Rejection of the Term “Euthanasia” for the Systematic Medical Mass Murder of 1939–1949

On the Rejection of the Term „Euthanasia“ in Describing the Systematic Medical Mass Murder of 1939-1949

The term „euthanasia“ must not be used to describe the systematic medical mass murder carried out between 1939 and 1949. Its continued use in scholarship, public memory, and institutional discourse reproduces a central element of the perpetrators‘ own justificatory language and thereby perpetuates a profound distortion of historical reality.

„Euthanasia“ is a propagandistic term originating from the perpetrators themselves

The word was deliberately employed by the architects and executors of the killing programs – physicians who became Nazis, not „Nazi doctors“ as if ideology preceded professional identity – to mask the nature of the crimes. It framed the killings as acts of mercy, thereby concealing their coercive, non-consensual, and homicidal character. The term functioned as a linguistic instrument of deception, designed to legitimize the elimination of those whom the medical profession had classified as subhumans and „life unworthy of life.“

Contemporary use of the term reproduces the original moral inversion

To employ the term uncritically today is to reinscribe the perpetrators‘ perspective. As survivor-led human-rights organizations such as IAAPA have emphasized, the term degrades the victims once again in the present. It implies voluntariness, beneficence, or therapeutic intent – none of which were present. The victims were not „released“ from suffering; they were murdered under the authority of medical professionals acting within a state-organized killing apparatus.

The term obscures the central role of the medical profession

The killings were not an aberration imposed upon medicine from outside. Rather, they were conceptualized, justified, and operationalized by physicians who became Nazis, psychiatrists, nurses, administrators, and scientific experts. The medical profession was not merely complicit; it was structurally and ideologically foundational to the design and implementation of the killing programs. The term „euthanasia“ obscures this professional agency by implying a medicalized benevolence rather than a medically organized crime.

Accurate terminology is essential for historical, ethical, and analytical clarity

Scholarly discourse must therefore employ terms that neither reproduce perpetrator language nor obscure responsibility. Appropriate designations include:

• systematic medical mass murder (1939-1949)
• the National Socialist medical killing programs
• T4 and the subsequent decentralized killings
• the killings of patients and institutionalized persons

These formulations identify the perpetrators, the institutional structures, and the homicidal nature of the acts without recourse to euphemism.

Why the term persists – and why this persistence is problematic

The continued use of „euthanasia“ in academic and memorial contexts reflects the inertia of institutionalized terminology, the dominance of archival categories created by the perpetrators, and the longstanding marginalization of survivor perspectives in the historiography of psychiatric violence. Its persistence is not evidence of conceptual adequacy but of the slow pace at which scholarly and institutional language adapts to ethical critique.

Ethical responsibility in scholarly language

Given the historical origins and contemporary implications of the term, its unqualified use is ethically untenable. Scholars bear responsibility for ensuring that their terminology does not reproduce the ideological frameworks of the perpetrators or contribute to the symbolic degradation of the victims. The rejection of the term „euthanasia“ is therefore not merely a linguistic preference but a necessary act of historical accuracy and moral integrity.

See also our 8 demands as to how the memory of the victims and the perpetrators of the systematic medical mass murder from 1939 to 1949 should be handled: https://www.iaapa.de/8_demands/

rene talbot
(Secretary of IAAPA and member of the board of a national German survivor organization)