Benedict, Benedict, Susan and Linda Shields (eds.), Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Germany: The “Euthanasia Programs.”

Susan Benedict’s and Linda Shields’ edited volume focuses on the ways in which nursing and midwifery were involved in the Nazi “euthanasia” programs, a still largely understudied aspect of Nazi medicine. In doing so, it also addresses questions such as: “how a nurse, who is educated and trained to think that caring is the platform on which her/his work is based, can regard killing as a legitimate part of that caring” (1). The volume provides its readers with an in-depth analysis of how curing can become intimately connected to killing, and how (easily) people can become perpetrators.

The volume comprises eleven chapters that take the reader through the different stages and elements of nursing and midwifery in Nazi Germany. In the first chapter, which functions as the introduction, Shields and Thomas Foth introduce the key concepts and give some historical backgound on the “euthanasia” programs. Benedict studies the role of the eugenics movement in the broader development of racially motivated killings in chapter two. In chapter three, Foth, Jochen Kuhla and Benedict focus on what nursing looked like in the early 20th century and how it developed under Nazi rule. In chapter four, the focus is on psychiatry, and Benedict, Mary Lagerway, and Shields explain how psychiatric nursing was structured in Nazi Germany, and how it became the most important site for the euthanasia killings. In the fifth chapter, Benedict thoroughly describes the “euthanasia” programs. Chapter six, also written by Benedict, describes the activities of the nurses stationed at Meseritz-Obrawalde, a psychiatric hospital that functioned as a killing center. In the seventh chapter, Benedict then focuses on the testimonies of nurses who were involved in such mercy killings at Klagenfurt. Chapter eight turns to the role of midwives in Nazi medicine. Chapter nine, written by Ellen Ben-Sefer and Dganit Sharon, moves to the question of what the legacy of the “euthanasia” program can teach nurses and midwives today, and in the tenth chapter, Foth discusses philosophical and sociological theories that help us approach and understand the nurses’ and midwives’ actions during th Nazi era. In the final chapter, Shields and Benedict conclude with reflecting on some of the disquieting continuities between Nazi policies and twenty-first century nursing and midwifery

This volume shows how, much like soldiers and physicians, nurses and midwives were also “caught up in the propaganda of the time” (7). However, where a large body of research exists on the roles played by other parties in perpetration in this time, the role of nurses and midwives was left relatively unexplored in that regard. This book fills a long-standing gap left in the discussion of medicine in the Nazi era and contributes to discussions about the important role medicine and nursing play in eliminatory politics and practices.

Further Reading

Davidson, Martin. The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My SS Grandfather’s Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a Generation. Viking, 2010.

Benedict, S. and J. Kuhla. “Nurses’ Participation in the Euthanasia Programs of Nazi Germany.” Western Journal of Nursing Research, vol. 21, no. 2, 1999, pp. 246-263.

Burleigh, M. Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia”in Germany c. 1900-1945. Cambridge U.P., 1994.

Hoskins, S. A. “Nurses and National Socialism – A Moral Dilemma: One Historical Example of a Route to Euthanasia.” Nursing Ethics, vol. 12, no. 1, 2005, pp. 79-91.

MacFarland-Icke, Bronwyn R. Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History. Princeton U.P., 1999.

Steppe, Hilde. “Nursing in the Third Reich.” History of Nursing Society Journal, vol. 3, no. 4, 1991, pp. 21-37.

Author of this entry: Alyssa Vreeken.

Benedict, Susan and Linda Shields (eds.), Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Germany: The “Euthanasia Programs.” Routledge, 2014.