[German medicine during the Nazi regime--cooperation and resistance]

The author reviews the collaboration between the medical profession and the Nazis in Germany during the period 1933-45, based mainly on recent literature. As several authors have pointed out, the medical profession became extensively involved in the implementation of a sterilisation programme, the practice of the racial laws, the exclusion of Jews from the medical practice, the Euthanasia Programme and the performance of painful and dangerous experiments on prisoners. Although the resistance to Nazism was weak and did not succeed in preventing the atrocities, it deserves historical attention. The resistance seems to have been motivated by an alternative ideology, such as Socialism, Christianity and Humanism. There were also some protests based on principles of medical ethics. Passive neutrality through "internal exile" seemed to have been difficult, and heroic resistance was rare, but did occur.