Medicine and medical ethics in Nazi Germany

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Nazi era and the Holocaust was the participation of German physicians in human experiments and in mass murder. According to the editors of this volume, German physicians fully understood what the Nazi racial and eugenic research entailed, with many opting to pursue the career opportunities it afforded. "The first three decades of the twentieth century witnessed the growth of the eugenics movement in Europe, North America, and elsewhere," they say. "Unfortunately, the Nazi's translated eugenic principles into a program for the racial purification and moral improvement of the German nation." Confronting these issues from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this volume addresses the critical issues raised by the murderous experiments, the motivation of the German medical establishment and its complicity in Nazi crimes, and the impact and legacy of the eugenics movement as practiced in the Third Reich.