flow. Footnotes or endnotes would significantly help the problem. You will find yourself bored throughout the book because you are constantly hammered with small details. And that is why it gets 3 stars.

There is also a very unnecessary, albeit subtle, pro-choice message in the "Note On Language" section in the beginning of the book (Note: I did *not* deduct a star because of this). Quote:

"Whatever one's position on either abortion or assisted suicide, comparisons with Nazi killing operations do not illuminate today's discussion. It seems to me, however, that one general lesson can be applied. Government programs launched by the Nazi regime to exclude and kill clearly show that there are private spheres of human life where no state interest is sufficiently compelling to justify intervention. Only the individual directly affected, and possibly his or her closest relatives, should make such intimate decisions. True, individuals might err, but even mistakes by millions of private citizens about their bodies or their lives are far less open to abuse than are judgments legislated by the state imposed by its agents."

While reading a book detailing the destruction of, among others, the disabled, I find it really unfortunate that Friedlander felt a need to insert such statements. He implies that government sanctioned killing of the disabled (or others) is wrong, but a private killing on a similar scale is "ok" because it's confidential and everyday people make mistakes.

Despite these problems, the book is an excellent reference guide. A sad, scary chapter in human history. You should at least take the time to skim this book, if nothing else.

Customer Review: the second great one:
A very important book that must be read with the "Nazi Doctors"

Customer Review: Very interesting, but somewhat poorly written:
I did enjoy reading Friedlander's book, and I found it very informative. It was very interesting to track the origins and path of the Nazi genocide program, from the view of the handicapped, Gypsies, and Jews. As a scientist, I feel it is very important to understand what happened so that it can be prevented again. Even chemists like myself were involved in the operation.

The problem I have with the book is the way in which it is written. First of all, Friedlander gives far too much information, which ends up detracting from the overall theme of the book. For one person, he will often provide four or five different dates, where they were born, the three or four different jobs they performed before the war even started, and it all is very tedious. Second, much related information is scattered throughout the book. He may have three different chapters discussing essentially the same topic, and he is often very redundant. He will restate minor details over and over again, thereby reducing the impact of the more important information concerning Nazi genocide. Finally, I believe the book would have had much more impact if more true stories and examples were provided. While he does present a fair amount of examples in some chapters, in others there are none. I believe the book would be more profound and emotional if these "stories" were provided. Even so, I would still recommend this book.

Customer Review: Who Cries for the Different?:
Henry Friedlander provides a compelling and accurate portrayal of the origins of the Holocaust in the elimination of the mentally ill and physically handicapped. He starts with a description of the origins of German theories of racial superiority based upon social Darwinism which began long before the Nazis came to power. Many German physicians believed that the handicapped were a burden to society and that one of Medicine's chief functions was to be merciful and weed out the lame and feeble and remove them, painlessly, of course. With the advent of National Socialism and coming to power of Adolf Hitler, these doctors willingly joined in the sterilization and euthanistic practices of the Master Race. Gypsies and Jews were the main groups selected but all handicapped were gathered up. The author describes in detail the frustrations experienced by these teutonic genetic warriors because they could not more efficiently kill and maim and remove the untermeunschen. This book is a nightmare which can happen again. The world still witnesses the open genocide of Central Europe and parts of Africa and Asia. While Hitler's bodily presence has been gone for 55 years, his philosophical dementia remains with us. This book is an excellent reminder of science misused and politicized.

Product Description:
In the last two decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century, it was widely assumed that society ought to foster the breeding of those who possessed favourable traits and discourage or prevent the breeding of those who did not. To individuals across the political spectrum, controlled human breeding - or "eugenics" as it was labelled in 1883 by Francis Galton - seemed only good common sense. How did eugenics come to exert such powerful and broad appeal? What events shaped its direction? Whose interests did it finally serve? Why did it fall into disrepute? In spite of eugenics's bad reputation, has it survived in other guises? These are the questions this book aims to answer. The US experience is compared with those of Canada, Britain, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. As questions about eugenics have become more urgent, scholarly and lay understandings of its history have increasingly diverged. This book aims to bridge the gap between these understandings of the history of eugenics and, thereby, enrich debate on perplexing contemporary choices in genetic medicine.



Customer Review: Great Introductory Survey of the History of Eugenics:
Diane Paul has produced a readable and brief introduction to the history of eugenic thought. After an excellent overview chapter, Paul proceeds chronologically from Francis Galton and social Darwinism through twentieth century campaigns for sterilization and immigration restriction in the name of eugenic reform. Paul convincingly argues that eugenics has been used by proponents of a variety of causes and political persuasions, left and right. With announcements every week of the discovery of the gene for some ailment, Paul's book is both timely and important. As the debates over cloning, genetic screening, or gene therapy continue, this book will provide a much needed historical context that can only help as we reflect on today's eugenics.

Customer Review: 20 pages of information in a 120 page book.:
It is interesting (strange actually) that theauthor chose to present an inherently historicaltopic in a non-chronological format. The book is instead organized as a series of (IMHO arbitrary) topics, and the subject is analyzed in turn from the perspective of each. In fact, there is a great deal of redundency from "topic" to "topic", so much so in fact that reading any 20 pages of the book are as good as reading the whole. Still, those 20 pages would constitute a good introduction to the subject.

Product Description:




Customer Review: Never Again:
"Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress" is a well documented work using largely primary sources, many in German. It follows the authors first book "From Darwin to Hitler" and further supports his conclusion in the first book, namely that Darwinism had a major influence on Hitler and the leading Nazis. Professor Weikart concludes that Hitler's evil can be explained only by evaluating the influence of eugenics on Germany, a conclusion that should be obvious to any informed student of the Nazi movement. The exact influence is the area of contention, an issue that this book helps to clarify in some detail. The study of the Nazi movement is now a small industry, and this book will greatly add to our understanding of many aspects of the worst 12 years in world history. This book is must reading for anyone who wants to be informed about this important chunk of Western history. We must not forget, and must understand it, to insure it never happens again.

Customer Review: Definitive authority on LEBENSBORN:
I found this book while researching my own, SACRED BLOOD. Not only was it enormously helpful, it is fascinating and meticulously researched, documented and presented. Anyone with interest in WWII, particularly Nazi atrocities, will be gripped by this incredible book.

Product Description:
"From Racism to Genocide" is an explosive, richly detailed account of how Nazi anthropologists justified racism, developed practical applications of racist theory, and eventually participated in every phase of the Holocaust. Using original sources, correspondence between anthropologists of the time, and previously unpublished documentation, Gretchen Schafft shows the total range of anti-human activity from within the confines of a particular discipline. Based on seven years of archival research in this country and abroad, the work includes many original photos and documents, most of which have never before been published.It uses primary data and original texts whenever possible, including correspondence written by perpetrators. A discussion of Hitler's "final solution," Nazi slave labor, and the rape of occupied Poland reveal the full horror of the Third Reich. Embedded concepts of "scientism," "denial," "academic responsibility," and "race" contribute to understanding some of today's most pressing social science issues. The book also reveals that the United States was not merely a bystander in this research, but instead contributed scientific and financial support to early racial research that continued through the first five years of Hitler's reign.



Customer Review: Racism Then.... and Now?:
This book is a facsinating view of how racism, policy, and science converged into state practice in the Third Reich. The depth of research is overwhelming;yet, inspiring. Some of the practices remain in our own society today. Practices which act to seperate and identify us as different from each other. The book echos to many issues we currently face.

Customer Review: A powerful indictment of Third Reich "science":
This book is a combination of carefully researched historical analysis, biographical vignettes, and personal memoir written by medical anthropologist Gretchen Schafft. It documents work done by German anthropologists employed by foundations, academic institutions and the German government from the 1930s until the end of World War II. These anthropologists apparently embraced Nazi ideology so thoroughly that they left behind their scientific methods and ethics to become co-opted into the processes undertaken by the Nazi party, the SS and other government officials to eliminate political opponents, people of color, homosexuals, Roma, Polish, and Jews from German and German-occupied territory. Their ability to deceive themselves into believing that their work in categorizing people destined for death camps was scientifically valuable is astonishing. The fact that they were never punished for their complicity in the Final Solution is extremely sad.

Dr. Schafft has done an extremely thorough job of reviewing holocaust literature and newly available archival materials from both the Smithsonian Institution and sources in Europe to bring the reader extensive understanding of this co-option. She places the activities of the Third Reich's anthropologists in the context of other well known events from the rise of Nazism and the war. This convincing saga has, as Schafft says "no smoking gun" pointing to the crimes (including euthanasia, trafficking in body parts, and unethical torture filled medical experimentation) that these anthropologists very probably were complicit in.

I bought this book because I am interested in the moral lessons of the holocaust. As an applied anthropologist myself, this disturbing and detailed story awakened in me a desire to deeply evaluate my own work as an applied anthropologist. The book is well written, although some of the translated German memos have a stuffy bureaucratic sound--attesting to their authenticity, no doubt. I recommend this book to general readers as well as professional specialists in history, anthropology, and the history of science. It will change how you think about the German public's awareness of the evils perpetrated by Hitler's regime.

by Charlotte Miller, Ph.D.