Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany, c.1900 to 1945 by Michael Burleigh

Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany, c.1900 to 1945 Reviews

• 
  Ana

  Do you ever feel like humanity did more wrong that it will ever have the guts to repent for? I do..
  This was tough. There were moments where I did not want to go on reading. What's the point of knowing about all of the suffering if you can't do anything to change it? And then, of course, you find the point: making sure it never happens again. Historically, this work is flawless. Only the notes and bibliography occupy pages 399-372. Let me reiterate that: this book has 73 pages of pure research in fine print. There are over 1000 general notes, and it still tells you that it "excludes works cited in passing". It's monumental in its scope, there's references from all over the place, and it gives you so much reading to do that you feel like you don't actually know anything about the subject. The writing is superb - sharp, powerful in its cleanness, but at the same time considerate to the subject and compassionate in its purpose. Even while tackling such a theme, the author still manages to bring laughter out, with the help of a merciless sense of sarcasm. Loved, loved, loved it.
  
• 
  Vivian

  Great treatment of various “euthanasia” programs in Nazi Germany, especially the children’s euthanasia program Aktion T-4. Burleigh does a fantastic job of contextualizing T-4 within the wider Nazi forced killings, especially through the ties of many T-4 administrative and medical personnel to concentration camps in the Final Solution. Unfortunately this book has been out of print for several years, but it is very much worth the effort of finding a copy.
• 
  Bibliophile

  Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance is a harrowing look at the care of mental patients during the Weimar period and how easily certain ideas about "valuable lives" were harnessed into the Nazi killing machine between 1933 and 1945. Because the murder of tens of thousands of mentally ill people is often considered a mere footnote to the main story of millions murdered during the Shoah, there are very few detailed accounts of the T-4 program (named after the innocuous office building on Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin where the "euthanasia" program was headquartered) or its aftermath when thousands more were slowly starved to death. Burleigh's work is a necessary corrective to this view; he does his best - given the limited information still available - to provide a voice to those who were so brutally treated by the men and women who were supposed to be caring for them and places the Nazi campaign against the mentally ill in the landscape of brutality present in Germany at that time. Burleigh's own disgust for the men (and some women) who so utterly betrayed their Hippocratic oaths shines through the convincing and chilling statistics he presents. This is a heartbreaking book, but a very, very good one.
• 
  Red Haircrow

  "Death and Deliverance" reads more like a psychology journal or article than what many might expect if they've read other books on the Holocaust or WW2 era Germany, memoirs, non-fiction and the like. You are given the background on some of the perpetrators, who were simply doctors, hospital staff and others, who accepted the mission or research project into euthanasia actively or passively. A series of biographic information on those ones, and the locations where the terrible deeds took places, as well as examples of persons who were interred and killed at them make up the majority of the book.
  
  The author chose to simply present the information for the most part, without giving their personal opinions, so in a way, it does seem a little detached and lacking in emotion at times. Someone looking for a passionate diatribe against the ones who managed and executed the projects would be disappointed. As a scholar of the time period, Holocaust journals and WW1 and 2 Germany in general, I found the information invaluable.
• 
  Johann Manstein

  very comprehensive on a subject that while well known in history is not well discussed nor prolific in thororough analysis. The book does a good job covering pre-nazi policy and social circumstances through postwar debate. For the reader, there are disturbing questions raised on a number of issues including how life is regarded as precious or not at all from government all the way down to mothers of children. I was shocked to learn that a surprising number of family members desired these programs. In our world of staggering health care costs, strained family resources and stress levels coupled with increasing numbers of mentally ill, crack children, broken families, families with a disabled child taking up more resources than other children, and disfunctional adults, the risks of cost based utilitarian arguments that the Nazis used certainly will inevitably have resonance in the public arena. History has a real chance of revisiting the weak and helpless
• 
  Kate

  This review is from: Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany, c.1900 to 1945 (Paperback)
  Difficult to read, but important as so many books covering this period tend to focus on the 'Final Solution' and ignore the 70,000+ who were killed because of their mental disorders, birth defects, congenital malformations and diseases and injuries that resulted in loss of productivity. This text is important because it lays out the historical factors that lead first to the eugenics movements and Germany's eventual sterilization policies which were bolstered by the forced sterilization policies in the U.S. and moved toward the 'life unfit for life' philosophy that was being intellectually discussed by both the right and left leaning philosophers, to the eventual killing through starvation, injection and gassing of people held in asylums and hospitals.
  These policies did not happen merely because of the madness of the National Socialist Policies, but in a intellectual debate on what it is to be human which was being held across national boundaries, whose arguments supported the ideas of the Nazi Party on genetic superiority, and the purification of the volk that would make up the Germany of the future.
  The methods and the secrecy of these systematic killings did not come from demands on high, as the some histories would have one believe, with participants acting in fear of their lives and under duress. It started with the change in the civil service system, placing Party members in charge of asylums, the cutting of all funds to maintain those who had the least protections and political voice, it involved the collusion of thosands in the selection process, the killing and the disposal of remains and the vast bureaucracy that collected data on who was unworthy of life and to create the death certificates that were sent to families listing one of the 92 causes of death they could list that might not create to much questioning from families.
  The men and women who were the main actors in this euthanasia developed the methods and indeed were some of the people transferred to run the death camps, because they had become so skilled in the murders of the 'unfit'.
  Strangely, post war very few of these people were ever brought to trail by German authorities, who either acquitted them or gave them light sentences such as several months to four years for the direct murder of thousands, as the courts declared that these perpetrators did not know that the killing of thousands of Germans was illegal. Also many of these perpetrators were honored members of the community and friend of people in high places in post-war Germany.
  It also has a chapter that focuses on the film propaganda, and the tourist trade the government provided giving thousands of Germans tours of asylums so they could see for themselves how unworthy of life these charges were. The films presented the economic arguments, telling audiences how much it cost to maintain these creatures, when these funds could go to them, the viewer in better housing, or more food access, if only the state wasn't being burdened.
  Atrocities will always be with us, but they are not only the work of a few, these few always need the complicity of the general population, the willingness of a large number of people who can be bought with additional pay, food & alcohol allowances, and the right to some of the spoils of those they dispose of.
  This text is quite balanced giving no quarter to any specific point of view, but by providing documents and diaries of perpetrators lets the reader come to their own conclusions. A very important read on the direction medical and personnel can easily be subverted.