On paper, medical training under the Nazis differed little from that of
the pre-Nazi era. However, its fundamental spirit was ruinously
distorted and medical standards suffered a dismal decline.
Medical students had to be “Aryan,” and were required to belong to the
National Socialist Students’ League. The students’ entire course of
studies was constantly interrupted by the demands of the various party
organizations to which they were forced to belong. A student whose
knowledge of the racial theories and Nuernberg laws was not sufficient
would fail his medical examinations.
Chairs in the universities were filled in many cases by Nazi so-called
“professors” who might or might not have a scientific background. The
true scientific societies under the Nazi regime became less and less
active, and the Nazi professors in the universities devoted more time
and interest to their SA or SS organizations than to the teaching of
medicine. These Nazi professors would don their brown SA or black SS
uniforms on all possible occasions, exchanging them proudly for their
academic gowns at all academic celebrations and meetings.
The worst Nazi politicians, like Streicher, were given the free run of
university clinics, such as at Erlangen. This submissiveness to lay
politicians led to a general decline of respect for German academic
medicine not only on the part of their own public and abroad but even on
the part of the very same politicians before whom they kowtowed. This
went so far that Streicher, when addressing a full faculty meeting at
the University of Erlangen in 1936, called the assembled professors
“complete idiots” to their faces. This was by no means an isolated
occurrence.
Particularly deplorable was the degradation of psychiatry. Psychiatric
university teaching declined to the level of a mere rehashing of the
Nuernberg and sterilization laws. The modern techniques of psychotherapy
had been abandoned, and treatment deteriorated to pep talks full of Nazi
indoctrination admonitions and threats. No wonder that these methods
backfired against the best interest of the German war effort which they
were foolishly intended to serve. The lack of proper understanding and
treatment of German soldiers who developed combat fatigue or neuroses,
on the part of their own medical personnel, drove many of them to
surrender to the enemy; efforts to rehabilitate them and restore them to
duty were frustrated by the ruinous infusion of Nazi doctrine.