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Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life: Its Measure and Form
by Karl Binding (Author), Alfred Hoche (Author), Cristina Modak (Translator) |
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The Germans were methodically killing fellow Germans before they killed Jews, gypsies, and dissidents. 'Action T4' was a medical program that quietly whisked disabled and mentally ill people for extermination. Germans of all ages were targeted. Hundreds of thousands received 'treatment.' The philosophical foundations for the Nazi actions grew out of this book.
In a sober, philosophical discussion, professors Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche argued that there were 'lives unworthy of life'--and for the good of society, indeed out of compassion for worthless individuals, these people could be ethically killed. Binding and Hoche's book was a turning point in German culture and served as a catalyst for the T4 program, out of which the Holocaust grew.
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The passage below--shaping the history of the Twentieth Century—appeared in Allowing the Direction of Life Unworthy of Life (1920) by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding:
| Are there human lives which have so completely lost the attribute of legal status that their continuation has permanently lost all value, both for the bearer of that life and for society? Merely asking this question is enough to raise an uneasy feeling in anyone who is accustomed to assessing the value of individual life for the bearer and for the social whole.
It hurts him to see how wastefully we handle the most valuable lives (filled with and sustained by the strongest will to live and the greatest vital power), and how much labor power, patience, and capital investment we squander (often totally uselessly) just to preserve lives not worth living--until nature, often pitilessly late, removes the last possibility of their continuation.
Reflect simultaneously on a battlefield strewn with thousands of dead youths, or a mine in which methane gas has trapped hundreds of energetic workers; compare this with our mental hospitals, with their caring for their living inmates. One will be deeply shaken by the strident clash between the sacrifice of the finest flower of humanity in its full measure on the one side, and by the meticulous care shown to existences which are not just absolutely worthless but even of negative value, on the other. |
This passage—quoted repeatedly by historians of Nazism—provided the philosophical foundation of the “Euthanasia Program” that took hold in Germany in 1939. The authors, eminent academics, proposed that the state was justified in killing “life unworthy of life.”
The authors ask us to reflect upon a “battlefield strewn with thousands of dead youths,” and to compare this scene with “our mental hospitals with their caring for their living inmates.” Making this comparison, one would be “deeply shaken by the strident clash between the sacrifice of the finest flower of humanity,” on the one hand, and the “meticulous care” shown to existences which are “absolutely worthless,” on the other.
The authors present their proposal for euthanasia—the destruction of life unworthy of life—based on comparing the two cases: “If the state is willing to kill its best people—healthy young men who contribute significantly to society--why should the state hesitate to take the lives of people who make no contribution, indeed are burdensome to society?”
The Nazi euthanasia movement arose out of a reality that could not be uttered: that the state already was involved in a project of extermination--the First World War. If the state killed its best and healthiest human beings (who contributed substantially to society), why could it not also kill the worst or least healthy human beings (who were incapable of contributing to society)?
If a Nation Can Kill Its Best Citizens
Why Can it not also Kill Its Worst?
Hitler fought in the First World War and experienced is horrors. Yet he refused to criticize the German leadership. Though death had “snatched so many dear comrades and friends from our ranks,” Hitler averred in Mein Kampf, it would have been “a sin to complain” because after all, were they not “dying for Germany”?
Like Hitler, Hoche and Binding are unable to critique Germany directly by posing the simple questions: “Why did my nation sacrificed the finest flower of its humanity in the First World War?” “Why—during the First World War—was the battlefield strewn with thousands of dead German soldiers?”
They refused to adopt an antiwar stance. Rather, they perform an oblique, indirect critique, comparing the care that the nation provided for soldiers--with the care provided for mental patients. Why is Germany so wasteful with its most valuable lives yet provides excellent care for lives that are worthless?
Arising from the wreckage of the First World War, Hoche and Binding's thinking established the ideological foundation for the Holocaust. Unable to pose the question, “Why did our nation kill its healthiest or best citizens,” Hoche and Binding declare, “If our nation can kill its healthiest or best people, why can it not also kill its unhealthiest or worst people?”
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