Psychology In Nazi Germany

Many people would willingly assist someone in danger, yet many German citizens sat idle as innocent people were slaughtered by the thousands. By the mid 1920s, Germany was plunged into a state of economic depression and people were desperately looking for someone to follow. Many people simply conformed to the ideals of others, despite their own thoughts and beliefs. Herd mentality is the subconscious adoption of the attitudes and behaviors of one’s peers. As a result of this ingrained disposition, people are more likely to “bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one” (Taleb 192). Through the use of propaganda, Hitler effectively targeted people’s innate need to conform to prevent the rapid decline in his following

Evaluate the impact of Nazi Policy on the young people in Germany between 1933 and 1939.

Another group of victims in the Holocaust was the mentally and physically handicapped. It Hitler’s mind, his new vision of the world needed to be ‘perfect’ and these people threatened it. The majority of the handicapped were killed on the spot instead of being put through the concentration camps. In 1939, the ‘euthanasia

46). For this reason, the mentally retarted, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targets, having been killed in gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were killed by an injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies were burned in crematories leading to more than 200,000 handicapped people murdered between 1940 and 1945 (Bachrach, 1994, p. 32).

These experiments were not only full of hate but also used for the advancement of medicine and effective treatment of the patient. Some were just out of fascination and believed they were for the better of the Aryan race. Injecting prisoners with chemicals, raising and lowering body temperature, and comparing the vitals of twins under extreme conditions are just three ways doctors of the Holocaust used prisoners for medical advancement. Since that age and time we have strived to move forward from that period and time and focus more on the patient's well being rather than the

There are photos all over the internet, photos at Nuremberg, photographs that regular people took of the killings the Nazis were doing. There is even a picture of a book that has the registry of everyone who died and who was killed. These people on this photograph where all disabled and mentally disabled and they were part of the Euthanasia project in Germany. -National Archives and Records Administration. Then there is also a cemetery at the hadamar institute where victims of that same euthanasia project were buried in graves. With hundreds and hundreds of graves in that one small acre of

“Young boys were organized into the Deutches Jungvolk (German Young People, informally called Pimpfe), older boys into the Hitlerjugend (HJ). The Deutches Jungvolk could have boys from the ages of 10-14 and the Hitlerjugend could have boys from the ages of 14-18. When World War II started, more than ninety percent of German youth were members of these organizations. Ninety percent is a huge percentage. That means that almost every teenage German, Gentile was a member of some kind of Nazi Youth Organization. Many of these youth organization actually over rid the parental control on the children. Many were told that the individual or the family was less important than the state. If children had disloyal parents, they were encouraged to report them. When the boys weren’t in school or at home with their parents, they were with their youth organization learning military maneuvers and different chants. An example of the one the chants that the Hitler Youth used to march around chanting are: “Comrades, we march to the field, red today, tomorrow dead, Comrades it must be that way.” If the boys made any achievement in the Hitler Youth, credit in school would be given to the student. The teacher must respect the authority of the youth leaders, regardless of their age or attitude towards them. Blind obedience seems to be a common theme. Children are taught these ideologies without knowing the true real reason. Teachers are forced to believe and follow these ideologies if they wish to

At the beginning of the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia program. After prominent German religious leader protest, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941. By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering and Himmler both Hitler and take power.

The Nazi Party wanted to get rid of all who were not healthy enough to work. Contrary to this fear, there are important “safeguards” to prevent anything like the holocaust from happening with euthanasia or physician assisted suicide (Brock 59). According to a survey done by the Louis Finklestein Institute for social and Religious Research and HCD in February of 2007, fifty-four percent of the doctors who participated believe the government should not control or regulate physician-assisted suicide (Friedman 35). It should be a matter between the patient and his or her medical practitioner. Also, those who oppose euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide may also fear those who are physically or mentally disabled may one day be grouped with those who are terminally ill (Friedman 62). This would not be a problem. Oregon's Death with Dignity Act has a safeguard―the patient must have a predicted lifespan of only 6 months to live to even qualify for being eligible to partake in using this act (Friedman 59). This safeguard is in place so neither the doctor nor the patient can falsely apply. Additionally, euthanasia for terminally ill children is still “morally repugnant” in many of the European countries today. This hatred for the euthanasia of children stems from the Nazis, who killed thousands of

The Holocaust is widely considered one of the darkest hours in world history. People of Jewish descent were imprisoned and confined to brutal conditions in concentration camps. Author Elie Wisel captures many of the atrocities of these detainments in his literary work, Night. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs describes the needs and motivation of people (Boeree). In Night, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs has a direct impact on the lives of the Jews and their relationships with each other.

During World War II Nazi Doctors played a key role in the mass genocide of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and those who were mentally and physically handicapped. The primary motivations of the Nazi doctors were most likely provoked by fear and safety at the cost of the cleansing the Aryan race of those who were considered impure. Motivations including peer-pressure and self-preservation are very likely to have increased the ability for the Nazi doctors to ignore one of the most basic components of moral and ethical code (do not kill others), as well as being able to ignore the Hippocratic oath all doctors swear by, to experiment on the poor dying bodies of the victims of the Holocaust. In order to murder thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and those who

The Holocaust in World War II is one the many cases of genocide. Millions of people were killed, or injured during the war. People were held in places called concentration camps. In the camps, people were dehumanized. They were treated like animals, and hurt. Sometimes they were even put through unethical treatments and medical experiments. Medical experiments are often talked about during times of war, as most of the time they are unethical, and a crime against humanity, as in the case of the experiments during the Holocaust. The medical experiments, and the trials that followed were the first trials for the crimes against humanity. The medical experiments of the Holocaust were a horrendous crime against humanity because they needlessly slaughtered

For example, the Nazis set up euthanasia program that targeted the physically and mentally ill. The word “euthanasia” literally means merciful death. Heads of the euthanasia program called their enterprise “T4”. The euthanasia program was the first mass murder program initiated by the Nazis. If the disabled were not killed, they were sterilized so they could not reproduce. According to JewishVirtualLibrary, “Meticulous records discovered after the war documented 70,273 deaths by gassing at the six "euthanasia" centers between January 1940 and August 1941.” (Persecution of the Mentally & Physically Disabled 1). Furthermore, during the euthanasia program, the Nazis would call the parents of disabled children and tell them to send their kids to “pediatric care centers”. These care centers were really killing centers. The kids would go to take a shower, but instead of water coming out of the nozzle, it would be poisonous gas that would kill the kid. Workers would clean out the shower and prepare it to receive the next person up in line. The dead body would be burned in a crematorium into ashes. Then, workers would take some ashes from a central pile and put them into an urn to send to the parents of the dead. Even though the physicians and workers would say the victims died of natural causes, the program quickly became common knowledge. Everyone knew about the program and started to protest. Eventually, Hitler was pressured into ordering a halt to the dreaded program. Although he ordered a halt publicly, the killings still went on in secrecy. The "Euthanasia" program continued on until the last days of World War II. It expanded to include a wider range of victims including geriatric patients, bombing victims, and foreign forced laborers. In total, most historians estimate that the "Euthanasia" Program, a death sentence for the disabled, claimed the lives of up to 500,000

This cleaning up of our culture must extend to nearly all domains. Theater, art, literature, movies, the press, posters, and window displays must be cleaned of the symptoms of a rotting world and put into the service of a moral idea of state and culture.” -Adolf Hitler. This meant exterminating anyone or anything that didn’t fit his standards. Hitler wanted to “cleanse” Germany of imperfections. People that Hitler didn’t deem fit for benefitting Germany were disposed of. Many groups of people were targets of discrimination during the holocaust, including jews, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped and the list goes on. The treatments the mentally handicapped had to endure were often overlooked and ignored, almost more than the other victims

Depression-era hardships had made it possible for the rise of extreme political movements in European countries, the most well know of these is that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The german invasion of poland led war to breaking out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its priorities to improving military infrastructure of the United States, even though the country remained