Nazi expulsion of Jewish medical students and Nazification of curricula

“This qualitative decline, which was to have grave import for the future of medicine in Germany after 1945, was predicated on additional factors not traceable to anti-Semitism. To begin with, the problem had a quantitative dimension in that whatever solid medical teaching had been left . . . was pressed into fewer hours than had been the case before 1933. This progressive curtailment of legitimate medical content commenced with the emergence of peacetime Nazi preoccupations for students and after 1939 led to martial supertasks. . . early in the regime precious time was deducted from needed study periods, especially before the premedical and final medical examinations, by the labor service imposed through the Nazi-coordinated student self-government. . . Well in 1934, mandatory SA service, including physically demanding sports training and days-long stays in exercise camps, cut deeply into the study time of every male student, but especially medical ones because of their daily commuting between university and clinics” (Kater, 172). . . . This system produced ramshackle physicians, whom even the wounded soldiers did not trust. . . . specialism was discouraged or neglected so as to manufacture physicians with minimal general training in assembly-line fashion; on the other hand, the half-baked generalists were suddenly required to do most surgery in the field, a subject on which they had not had sufficient instruction” (173). . . . traditionally valid medical subject were either shortened or abandoned to make room for useless fields like Rassenkunde, useless particularly in war” (174).