Transcripts For CSPAN3 Nazi Persecution Murder Of The Disabled 20240712

Systematically murdered an estimated 250,000 people with mental and physical disabilities. Most were native burnt germans. Next, patricia of the Holocaust Museum details the atrocities of this, she focuses on an institute in germany used for the mass murder of individuals that the nazis dubbed ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I am jason from the National World War Ii Museum for institute of war and democracy. We appreciate you joining us today for this webinar on the nazi murder of the disabled in the 1945 trial. We are so fortunate to have as our special guest today doctor patricia rice from the United States Holocaust Memorial museum from washington d. C. A little bit of background about doctor race, she is director of the division of the Senior Historian of the jack joseph and morton Mental Center of holocaust studies. She is an expert of the nazis annihilation policies and the effort to bring them to justice after world war ii. She has a lot of publications. Im going to mention a small number of those for you today. First is the atrocities on trial, historical perspectives on prosecuting war crimes, 2008 volume she coedited with her colleague. I would like to mention to you about this volume, dr. Races contribution in a piece entitled early postwar justice and the murder factory trial which we will get to to the discussion today. A volume titled, children during the holocaust, part of her series on holocaust sources and contacts, it is a very important volume of source material for educators. And finally, from 2019, war and childhood in the era of and edited by jeep spartan. Patricia, welcome to our webinar, it is so great to have you here. This is a topic that obviously a lot of her viewers are just generally familiar with. They certainly know about the nazi persecution of people with mental and physical physical disabilities. But obviously, when you get beyond that, there is a lot of things that are unfamiliar. A lot of the details. We just dont know as well as we should. And we feel very fortunate to have you here today to talk through what happened with this program, how many kinds of people were caught up in it and the attempts to bring perpetrators connected to the program to justice after the war. I thought we would jump right in and start out with a very basic question for our viewers about your background on this topic. It is a very difficult topic, very painful topic to research. I think people would be curious about how you became interested in researching this program, the nazi regime implemented during world war ii. Good morning. It is an honor pleasure to be here with your viewers and your audience this morning. The hadamar trial was my jumping off place into the history of the Euthanasia Program. It was the subject of my masters thesis. At the time, the topic of the Euthanasia Program was not well known. The first books in euthanasia had just come out in 1985, in german, so at the time that i was writing this which was 1986, 1987, there is almost nothing about this in english. And through my immediate interest, and ive working on it ever since. It is remarkable that you were certainly one of the first researchers in the anglophone world to be working on this. I think about when i was in graduate school and the books we all had to read on this program. Like the origins of nazi gem inside. Or death and deliverance. Those are a decade later from what you are working on. All the more reason we are so grateful for you to join us. Why dont we talk about this program, which is known usually as the t4 program. Tell us about the nazi regime decision in 1939 to secretly murder people with mental and physical disabilities. Tell us which individuals specifically were targeted. What is very interesting, this socalled Euthanasia Program is also known as operation t4, it was one of the nazis radical policies to have what they described as, restoring that racial integrity of the german race, to cleanse the race, they did this by murdering European Jews, but one of their biological enemies that they focused on in their own community where wet they called the ill, unworthy of life. Today we would call these individuals persons with mental disabilities with intellectual or physical disabilities. The nazis believed that these individuals placed both the genetic that is important, as well as a financial burden on the state. They made no contribution to society. They were targeting institutionalized patients in germany and austria. This Euthanasia Program, see quotations around this term because it is not euthanasia in terms of a mercy death, which team is a debate today, this is a cynical program of mass murder. It is the regimes First Program of mass murder against its own citizens. An overwhelming number of people who died in the Euthanasia Program were aryans, nonjuice. This program was before the holocaust, by about two years. To give you a little background, in 1939, they initiated a child Euthanasia Program which murdered over 10,000 disabled children during the war years through starvation and overdoses of medication. By january 1940 you have 80 parallel adults program. This was code named operation t4, here you see the villa, they aryan villa that was used as the nerve center as the Euthanasia Program. For those of you who know, this was hit in and is world war ii and it stood right about where the berlin phil harmonics tense now. The nazis take this villa, and they use it to give it the code name operation t4, the operation basically removes disabled patients from their home facility to eventually one of six killing centers throughout germany in austria. Within hours of their arrival, patients are gassed. You see the gas chamber at hadamar as it was restored in the memorial site, after the war. They are gassed with Carbon Monoxide gas in gas chambers that look like showers. Their goal is to remove these and their bodies are burned in crematoriums. About 70,000 patients were murdered between 1940 and august, 1941 in this gassing phase of the Euthanasia Program. The program stops for about a year in 1941 in 1942, it begins again in august of 1942 in places like hadamar and continues to the end of the war. About 250,000 institutionalized patients died it is the result of the Euthanasia Program. Thank you for that. There is a lot there for a viewers to deal with in that this is a program that really covers most of the war other than this one year which you mentioned, we will discuss as well, why that happens. I thought we would talk about hadamar and some of the key perpetrators that you alluded to. This was one of six killing centers in the third reich. These killings centers were essentially this program with supervise by men with a last name of b. You mentioned a couple of them already, there was the director of hitlers private chancellery, hitlers attending physician and much of the daytoday management of the t4 was by victor brock. Often when we look at these perpetrators, this is largely affected by the trial of adolf ike men, several years later. He is not tied into this program directly but his trial shaped the way we think of a lot of them. The term desk murderer gets used for many men involved with either the t4 program or the genocide of the jews. It if you think the term desk murderer is adequate for understanding them for not. That is a pretty good definition of what these individuals did. Lets take a look at who these men were. It is a very interesting photograph which you dont usually see in this particular era. Philip bouhler is the man in the dark. He is the director of the chancellery, he manages hitlers private affairs. It is off the radar screen of most germans as a small podium of organization, its a perfect machine for clandestine operation. And next we have doctor brandt, hitlers attending physician. Here you see brandt, serving his place at the nuremburg doctors trial in 1946. Then there was victor brock, he is basically what you might call a man of no medical training who runs the daily operations of the t4. He is the t4 office manager. They were responsible for the killing program. Putting it into operation, managing as you say from their desks. They are responsible for orchestrating the killing process. They dont do any actual killing. The trials for these kind of men are very hard to come by, especially in early war crimes trials. We tend to see those later in the 1960s. But these people operated these enormous, important killing operations from their offices. These perpetrators that i just spoke about, they carefully organized and implemented the Euthanasia Program, but there are links to the organization that require investigation, tenacious prosecution. They literally get away with murder. Some of these t4 originators. Thank you. There is such a frightening kind of perpetrator to deal with. They are there legally, but even intellectually to come to terms with these individuals who literally the paper they push involves the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals. We will obviously hear more about these three men as we work through. Youve already eluded the faces of this program, this t4 program. If we can distinguish these a bit, the first one lasted from january, 1942 late summer, august, 1941. Can you describe hadamar them, as to what happened to victims during the first phase. People try to understand, how did this take place . How did this work . And obviously we have learned a lot thanks to your research. Jim how this actually worked for the victims . Hadamar was one of the last of the six establish killing centers. It actually sits you cant tell from this photograph but you will see that it sat above the town of hadamar, which is a small town. Not so small from frankfort. In a ten short months from january to august of 1941 when it was in operation as the chief center, the staff gassed 10,072 mentally and physically disabled individuals. Before that, halt in Euthanasia Program takes place. We will talk about that in just a little while. Patients were simply brought to hadamar from their home institutions, they went through transit facilities east as way stations that disguised where the patients were actually going. To keep the relatives of victims and agencies like insurance, Government Agencies that track these individuals, their physicians, and so on from being able to follow where the patients went. Patients were usually brought from these facilities to hadamar and they come in buses about 80 to 100 every day except for sunday. The buses run through the town, where they are seen by the local population, they go up to the hill in the facility, they are given a brief, very brief examination that lulls them into a sense of security at very anti gas chamber. Often the doctors, they are trying to give a sense that it is a medical procedure. But they are also looking for a diagnosis that they might be able to use. When the patients are gassed, it is bad to look like showers, they are than cremated. The physician signs death certificates giving of peak cause of death. And then the relatives of the victim receive the death certificate as well as an urn with ashes on the floor of the crematorium. It is grisly business. It is horrifying, when you actually look at the details of this. How systematic, thought a call it is. Im a kind of bureaucratic process, get one that is so full of ideological fervor. The nazis commitment to purging people, in this case murdering, perjurer is in mass murder. Tens of thousands of the most vulnerable citizens of germany and greater germany. How did they, how did the perpetrators try to keep the secret . And the followup that people always want to know who have studied this is how did the public come to learn something about the fact that this program was in place and operating. Part of the effort to keep this operation on track and off the radar screens, using thick fictitious dates and causes of death. Giving the impression to relatives an insurance agencies, germany is a welfare state, that the bulk of these patients are actually being paid for by the german central house, Public Health administration. The relatives of the death certificates, they are trying to convey that these patients have died of natural causes. But very soon, this secret operation becomes for many reason, an open secret. You will see probably a better photograph on that town. You can see the smoking crematorium. And the first access the public had to the secret clandestine program happened around the places of the euthanasia sites themselves the. As you can see hadamar anne was perched above the agricultural town, and these are all farmers, with, i can tell you that when you burn flash it has the peculiar smell. And these are all farmers in this community. At a certain point, they were burning so many patients that they claimed they ashes from the crematorium are rooting their crops. Relatives of victims often find out when they received very strange diagnoses that happens, for example someone might dive appendicitis. That is a classic case. And their appendix has been removed several years ago, or they receive something for a 17 year old saying this person has died of old age. You see the slip ups occur and it gives them clues to relatives that things are not quite right. We know that lawyers and the legal profession, most german Government Agencies were not briefed until relatively late about a secret program, so it is a secret about them to. You see attorneys trying to figure out behalf of families where their loved one has disappeared and told to shut them down. People are finding out in various parts of the grapevine that something strange is going on. I should also point out that Church Officials are some of the early detectors of this program. People like clemencys finds out that patients are being removed from a catholic institution. He is also receiving a lot of dispensation requests from relatives whose relatives have been cremated. Catholics at the time could not be cremated. This is how a lot of catholic figures found out that something strange was happening. They also know that the public may be the public doesnt understand every detail, but it is very clear that a large segment of the population knows that something is afoot. When the Nazi Administration tries to mount a tv campaign to screen the countrys inhabitants for tuberculosis. They actually feared that they would be pulled into this killing process. At this very crucial time during the war effort, germany has just invaded the soviet union. Hitler calls bouhler and tells him to halt the program. This is such an important point for people who studied it tighter ship and ask questions about popular pressure, Popular Resistance to the regime. Did that regime ever fear public pressure or opposition, and so this case that youre talking about here, where everyday people begin to figure something out and the role of the church place, as you mentioned the bishop and monster, this is something that you have to factor in was that resistance or not . Did people actually defy the regime or challenge the regime, this is a very interesting case. You noted that hitler orders a halt to adults in august of 1941, and then a year later the regime resumes. The murder of adults with disabilities. Could you Say Something about the second phase of the tee for program which goes into late in the war and how it differed from the first phase . This is very interesting part of the Euthanasia Program. It is not when you see until recently, a lot of the books on this subject, there is Less Research done on this part of the Euthanasia Program. This hauled lasts until 1941 to 1942. It is a time when the planners of these programs are trying to knock out that kinks and make the program more covert. By the way, this is a time at which the final solution of the european jury is going on. Not only the shootings in soviet union, but the first killing center begins gassing jews anne. This is a really interesting time where theres a connection between this first killing operation and the final solution. While these facilities remain dormant, any euthanasia people were sent to other places. These killings centers which murdered 925,000 jews, thats almost as many as auschwitz. The key personnel there are actually t4 staff. They are so used to this killing on german soil that they are key players in the execution of the final solution, the genocide of the European Jews. But hadamar opens as one of the first euthanasia facilities in the summer of 1942. It is the only original t4 killing centers during this second phase. It goes on murdering patience until 1945 win germany. , hadamar shows the differences that take place over germany in austria. They changed from gassing which was used in the first we called the gassing face intel 1941, they switch to the more successful method using child euthanasia which over deuces of medication, sometimes starvation. Its also who does the killing. During that gassing phase, they had a guest valve that was in the hands of the physician. The during the second killing face, that changes. Now the nurses, female nurses are distributing overdoses of medications. It looks like a normal process, you might give outpatients to give them something to sleep. But what is interesting now, female nurses enter the killing process. That is really the first time that you see women connected with a killing program. Not so much concentration camps. And finally, it decentralize is deep entirely. Instead of six killing centers, it becomes one of 100 facilities across germany in austria. About 250,000 die. Hadamar originally killed 10,000 patients, kills 5000 more during this second killing face. That number, 250, 000, is a staggering number. It really is. I think because we know the numbers connected to the final solution which are that much higher, is the only reason i think there is not more recognition. A quarter of 1 million, mostly nonjews were murdered as part of this program and the connections that you alluded to between the genocide of European Jews and this program. You also noted in your research that there were other victims beside those with disabilities who were caught up in the vortex of destruction during the second phase. This is a really crucial insight. About how the net spreads during the second phase, can you see something about who else is targeted win the killing starts in 1940. To so from january, 1942 august 1941, the key and relatively only victims of the Euthanasia Program, meant that they intellectually intellectually or physically disabled patients, that maybe by 1943, the killing operation begins to expand. Beyond severely disabled adults. Which the programs focused on a circle new circle of victims. And here in you see disabled children, and juveniles being killed at the facility, and they didnt have a pediatric facility, for murdering young children, and juveniles but instead these are being drawn into the adult killing process. And that is very unusual, for euthanasia killing center. They murdered some jewish. One jewish man, and one aryan man are murdered there. And nothing is wrong with them, they had no kind of disability or mental they murdered simply because, they are the children of jews and a mixed marriage between jewish and christian parents. Aaron parents. And that seems to have been some effort to start in that direction and it fizzles out so about 40 of these children are murdered in panama. And the only place i know thats happened. But we have had soldiers, murdered at these facilities. And we originally, these guidelines that were set up for the Euthanasia Program, and strenuously for baiting, the trends or current soldiers of being murdered, but we see them and we see about 100 victims of allied bombing raids, its usually elderly women, who are traumatized, and they are bombed out of their houses, and have known to come and collect them. They wind up in panama, and whats sad is you see people even from the bombings of dresden, coming to these facilities. To the very famous, you know you see the bombing victims, being murdered. And many people were bombed out in hamburg. Thats a port city. It was very heavily bombed. Finally and most importantly, for a story today, we have the murder of forced labors at the facility, these are not jewish forced laborers, and specifically polish and soviet, or they were called eastern workers by the nazis. And they had this basis for the panama trial. And if they were ill or exhausted, well they were performing forced labor they were sent home are sent back east. But this was not possible at a certain point in the war effort, when the red army was coming towards the german border. So camps, the was set up to confine basically these individuals. But in the frankfort area, near where panama was. These forced laborers, almost all of them they had tuberculosis they were close enough to the population in frankfurt to cause a Public Health crisis they didnt want tuberculosis to spread so they sent these individuals to be murdered, and we knew that 476 laborers forced laborers were killed in panama. Everything you told us their points to the fact that the nazi regime as you noted the second phase in 1942 the summer of 1942 and as the war turns against hitler the dictatorship over the next year, stalin grad curves north africa and sicily the invasion and the italian peninsula etc and the regime expense the killing. They dont hold back from it they broaden the array of victims, and that goes right into the end of the war, and the fact that takes us here to the wars and and the discovery of these killing centers, and the attempt to bring justice to the perpetrators. So when the american show up in late march of 1945 what did they find their. The americans overrun the town in late march of 1945, the second infantry division. And in most cases in terms of other you should nation killing sites, the and they come into the towns and say hey they are killing people up there. And everybody is talking about it go up there and check on the patience and thats how American Forces learn and capture the unit that comes into town the and they decided to investigate, and they send a group of americans that you see surviving patients of the had him our facilities and they go to see the facilities on a few days after they come into hadamar hadamar in 1945. And we did know what the conditions were like. The official record of their findings, the was not within the preliminary court documentation. So we dont know what the original report said. We know we know that about 550 people, who were at hadamar as a killing center. You see three of them there. In the final months, many of the orderlies had been drafted and these were older people so they were not of service age, but they had been drafted, to the home army. So young and old men, defending their front lines. The home fronts essentially. And others have fled, because they knew they were in a lot of trouble with allied authorities who could arrest them. So the chief physician, and the head female nurse they decided that they would stay with the patients and they were getting arrested so investigating officers you know we see a photograph of that 581 mass graves in the Institution Cemetery they found the deaf register showing 15,000 patients dying so the mortality is two to 5 of the population. So they contact the United States war branch. Because the war still going on and its in paris to investigate this scenario. So we are seeing those images, and they are startling and its often overlooked that americans we think about the americans liberating daca, or buchenwald, but obviously they liberated these killing centers and facilities, where they had operated at the same time. As you point out, that the americans put on one of the first trials proceeding the nuremburg trial and the trial of 1945 which you describe and im quoting you here as the first mass atrocity want to be done in the americans on. The first one to be tried by an American Military tribunal. Can you take us through these this trial a bit . So this is an early trial, its one of the earliest trials in the ico, and there were four occupation zones in germany, and each of these rests with france soviet union, they were trying and carrying out trials in the occupation. The but this hadamar trial, you know everybody thinks of the nuremburg trial, but which were basically was trying war criminals. But the hadamar trial took place in october. So we are pretty early in this. And before this particular trial, u. S. Forces have been trying what you might view as classical violations of war. War crimes like the murder, of downed service personnel. That was pretty common, and in order at the end of the war to murder any pilots that were found, and the local population, because germany was very heavily bombed, and they were told to follow these instructions, so if you have downed allied fliers, and the local populations shot them, before they could be taken to a prisoner of war camp. And these were typical trials, that were you know their classical work crimes trials. Because they are u. S. Servicemen, or you know but this goes outside of that scope. It addresses crimes carried out, because of nazi racial policy so this is not your classical war crimes trial and i think he wanted to hear about whether things in the trial and that is the trial judge advocate and the prosecutors in this case, and he was a rather obscure corporate lawyer from Houston Texas and his name was leon. The. And he goes on to gain fame during the Nixon Administration and you saw him on the cover of Time Magazine at the time and he was no stranger to war crimes and he had been trying many of these earlier trials. He was trying german civilians for killing u. S. Servicemen. So to file things just watching our time here that you could maybe fit in briefly the is that maybe you can go to some going to some detail about these forced laborers and then could you know Say Something to our audience about the final verdict like what actually happens at the outcome of this early trial. Yes so, very interestingly these eastern workers that i talked about earlier theyre going to form the basis for the proceedings that occurred. Originally that leon jawarski was ready to try the individuals that he had in custody and who had murdered the 2000 mental patients at the facility. But because there was no precedent at the time of International Law that allowed foreign nationals like the United States and the u. S. Army to try german match nationals for killing their own kind. This is a german on german kind. So german nationals who killed their own citizens. And there was no precedent in International Laws, before the crimes against humanity that came out in the nuremburg trial. In the national tribunal. There was not to ease the wheels of justice. So the judge, they told leon jawarski you can take the slide from him now down but you know he tells leon jawarski that you cannot try these people. You have no jurisdiction in this matter. So the leon jawarski comes up with the idea, that these individuals or at least some of them that they had in custody, had murdered civilian forced laborers. Soviets and polls who are our allies. So that is the basis for this trial. And just to kind of see who finally gets in the trial, so the leon jawarski tries the hadamar seven. I think we see a photograph there, and at least theres some photographs, of the woman in the center, she is the head nurse. And then the director is there, of the facilities. And leon jawarski as you alluded to in the beginning he has as you said the beginning, the trial is described in the paper as the hadamar murder factory trial. And thats because leon jawarski has a strategy that he uses in almost every charlie prosecutes he stresses the Assembly Line nature of the killings. He says, okay, this is the head position. And he is the one who orders the deaths of these patients and checks to see if theyre dead. And there is klein who orders his staff to kill these patients as they arrive. There are the nurses who are actually admitting to the murders. This is the only woman in the dock. She is responsible for giving the medicine. She is handing out the morphine solution from her pharmacy, it is under her control, she is putting in the pharmaceutical sets kill. They also charge adolf for forging the death records and a man named philippe bloom who buried these individuals. He is stressing the Assembly Line nature of this killing process and saying it is a production line of death. His strategy, as usual, some results in a completely set dock where everyone is convicted of their crimes. Ill funds klein and the two male nurses are hanged. They are sentenced to death and hanged. The chief physician, because he is in port physical health an advanced age, he gets a life sentence. And philip bloom who have attention tulle attention to the murder, because they forge the death certificates and buried the bodies, they get 35 and 30 years. The pharmaceuticals that are handed over, they get 50 years. That is what happens in the trial. Thank you. That gave us a lot of insight about the beginning of the program in 1939 to the end of the war and the attempt to try these individuals probably the q and a we will be able to say more about the trial. I thought we would open it up to some questions. We have a few in. Not a surprise given how crucial this subject matter is. The first question is from john, he is in new orleans, his question is, did the germans keep the records of where their victims were prior to entering the system that eventually led to their demise . He has a followup, for was there any form or method of selection as to when juan was finally sent to hadamar some. He was curious about if forced labor was imposed on people with disabilities. You obviously have talked about people who are brought in as forced laborers. But did people with disabilities, where they required to do anything in terms of labor expectations . Right, i will answer the first question. Lets take it chronologically. The apparatus was kept very complicated statistics. Thats how we know exactly how many people died. We know that 70,273 people were gassed. We know every single individual. Usually the patients came with their patient records. And their names were registered, so we do have records of each of those individuals and each of the families gets a condolence letter along with the death certificates. And the ashes. And their personal effects. It is this very complicated bureaucratic machine operating that is able to send every one of these victims, their personal effects, as though it were a natural thing. How these patients were selected . They were selected on the basis of questioning papers that are sent to the medical directors throughout the facilities in germany in austria. The directors of these facilities in general, they have to fill out the questionnaire, they have to flake people with serious disabilities. They have to show people that are in an institution that have committed a crime. It flags non german victims, 5000 jews were murdered. And that was before the general murder of juice. Yet flakes people who have been in a long term setting for one of these facilities for more than five years. They are looking for incurable cases. On forced labor, they are there to offsets the missing labor of individuals who had been sent to the front, ordinary governments were fighting at the front. But there is a kind of i wouldnt say it is forced labor, but from the 1920s and on, it was very common in german facilities, a lot of european facilities, and they called it work therapy. That meant that patients worked at these facilities, which were kind of self functioning, they had shoe factories, they had basket weaving, they hads eighth farm. So they were basically self sustaining, most of these institutions, the patients worked at these facilities and the idea was to fight the symptoms of institutionalization. Keep them busy. Give them skills. But the dirty little secret is that when there was a financial crisis in the twenties and thirties, these institutions are instrumental to help facilities run. They are cooking and cleaning. But the patients are working, and there is indeed on that questionnaire, it asks specifically if the patient is able to work what you see connected with a win who is able to be forced labor. They are not the kind of forced labor we associate with a camp in auschwitz but they are working and expected to work. That is an interesting question. Thank, you i thought we would work into more, i will just give these to you and we can try to squeeze them in. The first is from arthur, who is joined us today, he was curious about hitlers role in this. How much is he directly involved or not . The other one is from my friends who has joined us from the twin cities. She was curious about whether medical experiments are conducted on these victims before their murdered. First to arthur, hello. I dont know what time it is there but it must be quite late. Thank you for joining us. Hitlers role. This is not a big consideration of his. We do know that he signed on his own private stationary. It is the only time that we have hitlers signature on what could be seen as an order for a killing operation. That is the top for another time. This is not his thing, he is interested in juice. The real impetus for this Euthanasia Program, i can talk for hours on this, it comes from the medical community and a lot of individuals around hitler we are interested in things like eugenics and the idea of getting rid of populations like these that might cause a genetic stain. Making the master race by getting rid of hereditary conditions. It is not really hitlers thing. The other question has to do with medical experimentation, nazi doctors, this is a program carried out by our medical community. They have to fisas and implemented this program, the medical professionals. So, in a concentration camp system, that is where you see the bulk of experimentation. It is on victims. That being said, there is experimentation on some of these patients but what is terrifying is that was very common before the nazis. Here at hadamar we talked about bouhler, the chief physician, and he was interested in thai looking at the time just to make sure we have enough time. He was very calm interested in anti convulsive drugs. He thought Shock Therapy was done on the basis of convulsive medicine, the idea was that epileptics who had couldnt motions so Shock Therapy was supposed to shock the system by making the patient convulse with a convulsive medicine. And he was interested, but. And he is experimenting on patients using these convulsive drugs and they are devastating results. The patients can break their jaws, their backs, their spines in these uncontrolled convulsions. And hes working on the strike and he thinks it is great because he is trying to make therapeutic advances in medicine. What is terrible is that these kind of things were not tried, then they went on before and if you talk to people in psychiatric communities in the United States, they were clearly patients, mental patients, people with disabilities were experimented on for years. Without the kind of attention that the concentration camp had. Im very sad story. Extremely sought. That said, i want to thank you so much for joining us today, youve given us lots to think about especially how to integrate all this material that you provided and the way that we understand the third reich, they were reaching a very different kind of war, against its own citizens, against jews and the conventional kind of war that is more familiar to the audience. Youve given us a lot to consider and we really appreciate that. Thank you tour viewers for joining us this morning from wherever you are, we hope that you will join us again for our webinars very soon. Thank you very much. Its september of 1939 at the outbreak of world war ii in europe, the u. S. Army had fewer than 200,000. Yet by the time the japanese attack on pearl harbor in september of 1941, this army would grow in size ten fault and see the rise of future military leaders such as george marshall, dwight eisenhower. In his book, the rise of the j army, paul explains how this transformation occurred and the impact and future wars. Heritage frederick hosted this discussion and provided the video