Introduction

The central aim of this chapter is to take a closer look at those mechanisms that were employed during the Nazi regime to make people forsake their reflective judgment, which implies the attempt to destroy the capacity for thinking and feeling that one is doing wrong. On March 20, 1946 Dr. Franz Niedermoser was on main trial in the Volksgericht Graz, together with twelve nursing and auxiliary hospital workers, for having murdered between 700 and 900 patients in the psychiatric hospital in Klagenfurt, Austria during the NS regime. The trial ended on April 6, 1946, with the result of four death sentences and multiple judgments with ten or more years of incarceration.

The trial against Dr. Niedermoser was the largest and most important trial for the Volksgericht Graz, and occurred in the context of “euthanasia crimes,” the largest complex of the “medical crimes” of the National Socialist regime, which implies the “directed and conscious killing of patients and Pfleglinge from diverse hospitals, nursing institutions, and sanatoriums” (Achrainer and Ebner 2006: 84). The trial was the first in Austria against a euthanasia perpetrator, and found great public attention.

In this chapter I trace the ways in which Dr. Niedermoser, who was initially hesitant to carry out the murders in his institution, gradually became morally disengaged, in the course of which he lost the capacity to feel guilty and critically reflect upon his actions, which arrested his capacity for reflective judgment. I explain those mechanisms that made him move from initial skepticism (or hesitation) at committing crimes, to later feeling no guilt for having committed them.

After the verdict is read Dr. Niedermoser states in his defense: “I do not feel guilty (Ich fühle mich nicht schuldig),” which he reiterates throughout the trial as a means of defense (DÖW, Sig.: 51304/2: 48; my emphasis). In what follows I elaborate several mechanisms that destroyed his capacity to feel himself guilty, which is connected to his inability to think or critically reflect upon his deeds, which underlines the ways in which thinking and feeling are deeply enmeshed and central for embodied reflective judgment.