Aktion Against Humanity?

Hitler’s “Memorandum Authorizing Involuntary Euthanasia”, 1-Sep-1939, via Wikipedia

World War II is generally considered to have begun with the German invasion of Poland on 1-Sep-1939. The above document, while actually signed in October 1939, was backdated to 1-Sep-1939, presumably to coincide with the beginning of the war. The (translated) memorandum states:

“Reichsleiter [Philipp] Bouhler and Dr. med. [Karl] Brandt are hereby instructed and authorized to broaden the powers of designated physicians to the extent that persons who are suffering from diseases which may be deemed incurable according to standards of human judgment based on a careful examination of their condition shall be guaranteed a mercy death.”

Adolf Hitler, Memorandum Authorizing Involuntary Euthanasia, Berlin, 1 September 1939

The document was requested as legal “cover” for the adult “euthanasia” program being organized by Brandt and Bouhler, later referred to as Aktion T4. Note the use of the word “adult” – the children’s “euthanasia” program began earlier that same year.

While the “euthanasia” programs began in 1939, the framework for them was built over a period of years. For example, the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” became active in January 1934 and allowed the compulsory sterilization of people deemed by the “Hereditary Health Court” to suffer from a list of alleged “genetic disorders”, which were sometimes neither.

Is it surprising that most of the over 400,000 victims of this sterilization were women, and that women had little say in the matter? Or that one group of victims were the “mixed-race” children of German civilians and French African soldiers who helped occupy the Rhineland?

And is it surprising that Hitler personally decriminalized abortion in the case of fetuses having “racial or hereditary defects”, while abortion of healthy “pure”, “German”, “Aryan” fetuses remained strictly forbidden?

Getting back to the “euthanasia” programs, the justifications given were not only racist, ableist, and misogynistic, but also based on the idea that these people were “unworthy of life”, and a drain on resources. Or, in other words, eugenics, which essentially could include anyone considered “undesirable”.

But, of course, it gets worse from there, since the “euthanasia” program was used as a model for the coming industrial-scale murders committed during the “Final Solution”.

While drug overdoses and starvation were used in the early days of the “euthanasia” program, they eventually settled on gassing victims as being more “efficient”. The first gassings in Germany (as opposed to conquered territories) took place in January 1940 at the Brandenburg “Euthanasia” Centre, and used pure carbon monoxide gas.

But this is insane, you might say. People would never have supported a program like this!

Whether people would have supported the end result of this specific program is ultimately irrelevant, due to the combination of fear, disinformation, propaganda, and the use of laws which could be described as being intended only for extreme cases, along with secret government memos, and a complicated web of bureaucracy which made it nearly impossible to actually see what was happening in detail.

As an example, some parents were told that their children were being sent to “Special Sections” for “improved treatment”, and then later that their children had died of “pneumonia”.

All of that said, it should be noted that Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, years before, that racial hygiene “will appear as a deed greater than the most victorious wars of our present bourgeois era”, so no one could plausibly say that they were surprised by things like this.

In addition to the original memorandum, Hitler tasked an advisor to draft a “euthanasia” law, but decided not to proceed with it, because he thought it would “cause an uproar”. And, in fact, there was an uproar anyway, as some details of the program were discovered over time. In August 1941, the program was officially ended, but actually continued until the defeat of Germany in 1945.

So, who were Bouhler and Brandt, that they could do such things as murder children and people they labelled as disabled?

Philipp Bouhler was a senior functionary of the Nazi party, and an Obergruppenführer (roughly equivalent to general) in the SS. He was one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1922, and was one of the people Hitler trusted to get things done. He was arrested on 10-May-1945, and killed himself using a cyanide capsule on 19-May-1945.

Karl Brandt was a physician and surgeon, and a Brigadeführer (roughly equivalent to major-general) in the SS, who served as Hitler’s “escort doctor” and was later appointed Reich Commissioner of Health and Emergency Services. He was arrested on 16-Apr-1945 by the Gestapo, for moving his family out of Berlin so they could surrender to American forces, condemned to death by a military court, released from arrest by Karl Dönitz (who succeeded Hitler after his suicide), then arrested by the British on 23-May-1945. He was later convicted at the so-called “Doctors’ Trial”, and executed on 2-Jun-1948.

The Doctors’ Trial was held to charge 20 physicians and 3 SS officials for their involvement in the Aktion T4 program and Nazi human experimentation. Brandt was the first-listed defendant, though it’s interesting to note that Philip Boucher and three others who would have been included had died by suicide, while Josef Mengele evaded capture.

Either way, World War II was over 75 years ago, so this is “only” of historical interest, right?

Well...

Right?

I recently described RFK Jr’s lies about vaccines and autism, but he doesn’t stop there.

Other recent comments have made me even more worried and angry than before.

While claiming that the prevalence of autism is rising (it isn’t), he said that “autism destroys families” and is an “individual tragedy as well”.

He also claims that “many” autistic children were “fully functional” and

“regressed... into autism when they were 2 years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

RFK Jr. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-statements-on-autism)

Then, in response to the inevitable backlash against this hateful fiction, HHS responded that Kennedy “was referring to those that are severely affected by this chronic condition” and that “this was in no way a general characterization.”

Um, yeah. Bullshit. His apparent goal is to make autism a “horror” diagnosis by describing the most extreme cases in a dehumanizing way, and using numbers which are either fictional or misleading to make it appear that there is an “epidemic” that requires urgent action.

This sounds familiar, somehow... Different song, but the same tune...

Then, of course, he claims to follow the science – but only when it is consistent with his ideological position, and announces a “series of new studies”, which would be done “very, very quickly” by the “most credible scientists from all over the world”.

Yeah. About that... RFK Jr appointed David Geier to lead the study on the “causes” of autism. So, he must be a highly-qualified doctor and scientist, right?

No. But he HAS been sanctioned for practising medicine without a license, while “working” with his father Mark Geier on a “study” claiming to “treat” autism using a drug called Lupron, which is a manufactured version of a hormone used (among other things) as a puberty-blocker or as chemical castration. His father WAS a doctor, though... until his medical license was revoked as an “emergency action” because he “endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community”.

So, totally unqualified. Seems consistent with RFK Jr’s past record.

And then there’s the “autism registry”. RFK Jr has described his plans to “study” autism, and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has said that NIH would be “developing national disease registries, including a new one for autism”, though HHS then released a statement that “We are not creating an autism registry. The real-world data platform will link existing datasets to support research into causes of autism and insights into improved treatment strategies”.

So, contradictory statements, lies, an incompetent ideologue to lead a “study” which has apparently already-discarded the conclusions of all credible prior studies, and wildly exaggerated descriptions of autistic people as destroying families.

Why do I find it so easy to imagine RFK Jr in the uniform of an SS Obergruppenführer?

Cheers!