Reddit reviews The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

We found 9 Reddit comments about The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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9 Reddit comments about The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide:

u/Sproutedonthenumber9 · 382 pointsr/todayilearned

The problem is very complex, I think. Police are like the bag you use to pick up shit and keep your hand clean. They have a side which interacts with the 'normal' public and a side which just as much interacts with the criminal world. I don't think you'd find many psychologists who would be surprised at people who live in this interface 8 hours a day find the behaviour on the shitty side to become normalised.

A criminologist for whom I do not have a reference is quoted as saying "When men first come into contact with crime, they abhor it. If they remain in contact with crime for a time, they become accustomed to it, and endure it. If they remain in contact with it long enough, they finally embrace it, and become influenced by it."

We look at individual, micro actions of misbehaviour by Police and have trouble understanding them. They look like cases of 'why would they do that?' and the conclusion that most people reach is that the Police Officer is a bad person. The funny thing with human behaviour is that at the micro level, we make sense of things by consciously projecting ourselves into that position. We involve our own mind emotionally and personally in what we're assessing. For any species wide assessment or large scale group behaviour, the notion of the individual unit as a free, sentient, thinking, living wildcard is the first thing to go out the window. There's no humanity at the macro level. Once we 'zoom out' far enough, human behaviour is quite predictable and not really surprising and we behave just like any other animal. Look at the obesity problem in America. You put rats in a cage with too much food, they get fat. I'm sure human population growth and spread mimics many other species over evolutionary time periods, too.

So should we really be surprised that these people who we have living in this interface, institutionalised from other facets of society, develop behaviour patterns that have elements of each world they're exposed to? It is a very institutionalised life, it's more than a job and becomes a part of who you are. You're never off duty, really. There is always a part of you which remains switched on and you know you're responsible if anything happens. It's very hard to relate your stresses to non-Police, too. I found it very hard to have relationships with women because they especially being my age (late teens/early 20s during this) were immensely virginal in the ways of the world compared to what I was having trouble processing from work.

The criminals you deal with hate you. The public, for the most part, hates you (or at least the ones you deal with who shape your personal knowledge of how the public feels towards you are often horrible). The media is AWAYS out to fuck you and the people you're out there taking on all this shit for are the first ones to get out the pitchforks if you make even an honest mistake or error or judgement. But you know that your fellow Officers have your back and even the ones you don't like, you have a bond with. Sometimes, within the department, people won't get along (as I elaborated on a bit in my previous post), but when it's 'us and them' versus the public, you've got your fellow Officer's back first and foremost. Kind of like how people will bicker with someone from the town over about a sporting team, but gladly band together when it's an interstate rivalry.

I'm in Australia, so it's no where near as bad as it seems in America, by the way. But still here, I think all the ingredients are there. It looks like Police in America are being used by illegitimate interests and getting primed to become the authoritarian militia and when you look at it from a system wide point of view, it's very easy to see how this slide could happen. Your Officers are essentially a captive population that can be gradually re-trained and purposed without them even realising it, or having real need to question what they're doing. Their whole family is doing it, after all. Most of them are trapped in that line of work, too. Mortgage, families depending on them. I was lucky I had no debts or dependents and could spontaneously resign.

It's easy to say 'well why wouldn't they just resign, or refuse to do that', but it's really not that simple. Unfortunately, to argue against that is a very difficult and complex problem that most people who just want to bitch about the Police won't stick around to listen to.

There is a very good book (which I have to confess to not having finished) called The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert J Lifton. Though it says many other things, it explores the psychology behind how people change from being 'normal' to becoming able to commit horrible acts. Clearly I'm not comparing a decline in Police behaviour to this level of extreme, but it's interesting to look at militarisation of Police in this light.

What's a viable solution? Perhaps one place to start is to change how we view our Police. Yes, they still need to be accountable for their actions. But we should look at them as our peers who need our help and support to keep going out there and fighting the fights for us so we don't have to. They're good people, they're your friends and they want to help you. But they are also just simply human at the end of the day and if you think you'd be immune to having your personality skewed and distorted by the things they experience every day, you may be in for a very rude shock. Don't react with anger, react with empathy at what has happened to that formerly keen, idealistic person to make them behave less than admirably. You won't have to scratch far below the surface to find some pretty dark and upsetting shit. Again, it doesn't excuse bad behaviour, but we can't be surprised when we throw someone into the septic tank and they come out smelling like shit.

Our efforts should really be concentrated on the laws and policies that are resulting in parts of our society being so fucked up. I think massive drug law reform and legalisation of pretty much everything would change the landscape so much for the better that hypothesising past that point would just be guesswork.

u/mikeaveli2682 · 52 pointsr/hiphopheads

u/codifier · 3 pointsr/HistoryPorn

There's a good book on how educated and intelligent people participated in despicable acts against other humans some with extreme zeal. Zimbardo also wrote an interesting book on the topic; particularly how regular people like you and I can even get sucked in.

u/Boredeidanmark · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

This book may be helpul. I read it over ten years ago, so I don't totally remember how much of it is on point.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nazi-Doctors-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052

u/CovertGypsy · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

I typed up a really long reply and then realized it was a little too off topic and in depth without really answering your question. Essentially, no, the original intent was never to systematically kill off the Jewish population. If you'd like to learn how eugenics gained a foothold in Nazi Germany and how the "stages" of eradication plans unfolded, I would suggest reading The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. It goes into detail about how mental illnesses, genetic illnesses, and certain races were targeted before and after the start of the war and how the Nazi's were able to convince (specifically) doctors to take part in genocide.

u/DejaBoo · 1 pointr/IAmA

Here's a very respected book to answer your question WritingIplement. Although very bleak. I read at most 10 pages at a time to try and digest how the "final solution" came to be. Hitler merely enforced a held belief by professionals that justified his hatred for the Jews.

Nazi Doctors

u/deathofregret · 1 pointr/todayilearned

holy shit if this isn't a book to get your skin crawling late at night. who needs r/nosleep when you can have nazi doctors

u/Clam666 · 1 pointr/todayilearned

That's something I've been saying. I have no idea what did or didn't happen in WW2, I wasn't there. And I'm more than willing the believe in the possibility that numbers are inflated to some extent, because there aren't detailed records giving an exact count. For years I had heard "6 million Jews killed" when they fail to mention that many of them were the disabled and infirm, the mentally handicapped, gypsies, homosexuals, political undesirables, and a variety of other figures. A book on how the medical field was corrupted and different kinds of people killed and methods is quite fascinating.

Even if the numbers are inflated, which Russia, the US, and Israel would never want to correct even if they were, who cares? Let's say there were only 1 million executed. How is that better? If there is some conspiracy that's inflating the numbers, great, but how is a million people acceptable? Hell 10,000 people is too many. Genocide isn't good at any number.

Let's say they discover incontrovertible proof that there were only 500,000 Jews (and others) killed in a factory fashion. What do we do with this information and "facts"?

These things are stupid, I'm not sure why people waste their time trying to uncover supposed conspiracies from 75 years ago, especially one that at best, alters some numbers of body counts which doesn't make anything better.

u/sie_liebt · 1 pointr/todayilearned

It was the US and England that Hitler and the Nazi Party were concerned they were "falling behind" in regard to implementing sterilization programs. It is worth pointing out, though, that once they got that ball rolling, they seriously outpaced us, sterilizing more people in one year than we had in twenty. Also, their sterilization program rapidly grew to include "euthanasia", beginning with infants and children and only later going on to include adults. I'm reading this book currently. It's incredibly interesting and informative. Definitely worth picking up if you're interested in that sort of thing.