Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Germany : The "Euthanasia Programs"

This book is about the ethics of nursing and midwifery, and how these were abrogated during the Nazi era. Nurses and midwives actively killed their patients, many of whom were disabled children and infants and patients with mental (and other) illnesses or intellectual disabilities. The book gives the facts as well as theoretical perspectives as a lens through which these crimes can be viewed. It also provides a way to teach this history to nursing and midwifery students, and, for the first time, explains the role of one of the world’s most historically prominent midwifery leaders in the Nazi crimes.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the National Socialism government of Germany began a program of killing individuals with mental or physical disabilities. Six "killing centres" were established. By August 1941, knowledge of the killings had spread to the general public and Hitler called for the program to end. This, however, did not end the killings. The gas chambers were dismantled and taken to the concentration camps, but the killing of psychiatric patients continued at many institutions throughout the Reich. Over 70,000 people were killed at the established centres and in psychiatric hospitals, with an estimated 10,000 being killed by nurses. This book offers a pioneering and startling historical analysis of the ways in which nurses were involved in and central to the success of the Nazi "euthanasia" program.