Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany, c.1900 to 1945

By Michael Burleigh

Book Overview

Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazis systematically murdered as many as 200,000 mentally ill or physically disabled people whom they stigmatised as 'life unworthy of life'. This complex and covert series of operations was known as the 'euthanasia' programme. It provided many of the personnel and the technical expertise later deployed in the 'Final Solution'. This is the first full-scale study in English of the 'euthanasia' programme. It considers the role of all those involved in these policies: bureaucrats, doctors, nurses, health officials, lawyers, clerics, and also parents, relatives, and the patients themselves. Using a wealth of original archival material, it highlights many of the moral issues involved in a way that is profoundly disquieting. The book concludes by showing the ease with which many of the perpetrators filtered back into German society after 1945.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521416132
• ISBN13: 9780521416139
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Remembering the forgotten victims

An extraordinary and deeply moving book. Burleigh documents in meticulous and scholarly detail the mass murder of psychiatric patients, and exposes the obscene justification of this as "mercy killing" (incidentally providing a fascinating and horrifying survey of the way in which the Nazi "euthanasia" program helped create the bureaucratic machinery later used to run the concentration camps). Instead of allowing the sheer weight of numbers to render the victims anonymous, he uses haunting photographs and details of some of the murdered adults and children to "bring them to life" and make vivid the humanity which the Nazis were unable to see. Anyone interested in the rights of the mentally handicapped and mentally ill should read this book