Eugenics in Nazi Germany

Ian Kershaw's 1998 biography of Adolf Hitler states that Social Darwinism, eugenics and fascism were closely interconnected in 1920s Germany:

Integral nationalism, ... national socialism, social Darwinism, racism, biological anti-Semitism, eugenics, elitism intermingled in varying strengths...118

Dr. Robert Youngson, who has studied errors in the history of science, states in his analysis that the idea of eugenics underlay the Nazi slaughter, and that eugenics itself was a great scientific error:

The culmination of this darker side of eugenics was, of course, Adolf Hitler's attempt to produce a "master race" by encouraging mating between pure "Aryans" and by the murder of six million people whom he claimed to have inferior genes. It is hardly fair to Galton to blame him for the Holocaust or even for his failure to anticipate the consequences of his advocacy of the matter. But he was certainly the principal architect of eugenics, and Hitler was certainly obsessed with the idea. So, in terms of its consequences, this must qualify as one of the greatest scientific blunders of all time.119

Describing Galton's irrational, unscientific views as merely a "scientific blunder" is actually a too "optimistic" approach. Actually, the claims made by Galton and those like him formed the basis of unprecedented savagery and slaughter. When Nazi Germany adapted the Social Darwinist world view to society, the catastrophes that ensued are a historical lesson of what can happen.

The Nazis adopted as a state policy the killing of every "inferior," "deficient," "flawed" and sick" human being who "polluted" the Aryan race. Hitler set out the reason:

… peoples to decay … In the long run, nature eliminates the noxious elements. One may be repelled by this law of nature which demands that all living things should mutually devour one another. The fly is snapped up by a dragonfly, which itself is swallowed by a bird, which itself falls victim to a larger bird … to know the laws of nature … enables us to obey them.120 

Hitler made the grievous error of suggesting that various phenomena that maintain the ecological balance in nature also applied to human beings. If animals regard each other as prey, that does not mean that humans should ruthlessly destroy those they regard as weaker. Animals have no conscience. Human beings, on the other hand, possess both conscience and consciousness, the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, and the capacity for judgment. Only those, like Hitler, who seek to justify their own psychological imbalances maintain that human beings should lead an animalistic lifestyle. Indeed, Hitler expressed the extent to which he had carried this deception:

If I can accept a divine Commandment, it's this one: "Thou shalt preserve the species." The life of the individual must not be set at too high a price. If the individual were important in the eyes of nature, nature would take care to preserve him. Amongst the millions of eggs a fly lays, very few are hatched out—and yet the race of flies thrives.121

The life of every human being is valuable, no matter what his or her race, gender or language. What those of good conscience should do is to do all in their power to protect every human being, with no regard to race or physical characteristics. During World War II, the catastrophes caused by the Nazi ideologues regarding human life as of so little value, and their vengeful feelings towards other nations, became apparent to all. Furthermore, Hitler's world view represented a nightmare also for his own people, not only for other races. Eugenics, widely implemented in Germany, is one instance of this.

• The Rise of the Eugenics Movement in Germany

In 1900, the German industrialist Alfred Krupp sponsored a contest for the best essay on the subject of "What can we learn from the principles of Darwinism for application to inner political development and the laws of the state?"

First prize went to Wilhelm Schallmeyer, who interpreted culture society, morality, and even "right" and "wrong" in terms of the struggle for survival. He wanted all laws brought into line with these concepts to prevent the white races from degenerating to the level of the Australian Aborigines—and as long as society protected the physically and mentally weak, degeneration was inevitable. Dr. Alfred Ploetz, the Social Darwinist who founded racial hygiene in Germany, announced that he fully supported Schallmeyer's barbaric ideas. He insisted, for example, that at times of war, the racially inferior should be sent to the front in order to protect the white race. Since soldiers fighting in the front lines were generally killed, this would preserve the "purer" part of the race from being weakened unnecessarily. Going even further, he suggested that a panel of doctors be present at each birth to judge whether the infant was fit enough to live, and, if not, kill it.122

These terrifying recommendations were the first moves made by the eugenics movement prior to Nazi rule. On 14 July 1933, four months after the elections that brought the Nazis to power, the eugenics and so-called "mental hygiene" movement began spreading rapidly. Before that date, sterilization for purposes of eugenics was banned, even though it was carried out in practice. But now, permission was given for the implementation of eugenic savagery under the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease in Posterity," better known as the Sterilization Law. The chief architect of this tyranny was Ernst Rüdin, a professor of psychiatry at Munich University and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Shortly after the Sterilization Law was passed, Rüdin—together with a number of Nazi Party lawyers and specialists—published a statement on the law's meaning and aims. Essentially, its intent was to rid the nation of "impure and undesirable" elements so that it might achieve the Aryan ideal.

To subject the helpless in need of protection to the inhuman treatment of eugenics could be acceptable only to those deceived by the falsehoods of Social Darwinism. All these people need to be helped with their sicknesses and weaknesses. The Nazis thought they could treat them as they wished, caused terrible scenes of barbarity for as long as they remained in power.

According to this terrible law put into effect in Germany, sterilization could be performed without the permission of the person concerned. A state doctor had the legal right to conduct forcible sterilization, with police assistance. In his book Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today, the pro-Nazi American Lothrop Stoddard wrote of his impressions of the eugenic courts during a visit to Germany. An official from the tuberculosis section of the public health service headquarters told Stoddard the following:

The treatment given a tuberculosis patient is partly determined by his social worth. If he is a valuable citizen and his case is curable, no expense is spared. If he is adjudged incurable ... no special effort is made to prolong slightly an existence which will benefit neither the community nor himself. Germany can nourish only a certain amount of human life at a given time. We National Socialists are in duty bound to foster individuals of social and biological value.123

In Islamic moral values, however, people possess an equal right to treatment, no matter what their material means, rank or status. To abandon people to die because they have various physical defects or are not wealthy is clearly murder; and to seek to implement this in the social sphere constitutes mass murder.

The scope of Nazi Germany's Sterilization Law was increasingly broadened. On 24 November 1933, it was decreed that "habitual offenders against public morals" were to be sterilized. The Nazis' "racial pollution" theses now included the crime of opposing public morality. The years that followed would show that the National Socialists' terrible plans were by no means limited to sterilization.

• The Nuremberg Laws

The Sterilization Law was not sufficient for the Nazis to achieve their real objective. In order to establish a "purified Aryan race," the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. Under these laws—savagery and primitiveness legalized—, enshrined the ideal of the so-called purification of the Aryan race.

Work on racial purification began with an enquiry into civil servants' family trees. Those thought not to belong to the Aryan race were forced into retirement. The Nuremberg Laws divided the German people into half: those who were subjects of the state and those who enjoyed full citizenship and political rights. Jews, Gypsies and members of other races were merely subjects of the state who did not enjoy citizenship rights. The second of the Nuremberg Laws, "For the Protection of German Blood and German Honor," (known as the Blood Protection Law for short) sought to guarantee the nation's so-called racial purity.

Under this new law, marriage between German citizens and German subjects became a crime. It also constituted a precedent for future practices implemented to isolate "undesirable individuals."

• Master Race Specification Programs

The first step in the eugenics program was to classify the features possessed by the race the Nazis regarded as superior. The characteristics of the so-called master race were enumerated as follows:

Blond, tall, long-skulled, with narrow faces, pronounced chins, narrow noses with a high bridge, soft hair, widely spaced pale-coloured eyes, pinky-white skin colour.124

These and similar criteria, manifestly the product of a diseased mentality, are both a violation of science and also morally unacceptable. As already emphasized, there are no logical or moral grounds for discriminating against people on the grounds of the color of their skin, eyes or hair.

Despite these irrational criteria, it wasn't that easy for the Nazis to distinguish the races from one another. To that end, they carried out various measurements, using exceedingly primitive methods, to measure people's skulls, and implemented a number of intelligence tests with no scientific validity. Women who met their necessary racial requirements were placed in special houses and kept pregnant by Nazi officers for as long as this primitive state of affairs continued. Children of unknown fathers were brought into the world in these immoral "human stud farms." These children represented the next generation of the so-called master race. However, the totally unexpected result was that the average IQs of children born on these farms were lower than the average IQs of their mothers and fathers.125

The T4 Euthanasia Program: "Scientific" Murders

These laws laid the foundations for even more unimaginable measures. One of these practices may be summarized as mass murder of the mentally impaired. The T4 Euthanasia Program took its name from the initials of the address of the headquarters in Berlin where the measures were administered: Tiergartenstrasse 4.

Under the T4 program, the incurable, the physically or mentally impaired, those with psychological problems and the elderly were killed to ensure so-called racial purity. Children, women and the elderly were subjected to the gas chambers, simply for being members of a different race, while thousands of innocent people of the same race were slaughtered for being viewed as weak and powerless. Hitler initiated this ruthless campaign in 1939. The killings continued officially until 1941, but on an unofficial basis until the final Nazi defeat in 1945.

T4 contained measures known as "Geheime Reichssache" (Secret Reich Matters), and those charged with implementing them were obliged to remain silent. One reason why little information could be obtained about euthanasia in Nazi Germany is that later, the personnel trained and employed within the program were sent as soldiers to the most dangerous fronts. The resistance partisans in Yugoslavia were known for killing enemy troops rather than taking them prisoner. Most witnesses to the euthanasia were sent to that particular front and eliminated.

In Fundamental Outline of Racial Hygiene, Alfred Ploetz was one of the first to speak about the killing of the sick and handicapped. According to Ploetz, from the point of view of "the protection and hygiene of the race," it was a grave error for the sick and weak to be protected and cared for (which is exactly what should happen in a healthy society). According to his perverted thinking, the weak were being protected and kept alive when they ought to be eliminated. Ploetz was sufficiently heartless as to maintain that the doctors' board should immediately kill a handicapped or flawed newborn baby with a low dose of morphine.

Others followed in Ploetz's footsteps. In 1922 the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published a book supporting euthanasia titled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value). Their book claimed that the sick and handicapped were a burden both to themselves and to society, that killing them would be no great loss, that the cost of keeping such "useless" individuals alive was very high, and that the state could spend that money in more productive areas. As a solution, they proposed killing the physically and mentally handicapped, and demanded that the religious and legal obstacles be lifted.126 One of Hoche's irrational assumptions was that the moral values concerning the protection of life would soon disappear, and the elimination of "unnecessary" life would be essential to society's survival.127

To have a clearer grasp of just how terrifying that recommendation was, consider if you found yourself in a society where these proposed models were actually practiced. What if your deaf sister, your blind mother, your psychologically disturbed grandfather, your lame grandmother, or aging father were taken away for death before your very eyes, in the name of science and for the benefit of society? No doubt you would understand that there was nothing scientific whatsoever about the murder of people you love. You would have no difficulty seeing these claims as the result of a diseased mentality. Such barbarity would inflict indescribable suffering on you and everyone you know. Such suffering was indeed experienced in many societies, especially in Nazi Germany, and murders in the hysteria of eugenics left deep wounds in the conscience of society.

The efforts made by evolutionists to ignore or forget the scale of these depravities are ultimately doomed to failure. No matter how they seek to cover them up, the facts are clear. Humanity experienced terrible suffering and grave losses on account of the ideological foundations laid by Darwinism.

At the same time that the barbarity of eugenics was taking place in Nazi Germany, it also spread to a number of other countries, particularly the USA. In 1935, Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute published his book, Man the Unknown, which was translated into nine different languages within three years. In his book's final chapter, "The Remaking of Man," Carrel pointed to eugenics and euthanasia as alleged solutions to social problems. He said that the mentally ill and criminals should be killed at small euthanasia centers equipped with appropriate gasses, and sought to justify murder in the following words:

There remains the unsolved problem of the immense number of defectives and criminals. They are an enormous burden for the part of the population that has remained normal. As already pointed out, gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect the public against gangsters and lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? The abnormal prevent the development of the normal. This fact must be squarely faced. Why should society not dispose of the criminals and the insane in a more economical manner? We cannot go on trying to separate the responsible from the irresponsible, punish the guilty, spare those who although having committed a crime, are thought to be morally innocent.

We are not capable of judging men. However the community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements.

How can this be done? Certainly not by building larger and more comfortable prisons, just as real health will not be promoted by larger and more scientific hospitals. In Germany the Government has taken energetic measures against the multiplication of inferior types, the insane and criminals. The ideal solution would be to eliminate all such individuals as soon as they proved dangerous.

Meanwhile criminals have to be dealt with effectively. Perhaps prisons should be abolished. They could be replaced by smaller and less expensive institutions. The conditioning of petty criminals with the whip or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have [committed more serious crimes] ... should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts. Modern society should not hesitate to organise itself with reference to the normal individual. Philosophical systems and sentimental prejudices must give way before such a necessity. The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilisation.128

Dr. Carrel maintained that the murder of criminals and those thought to be harmful to society was the best, most "economic" solution. As already made clear, when Social Darwinism seeks a solution to social problems, it fails to consider the human dimension, and proposes exceedingly mechanical, inhumane, ruthless and cruel solutions that are totally incompatible with human conscience. It maintains that human beings, especially the so- called "undesirable," should be regarded as animals or chattels.

True, the fight against crime and criminals is of the greatest importance to society. But this fight must absolutely be waged on the level of ideas. Environments that lay the groundwork for crime must be eliminated, and various cultural and educational programs must try to win back those who engage in criminal activity. Falsehoods that portray human beings as a species of animal lay the basis for crime of all sorts; purporting to justify murder, theft, rape, aggression and all forms of evil. Depicting people as justified in committing crimes, and then suggesting that they be punished by death is totally inexplicable. For that reason, it's of the greatest importance that those who keep supporting the theory of evolution—either for lack of sufficient information or because they fail to consider the catastrophes to which these claims can lead—realize the scale of the danger. To seek well-being for a society by killing criminals is most savage, primitive and barbaric. The most effective, permanent means of lowering the crime rate and the numbers of those engaged in criminal activity is to strengthen society in spiritual terms, and to improve education, living standards, and levels of well-being. Most important of all, society's religious belief and love of God must be strengthened. Someone who fears God knows that after death he will receive a reward or punishment for his actions in this world; someone who loves God, also loves those things He has created. He respects and loves other people and always behaves in a moral manner. The more such a conception becomes rooted in society, the more that society will enjoy well-being, peace, and progress.

• Hitler's Secret Death Warrant

After Nazi Germany passed its racist laws, the time had come to obtain public acceptance of eugenic measures, especially euthanasia. Various propaganda methods, with films heading the list, were employed to bring people to believe the lie that there is no point in making great efforts to keep harmful people alive. Newspapers published reports and articles about how much money was being spent on the mentally handicapped, and how that money could be more usefully spent elsewhere. The campaign was initiated on such a scale that it even entered school textbooks.129

Germany's first euthanasia measures were taken at the end of 1938, at which time a certain Knauer from Leipzig wrote Hitler a letter, saying that he wanted a doctor to put an end to a child of his who was born blind, with only parts of its arms and legs and seemed to be an idiot. In response, Hitler sent his private physician, Professor Karl Brandt, to Leipzig, where the child was duly put to death.130

Hitler signed a document authorizing Karl Brandt and Reich-leader Philip Bouhler to permit euthanasia in special cases. The official permission, known as the "Führer-Order," read:

Reichsleader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M.D. are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who according to human judgement can upon most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness be accorded a mercy death. Signed - A. Hitler 131

This authority, which made murder a part of daily life, formed the basis for crimes perpetrated by the psychiatrists of the Nazi Germany. Later, ironically, the defendants in the Nuremberg and other war crimes trials tried to depict it as an order and a mitigating factor in their crimes.

How Was the T4 Euthanasia Program Put into Practice?

In mid-1939 the final preparations for the program were initiated. In October, questionnaires about the mentally ill, prepared by advisors and the Psychiatry Committee, were sent out to hospitals and institutions. These sought the following information: "Name of patient, marital status, nationality, next of kin. Is patient visited on a regular basis? If so, by whom? With whom does financial responsibility lie? How long has patient been in hospital? How long has patient been ill? Diagnosis, main symptoms. Is patient bed-ridden? Is patient under restraint? Was patient admitted because of an incurable disease or condition? Is the patient war-wounded? And patient's race." Front groups operating under the T4 program distributed the questionnaires.

Under the T4 system, four front groups had been set up to carry out orders from the real T4 team, and in the event of any investigation, the groups would conceal the true source of the operations. Any hospital or family investigating a death warrant or the form of death found it impossible to reach anyone further back than the four front groups.

Working in parallel to these four groups was another group, whose members had become expert on the killing of children in particular. This group was named the Realms Committee for Scientific Approach to Severe Illness due to Heredity and Constitution and had two other organizations in association with it. The Charitable Company for the Transport of the Sick was responsible for transporting patients to the killing centers. The Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care dealt with final arrangements and procedures.

One of the Nazis' heartless practices was to demand "expenses" from the families of the patients killed, although the families were unaware they were actually paying for their relatives' murder.

The questionnaires were filled in by the doctors or psychiatrists responsible for the patients in the asylum. The returned forms were evaluated by T4's own psychiatrists and other experts. No patients were examined or observed directly. The decision on whether or not a patient was to be killed was based on information in the questionnaires.

When the forms were first sent out, a number of mental hospitals and suitable buildings were re-arranged for use as killing sites and murder training schools. The death chambers inside the buildings were camouflaged as showers.

This is how this terrifying system functioned: After the questionnaires' responses were received, a notice was sent to the institutions caring for those patients selected for death, announcing that space was to be made available for war-wounded, or that patients were to be removed elsewhere to receive better treatment. One of the front groups collected these patients and transported them to one of the killing centers. There, they were exterminated within a few hours of their arrival.

Not only the mentally incurable were butchered. As the practice of euthanasia gained pace, the Nazis began to include other "undesirables." Death warrants were issued for the mentally unstable, schizophrenics, the elderly and infirm, epileptics, and people suffering from Parkinson's disease, paralysis, multiple sclerosis, brain tumors and other organic neurological disorders. Children were killed in the same way, and orphanages and reformatories were investigated in detail to discover new victims.

One very important point must be made clear: 50% of those killed might have recovered had they been permitted to do so.132

In order to conceal the T4 operations, great efforts went in to making the death centers appear like ordinary mental hospitals. This was admitted at the Nuremberg trials by Viktor Brack, head of the 2nd unit of the KdF (a term used to refer to the Chancellery of the Führer) and one of the main figures responsible for the euthanasia program. Brack stated that on entering the death chambers, the patients carried towels and soap and thought they were going to have a real shower. Instead of water, though, they were "showered" with poison gas.

High-level Nazis devoted to Hitler selected the students who carried out the killings, who were given very special training. At first they would watch the killings and, as their training progressed, they would take patients to the chambers and begin to switch on the poison gas. They would watch the victims in their death throes, and after death had been ascertained, they would ventilate the chambers and remove the bodies. They thus massacred thousands of innocent victims.

These murders were all carried out under tight security, with every possible precaution to prevent the slightest leak of information, because the people killed in these buildings were not members of "other races." Most were Germans and Austrians. If the German public ever learned that their compatriots were being killed in this way, the Nazis would find this difficult to explain, and so adopted all possible security measures.

The students, who had now turned into executioners of sorts, soon grew used to the murder procedures, and became immune to the pleadings, screams and writhings of the victims. During this process, their instructors closely observed their reactions and wrote reports about them. It was calculated that if students had no difficulty in killing members of their own race simply because they were sick, then it would be even easier for them to kill members of "inferior races," and they were trained for "wider ranging" practices in future. Students who were unable to bear these killings or who protested were sent to the front and placed in "suicide squads" by their unit commanders.

In order to become executioners, the students were trained to be cold-blooded, "flawless assassins"—to withstand the cries and writhings of the dying and the smell of burning human flesh and, to be able to speak to the people they were sending to their deaths as if they really were just going to the showers. They were rewarded and encouraged in various ways. In addition to these various incentives, they were also awarded the Iron Cross Second Class medals, for "Secret Reich matter."

Slowly the public became aware of what was going on in these institutes, and protests began. It was then announced that Hitler had issued an order for the killings to cease. They did not, however, and all that happened was a change of methods, involving either lethal injection or starvation, with the dead buried in mass graves. In this way, the savagery of euthanasia continued throughout the war.

Special Action 14f13

After slaughtering a great many "undesirable" and allegedly "useless" mentally ill people, the T4 program widened its sphere of activity under the code name 14f13. Previously restricted to mental hospitals and research institutes, the program was now directed toward German and Austrian prisoners who fell sick because of the conditions they were kept in, and towards Jews, Poles and Gypsies in the concentration camps. Operation 14f13 began in December 1941. Special commissions consisting of psychiatrists were added to the Berlin T4 team, and they selected sick and in their view, otherwise, undesirable individuals and sent them to concentration camps to empty out medical departments and sick centers. The patients selected were generally sent to one of six killing centers and killed there. The people selected from the concentration camps were generally classified according to their ability to work, and if unfit for hard labor, were sent to their deaths.

In 1943, children, too, began being killed in Hadamar, one of the death stations. In addition to the physically or mentally handicapped, these also included those in state shelters or orphanages.133

Irreligion Lies at the Root of Ruthlessness and Lack of Compassion

Nazi Germany is a clear example of the sufferings inflicted on people when Social Darwinist ideas are put into practice. Joseph L. Graves Jr., professor of evolutionary biology and author of The Emperor's New Clothes, which criticizes racist theories, makes this comment:

The tragedy of Nazi Germany stands as the clearest example of what can happen if eugenics, racial hierarchy, and Social Darwinism are taken to their logical conclusions.134

How did these people come to harbor such great hatred, insensitivity and ruthlessness? How did they come to be such murderers and enemies of the human race? The manifest answer is that people educated in the light of Darwinist teachings, who regard human beings as no more than animals, who imagine life as a battleground, and who believe that all forms of evil are justified in the struggle for survival will inevitably constitute a ruthless social order. Those who deny that man is created and possesses a soul breathed into him by God, who refuse to regard their fellow humans as valuable entities with reason and conscience, and who regard them as no different than animals and plants, will naturally be unaffected by mass murder and the sufferings of the helpless. When such people think that harm might come to them or their own interests, they can easily kill others, feeling no pity or compassion, or abandon them to a life of poverty and unhappiness. One cannot expect such a heartless individual to protect the sick, help the needy, or engage in altruistic behavior. Such a person will not even protect his ailing and elderly parents. He will regard caring for his handicapped brother as a waste of time, energy and money. If this diseased world view spreads, then everyone—administrators to family members, from doctors to teachers—will behave under its influence. It is impossible for such virtues as altruism, patience, compassion, affection, respect or devotion to apply in societies that do not live by religious moral values, whose lack has always brought destruction and catastrophe.

COMPASSION IN ISLAMIC MORALITY

In the Ottoman Empire where Islamic moral values prevailed, families looked after not only their own sick, but also those around them. The ailing were cared for in special clinics and efforts were made to treat them using various means. The poor were offered free health services, and doctors and hospital officials were even punished for demanding money from the poor. In 1871 the Health Inspectors and National Doctors offices were established with the aim of regulating public health services. Some of the measures under this arrangement were as follows:

• Doctors will examine all patients on specific days and at specific times of the week, and in a specific place, free of charge, making no distinction between rich and poor. The necessary vaccinations will also be given free of charge.

• Doctors will examine those who are unable to attend physical examination in their own homes, and a predetermined fee will be charged to those who have the means to pay. No fee will be taken from the poor, and costs incurred will be paid to the doctor from municipal funds.

• Failing to care for the sick without a valid reason, or receiving fees from the poor, will be a cause for sacking.135

Ottoman mental hospitals also employed special treatment methods. In the 15th-century Ottoman Empire, special hospitals were built for mental patients. Efforts were made to heal the sick, depending on their illness, by means of specially selected Turkish melodies, special meals, and flowers. Patients were fed poultry in particular. Every patient's room had two windows, preferably looking out over a rose garden.136

Long before the Ottoman Empire, other Muslim states employed special methods to care for the physically and mentally ill. During the time of the Abbasid Caliphate in particular, the Islamic world attained the highest medical and psychiatric sophistication. The world's first hospitals were built in the Islamic world, and the treatment of the mentally ill by means of suggestion was first applied there. The moral values of the Qur'an gave Muslims the compassion, affection, reason and understanding to do this.

Islamic moral values encourage believers to feel affection and act compassionately towards the poor, the weak, the lowly, the needy and those unable to care for themselves, and to make sacrifices for, care for and protect them. In some of the verses of the Qur'an, God has revealed how the weak, the poor and the elderly should be treated:

"… Worship none but God and be good to your parents and to relatives and orphans and the very poor. And speak good words to people. And perform prayer and give the alms." (Surat al-Baqara, 83)

It is not devoutness to turn your faces to the East or to the West. Rather, those with true devoutness are those who believe in God and the Last Day, the Angels, the Book and the prophets, and who, despite their love for it, give away their wealth to their relatives and to orphans and the very poor, and to travelers and beggars and to set slaves free, and who perform prayer and give the alms; those who honor their contracts when they make them, and are steadfast in poverty and illness and in battle. Those are the people who are true. They are the people who guard against evil. (Surat al-Baqara, 177)

They will ask you what they should give away. Say, "Any wealth you give away should go to your parents and relatives and to orphans and the very poor and travelers." Whatever good you do, God knows it. (Surat al-Baqara, 215)

Worship God and do not associate anything with Him. Be good to your parents and relatives and to orphans and the very poor, and to neighbors who are related to you and neighbors who are not related to you, and to companions and travelers and your slaves. God does not love anyone vain or boastful. (Surat an-Nisa', 36)

118. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1998, p. 134. 
119. R. Youngson, Scientific Blunders; A Brief History of How Wrong Scientists Can Sometimes Be, New York: Carroll and Graf Pub., 1998.
120. A. Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941–1944, With an introductory essay on The Mind of Adolf Hitler by H.R. Trevor-Ropr, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953, p. 116.
121. Ibid.
122. Schreiber, The Men Behind Hitler.
123. Ibid.
124. J. C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, New York: Pantheon, 1970, pp. 99100.
125. Jerry Bergman, "Darwinism and the Nazi Race Holocaust;" http://home.christianity.com/worldviews/52476.html
126. Schreiber, The Men Behind Hitler.
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid.
129. Ibid.
130. Ibid.
131. Ibid.
132. Ibid.
133. Ibid.
134. Graves, Jr., The Emperor's New Clothes, p. 128.
135. Doc. Dr. Haydar Sur, "Saglik Hizmetlerinin Gecmisi ve Gelisimi" (The Past and Development of Health Services); http://www.merih.net/m1/whaysur12.htm
136. "Osmanlıda İlim" (Science of the Ottomans); http://www.mihr.com/mihr/osm/sistem/ilim.htm