Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History / Edition 1 available in Hardcover, eBook
Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0691006652
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691006659
- Pub. Date:
- 11/21/1999
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0691006652
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691006659
- Pub. Date:
- 11/21/1999
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History / Edition 1
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$102.00Overview
McFarland-Icke offers gripping descriptions of the conditions and practices associated with psychiatric nursing during these years by mining such sources as nursing guides, personnel records, and postwar trial testimony. Nurses were expected to be conscientious and friendly caretakers despite job stress, low morale, and Nazi propaganda about patients' having "lives unworthy of living." While some managed to cope with this situation, others became abusive. Asylum administrators meanwhile encouraged nurses to perform with as little disruption and personal commentary as possible. So how did nurses react when ordered to participate in, or tolerate, the murder of their patients? Records suggest that some had no conflicts of conscience; others did as they were told with regret; and a few refused. The remarkable accounts of these nurses enable the author to re-create the drama taking place while sharpening her argument concerning the ability and the willingness to choose.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780691006659 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
Publication date: | 11/21/1999 |
Pages: | 304 |
Product dimensions: | 7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
What People are Saying About This
The descent into mass murder, for ordinary Germans like psychiatric nurses, was for the most part a matter of choices avoided. How the moral senses could be and were blunted by institutions and ideologies on the one hand and by personal subterfuges on the otherthis is the subject of McFarland-Icke's careful and painstaking historical recounting and analysis. This is a quiet and watchful book, devoid of the sensationalism that so easily adheres to the subject of mass murder. But for that reason it has a powerful and lasting effect that extends beyond the historic subject matter.
Michael Geyer, University of Chicago
Nurses in Nazi Germany is bold, meticulously researched, and insightfully argued. Its topic is an important and relatively neglected one. Attracting general readers and scholars alike, the book should have a very long shelf lifenot simply as the definitive history of Nazi nursing but as a major contribution to bioethics literature and ethics more broadly.
Robert N. Proctor, Professor of the History of Science, Pennsylvania State University
"The descent into mass murder, for ordinary Germans like psychiatric nurses, was for the most part a matter of choices avoided. How the moral senses could be and were blunted by institutions and ideologies on the one hand and by personal subterfuges on the other—this is the subject of McFarland-Icke's careful and painstaking historical recounting and analysis. This is a quiet and watchful book, devoid of the sensationalism that so easily adheres to the subject of mass murder. But for that reason it has a powerful and lasting effect that extends beyond the historic subject matter."—Michael Geyer, University of Chicago"Thoughtful, sensitive, and revealing, this book brings something new to the discussion of the perpetrators in the Nazi era, particularly those associated with the medical profession. This is history 'from the bottom up' of the very best kind."—Robert Gellately, Strassler Professor in Holocaust History, Clark University"Nurses in Nazi Germany is bold, meticulously researched, and insightfully argued. Its topic is an important and relatively neglected one. Attracting general readers and scholars alike, the book should have a very long shelf life—not simply as the definitive history of Nazi nursing but as a major contribution to bioethics literature and ethics more broadly."—Robert N. Proctor, Professor of the History of Science, Pennsylvania State University
Thoughtful, sensitive, and revealing, this book brings something new to the discussion of the perpetrators in the Nazi era, particularly those associated with the medical profession. This is history 'from the bottom up' of the very best kind.
The descent into mass murder, for ordinary Germans like psychiatric nurses, was for the most part a matter of choices avoided. How the moral senses could be and were blunted by institutions and ideologies on the one hand and by personal subterfuges on the other--this is the subject of McFarland-Icke's careful and painstaking historical recounting and analysis. This is a quiet and watchful book, devoid of the sensationalism that so easily adheres to the subject of mass murder. But for that reason it has a powerful and lasting effect that extends beyond the historic subject matter.
Nurses in Nazi Germany is bold, meticulously researched, and insightfully argued. Its topic is an important and relatively neglected one. Attracting general readers and scholars alike, the book should have a very long shelf life--not simply as the definitive history of Nazi nursing but as a major contribution to bioethics literature and ethics more broadly.
Recipe
"The descent into mass murder, for ordinary Germans like psychiatric nurses, was for the most part a matter of choices avoided. How the moral senses could be and were blunted by institutions and ideologies on the one hand and by personal subterfuges on the otherthis is the subject of McFarland-Icke's careful and painstaking historical recounting and analysis. This is a quiet and watchful book, devoid of the sensationalism that so easily adheres to the subject of mass murder. But for that reason it has a powerful and lasting effect that extends beyond the historic subject matter."Michael Geyer, University of Chicago
"Thoughtful, sensitive, and revealing, this book brings something new to the discussion of the perpetrators in the Nazi era, particularly those associated with the medical profession. This is history 'from the bottom up' of the very best kind."Robert Gellately, Strassler Professor in Holocaust History, Clark University
"Nurses in Nazi Germany is bold, meticulously researched, and insightfully argued. Its topic is an important and relatively neglected one. Attracting general readers and scholars alike, the book should have a very long shelf lifenot simply as the definitive history of Nazi nursing but as a major contribution to bioethics literature and ethics more broadly."Robert N. Proctor, Professor of the History of Science, Pennsylvania State University