Eugenics
The publication of Charles Darwin’s landmark “Principles of Evolution” prompted writers in the early twentieth century to espouse a new science called eugenics. Instead of waiting for improvement in the human race through the laws of natural selection, why not actively achieve this by the scientific application of careful parental selection? Those with “good characteristics” would be encouraged to have children; those with “bad characteristics” would be sterilized. Eugenics developed a significant following in America and in Australia where mixed race Aboriginal children were forcibly re-homed. In 1907 Indiana became the first of an eventual thirty-five states in America to pass the Eugenics Laws that led to forced sterilizations. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, eugenics was elevated to a new level of importance, becoming central to the tenants of the Nazi program for a new Germany, a racially pure Germany, free from the contamination of “inferior racial influences”.
Heinrich Himmler
Born in 1900, he advanced to the rank of Reichsführer and head of the dreaded SS. Instrumental in establishing the T4 Euthanasia Programme, he founded the Lebensborn homes and cherished the racially pure children born in them. He was one of Hitler’s closest allies and committed suicide in Allied custody in 1945 by biting on a hidden cyanide capsule in his mouth.
Viktor Brack
Born 1904, Brack successfully implemented mass murder of physically and mentally disabled Germans through the T4 Euthanasia Programme in collaboration with Heinrich Himmler. He was also responsible for expanding this project into the extermination camps where millions of Jews died from poisonous gas.
He was convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, sentenced to death and hanged in 1948.
Oskar Vogt
Born in 1870, Oskar Vogt was an ambitious and talented doctor with an interest in the function of brains, neurology, and what he called the “source of genius”.
Having achieved renown by examining Lenin’s brain after his death, Vogt opened the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research where he served as director until 1936, when he was forced to leave because of his opposition to the Nazis. He set up a clinic near Neustadt and was left alone by the Nazis until in 1939, at the age of 69, he was drafted into the army as a Private and made to serve in a military hospital. One of Vogt’s post-war triumphs was his pioneering research into schizophrenia. He died in 1959.
SS Ranks and Allied equivalents
Schütze Private
Obersturmführer First Lieutenant
Hauptsturmführer Captain
Sturmbannführer Major
Obersturmbannführer Lieutenant Colonel
Standartenführer Colonel
Reichsführer National Leader
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank a number of people for their invaluable help with this book: Gordon Pfetscher for the German and Suzanne Anheuser with the French dialogue; Fred Lydon, who gave so much of his time helping me to understand the mechanics of CID and crime scene work; and finally to Dianne, not just for her enthusiasm on this project, but for her endless readings and honest feedback. The re-writes were hard, but worth it in the end.
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