ia_2011_b_nash

=B. Summary of Evidence (500-600 words) Tips]=

There has always been a claim for ‘the right to die’. As Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and World War Two began, he ordered this statement; ‘//Reich leader Philip Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians,…to the end that patients considered incurable to the best available human judgement of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing.’// [1] A consequence of this statement was the commencement of the T-4 program, which would ‘//take executive measures against those defined as life unworthy of living.’// [2] The T4 program involved sterilization of minorities, euthanasia and mass murders of humans who were considered unfit to live by physicians who had racial prejudices against them. The Sterilization **L**aws were an extremely important part of the Nazi program, focussing on negative eugenics, by discouraging the reproduction of people with genetic defects or inheritable undesirable traits. The Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health stated that "feeble mindedness", depression, schizophrenia, blindness, deafness and alcoholism all qualify for sterilization.[3] There are examples of T4 propaganda in the list of sources. Whilst there was the problem of controlling the ‘unworthy’ there was also the task of achieving a master Aryan Race.

This was Josef Mengele’s task and ambition. //‘to perfect the master race he studied twins, Gypsy twins, and Jewish twins to see if the breeding of the German people could be improved and thus one pregnancy could yield two members of the master race.’// [4] Nazi Eugenics in summary is medicine which strived to prove //‘racist scientific theories’.// [5] The Third Reich had let their subjective point of view cloud their objective, scientific judgement. Mengele was convinced that these theories were true, and that it would be him who would provide the mechanism. He once said, ‘there are only two gifted people in the world, Germans and Jews, and it’s a question of who will be superior’[6]. His PhD thesis was entitled; //‘Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups’// in which he claimed he could classify racial groups by using their jaw. Mengele was fortunate in a sense that his interests in Darwinist evolutionary theories were becoming a very popular area of science in the Third Reich.

Mengele was obsessed in trying to discover how to create twins at will. He wanted to increase the Aryan birth rate of Germany. The West German Indictment stated: ‘the research into twins occupied a large part of the pseudo experiments ... This was especially interesting to the Nazi regime, in particular with regard to a desired increase in the birth rate through medically manipulated increase in the number of birth of twins.'[7]

The result of these new laws of Euthanasia meant that doctors didn’t treat these people as patients but more as lab rats, as objects to work on to help produce the perfect man. Of course, Mengele gained notariety from these allegations. He tried to change the pigmentation of eyes using dyes in children,[8] which resulted in blindness and infections. He engineered conjoined twins,[9] forced twins to have sex with other twins in hope that they could reproduce twins.[10] All of these weird and crude experiments were in a vain effort to discover the truth. We know now that DNA is the defining factor in inherited traits, and why some of the bone marrow transplants, blood transfusions and pointless experiments seem certainly unprofessional and insane to us. Mengele was a pseudo scientist, whose racial beliefs overshadowed his objective scientific teachings.

for DVD references, use minutes into the film instead of a page ref,


 * [1] The T4 program see list of sources for picture**

[2] Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9 "Preface." xv. Print.

[3] // Article 1 of The Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health // (see list of sources) // [] last accessed 30/08/10 //

[4] Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9 "Preface." xv. Print.

[5] Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9"Preface." xxv. Print.

[6] // Dr.Lingens’ //Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9"// Auschwitz: May 1943-January 1945 //" 27. Print.

[7] // West German Indictment - Arrest warrant and indictment issued in Frankfurt am Main on January 19, 1981 //

[8] Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9 "// Auschwitz: May 1943-January 1945 . //" 34. Print.

[9] // Vera Alexander, interviewed by Central Television (London) for Home Box Office production “The Search for Mengele” October 1985 //

[10] Posner, Gerald L., and John Ware. //Mengele: the Complete Story//. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8154-1006-9 "// Auschwitz: May 1943-January 1945 . //" 37. Print.