The Nazification of German physicians, 1918-1937

Physicians were the most over-represented academic profession in the Third Reich. They participated in the Nazi programs of forced sterilization, systematic euthanasia, human experimentation, and mass genocide. Recent research has shifted from documenting the atrocities committed by medical professionals to elucidating the process by which the German medical community became integrated into the Nazi state. The Nazi doctrine attracted a profession in economic and political distress during the Weimar Republic. It drew physicians into its movement by appealing to the medical profession's pride and prosperity in the context of a philosophy that glorified contemporary medical practice. Physicians were attracted to the Nazi party's biologically based tenets that championed biomedical solutions to social problems. They perceived the Nazi regime as instrumental in improving their incomes, reducing unemployment by purging the profession of Jewish physicians, neutralizing the insurance bureaucracy, and re-structuring the profession. The Nazi government's popularity among doctors peaked in 1937, by which time physicians had already played an integral role in the orchestration of the Nazi state.