Could a citizen in Nazi Germany sue the government or doctors over the eugenics program?
score:13
There are a couple of different questions here ...
Could people view public records?
A very qualified yes. Some people could view some public records. Public life had to go on. People bought and sold houses, not just during Arianization. There were ordinary civil and criminal trials, not just political trials.
Could people sue the state?
A qualified yes. There was still a public administration, and people who thought that mistakes were made in their tax assessment or whatever. They could sue.
Could people sue the state over Nazi policies?
Not healthy. The Nazis set up special courts to sentence their enemies, and from 1936 the actions of the secret police were beyond judicial review. On the other hand, the Nazis were terrified of a crumbling of public morale as in WWI. Some people could defy the Nazi administration and get away with it, at least for a time.
Was there fraud in public records to cloak Nazi policies?
A clear yes. This applies to death certificates, notably cause and place of death.
Upvote:5
I have one reference about "sue the Government" in the Nazi Germany, though it is not about eugenics. When Jewish professors were dismissed, David Hilbert (the most famous German mathematician of the time), who was 71 in 1933 asked his colleagues: why don't you sue the government? Everyone looked at him as if he lost his mind. Reference: Constance Reid, Hilbert, Springer 1996.
Also: some of the German judges were prosecuted by tribunals after the war, exactly for implementing the eugenics/racial laws (by judicial decisions). There is a famous movie about one of these trials: Judgment at Nuremberg by S. Kramer. (Sorry for citing a movie as a reference but this one is based on real facts).
Upvote:6
The predominant source I read, Aly, mentions no one suing the state or individual doctors. The Aktion T-4, as the program to implement the euthansia murders is called now, was set up at first by verbal order by Hitler. The leading physicicians demanded a sort of written order to ensure some lawfulness. This was written in october '39, backdated to the first of september '39 and never published. We can see from this that the physicians organizing the murders were concerned about the legality and wanted some legal protection, and that Hitler insisted on secrecy.
The Nazis set up transfer centers where patients where sent, before beeing sent onward to the killing centers. The euthansia murders where an open secret, so at least sometimes relatives would try to rescue their kin. This often worked by petitioning the transfer centers and taking in persons destined to be murdered. Of course this was only possible if the relatives learned in time and had the ressources to actually care for their kin. Aly notes that during the course of the war, these interventions became less frequent.
This would allow the Euthansia murder program to achieve one of it's goals, emptying hospitals, while also muffling too public resistance against the euthanaisa murders.
The public records where fraudulent: The Nazis would fake death certificates that would list natural causes. Occasionally the date of death would be faked so that relatives could be billed for a longer stay in the states hospital system, that included the killing centers.
Source: Götz Aly: "Die Belasteten. 'Euthanasie' 1939-1945 – Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte", S. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main, 2013.
More post
- 📝 What was the first spy agency?
- 📝 When were the heresy laws abolished in England?
- 📝 Was the location of the 180° line of longitude coincidence or deliberately chosen?
- 📝 Had anyone envisioned a "wipeout" scenario for Japan in the Pacific for World War II?
- 📝 What 17C protocol left a princess standing whilst commoners sat?
- 📝 Why did not UK assist Greece in 1919 war?
- 📝 How many Scots were present at the Battle of Bauge?
- 📝 How Successful Were the International Brigades?
- 📝 Why did the Monitor and Merrimac (aka Virginia) have such radically different designs?
- 📝 Who was the first head of government to support same-sex marriage?
- 📝 What prevented empires with territory in North Africa from expanding south of the Sahara? And vice versa
- 📝 Is there any evidence that the fall of the Tibetan empire led to an increase in Buddhism?
- 📝 Who wrote the "Mi General Augusto Pinochet" Song?
- 📝 Has the strength of the historical-archaeological method ever been tested experimentally?
- 📝 Which came first, the shield or the sword?
- 📝 Could you help me identify this photograph that was taken shortly after World War 2?
- 📝 Would newspapers in 1890 London have printing presses in their offices?
- 📝 Why might one think that Australia gained independence from the UK in December 1920?
- 📝 How do I find the sources which determined the year of the fall of Babylon?
- 📝 Where can I find data on the amount of fuel carried by WWII Warships and what their operational ranges were?
- 📝 Did medieval kingdoms issue health related guidelines?
- 📝 If adultery was a felony during Hamilton era, why isn't he prosecuted?
- 📝 Why does some Califate money feature crosses?
- 📝 Why did the Japanese expect the United States navy would attack the Home Islands?
- 📝 How did an advancing force walk during WW1?
- 📝 Did the blanket pardon from 'The Three Musketeers' exist in real life?
- 📝 Is there any instance of part of a country successfully seceding and then unifying with a neighbouring country in the last century?
- 📝 Why was Operation Felix cancelled?
- 📝 Why didn't the English overrun France when the king was their captive?
- 📝 Why was the Spanish kingdom in America called New Spain if Spain didn't exist as a country back then?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Could a citizen in Nazi Germany sue the government or doctors over the eugenics program?
- 📝 Did Churchill and Roosevelt know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or the following secret pacts between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Was the option of setting up a Jewish state in defeated Nazi Germany ever considered?
- 📝 How did the civilian population of Nazi Germany react to Operation Overlord?
- 📝 Were there weapons that a private citizen could not legally own in 1789 in the US?
- 📝 From 1936-45 what was the prescribed punishment in Nazi Germany for failing to join or participate in the Hitler Youth?
- 📝 Were the 1940-42 RAF bombing raids over Germany unescorted?
- 📝 How economically profitable for Nazi Germany were the occupied countries in Western Europe?
- 📝 How effective was the (Western) Allies bombing campaign over Germany in drawing down the Eastern Front Luftwaffe?
- 📝 Did Nazi Germany use chemical weapons on the battlefield?
- 📝 Did the Nazi regime always or often prioritize transport trains to the death camps over military transport?
- 📝 How did attitudes of German citizens toward Hitler and the Nazi Party change over the course of the pre-war and the post-war periods?
- 📝 Could Nazi Germany afford its rearmament programme?
- 📝 Could the U.S. have used "Lend Lease" to force Germany onto the horns of a dilemma?
- 📝 What was the area of Nazi Germany at its height?
- 📝 Could German citizens visit Japan during the Nazi era? And if so what would the locals think of them?
- 📝 How did Germany deal with the East German communist Government structure after unification?
- 📝 Were there any Austrians in Nazi Germany's government before the Anschluss?
- 📝 Did Nazi Germany suffer hyperinflation during the war? Why or why not?
- 📝 Could the Japanese garrison at Rabaul have fed itself if it had been spread out over New Britain Island instead of being concentrated at Rabaul?
- 📝 How did Nazi Germany justify the attempted invasion of Britain?
- 📝 The situation in nazi Germany of a Jewish male married to an "aryan" female vs Jewish female married to an "aryan" male?
- 📝 On 1941 Dec 7, could Japan have targeted the Panama Canal instead of Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why didn't Germany blockade the Strait of Gibraltar during WW2?
- 📝 Why didn't France and the UK invade Germany in September 1939?
- 📝 Why, in the US, is Japanese brutality ignored compared with the Nazi brutality in WW2?
- 📝 How did Nazi Germany finance itself during WW2?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 Did Imperial Japan choose to ally with Nazi Germany because of ideological similarity?
