Nazi Propaganda and Countercampaigns
Resistance to Nazi Healthcare Policy Proposals before 1933
Even before the Nazis came to power, there was resistance to their antisemitism as well as their healthcare policy proposals and initiatives. Particularly prominent in their warnings and criticisms were Jewish, Social Democratic, and Communist physicians and social reformers, such as Dr Julius Moses, who was a Jewish-German doctor and Social Democratic politician. In terms of “Volksgesundheit”, which can mean both “public health” and “the health of the Volk”, Moses’ progressive ideas for securing the country’s healthcare differed considerably from the programme put forward by the Nazis.
“With an almost admirable dilettantism, they [the Nazis] have also jumped into the field of public health, putting forward ‘reforms’, that—if actually carried out—would soon not only threaten to destroy the German healthcare system, but also necessarily compromise physicians’ ethics in a most serious way.”
Dr Julius Moses, 27 February 1932 (emphasis in original)
Occasional Solidarity with Jewish Doctors after the Nazi Takeover of 1933
Even after the Nazi takeover, the early days still saw sporadic critical statements in the German press against the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish policies, for example in the Elberfelder Zeitung and in Der Kassenarzt, a journal for physicians licenced to treat insurance patients, sometime in February/March 1933. In this statement, released by the local medical associations of Barmen and Elberfeld, the relevant boards publicly condemned a recent Nazi announcement claiming that Jewish doctors are required by the Talmud to always cheat their Christian patients.
Anti-Antisemitism: Countering Nazi propaganda in the Foreign Press
One of the first systematic attempts outside Germany to document the persecution of that country’s Jews was The Yellow Spot, a book published in 1936. Its British-Jewish publisher, Victor Gollancz, had already emerged as a humanist activist during the First World War. After the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, he began collecting evidence about the growing persecution of its Jewish population. He then brought out this material in 1936, through his own British publishing house. The foreword was written by Hensley Henson, the Bishop of Durham. Henson was one of the few British church leaders who publicly opposed Nazism in the time before the Second World War.
Exposing Der Stürmer: The Power of Contextualized Documentation
In addition to written documents and the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish ordinances, The Yellow Spot also reprinted many photos taken from the antisemitic tabloid Der Stürmer. Further photos showed the increasing ostracism of Jews inside the Third Reich, including the shunning of Jewish doctors and lawyers. All these pictures were brought to a wider international public by The Yellow Spot, as well as Der gelbe Fleck: Die Ausrottung von 500 000 deutschen Juden (“The yellow spot: the extermination of 500,000 German Jews”), published by Editions du Carrefour in Paris with a foreword by Lion Feuchtwanger, also in 1936.
Antisemitic Propaganda Against Doctors
Besides Der Stürmer, an important mouthpiece for the Nazi regime’s antisemitic propaganda for the medical profession was the magazine Deutsche Volksgesundheit ...aus Blut und Boden! (“The health of the German Volk, from the blood and soil!”). Adorning the cover was almost always a caricature by the Nazi regime’s most important cartoonist, Philipp Rupprecht, alias “Fips”. The magazine’s purpose was to propagandistically prepare the readership for upcoming Nazi healthcare policy measures, or to accompany their rollout. Its articles were often directed against Jewish doctors alongside vaccinations and the pharmaceutical industry—against which it instead advocated what it considered “German” naturopathy.
Headline: “Away with Jewish Doctors!”