Nazi Medicine Inspired by Darwin
Darwin-inspired Nazi medicine
dominated academia in Germany
and generated a horrific medical atlas
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
One embarrassing historical fact is that many highly educated persons, including many professors at major universities, embraced Nazism. As one research study says,
It was not difficult for the Nazis to win the support of many university professors, administrators, and students. … . Many university professors immediately welcomed the Nazi-led government in 1933. Many student fraternities and other student groups already banned Jews and regularly protested against professors they believed did not support supposed traditional German values. Scholars who were Jewish … struggled to find research and teaching positions in public, government-supported German universities and often worked in private ones instead. With the passage of the new law, the Nazis attempted to root out any dissent to their policies and ideology that remained in German higher education.[1]
One residual of this marriage between academia and Nazism that still reverberates today
was the publication of both research and illustrations based on the victims of Nazi brutality.
The defeat of Nazi Germany on 7 May 1945 occurred when German General Alfred Jodl signed the surrender in the French town of Reims. The surrender document stated that all German forces would cease fighting on 8 May 1945 at 23:01 hours. Yet, 78 years later, Nazi research findings and illustrations in medical books are still relied on in the West. This is now changing. One UCLA doctor is attempting to replace the illustrations in medical books based on the “work of an ardent Nazi whose Vienna Institute had dissected the bodies of prisoners, many executed for political reasons after Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany in 1938.”[2]
How the Pernkopf Illustrations Were Made
The UCLA doctor, cardiac electrophysiologist Kalyanam Shivkumar, was attempting to understand the intricate details of chest nerves to help him improve cardiac arrhythmia treatments. He bristled at hearing others praise illustrations in one text as ‘unsurpassable.’ They were referring to “the anatomical atlas created by Dr. Eduard Pernkopf, a fervent supporter of the Nazi regime whose work was fueled by the dead bodies of its victims.”[3]
The text is a seven-volume anatomical atlas, Topographische Anatomie des Menschen (Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy, colloquially known as the Pernkopf Atlas). It was prepared by Pernkopf and four artists over a 20-year period.[4] One factor that motivated Shivkumar is that he is Jewish. The result of Shivkumar’s work was the publication of one of the leading textbooks in the area of cardiac anatomy and cardiac intervention. It contains visually stunning presentations of over 200 full-color photographs of the human heart and its adjacent structures. [5]
The Pernkopf text has a long controversy.[6] One reason is Pernkopf, as head of the Anatomy Institute in Vienna, was responsible for the procurement of bodies of Nazi terror victims for dissection used for creating his atlas. Therefore, he was a direct supporter in the pillaging of the bodies.[7]
Much of the concern was over the fact that Pernkopf did not just acquiesce to the Nazi’s demands, but enthusiastically supported them. In 1933, he joined the Nazi Party’s foreign organization and the following year he became a member of the Sturmabteilung (the SA, or assault division of the infamous Storm Troopers commonly called the “brownshirts”). In 1938, he became dean of the medical school in the same year as the Anschluss, when German troops invaded Austria and incorporated Austria into the German Reich.
The Storm Troopers played a significant role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their primary task was to provide protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, and disrupt meetings of opposing parties even if violence was required.[8] They also had an important role in supporting the Holocaust.[9] The Viennese School of Medicine “held a leading place in the hierarchy of medical excellence. No fewer than four Nobel Prize winners of this era originated from within the faculty: Robert Barany, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Karl Landsteiner, and Otto Loewi.”[10]
Pernkoph Drunk on Darwinism
Social Darwinism, a belief based on the teachings of Charles Darwin, spread throughout Europe during the 19th century. It concluded the Aryan race was “superior and its purification was seen as the only means to prevent the degeneration of society.”[11] At the medical school where Pernkoph was dean, he soon applied Darwinism to the school’s administration.
The result was “The Medical Faculty of Vienna suffered more than any other European faculty from ‘race hygiene.’ Within weeks of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, 153 of the faculty’s 197 members were dismissed. By far the most frequent reason for dismissal was Jewish origin.”[12] Importantly, the “relationship between Viennese Jews and non-Jews had been relatively unproblematic until the late 19th century, when the ideas associated with social Darwinism began to spread and combine with overt anti-Semitism.”[13]
Ironically, the “’cleansing’ process encountered little resistance, and the vacant posts were quickly filled with persons known not for their medical expertise but for their political trustworthiness. It was in this climate that medical atrocities could be committed.”[14]
One prominent proponent of social Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, was the first to indirectly promote euthanasia for eugenic reasons in Germany. Darwinism relates to
the fight for survival that has produced the diversity of natural life and that determines the history of peoples; it is complemented by artificial breeding, for example the Spartans who submitted all new-born children to selection and killed all weaklings… The basic idea of social Darwinism was that just as species fight for the survival of the fittest, peoples are in a constant process of competition that favors those who are genetically best equipped (Aryans). According to this theory, degeneration of a given people can be prevented by cultivating the optimal race (Aryans).[15]
As E. Edzard stressed in 1995, “The medical profession played an essential part in generating, popularizing, and implementing these theories; this resulted in the atrocities later revealed at the Nuremberg Trials.”[16]
Conclusions
The opposition to Professor Pernkoph went beyond the fact that he used prisoners for his medical illustration books. He played a significant role in supporting the Nazi ideology and movement. One result of his support was the exploitation of its victims. Consequently, opposition to his medical book was justified on several grounds. Now that a quality replacement is available no need exists to use the book tainted by Nazism. Pernkoph was one of many Nazi doctors that played a significant role in the horrors of the Holocaust.
References
[1] “Controlling the Universities. Learn how the Nazis pushed their ideology onto German universities, and how academics like Heidegger and Einstein responded,” Facing History & Ourselves; https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/controlling-universities, last updated 2 August 2016.
[2] Reyes, E.A., “A UCLA doctor is on a quest to free modern medicine from a Nazi-tainted anatomy book,” Medical Xpress; https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-ucla-doctor-quest-free-modern.html, 25 May 2024.
[3] Reyes, 2024.
[4] Williams, D.J., “The history of Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen,” Journal of Biocommunication 15(2):2–12, Spring 1988.
[5] Mori, S., and K. Shivkumar, Atlas of Cardiac Anatomy: Anatomical Basis of Cardiac Interventions, Volume 1, 1st edition, Cardiotext Publishing, Hopkins, MN, 15 October 2022.
[6] Dittrick Medical History Center, “The Pernkopf anatomical atlas controversy: Issues of Nazi medicine and medical ethics,” Case Western Reserve University, 2010.
[7] Riggs, G., “What should we do about Eduard Pernkopf’s atlas?,” Academic Medicine 73(4):380–386, 1998.
[8] Siemens, D., Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2019.
[9] Bartrop, P.R., and E.E. Grimm, Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, Enablers, and Collaborators, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA, 2019.
[10] Edzard, E., “A leading medical school seriously damaged: Vienna 1938,” Annuals of Internal Medicine 122:789-792, 1995, p. 789.
[11] Edzard, 1995, pp. 789-790.
[12] Edzard, 1995.
[13] Edzard, 1995, p. 790
[14] Edzard, 1995, p. 789.
[15] Edzard, 1995, p. 790.
[16] Edzard, 1995, p. 789.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.