The killer nurses of the third Reich WW2

Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Germany

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. The philosophies of the Nazi party, of which he was head, were based on eugenics – a pseudoscience that had much traction around the world at the time.

Eugenics dictated that only the healthiest and fittest be allowed to procreate and to live. The Nazis’ racial policies, which divided human races into levels of fitness for life, synergised with eugenics to support programmes declaring certain people ‘life unworthy of life‘ or ‘useless feeders.’

Under such policies, people with mental illnesses, physical and intellectual disabilities, and conditions such as epilepsy, chronic alcoholism and a range of genetic diseases, were considered a burden on society and should be annihilated.

To this end, in 1939, Hitler, through his personal physician Dr Karl Brandt, set up the ‘T4′ programme – the systematic, state-sanctioned murder of the disabled and chronically ill. The first people to be killed were disabled children.

The main killing centres were hospitals and homes for the disabled. Parents and carers were encouraged to place their loved ones and children into institutions. They would then be moved to another institution a long way from home, and contact between child and parent ceased.

After some months, parents received a letter saying that their child had died of something like pneumonia or appendicitis and that the parents could come and collect their ashes and pay for the funeral.

Doctors would assess the patients and make a mark on a standard questionnaire that dictated whether the person was to be killed or allowed to live.

While doctors made the decisions about who should live or die, the nurses did the killing. The killings took place in hospitals. Who constitutes the largest proportion of the workforce in a hospital? It’s the nurses, and it was the nurses who killed.

They used intravenous injections, lethal doses of drugs such as phenobarbitone, or starvation or hypothermia from exposure.

Memorial to the Children Victims of the War, Lidice, Czech Republic.

What made the nurses do this, surely they were there to care for patients?

In Hitler’s Germany, propaganda underpinned everything.

Propaganda about ‘life unworthy of life’ and ‘useless feeders’ was everywhere, even in arithmetic exercises for primary school children.

Many people genuinely believed that by removing these burdens on society, Germany would be a better place. Nurses, too, succumbed to the propaganda. Many believed that they were doing the right thing, that Germany would be a better place because of these policies.

Of course, there were many who disagreed and would not take part. These nurses were not punished, nor ostracised – they were moved to another hospital or another ward.

In other words, the nurses who participated in this murder did so willingly and voluntarily.

A Sad Farewell To Terry Jones.

See this website: http://www.montypython.com/

He was much cherished by all his fans and will be sorely missed.

Tudor period

The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I until 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England whose first monarch was Henry VII (b.1457, r.1485–1509). Historian John Guy (1988) argued that “England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors” than at any time in a hundred years.

Population and economy
Following the Black Death and the agricultural depression of the late 15th century, the population began to increase. It was less than 2 million in 1600. The growing population stimulated economic growth, accelerated the commercialisation of agriculture, increased the production and export of wool, encouraged trade, and promoted the growth of London.[2]

The high wages and abundance of available land seen in the late 15th century and early 16th century were replaced with low wages and a land shortage. Various inflationary pressures, perhaps due to an influx of New World gold and a rising population, set the stage for social upheaval with the gap between the rich and poor widening. This was a period of significant change for the majority of the rural population, with manorial lords beginning the process of enclosure of village lands that previously had been open to everyone.