BY TRUST BETRAYED - Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich by Gallagher, Hugh Gregory

Henry Holt, New York 1990, . 1st edition, hard bound w/ dust jacket 6 1/2 x 9 1/2, VG/VG condition, x , 342 pages., illus., appendices, bibliog., index,---------------------- In September of 1939, immediately after he started World War II by sending an invading army into Poland, Adolf Hitler signed an order declaring war on his fellow German citizens—that is, those of his fellow citizens who were crippled, mentally ill, or disabled. The directive was given to two of Hitler's closest associates, Dr. Karl Brandt, his personal physician, and Reichsleiter Philip Bouhler, the chief of his chancellery. They were to set up a program that enabled German physicians to kill anyone deemed "unworthy of life." Under the influence of the then-fashionable apocalyptic theories of eugenics, many German doctors greeted this blood-chilling idea as a "technological breakthrough" and an example of the new regime's advanced thinking, while the majority simply accepted it without protest.-----------------------------------Despite this acceptance, and a barrage of propaganda in books, movies, newspapers, and magazines attempting to justify euthanasia, public outrage began to grow. Because of the resistance of brave disabled people and because of the public sermons of important clergy, including Clemens von Galen, the Bishop of Munster, Hitler rescinded his official order, suffering the only major policy reversal of his twelve years in power. Despite the absence of an official order, however, the doctors who had been authorized to kill continued to do so without any fear of reprisal or prosecution. More than 200,000 people were killed under the program throughout the war and even, in some cases, during the occupation that followed the war.---------------------------------Hugh Gallagher's moving study is the first book to tell the complete story of this particular aspect of the Nazi nightmare. Based on extensive research, including captured Nazi documents and the full deposition and interrogation transcripts taken by the U.S. Army immediately after the surrender, it is a riveting account covering the smallest details of how the killing centers functioned as well as the larger social and historical context.