Health Under Hitler

The doctor whom Hitler appointed to be Fuehrer of National Socialist Health turned out to be a naturopath. He licensed faith healers and all manner of quacks. Last year this Fuehrer, Dr. Gerhard Wagner, died. His successor is not, as strongly rumored in U. S. medical circles, a veterinarian, but is in fact a well-trained pediatrician named Leonardo Conti, son of Hitler's solidly buxom "Fuehrerin of Midwives."

Preparing to celebrate the end of his first year as Nazi Health Fuehrer, Dr. Conti distributed to U. S. teachers and doctors good-looking statistics on German health. The statistics are correct. But, in a hard little book (Heil Hunger!--Alliance Books--$1.75), Dr. Martin Gumpert, former head of the City Clinic for Skin and Venereal Diseases in Berlin, now a refugee in Manhattan, made Dr. Conti's figures prove an ugly picture of deterioration in Naziland. Besides Dr. Conti's figures Dr. Gumpert also used other official Government figures and many hiding in German medical journals. "There are 700,000 German workers constantly out of action because of sickness," says Dr. Gumpert, and "80,000 more persons died annually in Hitler Germany than in pre-Hitler Germany." As for the Army, the proportion of serviceable young men of military age dropped from 75% in 1935 and 1936 to 55% in 1938. Well-known are the reasons for German debility: lack of food, lack of rest, lack of medical care.

Birth Rate. In 1932, says Dr. Conti, the German birth rate was 14.8 per thousand; in 1939 it rose to 20.7. True--but even in 1923, worst year of the German depression, there were 21.2 babies born to every thousand Germans. Twenty Nazi babies per thousand is nothing to boast about in comparison with Poland's 25, Yugoslavia's 29, Rumania's 30.

Infant Mortality. "In spite of the rapid rise in births," says Dr. Conti, "infant mortality in Germany has declined considerably. With [a mortality rate of 6%] . . . Germany takes its place among the ranks of the more fortunate nations."

The 6.4% infant death rate for 1937, says Dr. Gumpert, represents a rise of 1.5% over the previous year in the cities. Manhattan lost 4.5% of its babies; Holland lost 3.8%. And Mother Conti should have a hard job explaining to her son why cases of puerperal (childbed) fever jumped from 5.000 in 1933 to 8,000 in 1936.

Tuberculosis. In 1923, says Dr. Conti, 15 out of every 10,000 deaths were caused by tuberculosis; by 1936 this dropped to seven.

Says Dr. Gumpert: The T. B. death rate may have dropped, but there are now 1,500,000 cases of t. b. in Germany, more than one-fourth of them advanced. According to Nazi medical theory, best cure for the disease is "hard, compulsory labor."

Venereal Disease. "Complete, up-to-date national statistics on [venereal disease] are not available," says Dr. Conti. ". . . Considering Germany as a whole, social disease cannot be considered widespread. ... In fact, new syphilitic infections are so rare in Germany that our university clinics must hunt far and wide for such cases."

"It is a suspicious fact," says Dr. Gumpert, "that since the census of 1934 there has been no publication at all of general figures on the growth or decline of this type of disease. ... In 1934 there was recorded an annual increase of 225,000 in the number of cases, the total number of those being treated being about 500.000." Only figures Dr. Gumpert could find for the last six years were those from the State Insurance Health Centres of the Rhine Provinces, which reported 19,603 cases of venereal disease for 1936, 31,914 for 1938.

Lunacy. More appalling than physical breakdown is the spread of mental decay, says Dr. Gumpert. For the number of lunatics in German hospitals rose from 185,000 in 1923 to 346,000 in 1936. And new Nazi treatment for lunacy goes far beyond old-fashioned straitjackets and padded cells.

"No more capitulation to the psychopaths!" cried a German psychiatrist in a recent issue of the Militaerarzt (Military Doctor). "We must lay our hands on them ... [in a] pitiless campaign. . . . We have no time to lose. . . . They must be collected in the concentration camps.."

If any British doctors chanced to read the Militaerarzt, this violent attitude toward mental patients must have struck them with grim humor. For in the Lancet, every week since the year began, there have been articles and letters from psychiatrists coldly analyzing "Hitler as a Psychopath." And in the last year no fewer than 14 top-flight U. S. doctors have dissected the Fuehrer's personality at long distance.

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