Hist 33D, L 7: From Eugenics to Euthanasia
by Prof. H. Marcuse, UCSB, Oct. 14, 2003

What caused Kristallnacht?
(What caused doctors to murder patients?)

• proposals due (more topic ideas: Wave, a-bomb)
• Kristallnacht: motivation vs. cause vs. effect (diplomacy & persecution, opportunism, greed)
• Eugenics, euthanasia & the role of science
• Admin: comments & return J1+2,Q1 (roll) field trip, grading, grammar; films tonight

Causes, Goals, & Motivations

• Why does something happen?
• cause: forces it to happen ("push")
  longer term vs. immediate
• precondition: allows it to happen
  ("necessary but not sufficient")
• motivation (people=agents only):
  goal they want to achieve ("pull", in order to)
• Example: Why am I teaching you?
• Cause: my contract says so; events in my career
• Motivation: pleasure of teaching, to earn money
• conditions: existence and role of college educat.

Causes of Kristallnacht?

• Grynszpan assassinated vom Rath in Paris
• H.G. received a letter from his parents
• H.G. wanted to make a public statement
• Poland wouldn't accept G's family
• Poland was antisemitic
• Poland did have jobs for returning emigrants
• Why did G's parents have to go to Poland?
• expelled from Germany
• no other place to go (world didn't respond)
• Why were they expelled from Germany?
• because Hitler (and Goebbels) hated them
• because Germans hated them
• to steal their assets (and fund rearmament)
• to purify German society
• bureaucrats wanted to impress Hitler
• bureaucrats wanted to outdo each other

A model of historical causes: EIEO

• Question: What factors played a role in causing the Holocaust? In allowing it to happen?
  In general, what things play a role in allowing and making historical events happen?
• Answer:
  5 broad categories, interconnected:
• Economic factors (Marxism: these underlie all others)
• International factors (diplomacy, intervention)
• Elites (behavior of groups w/ special access to power)
• Ideology/Information/Media: perception of the world
• "Opposition": people, human agents
• "background" of culture and institutions

Definitions

• Eugenics ('good origin'):
• improvement of offspring
• possible since Darwin, esp. since 1890s
• textbook: popular in U.S.!
• Euthanasia ('good killing'):
• killing the painfully, incurably ill
• Nazi: killing the racially unfit
  (for eugenic reasons)
• T4: abbr. for Tiergartenstrasse 4
  (address of Reich Health Office in Berlin)

Why did doctors murder? (Questions for film tonight)

• motivations?
• goals?
• conditions?

Announcements

• Field trip Sunday, Nov. 2, 8am - 6pm
• how many will drive from here, room for …?
• how many will be in LA?
• how many want to be excused?
• Films tonight (volunteer?):
• "Selling Murder" by historian Michael Burleigh
  1993 Discovery Channel, 44 mins.
• "Nazi Designers of Death" by R-J van Pelt
  (book Auschwitz, 1270-present), 55 mins.
  bureaucrats made it possible

Film Selling Murder

• Town of Hadamar, north of Frankfurt
• "Devereaux"-like institution there
• 6 Nazi propaganda films
• 1935: Was Du Erbst, Erbkrank (What you inherit, Hereditarily ill)
• 1937: Opfer der Vergangenheit (Victims of Past)
  special commission, shown in all cinemas
• 1939: Existence without Life (Mentally Ill)
  commissioned by T4 staff, start of murders
• 1941: Ich klage an (I Accuse)
  feature film with famous actors, 18mio viewers!

Journals and grading

• check + vs. check +(-) vs. check +(+)
  3 pts, 2.5pts, 3.5pts.