Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (review)

Reviewed by: Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race William E. Seidelman Susan Bachrach and Dieter Kuntz , eds. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004. xiii + 226 pp. Ill. $45.00 (0-8078-2916-1). (Distributed by University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC 27515.) This is a book of substance in both presentation and content. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race is the companion volume to an exhibition of the same name at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The exhibition and this [End Page 602] publication represent a notable event in the history of Holocaust scholarship—namely, recognition of the role of medical science by a leading Holocaust museum and documentation center. The volume is an anthology of essays documenting the evolution of the Holocaust, from eugenic and racial theory to enforced sterilization, leading to the medicalized mass killing of German children and adults and, inexorably, to the "Final Solution." The book is enhanced by remarkable illustrations. A particularly notable photograph (p. 122) is that of attendees at a 1937 anthropology conference in Tübingen: on the far left of the picture is the young Dr. Josef Mengele; on the right side are prominent pioneers in Nazi racial science, professors Alfred Ploetz, Eugen Fisher, and Mengele's mentor, Otmar von Verschuer. The essays are written by outstanding historians, including the American scholars Sheila Faith Weiss, Daniel Kevles, and Henry Friedlander; German scholars Gisela Bock and Benno Müller-Hill; British historian Michael Burleigh; and French scholar Benoît Massin. The basic themes of the essays are eugenics, racism, sterilization, euthanasia, and the programs of extermination leading to the Final Solution. Weiss provides insights into the evolution of eugenic and racial thinking in Germany leading up to the Hitler regime. Kevles documents universal international aspects of eugenics. Bock provides an incisive overview of eugenic sterilization and reproduction policies in Nazi Germany. Massin addresses the subject of anthropology, including the anthropological studies carried out by the Vienna Museum of Natural History and the University of Vienna. Burleigh's and Friedlander's essays deal with the evolution of medicalized killing, euphemistically known as "euthanasia," that culminated in the Final Solution. An introductory overview is provided by the exhibit's curator, Barbara Bachrach. The concluding essay, by geneticist Müller-Hill, provides an important historical and moral assessment of the implications of the Nazi experience for genetics and science today. Each of the essays is an impressive scholarly work. Regrettably, however, there is a major omission: while the title is Deadly Medicine, the volume does not substantively address the subjects of medical practice, regulation, organization, research, and education. Some of these subjects are touched on with respect to individuals and institutions, but there is no overarching consideration of how the culture of medicine in the Third Reich became "deadly," how the medical community that gave birth to modern medical science became an agent of the Nazi state. No significant reference is made to Michael Kater's work documenting the representation and role of physicians in the Nazi Party and Hitler regime (The Nazi Party, 1983; Doctors under Hitler, 1989). No consideration is given to Robert Proctor's seminal work The Nazi War on Cancer (2000), which details the paradoxical relationship between Nazi philosophy and progressive attitudes toward public health and prevention in medical research and practice. The essays do not address the subject of physician (or scientist) education, with the inculcation of racist ideology and the exploitation of victims, both living and dead, for "teaching" and research in the German/Austrian universities, medical schools, [End Page 603] teaching hospitals, and research institutes. Using the parlance of the twenty-first century, there is no consideration of the transfer of knowledge from the scientists of the Third Reich to the practitioners. These criticisms notwithstanding, this is an outstanding and important volume. It deserves reprinting in a soft-cover format that would make it accessible to a wider readership, students in particular. William E. Seidelman University of Toronto (emeritus) Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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