Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (9 page)

4

T
O UNDERSTAND
how the Euthanasia Programme was practicable in a theoretically Christian country in the twentieth century, we must further examine the history of its development. We must also at least consider a disturbing story which has never been publicly aired and which rests on personal and circumstantial evidence. This evidence, however, has a disconcerting relevance because, if, as I believe, it is to be trusted, it would appear to prove that the Catholic Church, including the Vatican, knew of Hitler’s euthanasia plans before the programme ever began.

According to a careful analysis,
Euthanasia and Justice in the Third Reich
by Lothar Gruchmann, political scientist at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History, the question of euthanasia – the “destruction of unworthy life” – arose as early as 1933, in the course of government discussions regarding the proposed changes in the German criminal code. At that time the German Catholic Church declared uncompromisingly that any kind of legally sanctioned euthanasia was incompatible with Christian morality. Two years later, in 1935, Dr Franz Gürtner, Reich Minister of Justice, was to reject outright a proposal for legal sanction of euthanasia made by the Prussian Ministry of Justice. But a first compromise could be sensed in the
formulation
of his rejection: his report (on the work of the criminal law commission) said that “a (judicial) sanction of the destruction of unworthy life was out of the question”, but that the National Socialist State was “already providing against these degenerations in the nation’s body by measures such as the law for the prevention of hereditary disease in coming generations, which means that these degenerations are in effect in the process of decrease.”

The draft law Gürtner was referring to, for compulsory sterilization of men and women suffering from hereditary diseases, was originally discussed in a meeting of the Reich cabinet on July 14, 1933 – six days prior to the projected signing on July 20 of the Concordat between the Nazi government and the Holy See which was negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli and signed by Pius
XI
. On this occasion the then Vice-Chancellor, Franz von Papen, objected to the draft law as proposed, on the grounds that Catholic dogma opposed sterilization. The compromise he suggested was that sterilization should only be authorized upon the voluntary decision of a patient or, as an alternative, the “detention” of such patients might be considered. Hitler however opted for the original draft, but agreed that the publication of the law should be delayed until after the signing of the Concordat on July 20, 1933. The law accordingly was made public on July 25 and immediate reactions from a number of Catholic clergy were to prove that von Papen’s anxiety about the reaction of the Catholic Church was well founded.

Father Robert Leiber,
SJ
, Father Confessor and long-time friend of Eugenio Pacelli (Papal Nuncio in Germany 1917–1929; Cardinal Secretary of State at the Vatican 1930–1939; and Pope Pius
XII
1939–1959), addressed a long letter to Cardinal Pacelli on August 17, 1933, in which he expressed his deep disquiet over many facets of the National Socialist government.

In view of the many doubts raised during and since World War II over Pope Pius
XII
’s attitude toward the Nazis (which necessarily figures in many places in this book) Father Leiber’s well-known anti-Nazi convictions must in all fairness be registered, particularly as there is documented proof
*
that Eugenio Pacelli, at least in the earlier years, fully shared these apprehensions.

In the August 17, 1933, letter, Father Leiber said that he was “particularly anxious over the ideological confusion that had been brought into the minds of German Catholics. The National Socialists”, he said, “are doing everything they can to convince the Catholic population that an ideological agreement has [also] been reached between the Nazis and the Church. Already for six months now, Catholic authorities no longer dare (nor are given the opportunity) to expose and emphasize the ideological differences between the Party and the Church. Indeed,” he continued, “a number of professors at Catholic theological faculties have already come around to that point of view and are teaching that it is not the function of the State to serve the people, but the people to serve the State.” He continued to say that these particular theologians were attributing Catholic origins to the principles of the totalitarian state, and were using out-of-context quotations from, among others, Thomas Aquinas to substantiate their claim; and even that falsely, said Father Leiber, as the quotations were in fact from Aristotle, whose “concept of the relationship between man and State was totally antique-heathenish”.

Father Leiber went on to say that although the final clause of the Concordat assured the Catholic Church the right freely to disseminate its ideology, he had found no one in Germany who believed that this privilege could in fact be exercised. Already, he said, it was impossible to get ideas or articles contrary to the opinion of the Party into even
Catholic
publications. If they included such an item, the Catholic editor was removed and replaced with a National Socialist, but the publication continued to appear as if under Catholic auspices (thereby obviously lulling the reader into a false security). Amongst several examples he cited, Father Leiber enclosed a cutting of a case in point from the magazine
Germania
(published by von Papen) of Sunday August 13, 1933, with an article by Professor Dr Josef Mayer, professor in moral theology at the University of Paderborn.

Professor Mayer (who in 1927 had already published a highly controversial work on the sterilization of the insane) was here, said Father Leiber, cleverly propagandizing the new German law on eugenics on the pretext of interpreting the formal Catholic point of view. “Such articles,” wrote Father Leiber, “are even more harmful than openly advocating this law.” (The mention here of Professor Josef Mayer is, as will be seen shortly, of great relevance to later events.)

The 1933 law for compulsory sterilization of those suffering from hereditary disease was followed two years later, on October 8, 1935, by the
Erbgesundheitsgesetz
– the law to “safeguard the hereditary health of the German people”. This expanded the original law by legalizing abortion in cases of pregnancy where either of the partners suffered from hereditary disease.
*

Reichskommissar for Health and Hitler’s personal physician, Dr Karl Brandt,
†
testified at Nuremberg that euthanasia had long been on Hitler’s mind. As early as 1935 he had told the then Minister of Health, Gerhard Wagner, a notorious advocate of euthanasia, that “if war came, he would take up and resolve this question, because it would be easier to do so in wartime when the Church would not be able to put up the expected resistance”.

So Hitler and those around him, at least in these early years, were well aware of the fundamental opposition of the Catholic Church to euthanasia. Equally, there can be no doubt whatever that Hitler – nothing if not realistic – was, and in fact remained until the very end, perfectly aware of the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. If he had not been so aware of it, he would not have felt it necessary to exercise such stringent controls, particularly on the educational activities of the Church and – as Father Leiber pointed out – on the dissemination of its ideology.

And yet, despite this well justified misgiving regarding the potential reaction (and influence on the population) of the Catholic Church, Hitler, in the early autumn of 1939, took the fateful step towards “legalized” murder. A signed note from Hitler to Philip Bouhler was found after the war in the files of the Ministry of Justice. It bears no date, but according to the testimony of Dr Karl Brandt, it was made a secret decree at the end of October 1939 and was backdated to September 1. “Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians who are to be designated by name, to the end that patients who are considered incurable in the best available human judgment after critical evaluation of their condition can be granted mercy-killing.”

It is true that the war had begun, providing the camouflage under which Hitler had predicted in 1935 he would “resolve this question”. But even the war could not have been considered sufficient to deflect the attention of the Churches from this dark undertaking which could not in the long run remain hidden. And indeed, as it turns out, the Nazis quite realistically
didn’t
think they could hide it and therefore took the only step open to them: they sought out ways to “feel the pulse” of the Churches and then acted in accordance with what they found.

I have discussed the evolution of the Euthanasia Programme with a number of people in Germany who were involved in it (and others who deplored it); particularly with two men who were disastrously and closely connected with it at different periods and in different functions, but both at a high level.

One of them is Herr Dieter Allers who, as a young lawyer, on January 1, 1941 (a relatively late stage of the operation – two months after Stangl was assigned to T4) became chief administrative officer of T4 and who, after having been convicted of “psychological collaboration” in a recent euthanasia trial in Frankfurt, was sentenced to two years’ prison (considered served while awaiting trial). He is now back home, living with his family in Hamburg. Herr Allers – and incidentally his wife, who also worked at T4 – gave me information on a variety of administrative points which appears in relevant places throughout this book. And in an attempt to explain his own feeling about the acceptability of euthanasia, he advised me to see Herr Albert Hartl who, he said, would be able to tell me about an extraordinary sequence of events in which he had been involved.

The story told to me subsequently by Albert Hard concerns one short and specific period of vital importance to the evolution of the Euthanasia Programme: between March 1938, when Hitler moved into Austria, one of the traditional strongholds of the Catholic Church in Central Europe, and the autumn of 1939 when war began, and Hitler signed his secret decree which enabled the murder of the mentally and physically handicapped to commence.

I met Albert Hartl in the small town on Lake Constance where he teaches the history of art in a girls’ school, and lives with his wife, also a teacher, in a charming flat full of modern paintings and ancient pottery. He was then sixty-six. As a young man of twenty-one – son and grandson of teachers – Hartl became a priest. He had severe doubts even then about his vocation and about the dogma of the Catholic Church. “Just before I was ordained,” he said, “I went to see a Jesuit
Domkapitular
I much admired and told him of my doubts. This old and venerable priest knelt down, took my hand in both of his and said, ‘Believe me, my son, you are meant to be a priest: all of us have these doubts; they always come; but they will pass. Once you are ordained, once you wear the cloak of the Church – they will pass.’ And so I became a priest.”

He remained a priest for five years, most of that time teaching at a Catholic boarding-school in Freising. “My doubts were never resolved; on the contrary, they increased and strengthened. My whole concept of morality – my whole philosophy of life, as it developed, was inconsistent with the dogma. So, after five years, around 1933–4, I left the priesthood, and the Church.”

Before he took this step, Hartl, presumably searching for other ideals, had joined the National Socialist Party. He had been instrumental – however haplessly, as he now says – in the arrest and conviction for anti-Nazi statements of the headmaster of his school, a man called Rossberger. Hartl was a witness for the prosecution when Rossberger was tried and sentenced to three months in prison.

After leaving the Church, Hartl joined the
SS
and in 1935 was given the job of Chief of Church Information at the Berlin headquarters of the
SD
– the Reich Security Services.
*
It is not entirely clear what his functions were, but he has always maintained – and was never shaken during years of interrogation, first by the Americans, then by German courts – that his role was always in “intelligence” and was never “operational” – or executive. His position as head of one of the most important sd intelligence departments was, nevertheless, one of unique significance. And the fact that, despite these years of interrogation, he was never charged with any crime and in all the trials he took part in, was only heard as a witness, must speak for itself, and for the authenticity of the things he now says.

Regarding the beginning of the Euthanasia Programme, he says that in the second half of 1938, he received an order from Heydrich to report to Brack in the Führer Chancellery for a meeting involving a secret matter of State. Brack told him that many requests had been reaching the Führer Chancellery from near relatives of people with incurable mental diseases, asking Hitler to permit the mercy-deaths of these patients. It was therefore being considered, said Brack, whether the State should take action in this matter. But Hitler was opposed to it for the time being, especially because, having just received considerable support from the Catholic Church in Austria on the occasion of the Anschluss, he did not wish to provoke any conflict with them now. For this reason Brack wanted to have the question cleared up whether in fact there was or would be fundamental opposition from the Church to euthanasia of the incurably insane by the State.

Hartl says that Brack asked
him
to write an Opinion on this question, but that he refused, on the grounds that he did not feel competent to do this. In his view, he had told Brack, such an Opinion had to be written by a practising priest who understood something of Catholic moral doctrine. Instructed to find such a man, he addressed himself first to the canon of the St Kajetan Church in Munich, Dr August Wilhelm Patin. Hard does not deny that one of the reasons why he first went to Dr Patin was that Patin – a practising priest at the time – was Himmler’s cousin. “But Dr Patin,” said Hard, “finally seemed to me to take this matter much too lightly: he just said he didn’t think there would be fundamental opposition and gave some primitive reasons for his opinion. It was useless. That’s what finally made me suggest to Brack that we should commission a professor of moral theology to write a real expert Opinion.