The Sound of the Machine; M. Perry

257 The Sound of the Machine by Mike W. Perry E verything they saw that day, from the vast fields of ripening grain to the nu merous children, spoke of fertility. Nothing, it seemed, could change the vitality of these people. As Martin and Karl drove from village to village their faces grew increasingly grave. In the evening the men returned. Martin told of all the children he had seen and warned that, "someday they may give us a lot of trouble" because they were "brought up in a much more rugged way than our people." Alarm spread through the group until the group's leader began to speak. Obviously peeved, he pointed out that someone had suggested that abortion and con traceptives should be illegal here. He con tinued, "If any such idiot tried to put into prac tice such an order ... he would personally shoot him up. In view of the large families of the native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. Active trade in contraceptives ought to actually be encouraged." 1 The date was July 22, 1942. The place was the ' ,Werewolf" headquarters in the Soviet Ukraine. The ,group's leader and abortion ad vocate was Adolf Hitler. The two men were Martin Bormann, his Secretary, and Karl Brandt, his personal physician.

Mike Perry is a freelance writer living in Seattle, Wash ington, as well as a professional technical writer. This ar ticle was developed from research done during graduate study in biomedical history at the University of Wash ington's School of Medicine. © Mike W. Perry Operation Blue, the 1942 German offensive in the East, had been under way for almost a month and already its success was assumed. At Hitler's headquarters thoughts turned to what should be done with the occupied territories. Some wanted a lenient policy to gain Ukrainian support in the war against the Soviet Union. Others wanted to eliminate the Slavic popUla tion to make room for Germans.2 As Bormann hoped, that evening Hitler chose the second policy and the next day he told Bormann to issue population control mea sures for the occupied territories. Bormann de veloped an eight-paragraph secret order which included the following: "When girls and women in the Occupied Territories of the East have abortions, we can only be in favor of it; in any case German jurists should not oppose it.

The Fuhrer believes that we should authorize the development of a thriving trade in contra ceptives. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply. "3 This was not the first such policy. On No vember 25, 1939, shortly ·after the Nazi occu pation of Poland, the Commission for Strength ening of Germandom issued a circular con taining the following: All measures which have the tendency to limit the births are to be tolerated or to be supported. Abortion in the remaining area [of Poland] must be declared free from pun ishment. The means for abortion and contra ceptive means may be offered publicly without any police restrictions. Homosexu ality is always to be declared legal. The in258 THE FREEMAN. JULY 1988 stitutions and persons involved profession ally in abortion practices are not to be inter fered with by police.4 This policy was confirmed on May 27, 1941, at a Ministry of the Interior conference in Berlin. There a group of experts recommended population control measures for Poland that in cluded authorization of abortion whenever the mother requested it.5 On October 19, 1941, a decree applied the measures to the Polish popu lation. Hitler's July 23, 1942, decree extended it to other parts of Eastern Europe.

German experts also worked out practical ways to control population. On April 27, 1942, in Berlin, Professor Wetzel issued a memo randum suggesting ways to deceive people. It included the following: Every propaganda means, especially the press, radio, and movies, as well as pam phlets, booklets, and lectures, must be used to instill in the Russian population the idea that it is harmful to have several children. We must emphasize the expenses that chil dren cause, the good things that people could have had with the money spent on them. We could also hint at the dangerous effect of child-bearing on a woman's health. Paralleling such propaganda, a large-scale campaign would be launched in favor of contraceptive devices. A contraceptive in dustry must be established. Neither the cir culation and the sale of contraceptives nor abortions must be prosecuted. It will even be necessary to open special institutions for abortion, and to train mid wives and nurses for this purpose. The popu lation will practice abortion all the more willingly if these institutions are competently operated. The doctors must be able to help without there being any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.

Voluntary sterilization must also be recom mended by propaganda.6 The planning for this goes back still further. In the summer of 1932, almost a year before the Nazi Party took power in Germany, a con ference took place at the party headquarters in Munich. It discussed Eastern Europe and as sumed Germany would someday conquer the region. Adolf Hitler with a member of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s. Agricultural experts pointed out that control ling Eastern Europe would make Germany self sufficient in food but warned that the region's "tremendous biological fertility" must be offset with a well-planned depopulation policy. Speaking to the assembled experts Hitler warned, "what we have discussed here must remain confidential." Not all Nazi insiders remained silent though. Hermann Rauschning, a prominent Nazi in the early thirties, defected in the mid-thirties and tried to warn of Hitler's plans. In The Voice of Destruction he described a 1934 conversation with Hitler about the Slavs.