Jürgen Schreiber und Jens Lohmeier: Nationalsozialistische Gesundheitspolitik und die Region Aachen im Spiegel des „Westdeutschen Beobachters“

The article deals with the question of medicine in the time of the Nazi regime in Germany. It focuses on the question how the media in the “Third Reich” took up the subject “medicine” in general and which aspects were notably mentioned. The footing of this research is the “Westdeutscher Beobachter” and its local edition for the region and the city of Aachen. It was a newspaper published by the regional division of the NSDAP, hence a direct repetition of the Nazi ideology can be expected.

During the research it became clear that medicine was not an important subject of propaganda in this newspaper. Only a few articles were about classic Nazi medical topics like “Erbgesundheit” (racial hygiene) and even less about naturopathy. The frequency of articles containing medical issues was very inconsistent, but only in 1934 there was a mentionable number of articles mostly concerning “Erbgesundheit”. In this year the racial hygiene poured in law. The main consequence was the forced sterilization of over 300.000 people.

Furthermore the topic “medicine” in general seems to be a marginal factor. More popular topics like economic or foreign policy dominated the report of the “Westdeutscher Beobachter”. It seems to be that the emphasis was deliberately not laid on the matter “medicine” especially eugenics – which was one of the main components of the Nazi ideology – because the regime didn’t want it to become a public interest.

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