T.C. 

İSTANBUL KÜLTÜR UNIVERSITY 

INSTITUTE OF GRADUATE STUDIES 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FROM GENOCIDE TO GENESIS: PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPLORATION OF EVIL 

IN MARTIN AMIS’ TIME’S ARROW: OR THE NATURE OF THE OFFENCE 

 

 

 

 

Master of Arts Thesis by 

 

Hilal BİLGİLİ 

1600001923 

 

 
 

Department: English Language and Literature 
 

Programme: English Language and Literature 
 
 
 
 

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gillian M.E. ALBAN 
 
 
 

 
 

NOVEMBER 2023 



T.C. 

İSTANBUL KÜLTÜR UNIVERSITY 

INSTITUTE OF GRADUATE STUDIES 

 

 

 

 

 

FROM GENOCIDE TO GENESIS: PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPLORATION OF EVIL 

IN MARTIN AMIS’ TIME’S ARROW: OR THE NATURE OF THE OFFENCE 

 

 

 

 

Master of Arts Thesis by 

 

Hilal BİLGİLİ 

1600001923 

 

   
Department: English Language and Literature 

 
Programme: English Language and Literature 

 
 
 

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gillian M.E. ALBAN 
 
 
 
 
 

Members of Examining Committee: Prof. Dr. Işıl BAŞ İstanbul Kültür University 
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özlem GÖREY Boğaziçi University 

 
 
 

 
 
 

NOVEMBER 2023 



 
 

i 
 

PLAGIARISM 

 

 

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented 
in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required 
by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results 
that are not original to this work.  

 

 

 

Name/Last name: Hilal BİLGİLİ 

Date: 20. 11. 2023 

  



 
 

ii 
 

 

Üniversite                                          :           İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi 

Enstitüsü    : Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü 

Dalı          : İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı 

Programı    : İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı 

Tez Danışmanı   : Prof. Dr. Gillian. M.E. ALBAN 

Tez Türü ve Tarihi       : Yüksek Lisans - KASIM 2023 

 

KISA ÖZET 

 
SOYKIRIMDAN YARADILIŞA: MARTIN AMIS'İN TIME’S ARROW OR: 

THE NATURE OF THE OFFENCE ADLI ESERİNDE KÖTÜLÜĞÜN 

PSİKANALİTİK İNCELEMESİ 

 

Hilal BİLGİLİ 

 

Bu tez, başta doktorlar olmak üzere Nazi suçlularının, Holokost sırasında nasıl dehşet 

verici suçlar işlediğini ve bu süreçteki psikolojik dönüşümün edebiyattaki yansımasını 

incelemektedir. Yarattıkları bu kriz karşısında Nazi faillerinin kişilikleri, zulüm 

işlemek ve insani bir görünüm sergilemek arasında derin bir bölünme geçirir. Bu tez, 

edebiyat metinlerini kullanarak bu ikili doğayı anlamayı ve eylemlerinin ardındaki 

psikolojik süreçlere ışık tutmayı amaçlamaktadır. 

 

Martin Amis'in Time’s Arrow adlı romanı, bir Nazi doktorunun hayatını ölümden 

doğuma ters kronolojiyle anlatarak benzersiz bir anlatım tekniği kullanır. Bu teknik, 

kötülüğün tarihini çözer, kötülüğün özünü ortaya çıkarır, tarihsel olayları yeniden 

yorumlar ve kahramanın kendini duyarsızlaştırma ve cani eylemlerinden uzaklaşma 

yönündeki amansız çabalarını gözler önüne serer. Bu çalışmada, Nazi doktorlarının 

dönüşümü, suçun onlar üzerindeki kalıcı etkileri ve özellikle ters anlatım tekniğinin 

Holokost'u nasıl tasvir ettiği ve bir bakıma deşifre ettiği üzerinde durulmaktadır. 

 

Bu araştırmayla, Martin Amis'in Time's Arrow romanında tasvir edilen suçun çelişkili 

doğasına ve Nazi failinin karmaşık ruh haline psikanalitik bir yaklaşım ve romanın 



 
 

iii 
 

ayrıntılı analizi yoluyla ışık tutmayı amaçlıyorum. Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan ve 

Julia Kristeva’nın temel kavramlarıyla birlikte Robert Jay Lifton’ın Nazi sosyo-

tarihsel bağlamını kullanan bu tez, failin Holokost krizine verdiği tepkinin rahatsız 

edici doğasına ve ahlaki sorumluluk yoksunluğuna dair bir perspektif sunmak için 

ikileşme, yabancılaştırma, ruhsal uyuşma, iğrençlik, anne rahmi, kadın varlığı ve 

yaşam ve ölüm içgüdüsü kavramlarını incelemektedir. 

 

Anahtar kelimeler: Martin Amis, Psikanaliz, Kötülük, Ruh, Fail, İkileşme, Holokost 

Edebiyatı 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 
 

iv 
 

 

 

University                                          :           Istanbul Kültür University 

Institute    : Institute of Graduate Studies 

Department    : English Language and Literature 

Programme    : English Language and Literature 

Supervisor    : Prof. Dr. Gillian. M.E. ALBAN 

Degree Awarded and Date  : MA - NOVEMBER 2023 

 

ABSTRACT 

 

FROM GENOCIDE TO GENESIS: PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPLORATION 

OF EVIL IN MARTIN AMIS’ TIME’S ARROW: OR THE NATURE OF THE 

OFFENCE 

 

Hilal BİLGİLİ 

 

This thesis explores how Nazi perpetrators, notably doctors, committed heinous crimes 

during the Holocaust, delving into their psychological transformation. Faced with this 

self-inflicted crisis, perpetrators undergo a profound shift, splitting their personalities 

between committing atrocities and wearing a facade of humanity. Using literary texts, 

this thesis aims to understand this dual nature, shedding light on the psychological 

processes behind their actions. 

 

Martin Amis' novel, Time's Arrow, employs a unique narrative technique, recounting 

the life of a Nazi doctor in reverse chronology, from death to birth. This technique 

unravels a history of evil, deconstructs the evil self, reinterprets historical events, and 

exposes the protagonist’s relentless attempts to distance from his heinous deeds. This 

study focuses on the transformation of the Nazi doctors, the lingering effects of 

perpetration on them, and especially how the technique of reverse narration portrays 

and, in a way, decodes the Holocaust. 

 



 
 

v 
 

With this study, I aim to shed light on the paradoxical nature of the offense and the 

complex psyche of the Nazi perpetrator, portrayed in Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow, 

through a psychoanalytic approach and nuanced analysis of the novel.  By utilizing 

Robert Jay Lifton’s socio-historical context from Nazi Doctors, along with the key 

concepts provided by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, this study 

examines the concepts of doubling, defamiliarization, psychic numbing, abjection, 

maternal womb, and female presence and life and death instinct to offer insight into 

the disturbing nature of the perpetrator’s response to the Holocaust crisis and his lack 

of moral responsibility. 

 
Key words: Martin Amis, Psychoanalysis, Evil, Psyche, Perpetrator, Doubling, 
Holocaust Fiction 
 
 
  
 

  



 
 

vi 
 

 

 

 

 

 

To all the innocent children affected by the horrors of war, 

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

  



 
 

vii 
 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

 

I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to my dear thesis supervisor Prof. 

Dr. Gillian M.E. Alban, whose wisdom, perseverance, discipline, and guidance have 

enlightened me on this academic journey. Without her guidance and encouragement, 

this thesis would not be possible. I would also like to thank my professors Prof. Dr. 

Işıl Baş, Asst. Prof. Ayşegül Turan, and Asst. Prof. Derya Altınmakas, whom I had the 

privilege of meeting and receiving valuable educational experiences during my 

education at Istanbul Kültür University. 

 

I am truly thankful to my parents for always believing in me, supporting me no matter 

what, and being there for me through thick and thin. Their belief in me has been my 

driving force, and I am the person I am today because of their faith, support, and trust 

in me. I am truly appreciative to my cat, my sister, and my close friends for providing 

the much-needed emotional relief during the stressful times.  

 

Last but certainly not least, I want to express my love and gratitude to my other half, 

Uğur Yankı Üçkardeşler. Your never-ending support, patience, understanding, and 

love have been my rock. Thank you for believing in me and making this life worth 

living. It has not been an easy year, but your presence made the challenging moments 

bearable and joyful. Thank you with all my heart. 

 

I feel so lucky to have such amazing people in my life, and I am thankful for their 

timeless support and love. This thesis is a culmination of not just my hard work, but 

also the collective support and encouragement of all these wonderful individuals. 



 
 

viii 
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

PLAGIARISM ............................................................................................................. i  

KISA ÖZET ................................................................................................................ ii  

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... iv  

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................... vii 

TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ viii 

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 

CHAPTER I: LITERARY REVIEW ...................................................................... 6 

1.1. Literature of the Holocaust Perpetrators ............................................. 6 

1.2 Overview of Time’s Arrow ..................................................................... 12 

1.3 Perpetrator’s Trauma ............................................................................ 18 

1.4 The Meaning of Evil ............................................................................... 21 

CHAPTER II: SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND .................................... 24 

2.1 Introduction to Robert Jay Lifton’s Nazi Doctors ............................... 24 

2.2 The Historical Scene .............................................................................. 27 

2.3 Breaking of the Hippocratic Oath: Sterilization ................................. 28 

2.4 Genetic Cleansing: Euthanasia ............................................................. 34 

2.5 Racial Cleansing: Auschwitz ................................................................. 40 

2.6 Doubling, the Faustian Bargain and the Auschwitz Self .................... 45 

CHAPTER III: LITERARY ANALYSIS OF TIME’S ARROW ......................... 51 

3.1 Close Reading: When Things Run Backwards ................................... 51 

3.2 Women & Abjection .............................................................................. 60 

3.3 Doubling & Nazi Doctors ...................................................................... 68 

3.4 Odilo Unverdorben ................................................................................ 75 

CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 81 

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 90 

 

 



 
 

1 
 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life 

unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because 

I want to be a human being.” 

— Fyodor Dostoevsky 

Theodor W. Adorno asserted that “poetry is impossible after Auschwitz.” But why so? 

Is it merely because of the horrors that it caused, or the source of this horror which 

made it impossible to produce an artistic representation of it – which is the evil 

ingrained within the human psyche?  

The horrors of the Holocaust have undoubtedly been a taboo on which most 

authors hesitate to write, ever since Holocaust transpired. Perhaps, having the 

authoritative voice over such a tragedy was either too challenging or too overbearing; 

or too unthinkable considering that to create a fiction on the Holocaust entailed that 

the voice to be heard belonged either to the victim or the perpetrator of this offense; 

more often, of course, belonging to the victims of this dreadful crime against humanity. 

Giving voice to a Nazi criminal is not something that anybody would be readily willing 

to do since speaking a criminal’s mind and perhaps explaining it would in a way justify 

their horrible deeds or give excuses and rationalize their cruelty. However, sometimes 

it is essential to know rather than to avoid, just as it is important to face it rather than 

pretending to ignore it. Martin Amis is one of the few authors that has had the courage 

to write Holocaust fiction from the perpetrator’s eye and make his mind speak. His 

unorthodox narrative, therefore, introduces to us a new perspective on this very 

sensitive issue and leads us into the dark mind of a Nazi doctor in order to penetrate 

its darkness. 

  In a 2014 interview by Donna Seaman, Amis expressed his connection to the 

subject matter, stating, “It is more as if it’s chosen you rather than you’ve chosen it” 

(Seaman). I share a similar sentiment; it feels as though the topic has chosen me rather 

than the other way around. My selection of this particular subject is deliberate, rooted 

in a distinct perspective that holds valid merit. As Erin McGlothlin aptly points out, 

writing “from the perspective of [Holocaust] perpetrators” is uncommon and often 

considered “taboo” within the established canon of Holocaust literature (The Mind 

257). This choice reflects a conscious decision to explore a unique and unconventional 



 
 

2 
 

angle, challenging the boundaries of traditional Holocaust narratives. By delving into 

the perspective of the perpetrators, I aim to shed light on a less explored aspect of 

history, examining the complex motivations and actions of those involved. This 

approach, even if daring, provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of 

the human psyche and the factors that lead to such atrocities. 

What fascinates me and leads me into pursuing such a study was an attempt to 

understand the possible reasons and motives that formed the psychology of genocide, 

which is generated from the sick idea of racial cleansing. After all, this is humankind’s 

doing – a civilized nation to be precise, seeing Nazi Germany’s so far considered 

‘civilized’ history, and we cannot avoid it by simply ignoring or considering it taboo, 

which eventually prevents it from being represented and understood. Representation 

of the perpetrator’s point of view is not to justify their crimes nor to sympathize with 

them; on the contrary, to understand and face the dark potential of humankind and 

offer explanations of the matter. 

In light of this, it can be said that Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow offers an 

opportunity to case study the Holocaust perpetrator’s mind and psyche, as he is one of 

the rarest writers to challenge this notion and include it in his oeuvre. In Time’s Arrow, 

the life of a Nazi doctor who served in Auschwitz is narrated in backwards fashion, 

that is, the story retrogrades from his death surrounded by doctors on his deathbed, to 

his birth – back to his mother’s womb. The voice of the narrator, or more correctly, 

the focalizer is his soul1, or consciousness; both of which suggest a split from the body 

of the protagonist disguised in different identities unveiled as the story goes (back): 

first introduced as Todd Friendly in his American years, followed by John in 

Argentina, and lastly his real identity in Auschwitz as Odilo Unverdorben. His real 

name is rather meaningful with an ironic translation, since Odilo, which is a German 

name, means “prosperous in battle” and his surname Unverdorben means “unspoilt.” 

With Odilo Unverdorben we see his transformation before and after Auschwitz; and 

the shift in his voice from third person narrator to first person narrator. 

In the afterword of Time’s Arrow, Amis states that if it had not been for Robert 

Jay Lifton’s Nazi Doctors – a study on the psychology behind the genocide, this novel 

 
1 Soul is an abstract concept and has a religious connotation, even suggesting a sense of redemption in 
this respect. Although Martin Amis himself asserted that the voice of the narrator belongs the soul of 
the protagonist, in this thesis, it will also be referred as his consciousness since the focus is on the 
depths of the perpetrator’s mind and unconscious.  



 
 

3 
 

would not and could not have been written. This enlightening study presents a 

psychological explanation of the inhuman deed of genocide. In his study, Lifton 

suggests the theory of “doubling”, meaning the Nazi doctors could do what they did 

because they had a split in their identities, and this split separated them into the 

“normal self” and the “Auschwitz self”, whereby the “Auschwitz self” could be held 

responsible for the brutal crimes committed by these Nazi doctors. 

Moreover, Amis’s world building in Time’s Arrow also attracts my attention. 

It follows a Nazi war criminal’s life narrated through his soul from a reversed 

chronology which necessitates the reader’s involvement and judgement on the subject 

matter as well. Not only the time moves backwards, but everything including dialogues 

is narrated backwards, which induces the reader to expect explanations and even 

cognitively to engage in understanding the matter as the story proceeds. This 

unconventional narrative with its unreliable narrator invites the reader to both 

cognitively “make sense” of the events and to morally perceive the gaps in the 

narrator’s misinterpretation and misjudgment of his role and the events occurring in 

Auschwitz. With this narrative technique, Amis presents a dual irony that none of this 

“makes sense”, while all along both the narrator and the reader try to make sense of 

things and anticipate an explanation; however, it is up to the moral judgement of the 

reader to make sense of it all. This draws a parallel to the moral and linguistic decay 

that the actual Nazi atrocity caused — ideally a progress on the surface, while 

fundamentally being a regression to an ethical atrophy. 

For this reason, I, as a reader and a researcher accept this challenge and want 

to explore the sense of evil in this context. How did they do what they did? What was 

the psychology behind the genocide? What led them to go to such extremes and lose 

their humanity? These are only a few of the many moral questions that I had in mind 

when I started this study, and with the depth of psychoanalytic theories, I have decided 

to interpret “the nature of the offense” − which is the subtitle of Time’s Arrow. In the 

scholarship on Time’s Arrow, I have noticed a lack in psychoanalytic approaches to 

the novel. Most of the readings are made either in terms of narratology or morality. 

Psychoanalytic interpretations, however, have not been undertaken adequately. For 

this reason, with this thesis I aim to fill this gap in the literature and contribute a 

different point of view on such a controversial and sensitive topic.  

In Time’s Arrow, Amis employs linguistic and temporal manipulation to depict 

a distorted reality and morality, illustrating the symbolic nature of language, time, and 



 
 

4 
 

reality.  Through his unconventional narrative style, he delves into the mind of a 

criminal, requiring readers to decipher the twisted language and disordered structure. 

This technique is probably the most accurate representation of a criminal’s mind and 

psyche, since it requires readers to grapple with the narrative, unlike conventional 

storytelling that presents information directly. Amis’s narration offers an alternative 

to traditional Holocaust fiction; it terrifies, and catches one off guard, much like the 

horrific truths of the Holocaust. By excluding and pushing the other away from its 

firmly drawn wholeness (which desperately bears (w)holes in it), the Symbolic system 

that we are mentally, linguistically, and unavoidably bound by produces evil 

inadvertently through discourse, ideology, indoctrination, and propaganda This 

constructed system compels individuals to extremes, bringing forth repressed elements 

in the form of evil. It invokes a potential that is neither too foreign to humankind, nor 

truly inherent within it. 

Thus, with Martin Amis’s novel I attempt to explore the nature of the offense 

with the aid of psychoanalytic theories, starting from the pioneer Sigmund Freud, his 

descendants Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva; these will form the theoretical 

background of my thesis in my literary analysis. Firstly, I will provide an in-depth 

literary review encompassing Holocaust perpetrator fiction and studies, showcasing 

the existing scholarly work on this theme. Despite their limited number, I will review 

the narratives concerning Nazi perpetrators written up to this time, explaining the 

content and rationale behind these works. Furthermore, I will articulate the reasons for 

specifically concentrating on Nazi doctors in my exploration. I will then proceed with 

Robert Jay Lifton’s Nazi Doctors which is a psychological study on the subject matter 

and more importantly, one of the primary sources for Time’s Arrow, hence for this 

thesis as well. Therefore, Nazi Doctors with an extensive historical explanation will 

form the socio-historical background for my thesis. Lastly, I will present my close 

reading of Time’s Arrow; however, it should be noted that the close reading of the 

novel will comprise my analysis of the novel. I do not take Martin Amis at face value, 

nor do I claim that the way I read his work is the intended or the correct way to read 

it. His attitude might differ from the way I read his novel. I will only benefit from the 

richness of the symbolism implicit in his writing and offer an enhanced close reading 

of the novel to support my thesis and come up with possible answers. With my critical 

analysis, I hope to unlock a different and enlightening perspective on the novel, 

thereby enhancing the richness of Martin Amis’s creative work.  



 
 

5 
 

It should also be noted that psychoanalysis often disregards the socio-historical 

context, and therefore it is rather difficult to draw universal conclusions. The socio-

historical context that produced such evil is paramount for a multilayered, nuanced 

analysis; therefore, this thesis aims to provide a comprehensive socio-historical 

background to shed light on the often-overlooked layer of human perpetration. It is 

important to understand the diverse factors contributing to the emergence of atrocities 

and the essence of perpetration, encompassing cultural, social, and belief systems, 

alongside the influence of propaganda, as well as the allure of social, and material 

gains for individuals. In essence, it is not necessary for every doctor, across diverse 

decades and cultures, to manifest the same evil actions or responses under specific 

circumstances. Nonetheless, it remains crucial to recognize the latent potential within 

the human psyche to enhance our understanding of human nature.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 
 

6 
 

CHAPTER I: LITERARY REVIEW 

 
1.1. Literature of the Holocaust Perpetrators 

It is no doubt that the narratives recounting the Holocaust have profoundly captivated 

the interest of historians, psychologists, and novelists, as well as the public. This 

fascination primarily stems from the testimonies of the victims who endured the 

atrocities inflicted by the Nazis. However, the historical narrative has not extensively 

highlighted the accounts of perpetrators, barring a limited number of instances. One 

such exception is evident in the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, documented during his 

imprisonment preceding execution, subsequently serving as inspiration for Robert 

Merle in his novel, Death Is My Trade (1952). Delving into the perspective, 

motivations, and actions of perpetrators through fiction, particularly within the context 

of Nazi perpetration, has been a rare and cautious endeavor. The authoring of 

perpetrator novels, in this specific historical context, has never been quite a common 

or favored thematic pursuit. 

In her article “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the 

Holocaust” Susan Rubin Suleiman discusses this reservation that fiction writers may 

harbor when it comes to the portrayal of the inner life of a Nazi perpetrator. The 

comprehensive depiction of a character’s subjectivity, encompassing not only actions 

but also feelings, perceptions, opinions, psyche, and their way of existence in the 

world, inherently demands a certain level of empathy from both the author and the 

reader.  Even if the character is abhorrent, there is a need to recognize their humanity, 

thereby acknowledging shared characteristics with the broader human experience—

regardless of how hard it might sound.  

Suleiman highlights that cultivating such “empathy for a perpetrator of 

genocide—even if it coexists with revulsion and moral condemnation—puts both 

author and reader on uncomfortable ethical ground, and on uncomfortable aesthetic 

ground as well” (Suleiman 2). This discomfort is further compounded by the 

challenges associated with portraying the distorted nature of such narratives; thus, only 

the distorted narration techniques, such as the reversed narration technique of Time’s 

Arrow can authentically portray such distorted ground, both aesthetically and ethically.  

Suleiman's article further explores into the dilemma surrounding the narrative 

voice of the perpetrator. She highlights the concerns regarding the potential automatic 

evocation of empathy in readers through a first-person narrative voice, and shows the 



 
 

7 
 

difficulties associated with adopting the voice of an “omniscient” narrator to explore 

the behavior and perceptions of a perpetrator protagonist (Suleiman 2). While these 

issues may appear as aesthetic challenges in representation, Martin Amis’s Time's 

Arrow adeptly navigates and addresses them through its distinctive narrative mode, 

offering a unique and effective approach to both ethical and aesthetic considerations. 

A few other names have attempted to go into the chaotic inner world of the 

Nazi perpetrators to fictionally represent such point of view, both visually and in 

written form. Namely, the aforementioned novel, Death Is My Trade (in French: La 

mort est mon métier) by the French author Robert Mele, recounts the story of a 

commandant at Auschwitz named Rudolf Lang, a character closely modeled after the 

actual Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss. The book tells the story of Rudolf’s life 

from the age of twelve, including memories of his youth, his family life, his 

transformation into an SS commander, and his main mission to kill as many Jews as 

possible. Robert Merle drew upon Rudolf Höss’ testimonies written during his 

imprisonment and court records from the Nuremberg trials but most importantly, 

utilized from the interviews conducted by the American psychologist Gilbert, who 

interviewed Rudolf Höss in his cell at the time of the Nuremberg trial. He believed 

that these interviews were more revealing than the confessions written later by Höss 

himself in his Polish prison. In this respect, both Martin Amis and Robert Merle 

employed a similar approach, resorting to psychoanalysis to shed light on the twisted 

psyche of a Nazi perpetrator. In the case of Martin Amis’ exploration of a Nazi 

perpetrator in Time's Arrow, he, too, drew upon interviews with Nazi doctors 

conducted by Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist renowned for his study of 

the psychological origins and consequences of wars. 

In the preface of the novel Death is My Trade, Merle confesses that at the time 

he was writing the novel, he was well aware that he was writing a book against the 

grain. He asserts, “Les tabous les plus efficaces sont ceux qui ne disent pas leur nom” 

(“the most effective taboos are those that do not speak their name”; my trans. iv). 

Despite recognizing the societal taboos surrounding his subject matter, Merle 

ultimately concluded that Höss’ actions were not driven by malice but were carried 

out in adherence to the “categorical imperative of duty”, “loyalty to his leader”, and 

“obedience to orders”, all in respect for the State — Volk (vi). In essence, Merle 

characterized him as a “man of duty,” attributing monstrosity to this very behavior. 

This interpretation, influenced by psychoanalysis and Merle’s desire to comprehend 



 
 

8 
 

Höss’ actions, depicts Merle’s Lang as an idealized and stylized version of Höss, 

portraying him as a tragic figure rather than a sadist. 

Another fictional testament of a Nazi perpetrator is presented in the work of 

Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, in his short story titled “Deutsches Requiem” (“A 

German Requiem”) published in 1946. The narrative portrays the fictional final 

declaration of Otto Dietrich zur Linde, the amputated, one-legged commandant of a 

Nazi concentration camp. Refraining from presenting a defense for his actions since it 

would make him appear “cowardly” (Borges 229), zur Linde is adjudicated and 

condemned to execution by firing squad. While awaiting his impending execution, he 

composes a last testament in his prison cell. He has “no desire to be pardoned, for [he] 

feel[s] no guilt, but … wish[es] to be understood (229). This document notably lacks 

any attempt at justification, and instead, zur Linde expresses satisfaction in the 

anticipation that the future will be ruled by “violence and faith in the sword” rather 

than what he dismisses as “servile Christian acts of timidity” (234). Additionally, he 

expresses a wish that, should triumph and glory elude Nazi Germany, they might find 

harbor in other nations: “Let heaven exist, though our place be in hell” (234). He 

exhibits a refusal to embrace empathetic sentiments for his victim, displays 

characteristics of dehumanization, unequivocally rejects the virtues of compassion and 

mercy advocated by Christianity, and adheres blindly to a steadfast belief in sacrificial 

violence. This belief is evident in his vision of the new world order advocated by 

Nazism as he sees it as a “moral act” removing the old “corrupt and depraved” man to 

embrace the new one (231). Through Nazism the new world order is stripped away 

from the old, weak, defeated, fatalist mentality to renew it with a violent, merciless, 

and destructive as ever: “There are many things that must be destroyed in order to 

build the new order; now we know that Germany was one of them. We have given 

something more than our lives; we have given the life of our beloved nation. Let others 

curse and others weep; I rejoice in the fact that our gift is orbicular and perfect” (234). 

The need for destructing the old, defeated paradigms and reviving the German 

Volk by adopting a brutal, totalitarian, and homogenous vision is evident in Nazism, a 

theme that will be expounded upon in greater detail in the forthcoming Chapter II. 

Reflecting on his demeanor as he looks at his face in the mirror before the impending 

firing squad, zur Linde recognizes an absence of fear or pity, even towards himself: 

“My flesh may feel fear; I myself do not” (234). As explained in Chapter II, these 

perpetrators experience a kind of psychic numbing and losing of moral consciousness. 



 
 

9 
 

The stark contempt and disregard for Christianity emanate from the Nazi ideological 

perspective that associates religion with a perceived permissiveness, signifying 

vulnerability to external influences. This theme shall be further explained with the 

socio-historical background provided by Robert Jay Lifton in Chapter II. 

Another historical fiction, The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes in French) 

written by Jonathan Littell in 2006, unfolds through the perspective of its fictional 

protagonist Maximilien Aue. A former SS officer of French and German descent, Aue 

actively participated as a perpetrator in the Holocaust and bore witness to pivotal 

events of World War II. From the onset of the book, readers are aware that Aue’s fluent 

command of the French language enables him to escape and assume a new identity as 

a returning Frenchman in France. A similar theme which depicts a former SS officer 

from the perpetrator’s perspective is employed in another fictional autobiography 

titled The Nazi and the Barber (Der Nazi & der Friseur) authored by the German-

Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath. The intriguing aspect of the book lies in Hilsenrath’s 

decision to write it in German. Due to his choice of portraying the perspective of the 

perpetrator, he encountered challenges in getting it published in Germany. 

Consequently, the book made its debut in the United States in 1971 through an English 

translation by Andrew White, and then in 1977, it was eventually published in 

Germany. Through the lens of the perpetrator’s perspective, the novel narrates the life 

of Max Schulz, a mass murderer affiliated with the SS. Following World War II, 

Schulz adopts a Jewish identity and ultimately relocates to Israel as a means to evade 

prosecution in Germany. The disguise and change of identity are also evident in Time’s 

Arrrow with its protagonist Odilo, who assumes the names according to the places he 

flees to, namely Hamilton, John and lastly Todd Friendly. This theme reflects the 

actual evasion of Nazis from justice. Mary Fulbrook explains how after the war 

“…most of the guilty got away with it … Only a tiny minority were tried and sentenced 

for Nazi crimes. Fewer than one percent of those involved in killing Jews were ever 

convicted for their crimes” (31). Furthermore, a significant number of former Nazis 

quietly integrated into the new society without facing substantial accountability for 

their criminal actions (Fulbrook 32); in the case of Max Schulz from the novel The 

Nazi and the Barber, the grim reality was that he integrated himself into the very 

society he once a role in destroying, the Jewish society. 

Fulbrook continues to present how following the post-war period in West 

Germany, individuals in the judiciary, the medical profession, employers of slave 



 
 

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labor, and the civil service predominantly managed to evade justice in the courtroom 

(32, emphasis mine). The fact that medical professionals could evade justice, as 

portrayed in Time’s Arrow served as a catalyst for my concentration on these 

individuals. I contend that their violations of the law and betrayal of the Hippocratic 

oath were even more severe, and insulting compared to other already grim 

transgressions. “Blame was shifted onto a few individuals—preferably already 

convicted or dead—as well as the convenient symbol of all evil, the SS, ‘alibi of the 

nation’” (Reitlinger qtd. in Fulbrook 32). Their connections and shared solidarity 

reinforced the process of concealing a tainted history, and scapegoating the convicted 

or already dead individuals drew the attention away from them. This allowed those 

who found their way out of Nazism to settle in secluded or remote places to lead quite 

lives through the pensions acquired for their service to Hitler’s Reich.  

The assessment of the gravity and degree of perpetration shifted accordingly, 

almost selectively establishing a hierarchy of perpetration among the individuals based 

on their status rather than the nature of their crimes. Fulbrook demonstrates this unfair 

demarcation as follows:  

 

Even if there was, in Norbert Frei’s terminology, a “normative demarcation” in 

Adenauer’s Germany, this was partial and selective: the notion of “perpetrator” 

was progressively narrowed to the lower- class thugs and concentration camp 

sadists, while professionals who had assisted in the administration of 

discriminatory and ultimately murderous policies were let off the hook (Frei 

qtd. in Fulbrok 32-33). 

 

However, most of these individuals transgressed the lines and committed 

crimes against humanity at one lever or the other. While there were real sadistically 

driven perpetrators among them, there were also people who were just “doing their 

jobs” and acting as mere conformists abiding to the laws of the time. In their study, 

Uğur Ümit Üngör and Kjell Anderson assert that typologizing perpetrators is not easy 

since they do not fall within the boundaries of the same given type. They suggest that 

“for example, “law-abiding citizens” may become “conformist” perpetrators, while 

borderline types (those who are marginalized but not criminals) may be “profiteers,” 

and “criminals” (those with a record of violence) may become “sadist” perpetrators 

during mass atrocities” (Üngör and Anderson 10). They draw a model concerning 



 
 

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perpetration as a socio-ecological model comprising of three different analytical 

levels: top level (architects), mid-level (organizers), and bottom level (killers) (11). 

Initially, historical research predominantly focused on the top-level perpetrators, 

neglecting the lower levels. However, a shift has occurred with the emergence of more 

detailed studies delving into the middle and micro levels.  When it comes to the level 

of perpetrators, most of the perpetrator novels are concerned with the bottom level 

perpetrators, that is, the killers. 

 A few novels depict the top-level perpetrators, namely Adolf Hitler himself, 

such as The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. by George Steiner which revolves around 

Jewish Nazi hunters discovering a fictional version of Adolf Hitler (A.H.) who is alive 

in the Amazon jungle three decades after the war. There are also visual representations 

of top-level perpetrators, namely and perhaps the most remarkably the 2004 movie 

Der Untergang (Downfall) directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The movie depicts the 

final days of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker right before the end of World War II. 

The portrayal of Adolf Hitler, played by the exceptional actor Bruno Ganz offers a 

unique and powerful depiction, capturing the dictator’s despotic, furious, aggressive, 

and defeated yet undeniably human essence. These works, whether focused on the top-

level or bottom-level perpetrators, depicts the ideological environment and how it is 

initiated and absorbed by the individuals. Such extreme ideology can “have a penchant 

for mass violence due to their anti-liberal nature, flirtations with utopia, development 

of sharp in/out group dynamics, and permissiveness to the use of violence” (Weitz qtd. 

in Üngör and Anderson 12). As a result of such extremism, individual identity can 

merge into a collective identity, forming an out-group perceived as a dangerous and 

profoundly alienated, dehumanized enemy —in the case of Germans of Nazi era it is 

the Jews. It creates an ideological environment where “commitment to Nazi 

worldviews and exercise of brute force were the norm. [The] organizations were 

embedded in a largely supportive (or fearful) societal context” (Fulbrook 27). In such 

an ideologically intoxicated social context, all forms and degrees of perpetration 

become intolerable and unthinkable. Diverging from the portrayals of perpetrators 

delineated earlier in various literary and visual mediums, my emphasis will adopt a 

distinct perspective. Specifically, I intend to shed light on the harrowing dimension of 

Nazi perpetration through the lens of a doctor’s experiences. The analysis of Time's 

Arrow will provide a nuanced viewpoint, centering on the experiences of a Nazi doctor 

as a perpetrator.  



 
 

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1.2 Overview of Time’s Arrow 

 
“Not only will you break through the paralysing difficulties of the time—you 

will break through time itself … and dare to be barbaric, twice barbaric indeed.”2 

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus 

 

Time's Arrow deviates from its counterparts in the perpetrator novel genre, charting a 

distinct course in terms of narrative mode. Through the narrative of his 1991 novel 

Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis explores the concept of time and the nature of the offence 

in telling the story of a former Nazi Doctor named Tod Friendly, who relives his life 

backwards in time. With its unorthodox narrative framework, which shows the 

progression of events from death to birth in reverse, the Holocaust is provocatively 

examined. The novel first welcomes the reader with its protagonist, Tod Friendly as 

an elderly American resident, awaking from his death in the hospital as a result of a 

traffic accident. The narrative follows his life in reverse as it moves forward, enabling 

readers to witness his experiences during World War II, the horrors of the Holocaust 

along with the protagonist’s involvement in it, and especially his relationships with 

women. This reversal of viewpoint adds a novel perspective to the well-known 

historical events of Holocaust by exposing the atrocities of war and the cruelty 

imposed on the innocent from the voice of a perpetrator’s consciousness. Pushing the 

limits of narrative structure, reversing the meaning both semantically and physically, 

Time’s Arrow challenges the reader’s thinking, and induces them to reflect on the 

nature of time and offense, the potential for evil in people, and the complexities of 

individual identity and the human psyche through Amis’ creative approach to these 

events in history.  

In accordance with this aim, this literary analysis seeks to unveil how Nazi 

doctors became the instigators and focal points of the Holocaust atrocity, by delving 

profoundly into the evil that they embodied. Drawing on the references and clues to 

real-life Nazi doctors given in the novel and making use of the symbolism in the novel, 

this analysis will explore the psyche of the Nazi perpetrator and seek to find possible 

answers as to how such people came to commit the evil they did. Although there have 

been many narratological and moral readings on this novel, this study will attempt a 

 
2 Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend (1947) 



 
 

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more psychoanalytical reading in order to penetrate further and investigate how the 

human psyche initiates and reacts to the self-created chaos in such dark times. Many 

psychoanalytic studies will be utilized in this study, from the early pioneer Sigmund 

Freud, and his successors Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, to more recent trauma 

studies. Most importantly, the main source of this reading will be based on Robert Jay 

Lifton’s “doubling” theory in his book Nazi Doctors. Since the narration of the novel 

is told backwards, this chapter will present the reading in an intelligible, chronological 

order to give the reader a clearer picture of events and what this reversed order tries to 

imply, or simply to explain why the world in Auschwitz “makes sense” in the reality 

of Time’s Arrow. 

With this new sense of order, this experimental narrative form and narrative 

perspective along with the general narrative tone, which is a mix of black humor and 

irony, Amis attempts to convey a raw version of the Holocaust for our contemporary 

minds to perceive. Prior to delving into the literary analysis of the novel, it is essential 

to acknowledge and highlight a number of critical perspectives and the overall 

reception that the novel garnered. One of the criticisms on the novel’s formal strategy 

comes from Pearl K. Bell who defines Time’s Arrow as a “grievously misguided 

approach to the Holocaust” whose narrative technique is a “bag-of tricks 

gamesmanship” (qtd. in Trussler 35). However, certain human experiences, such as 

the Holocaust itself, cannot be accurately depicted by various types of general plotting 

and it is inappropriate or incommunicable to storify for the pain and the suffering it 

embodies, therefore, as Michael Trussler claims, “the Shoah [Holocaust] must be 

approached differently than other historical events” (35). Amis approaches this very 

phenomenon differently – and even in a particularly unconventional manner, addresses 

the problem of the impossibility of “writing poetry after Auschwitz”, as Adorno 

claims, and comes up with a solution for the “problem of representational 

accountability honestly” (35), and he does this through his time reversal. By breathing 

life back into the Jewish victims, he enables his Nazi protagonist to “help” Jews 

through semantic inversion and resolves him by sending him back to his mother’s 

womb – which acts as his redemption. On this James Diedrick writes: “In his 

descriptions of breathing life back into the victims of Nazi genocide, the narrator 

effects a poetic undoing of the Holocaust, all the more poignant for the reader’s 

knowledge that it can never be undone” (qtd. in Badrideen 60); however, at the end of 

the novel, it is undone, and it is a story that does not pass along, for it self-destructs. 



 
 

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Thus, he resolves this irresolvable question by undoing it through reversed chronology, 

reversal of meaning, and reversal of perspective. 

Amis states that “[t]he Holocaust is the central event of the twentieth century” 

(Ballante qtd. in Finney 101), therefore it is understandable why, as Dermot McCarthy 

observes, Amis’s “generation suffers from an event it did not experience and will 

expire from one it seems powerless to prevent” (qtd. in Finney 101). Furthermore, in 

2002 Amis confessed “I feel I have an unfinished business with Hitler” (Heawood qtd. 

in Finney 101), revealing the heavy impact and responsibility that the post-war 

remnants of this catastrophic destruction have left on the following generation. 

Henceforth, despite Martin Amis’s simple intention to portray the Holocaust, the task 

of accomplishing such a depiction through ordinary and conventional means proves 

far from straightforward, as Elie Wiesel posits that “at Auschwitz not only man died, 

but also the idea of man” (qtd. in Finney 102), thereby challenging the very 

foundations of trust in civilized society, justice, and goodness. Such metanarratives, 

encompassing concepts embodied in the Hippocratic oath, the Bible, and similar belief 

systems and principles, are fundamentally undermined by the existence of Auschwitz. 

Consequently, as articulated by Geoffrey Hartman, a sentiment emerges that “we feel 

that the Holocaust cannot be a part of us: the mind rejects it, casts it out” (qtd. in 

Trussler 36), for it entails a profound reversal of our established beliefs, values, and 

perceptions of reality. It is precisely this rejection by the human mind that necessitates 

the utilization of a similarly reversed logic in introducing the Holocaust into literature 

— an effect that Amis endeavors to achieve through his narrative inversion. 

This narrative inversion intentionally creates a chronological gap that 

penetrates how the reader and the protagonist see the historical events unfold. This is 

because, as contemporary readers, “[w]e shall never know whether Nazism [or] the 

concentration camps … were intelligible or not,” as Jean Baudrillard asserts, because 

“we are no longer part of the same mental universe” (qtd. in Trussler 37). Thus, “[t]he 

entire weight of the novel”, claims Michael Trussler, “is directed against such an 

erasure of knowledge” (37). In this way, the narrator, stripped of his historical context 

and burden of guilt, impels the reader to partake in, if not endorse, the simultaneous 

repression and revelation of knowledge embedded within the novel. This sense of 

distancing aligns with that of Wolfgang Kayser’s view that “the grotesque in art is in 

the “alienated world” — not a world which is merely alien but … our own world so 

disturbed that we no longer wish to live in it” (qtd. in Crew 646). Brian Crew, in turn, 



 
 

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perceives this narrative strategy employed by Amis as a means to engender 

“defamiliarization”, compelling the reader to reconstruct the experiences of the 

characters and apprehend them anew (646). Of course, there is also a psychological 

dimension that this narrative strategy strives to bring out in the protagonist, which 

constitutes the fundamental essence of this literary analysis. 

The inversion portrayed in the novel extends beyond temporal order and 

encompasses the moral and logical aspects of its world. As explained in Chapter II, 

Amis draws inspiration from Lifton’s work on Nazi Doctors, highlighting how the 

healing profession was perverted into a means of killing, upon which he recognizes 

that “[h]ere was a psychotically inverted world, and if you did it backward in time, it 

would make sense” (DeCurtis qtd. in Finney 106). Amis effectively unveils the 

inherently corrupted and inverted nature of conventional concepts by reversing them, 

thereby highlighting their true essence. These concepts, which we once believed in and 

relied upon, are fundamentally flawed, and distorted in this “psychotically inverted 

world” from a psychotically inverted perspective. Through this reversal, Amis 

confronts readers with the uncomfortable realization that the positive effects derived 

from these concepts are, in fact, a result of their inversion. This unsettling revelation 

fosters a deeper “understanding”, and “makes sense” (just like Auschwitz makes sense 

in the novel) albeit one that may elicit discomfort. 

For Time’s Arrow, a “reportorial and minimalist” novel,  “history is filtered 

through the psychological” lens (Trussler 38), rendering and connecting to the events 

in the past such as delusional Aryan superiority, the defunct whole national body of 

Germany, the belief in the Third Reich, the sheer hatred toward Jews, Nazi ideological 

brainwashing, the ultimate split in the psyche of the Nazi doctors, the “bio-soldier” 

fantasy and most importantly the Nazi belief in progress. By moving backward, the 

narrative structure in and of itself makes a comment on the paradoxical “progress” of 

the Nazis, wherein the revival of antiquated myths is blindly believed in for the sake 

of national rebirth (Harris 489). This so-called “progress” ultimately results in 

regression, an anticipated national “rebirth” turns into yet another defeat; only letting 

the protagonist be reborn for a new “win.” Susan Jeffords observes that “with a lost 

war in your hand you are sort of a woman” without a “resurrection, re-erection, re-

election,” and moreover, “you will not be a man again … unless you’ve got a replay 

on the war machine; a replay you win” (qtd. in Theweleit 284). In granting the 

protagonist the opportunity to replay events and achieve victory by taking refuge in 



 
 

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his mother’s womb and oedipally killed by his father’s penis, Amis allows him to 

reclaim his humanity, potency, and even the lives of those he had previously taken 

while remaining as “Odilo” that is, “prosperous in battle” and unverdorben that is 

“uncorrupted” by his crimes. However, of course, this will be elaborated in more detail 

below. 

This psychological dimension on the protagonist’s perception of events plays a 

large part in revisiting the Holocaust and re-interpreting its perpetrator’s psyche. 

Michaela Praisler observers that throughout the narrative, “the erudite narrator shifts 

the emphasis to Tod’s inner core, a strategy with a powerful proleptic force, 

announcing the horrors of the Holocaust which haunt our common past, but which lie 

in the narrative’s future” (Praisler 185). This temporal paradox emerges from the 

haunting presence of the horror he has inflicted, which disrupts both his past and 

future. Because Tod fails to reconcile himself with this traumatic burden, it becomes 

a perpetual entrapment, haunting his past, present, and future. Thus, the narrative’s 

purported “future” is, in essence, a disguised continuation of his haunted past and is 

haunted with all the futures of the others he has destroyed.  

The narrative heads towards his “secret” that is, his criminal Nazi past, thereby 

paradoxically situating his past as a psychological future while physically progressing 

towards it. As noted by Adam Głaz, for the protagonist, then, this means only the 

thermodynamic time’s arrow is reversed, not the psychological one (Głaz 111). The 

absence of a cause-effect relationship between events, caused by the reversed 

chronology, inhibits any sense of accountability for one’s actions within the novel. 

This absence creates a world for Odilo in which planning, prediction, responsibility, 

ethics, and morality hold no weight, allowing him to remain morally “un-responsible” 

(Głaz 112). However, his evasion of responsibility is not a means of escaping into a 

“peaceful” oblivion. In fact, he actively undoes himself throughout the narration, 

erasing his culpable existence that caused immense suffering to others and to himself. 

As the instigator of his own trauma, he strives to eliminate himself, echoing the 

Freudian compulsion to repeat the traumatic moments in the hope of resolving them 

while escaping the need to face them. In Odilo’s case, the traumatic cause resides 

within himself, prompting him to reverse his entire existence and erase the 

consequences of his actions. 

Consequently though, this reverse narrative structure of the novel generates a 

perverted irony. The narrator-protagonist, who is expected to recall his past and foretell 



 
 

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his future, appears to be deprived of such cognitive faculties. Therefore, Dermot 

McCarthy aptly characterizes the novel as “an inverted Bildungsroman” portraying the 

regression of the protagonist through the lens of an “amnesiac” narrator employing a 

blend of “comic” and progressively “darkly grim” ironies (McCarthy 294). This 

phenomenon becomes evident upon examining the novel’s tripartite structure. The 

initial three subparts of the novel provide invaluable insights into life: “What goes 

around comes around,” “You have to be cruel to be kind,” and “Because I am a healer, 

everything I do heals.” These first three subparts reveal the stage where he reaches his 

mental maturation, acknowledging that the consequences of his actions will eventually 

demand resolution, justifying and reconciling with his criminal past by rationalizing 

being cruel in order to be kind, as if kindness can exist after such extreme cruelty as 

he performed. Additionally, he reclaims his healer persona, which had been corrupted 

by the killings he perpetrated. 

 In part II, the narrative rewinds back to his relatively younger years, where he 

escapes from Auschwitz. Therefore, he rationalizes “you do what you do best, not 

what’s best to do,” and “here there is no why” referring to the inexplicability and 

inevitability of Auschwitz, “multiply zero by zero and you still get zero” during which, 

ironically, he gets something, the sense of purpose since it “makes sense” for him in 

Auschwitz. However, in hindsight, he realizes that nothing comes from nothing3, and 

repeating the same mistake cannot lead to new successes with a bit of belatedness in 

his comprehension. Subsequently, the part titled “She loves me, she loves me not” 

adopts a youthful tone, where the “world stops making sense” (157) for him. 

Nevertheless, he turns “innocent, emotional, popular and stupid” again (157). Lastly, 

the section titled “because ducks are fat” manifests a childlike reasoning, accompanied 

by a deviation from grammatical correctness. His judgment of the mistakes he “brang” 

and “choiced” (171) reflects an immature child’s perspective. As also indicated by the 

subtitle of the novel “The Nature of the Offence,” the didactic inclination underlying 

the novel becomes readily palpable, evident in the three distinct parts of the novel, 

illustrating the protagonist’s progressive mental and moral decline. 

Amis’ radical portrayal of the Holocaust has generated significant scholarly 

attention, ranging from postmodern criticism, critique on post–Enlightenment grand 

narratives, narratology, theories of trauma, and irony. These theoretical frameworks 

 
3 Latin: ex nihilo nihil fit. King Lear: nothing will come of nothing. 



 
 

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aid in explaining the narrative disruption of conventional norms within the work. 

However, Tamás Juhász observes that trauma theorists, despite their contributions to 

contextualizing the Holocaust and its diverse representations, fall behind due to their 

focus on therapeutic and legal processes, which contrasts with the essence of Time’s 

Arrow. Undoubtedly, trauma studies contribute key narrative idiosyncrasies for the 

novel, among which are a sense of belatedness, the representation of memory as in a 

state of “textual (dis)order”, the emergence of a split self, and the representation of 

emotional numbness (Juhász 647), all of which are elucidated by Robert Jay Lifton in 

his study on Nazi doctors.  

 

1.3 Perpetrator’s Trauma 

The exploration of trauma studies can shed light on various concepts experienced by 

perpetrators, including but not limited to “belatedness” and “repetition.” In Beyond the 

Pleasure Principle, Freud explores the enduring pattern of suffering in certain 

individuals. He reflects on the persistent nightmares of battlefield survivors and the 

repetitive reenactments of those who have undergone traumatic experiences. He is 

intrigued by the uncanny way catastrophic events seem to cyclically manifest in the 

lives of those who have lived through them. Therefore, he concludes that there must 

be a compulsion that leads to repetition hence calls it “repetitive compulsion.” 

Professor Cathy Caruth suggests that the traumatic neurosis “goes beyond this 

dramatic illustration of repetition compulsion and exceeds, perhaps, the limits of 

Freud’s conceptual or conscious theory of trauma” (Caruth 2). She adds and argues 

that it is not merely “the unconscious act of the infliction of the injury and its 

inadvertent and unwished-for repetition, but the moving and sorrowful voice that cries 

out, a voice that is paradoxically released through the wound” (2). Voicing, and talking 

through the past experience is also emphasized in Freud’s writings as he suggests that 

talking about one’s trauma, that is, “the talking cure” would be the “cleansing of the 

soul” and help in the removal of the recurring “mental clouds” (Freud “The Origin” 

184). Referring to Freud’s texts, Cathy states that trauma is like a wound “inflicted 

upon the mind, breach[ing] the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world, … [it 

is not] fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes 

itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor” (3-4). 

Deducing from Freud’s turning to literature when describing a traumatic event, Caruth 

draws a link between psychoanalysis and literature because both are “interested in the 



 
 

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complex relation between knowing and not knowing” (3). This is where the language 

of psychoanalysis and literature meet. The literary analysis of Time’s Arrow will 

attempt to present this link. 

Erin McGlothlin, for instance, by furthering trauma studies, adds a new 

perspective to traumatization, that is the unthinkable perpetrator’s perspective — 

specifically here the Holocaust perpetrators’, and argues that they are not exempt from 

this dispensation (McGlothlin “Perpetrator” 103).  Psychiatric research conducted on 

trauma studies during and after the World Wars I and II introduced the PTSD (Post-

traumatic stress disorder) which used to be defined as “shellshock” involving the 

aftershock and traumatization of soldiers fighting in a combat. This disorder, however, 

only involved those who suffered from the stress of “constant bombardment”, and 

witnessed the death of comrades, who are presumed to be the victims of or witnesses 

to violence, not the instigators of it (103). Therefore, the perpetrator’s trauma is 

“under-theorized” (Morag qtd. in McGlothlin 104) until MacNair coins the term 

“perpetrator-induced traumatic stress” (PITS) (105) resulting from “situations that 

would be traumatic if someone were a victim, but situations for which the person in 

question was a causal participant” (MacNair qtd. in McGlothlin 105) — such as 

committing violent crimes including genocide, mass murder, etc.  

McGlothlin suggests that for perpetrators who are obligated or encouraged to 

engage in mass killings, especially “ordinary” or “normal” persons who exhibit no 

noticeable psychological disorders or criminal behavior prior to the initiation into 

violence, the experience of killing, especially of unarmed civilians, “may be associated 

with terror and horror” (Maguen qtd. in McGlothlin 105) as well as with “physical 

disgust and moral abhorrence” (Munch-Jurišic qtd. in McGlothlin 105), all of which 

are connected to traumatic stress (McGlothlin 105). McGlothlin argues that this goes 

for genocidal projects, too, giving SS Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler as an example 

for having similar feeling of distress when witnessing mass killings that he had 

ordered. Furthermore, the perpetration can cause a sudden shock which leads the agent 

to a “new dimension of human experience” which both violates social and moral codes 

and surpasses cognitive and psychological barriers, since the “human mind is not well 

suited for killing” (MacNair qtd. in McGlothlin 105). The transgression marks a 

moment of split in the agent’s traumatic memory, of no return, where one is on the 

threshold of an existential break both within the self and from the moral taboos, 



 
 

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causing a destruction in one’s mental integrity and identity. This is where the 

perpetrator self emerges.  

The perpetrator self has different strategies to avoid any indications of the 

trauma. These strategies of avoidance, or rather “coping mechanisms” (Anderson qtd. 

in McGlothlin 107) manifest themselves in various ways. For example, rationalization, 

which justifies, excuses, or rationalizes their deeds, is often employed in the language 

of perpetrators of mass atrocities (i.e., Holocaust), revealing “the psychological or 

social structure of denial and of a specific absence of truth and conscious experience 

(Schmidt qtd. in McGlothlin 107). The denial, both “the denial of responsibility” and 

“the denial of memory” (MacNair qtd. in McGlothlin 107) correspond to the 

perpetrator’s efforts to maintain and present a sense of self that is unimpaired 

by personal experiences of committing violent acts. In attempts to integrate the 

perpetrator self into the overall self, the PITS sufferer may display dissociation, 

“disconnection between events, experience, and consciousness” (Staub qtd. in 

McGlothlin 107); a depersonalization, that is, “the experience of looking on from the 

outside, as if the person was an observer, not an agent doing the killing” (107), 

derealization, and lastly a “psychic numbing” as Robert Jay Lifton proposes, doubling 

occurring in the psyche of the perpetrator. To gain a deeper insight on this mental 

symptom, Chapter II will set out to explore Robert Jay Lifton’s Nazi Doctors and the 

respective socio-historical background of this era. 

 Narratives such as Time’s Arrow reflect fundamental aspects of postmodernist 

fiction by relying on a socially shared universe of meaning while simultaneously 

defamiliarizing it through its inseparability from an alternative world. This tendency 

is particularly evident in the narratives of traumatized individuals, as in the case of 

Odilo in Time’s Arrow. However, my analysis aims to delve deeper into the psyche of 

this unconventional narrator, whose account of this tragedy is both unwanted and, 

paradoxically, provides a “cathartic” (Praisler 194) perspective on the Holocaust. 

Specifically, my focus lies in attempting to comprehend the paradoxical nature of the 

perpetrator, aiming to elucidate the split between the narrator and the narrated. 

Considering the perpetrator's affiliation with the medical profession, the act of 

perpetration assumes a graver and more ominous dimension, an aspect that I endeavor 

to illuminate through this study. To achieve this, I will draw upon psychoanalytic 

theories, which offer profound insights into the human psyche and provide potential 

explanations for the emergence of evil within individuals and its impact on their 



 
 

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psyche. Evil is not a strictly inherent or extraneous aspect of human nature; rather, it 

can be activated or imposed upon individuals as can be seen in the case of highly 

civilized individuals having the capacity for evil. The premise of my argument lies on 

the acquired type of evil inflicting trauma not only upon its victims but also upon those 

who perpetrate it. Consequently, I will aim to analyze the impacts of evil on individuals 

and seek to recognize its manifestations. By utilizing the abundance of symbolism, 

both fictional and derived from real-life references embedded within the novel, I intend 

to portray a traumatized perpetrator’s twisted mind and split psyche.  

 

1.4 The Meaning of Evil 

The inquiry into the nature of evil necessitates a thorough examination of the 

psychology of the perpetrator, as it significantly contributes to understanding this 

phenomenon. When contemplating the question of evil, it is essential to scrutinize both 

its effects and origins. The psychological dimension of the perpetrator is crucial in 

determining the moral nature of the act. Equally important is an investigation into the 

underlying sources of these evil deeds. But before all that, one needs to question the 

true meaning of evil. 

Zachary J. Goldberg believes that the examination of the moral psychology of 

perpetrators is necessary for a complete understanding of the nature of evil and 

deduces from Kant that “evil is an invisible enemy that originates in a person’s moral 

psychology often hiding behind reason and even good conduct” (Goldberg 74). He 

goes on to argue that it is only by examining the psychology of moral choice that we 

can hold perpetrators responsible for their actions (74). In the case of genocide 

perpetrators, the profound moral contamination underscores the inadequacy of moral 

choices and, consequently, places culpability on the perpetrators for their deeds. For 

further inquiry, one needs to delve into the definition of evil. 

Peter French, for instance, offers a definition to evil as “a human action that 

jeopardizes another person’s (or group’s) aspirations to live a worthwhile life (or lives) 

by the willful infliction of undeserved harm on that person(s)” (qtd. in Goldberg 75). 

However, he goes on to argue that evil is “primarily about victims … victimization is 

the identifying characteristic of evil” (75). Victims are certainly one of the defining 

aspects of evil. The severity of victimization determines the impact of evil, as well. 

Similarly, Claudia Card characterizes evil as harm that is reasonably anticipated and 

intolerable, resulting from culpable wrongdoing (qtd. in Goldberg 75). Similarly, her 



 
 

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emphasis lies on the nature and gravity of the harms rather than the psychological 

states of the perpetrator, asserting that this distinction is what sets evil apart from 

ordinary wrongs. Todd Calder suggests that that evil is characterized by two elements: 

significant harm and an inexcusable intention to facilitate, permit, or observe 

significant harm for an unworthy objective. (qtd. in Goldberg 75). Even though these 

definitions do not completely dismiss the perpetrators; they do neglect the 

psychological aspect of the perpetrator and are, therefore, psychologically shallow. In 

the case of Nazis, for instance, the goal was never “unworthy” as Calder defined, for 

them it was a sacred mission to revive the Third Reich and doing it for the Volk.  

It is perhaps the complex nature of evil that ordinary people can make sense of 

these evil acts, that they can justify them, that ordinary people can cause not-so-

ordinary evil. This dynamic reveal that individuals with entirely ordinary motivations 

can commit acts of evil when placed in exceptional circumstances that prompt such 

behavior. Christopher Browning’s analysis of the Nazis as ordinary men in Ordinary 

Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 puts an emphasis on the “situational factors” 

(Browning 166), “peer pressure to conform” (Browning 175, 189) “culture of 

brutality” turn “ordinary men” into “willing executioners” (216). He highlights the 

“binding factors” or “cementing mechanisms” that make disobedience of refusal for 

the Nazi individual more difficult (173). This shows how the Nazi killers assumed an 

“authoritarian personality” (165) asserted by Theodor Adorno. Through this 

transformation, their general impetus became furthering of common goals of the Volk. 

In this context, evil was driven ideologically and intended for racial purity, and social 

dominance. Some of the Nazi perpetrators were obligated to obey to rules, some were 

passive complicit by simply being a conformist; some were motivated by material or 

social gain, and some were motivated by fear, fear of social exclusion, or simply, 

execution. 

Parallel to this, Goldberg suggests that perpetrators of atrocity can be motivated 

by banal motivations such as obedience to authority, peer pressure, or thoughtlessness, 

(Goldberg 77) much like Hanna Arendt’s statement, “banality of evil” on the SS officer 

Adolf Eichmann’s trial, who is one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. From his 

testimony, Arendt realized that “Eichmann’s murderous behavior did not necessarily 

correspond with stereotypes of SS men. He was neither mad nor a monster nor 

brainwashed, far from it” (Earl 113). Instead, he was a diligent bureaucrat, a relatively 

typical yet ambitious individual whose regular duties in office IV B4 played a role in 



 
 

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enabling the killing of millions of innocent people (Arendt 22-23). He was the 

“epitome of the banality of evil” (Arendt 252), Arendt argued. However, this comes 

across as an understatement, since in the contexts of a legal trial, individuals usually 

try to fight for their lives and thus give false impressions. Browning recognizes a 

contradiction in her thesis, particularly in cases that conflict with the shootings on the 

Western front. In those instances, perpetrators killed their victims—men, women, and 

children—at close range, face to face. These perpetrators were far from being banal as 

Arendt suggested.  

In his study Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton goes further than this statement 

and examines the not-so-banal actions of these banal looking people. He offers 

interviews conducted on former Nazi criminals in a non-legal environment, a departure 

from the approach in Adolf Eichmann's case. Despite the disturbing revelations in their 

testimonies, Lifton tries to come up with psychological explanations as to how and 

why the evil in these individuals emerged. Regardless of their pre-existing 

commitment to Nazism, the Nazis had to adjust to their transformed social identities. 

Lifton attributes this phenomenon to a concept he terms “doubling.” To gain a deeper 

insight on this mental symptom, the following pages will set out to explore Robert Jay 

Lifton’s Nazi Doctors and the respective socio-historical background of this era. 

 

 
 

 

 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 
 

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CHAPTER II: SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 

 
2.1 Introduction to Robert Jay Lifton’s Nazi Doctors 

In the afterword of Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis confesses that he owes a great debt to 

his friend Robert Jay Lifton who gave him a copy of his book The Nazi Doctors (Amis 

175). He states that “[his] novel would not and could not have written without it” (175). 

For Amis, who had been wanting to write a man’s story in reverse chronology, The 

Nazi Doctors played a pivotal role for shaping the story, the context, and the character 

of the specified novel because, as he states in a 2002 interview, after reading The Nazi 

Doctors, “now there would be a point” to reverse the arrow of time (Reynolds and 

Noakes 20). And the point is this historical tragedy, as the subtitle of the novel goes, 

“The Nature of the Offence.” In this interview, Amis expresses his view on this subject 

as follows: 

 

And what I’m saying is that the Holocaust would have been exactly what the 

Nazis said it was — i.e., a biomedical initiative for the cleansing of Germany 

— if, and only if, the arrow of time ran the other way. That’s how fundamental 

the error was. And I think the novel [Time’s Arrow] expresses that. Nazism was 

a biomedical vision to excise the cancer of Jewry. To turn it into something that 

creates Jewry is a respectable irony (Reynolds and Noakes 20). 

 

 Amis defines the nature of this offence as “unique” but not in terms of its 

cruelty or cowardice but in terms of its style which is, to him, “a combination of the 

atavistic and the modern”, “reptilian and logistical” (Amis 176). He claims that the 

Nazis found “the core of the reptile brain4 and built an autobahn that went there” 

arguing that it was “built for speed and safety, built to endure for a thousand years” 

and resembling it to “the Reichsautobahnen … [which] were also designed to conform 

to the landscape, harmoniously, like a garden path” (176).  

Similarly, in his study, Robert Jay Lifton, builds a psychological road that goes 

to the depths of the brains, or rather the psyche, of the Nazi doctors who participated 

in evil in the death camps. With his study, Lifton aims to explore “the broad Nazi 

 
4 Here the term “reptilian brain” likely denotes the primal segment of the human brain governing 
instinctive self-preservation behaviors crucial for individual and species survival. This region shares 
predominant structures similar with the brains of snakes and lizards, as implied by the name. In this 
analogy by Amis, the focus is on the Nazi obsession with preserving the “Aryan race.” 



 
 

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“biomedical vision” as a central psychohistorical principle of the regime, and the 

psychological behavior of the individual Nazi doctors” (Lifton 4), in order to 

understand more about how Nazis and Nazi doctors in particular came to do such 

demonic acts surpassing comprehension, from both dimensions. It should be noted that 

“understanding” should not replace “moral judgement” or “forgiving.” As Lifton 

mentions, the principle including the French aphorism Tout comprendre c’est tout 

pardonner (to understand all is to forgive all) (Lifton 13) does not correspond to 

forgiving all when full understanding includes an awareness of both moral and 

psychological issues that lie behind this crime. Lifton suggests that this danger needs 

to be recognized and “it can be overcome only by one’s remaining aware of the moral 

context of psychological work” (13). Therefore, in both Lifton’s work, and this 

dissertation, there is no intention to justify or forgive the atrocities that the Nazis 

caused, while trying to understand the nature of the evil they committed. 

Apart from the psychological explanations it offers, Nazi Doctors includes 

interviews that Lifton conducted with a group of former Nazi doctors. Regarding the 

interviews, Lifton observes that while some of them wished to be heard, none of them 

“arrived at a clear ethical evaluation of what he had done, and what he had been a part 

of” (8). These individuals could provide elaborate accounts of events and describe the 

general atmosphere with genuine feelings. However, Lifton noted that their testimony 

often came across with a sense of detachment, almost as if narrating in the third person. 

Therefore, in terms of moral presence, the narrator was not really present. In order not 

to color and impact their responses and create prejudice on the receiving part, Lifton 

intentionally hid his Jewish identity from the Nazi doctors he interviewed.  He believed 

this would cause a high percentage of prejudice and refusal from the doctors; however, 

some of them suspected, of course. Lifton notes that most of these doctors adopted a 

post-World War II conservative political and social stance that was characterized by 

criticism of Nazi extremes but sympathy for more authoritarian features of German 

society, and they occasionally displayed “a flash of nostalgia for Nazi times, for an era 

when life had intensity and meaning whatever the conflicts engendered” (11). During 

the interviews, Lifton himself felt the need for moral confrontation and accusation 

against the doctors along with feelings ranging from rage to revulsion. He even admits 

having nightmares about Auschwitz, “sometimes involving [his] wife and children” 

(12).  



 
 

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Considering the limits of psychological explanation, Lifton brings up Hannah 

Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil which is about her 

renowned judgement on Adolf Eichman and emphasis on the “banality of evil.” The 

entire Nazi activity has long been characterized and attributed by this phrase; however, 

Lifton goes beyond this perception and attempts to understand these banal doctors and 

their not-so-banal activities, or as he puts it the “banal men performing demonic acts” 

(12). He suggests that “in doing so — or in order to do so— the men themselves 

changed: and in carrying out their actions, they themselves were no longer banal” (12). 

To surpass this banality and explore the territories of the “not understandable”, Lifton 

adopts a significant principle, that even though certain events go beyond our 

comprehension, a partial grasp or at least an attempt is all it takes to approach this 

sensitive topic. In this sense, the nature of evil is better understood with a mix of 

psychological and moral considerations, along with discovering the psychological 

factors that advocate evil. 

In his book Becoming Evil James Waller similarly seeks to understand how 

“ordinary people” have committed “extraordinary evil” (Waller 9) bringing historian 

Saul Friedlander’s suggestion that “we now need the lens of psychology to bring some 

focus to the “incomprehensibility” of extraordinary human evil that scholars continue 

to document” (9). Waller believes that it is “ordinary people” who commit genocide 

and mass killing (20); however, he does not attribute it to banality like Arendt. On the 

contrary, he relates it to the components that psychologically form the enemy, the 

Other, such as: the “us-them thinking” (198): comprising of the inherent and 

universally observed facets of human nature, encompassing ethnocentrism, 

xenophobia, and a drive for social dominance; “moral disengagement” (201): 

involving cultural belief systems that mold perpetrator’s tendencies for moral 

justification, dehumanizing the victims and giving euphemistic labeling to evil actions 

(211); and the immediate social environment, professional socialization, group 

cohesion that makes one’s role and identity. These interpretations both enhance and 

go in line with Lifton’s psychological interpretation. 

In his psychological interpretation, Lifton partially departs from the canonical 

figures such as Freud, and Otto Rank with his 1941 study Beyond Psychology, 

claiming “psychology itself was entrapped in its own scientific ideology” (qtd. in 

Lifton 13), and assumes that such ideology could simplify Auschwitz or the SS doctors 

who were involved, down to a series of mechanisms. Therefore, in order to examine 



 
 

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the nature of evil and to evoke moral questions, he suggests “one need not remain 

entirely beyond psychology but must constantly look at the matters that psychology 

has ignored” (13). He states that his psychological paradigm departs from Freudian 

model life/death instincts and focuses on life continuity, or the symbolization of life 

and death. In his paradigm, which has an immediate and an ultimate dimension, he 

equals separation, disintegration, and stasis to death, and signifiers of death, while 

equaling the experiences of connection, integrity, and movement to a sense of vitality 

and with the symbolization of life. By implication, this ultimate dimension suggests 

that people ask for a sense of immortality, surviving through offspring, human affect, 

religious doctrines, or whatever bears an eternal nature.  

The experience of transcendence, an intense psychic state within which time 

and death disappear, can bring this sense of immortality, too, or what Otto Rank called, 

“immortality systems” — if one is to begin to grasp the force of the Nazi projection of 

the “Thousand Year Reich.” Likewise, the Nazi notion of the Volk, which goes beyond 

just referring to people, represented for many German intellectuals the idea of a 

collective group intimately linked to a transcendent essence. The Volk, therefore, 

materializes the immortalizing force in connection with eternal racial and cultural 

essence. And this connection is the Nazi version of “revolutionary immortality” (14). 

In order to achieve this sense, some boundaries had to be crossed. A Darwinian kind 

of “selection” was organized in the Nazis’ favor, which crossed the boundaries 

between nature (natural selection) and God (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away) 

(17). Through these organized selections the Nazi human evolution aimed at getting 

rid of the “gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind”, the racial polluters, “racial 

tuberculosis”, “the eternal bloodsuckers” “people’s parasite,” (16) those of the Jewish 

race. Through this organized mass murder, including forced sterilization, medical 

killing and eventually death camps, a vital boundary between healing and killing was 

violently crossed. This violation is so flagrant that neither logic nor morality can 

reconcile such violation with the Hippocratic oath. 

 

2.2 The Historical Scene 

It should be noted that the emergence of the highly organized and murderous regime 

in Germany did not transpire overnight. To comprehend the broader motivations that 

impelled numerous civilized individuals to perpetrate acts of extraordinary evil, one 

must take into account the leading historical context and the socio-political scene of 



 
 

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Germany during the interwar period. After the WWI, Germany found itself in the 

throes of a profound crisis. With a lost war at hand, a typical German household could 

often be depicted as working-class citizens struggling with unemployment, dire 

poverty, and the anguish of providing for their starving families. The nation had 

suffered the loss of about two million lives in the war, with an additional 1.5 million 

veterans returning home bearing physical and psychological scars. This collective 

trauma left the German population emotionally drained, devastated, and consumed by 

a vehement desire for retribution.  

Furthermore, Germany was compelled to sign a humiliating peace treaty, 

relinquish significant territories, and shoulder an unreasonable amount of debt, which 

precipitated severe economic turmoil. On top of it, the Great Depression hit, leading 

hyperinflation rates increase one thousand percent per month, and leaving the Germans 

to impoverished. All the socio-economic systems that had promised prosperity began 

to fail: Liberalism, Democracy, religion, one by one losing their power. Germany was 

facing an existential threat of literal extinction. All this depravity seemed to be 

contributing to what was to come.  

That is when Adolf Hitler entered the scene, wielding his charismatic charm 

and potential brilliance, while pledging to preserve the German race. The Nazis, under 

Hitler’s leadership, firmly opposed what caused destruction upon Germany: 

capitalists, communists, and notably, the infamous enemy within: the Jews. All along, 

what is striking is the fact that doctors, those to whom human life is traditionally 

entrusted, played a pivotal role in perpetrating acts of destruction — acts that are very 

foreign to their healing nature. 

 

2.3 Breaking of the Hippocratic Oath: Sterilization 

 
I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health by Panacea, and by all 

the gods and goddesses, making them my witness, that I will carry out, according to 

my ability and judgement, this oath, and this indenture.… I will use treatment to help 

the sick according to my ability and judgement, but never with a view to injury and 

wrongdoing. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. In whatsoever houses 

I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional 

wrongdoing and harm…. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain 



 
 

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forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I transgress it and 

forswear myself, may the opposite befall me. 

– Oath of Hippocrates 

 

Before Auschwitz and the other concentration camps, there was a breaking point that 

led to the violation of the Hippocratic oath. It all began when the Nazis devised a 

system of state-mediated, state-justified, direct medical killing or “camouflaged mass 

murder” (Lifton 21), that is, “euthanasia.” This system referred to executions that were 

planned through medical means with medical decisions and which were conducted, 

performed and supervised by Nazi doctors and their assistants. The justification for the 

direct medical killing was based on the concept of “life unworthy of life” 

(lebensunwertes Leben). Through this extreme biomedical vision, based on the 

principle of “life unworthy of life”, Nazis initially carried out coercive sterilization, 

which was followed by the killing of “impaired” children in hospitals, and then the 

killing of “impaired” adults, mainly collected from mental hospitals to be sent to the 

killing centers with gas chambers (21). Nazis expanded their outrage in the same 

killing centers to execute the “impaired” inmates, and eventually to the mass murder 

of mostly the Jews, in Auschwitz and the other death camps. This outrageous project 

included the murderous experiments conducted on the inmates, coercive abortions and 

castrations, tortures, deliberate malnutrition, and negligence, all of which annihilated 

the Hippocratic oath and damaged the public confidence in those who took this oath. 

An oath denouncing from its Hippocratic basis, hence become hypocritical. 

The mass killing project started with sterilization. Such a sterilization program 

existed in the Western world way before Nazi Germany, namely in the United States. 

By 1920, the American compulsory sterilization program on those criminally insane 

and genetically inferior, along with the growing interest in eugenics5 were existing 

factors (22). These factors must have played a pivotal role in inspiring the ideology of 

racial and genetic “hygiene” in Nazi Germany. In 1923, a German physician named 

Fritz Lenz was critical of his fellow citizens and the Weimar Constitution for their 

falling behind in terms of eugenics research; however, he was also critical of the 

general American focus on protecting the “white race” rather than the “Nordic race” 

— this is perhaps where the German focus on preserving the specific “Aryan race” 

 
5 “Eugenics” is a term coined by Francis Galton in 1883 referring to the principle of improving the 
genetic quality of human race.  



 
 

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comes from. The fear of “national degeneration” and a threat to the health of “civilized 

races” (23) led to the racial-eugenic drive in the United States to sterilize huge numbers 

of convicts and mentally ill patients. An emergent biomedical concept that was 

connected to the over-ardent American eugenics movement had the following 

potential scope, as A. E. Wiggam rightfully puts it: “The first warning which biology 

gives to statesmanship is that the advanced races of mankind are going backward; … 

that civilization, … is self-destructive; efforts to improve man’s lot, instead of 

improving man, are hastening the hour of his destruction” (23). That is to say, the so-

called civilized races are backfiring on themselves, and going backwards while 

supposedly developing. At times like this, progress becomes regression in terms of 

civilization; the kind of progress that is an accumulation of horror, regression, and 

chaos.  

For Germans, however, the eugenic movement had a specific tone of romantic 

excess. As in the example of Lenz and his earlier statement in 1917, that “race was the 

criterion of value” and “the State is not there to see that the individual gets his rights, 

but to serve the race” through “organic socialism”, with a fear that, without a radical 

eugenics program, “our [Nordic] race is doomed to extinction” (24). For this reason, 

creating a mass sterilization in Germany in the 1920s for Germans like Lenz became 

a sacred mission. It was this holy purpose that encouraged Germans to embrace 

National Socialism. The entire Nazi regime, therefore, was built on a biomedical vision 

that required the kind of racial purification that would “progress” (or rather regress) 

from sterilization to extensive killing (24). So, the regime initiated the so-called long-

needed genetic/racial hygiene. 

This “sacred mission” had been announced in Hitler’s publication of Mein 

Kampf as well, advocating that the German people should be “assembling and 

preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements [and]… slowly and surely 

raising them to a dominant position” (24; Hitler 395). Similarly, he asserts that “the 

völkisch state must see to it that only the healthy beget children.… [The State] must 

declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited 

a disease and can therefore pass it on” (22; Hitler 417). Therefore, it was the very first 

thing Hitler did in the name of “sacred mission” to sterilize the members of the state, 

as soon as he came to power on January 30, 1933, and took the oath of office as 

Chancellor of the Third Reich. Under the Nazi government, sterilization became the 



 
 

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very first application of biomedicine to the issue of whether the putatively genetically 

and racially inferior population should live or die.  

The early sterilization act was first announced on June 22, 1933, by the interior 

minister Wilhelm Frick, who declared that stern and extensive measures were 

warranted since Germany faced a serious threat of Volkstod (death of the nation) (25). 

Within the first six months of Hitler’s regime, sterilization became a basic doctrine 

and was based on the state’s medicalized justification of “life unworthy of life.” 

Among the “hereditarily sick” were “categories of congenital feeblemindedness”, 

“schizophrenia”, “manic depressive insanity”, “epilepsy” “Huntington’s chorea”, 

“hereditary blindness”, “hereditary deafness”, “grave bodily malformation”, 

“hereditary alcoholism” with pertinent individuals collected from institutions (25). On 

18 October 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Law was issued, which forbade Jewish and 

non-Jewish people to get married or engaging in any sexual activity, with the purpose 

of “preserving German blood” and “securing the German nation for all future time” 

(25).  

There was not much opposition to sterilization because of the fear of the 

regime, because any negative reaction was crushed. The Catholic Church disapproved 

of it but avoided any possible confrontation and could do nothing but urge for Catholic 

judges and physicians to be excluded from the law’s enforcement (29). An important 

question was raised by one of the judges on a Hereditary Health Appeals Court: that 

of the “burden of unusual responsibility placed on doctors to perform operations that 

serve no therapeutic purpose” (29). The response to this morally significant question 

came from Gerhard Wagner, a leading Nazi medical authority, and a zealous advocate 

of sterilization, in a column in a Party newspaper, which simply stated that the nation’s 

survival came before “dogma and conflicts of conscience” (29) and that anyone who 

opposed the government’s plan would face harsh punishment. Most of the doctors that 

Lifton interviewed had approved of sterilization, and although some thought that “the 

law was totally messed up” (29) and the Party’s idealism of the time produced a 

widespread culture of heavy devotion, they, nonetheless, contributed their services to 

the state by merely doing their job. 

This occurred due to the Nazification of medicine, education and military 

which was the turning point for the transition from sterilization to direct medical 

killing — euthanasia, and finally to systematic mass murder. For instance, Rudolf 

Ramm, a medical professor at the University of Berlin, put forth the radical idea in a 



 
 

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seminal journal that each doctor could no longer only serve as a caregiver for the sick 

but would also be a “cultivator of the genes,” a “physician to the Volk,” and a 

“biological soldier”; a “caretaker of the race” “preventing bastardization through 

unworthy, racially alien elements” and “attaining the national goal of keeping our 

blood pure” (30). He also argued that taking an incurable patient’s life, “euthanasia” 

“was the most merciful treatment” and “an obligation to the Volk” (30). The health of 

the Volk meant more than individual health, and according to one of the interviewers, 

the main principle was to become a “doctor to the Volkskörper [‘national body’ or 

‘people’s body’], emphasizing “[their] duty… to the collectivity” (30). The totalitarian 

perception of the national body, the totalized community (Gemeinschaft), coercive 

unification and elimination of possible oppositions within the social organization 

(Gleichshaltung), the need to become a national Gestalt unit were predominantly 

present in the spirit of Nazification. 

Even the Hippocratic oath was Nazified, with Gerhard Wagner’s claim that 

medicine had been “despiritualized” by the “mechanically oriented spirit” of Jewish 

professors (32). Thus, there was a need to return to the earlier generation, the 

Hippocratic oath. Consequently, Heinrich Himmler, the supreme commander of the 

Nazi police and the Reichführer of the SS, adopted Hippocrates as a role model for SS 

doctors. Himmler mentioned “the great Greek doctor Hippocrates,” his character and 

achievements in a brief preface to a collection of short volumes for SS doctors titled 

“Eternal Doctors,” which was approved and “authorized” by Hitler (32). This 

contradictory Nazi embrace of Hippocratic principle was referred as “an ironical joke 

of world history” by a witness in testimony at the Nuremberg Medical Trial. This 

paradox was justified with the underlying logic of reconstructing the medicine and the 

total German nation for the sake of greater healing. 

Nazis also departed from conventional medicine because of the weakening 

religious values. They opposed the exaggerated Christian compassion for the weak 

individual rather than focusing on the wellbeing of the Volk. With this rather 

Nietzschean stance, they also rejected the Christian principle of charity (caritas), “the 

ill-conceived love of thy neighbor” and claimed the state’s mission was to grant life to 

the healthy, hereditarily sound and racially pure (32). Nazified medicine, thus, 

involved applied biology, as Rudolf Hess stated: “National Socialism is nothing but 

applied biology” adding that “we [Nazi doctors] introduced biological considerations 

into [Party] policies” (31). This biomedical vision was so intense among physicians 



 
 

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that with 45 percent they had one of the highest ratios of Party members of any 

profession, revealing the failure of religion, and power of the instilled Nazi ideology. 

This Nazi biomedical vision was inextricably linked to the systematic 

persecution of Jewish physicians. Victimizing their Jewish colleagues allowed 

German doctors to conflate their “scientific racism” and anti-Semitism with their 

professional and economic motives to eliminate their challenging competitors. 

Germans had long felt threatened by Jews and their perceived otherness as a threat to 

German state, race and society. This worry was passed down to the German doctors 

who strived to solve the so-called “Jewish problem” (35). The key statement of 

Heinrich von Treitschke, a notable historian of the nineteenth century, in 1879 that 

“The Jews are our misfortune” (35) is crucial in this case which served as an image 

transmitted over generations. Lifton recognizes this reflection on some of the 

interviewed doctors through their references to Treitschke’s statement. Seemingly, the 

image of Jewish-caused German “misfortune” reminded the Germans that there was 

indeed a serious “Jewish problem” that Germans had to solve. 

Treitschke accentuated the dangerous Jewish “intrusion” into what had to be a 

“Christian-German state,” and the threat that the children of these “alien people from 

East” (eastern Europe) “would one day dominate” Germany’s institutions, especially 

economy and the press (36). For many German doctors, the notion of Jewish 

“dominance” was indeed becoming reality in their profession, with Jewish doctors 

constituting 50 percent of Germany’s medical profession in large cities, and 13 percent 

in general — along with their world-renowned scientific achievements. Therefore, 

Hitler placed a special emphasis on “the cleaning of the medical profession” mainly 

because of the Nazi biomedical expectation of “racial leadership” (36). For this reason, 

within two months of Hitler’s regime, an anti-Jewish boycott campaign began in 

Berlin, on 1 April 1933, posing constant threat, torture, bullying, physical abuse in 

order to discourage Jewish doctors from pursuing their profession. In early 1933, 

official measures had been taken against Jews: gradual limitations on their professions, 

academic prohibitions and finally on 3 August 1939, with the fourth amendment to the 

Nuremberg Laws, all medical licenses of Jewish doctors were nullified.  

Jewish doctors were considered “evil” and a “menace” for their “obsession 

with sexology and defense of homosexuality, along with the formation of Freudian 

psychoanalysis” — all in all, leading the German Volk to “sexual degeneration” and 

ultimate “destruction” (42). There were also caricatures of evil Jewish doctors 



 
 

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performing abortion on young Aryan women, supposedly undermining German 

womanhood and threating the innocence of young Aryan girls (41). Abortions were 

prohibited unless the child was defected or was of Jewish blood which was an “racial 

emergency situation” (42). Not only the medicine profession but also academic 

medical was Nazified. Universities became “intellectual frontier fortresses” and 

“bodies of troops” (37), and a public vow was signed to support Hitler, among those 

who signed the vow were reputable people such as philosopher Martin Heidegger and 

surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch. The principle of Gleichshaltung paved the way for the 

formation of a violent and arrogant subculture among students, namely Hitler Youth. 

Medical students were told to become “biological soldiers” with “marching boot and 

the book,” “placing on