ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study is the child of a gestation period that stretches back into the late 1980s, when I encountered the bizarre phenomenon of Nazi euthanasia for the first time as an exchange student at Göttingen University. Ernst Klee’s Euthanasie im NS-Staat was my guide through the apocalyptic landscape of Nazi violence against the mentally handicapped. After a five-year career as an attorney, I returned to this grim subject out of a conviction of its importance for all of us today, dedicating my doctoral studies to its representation in postwar trials.

Many people have been involved in one way or another with the project, both within the United States and abroad. I would like to thank my wife, Patty, for her support throughout the research and writing of this study. She provided not only encouragement and astute readings of the manuscript, but bore up under periods of separation that lasted for several months as I conducted research in foreign archives. Thanks go also to my mother, Elizabeth Bryant, who provided invaluable childcare for our infant son, Reed, that enabled me to finish the manuscript.

A special debt of gratitude is owed to my adviser, Dr. Alan Beyerchen, for his thoughtful comments on my chapters, as well as for planting the inspiration years ago to pursue my interests in Nazi euthanasia via a study of postwar criminal trials. Throughout my training as a graduate student, Dr. Beyerchen was a tireless supporter of my project. I would also like to express my appreciation for the superb feedback from my second and third readers, Professors Steve Conn and John Rothney.

I am grateful for the guidance and inspiration given me by Dr. Raul Hilberg, whose seminar in teaching Holocaust history at the college level was one of the formative moments in my scholarly career. Dr. Hilberg’s receptive attitude toward the stumbling efforts of a junior historian has been an example to me of graceful collegiality. The same may be said of Dr. Erich Loewy, a renowned bioethicist from the University of California at Sacramento. Dr. Loewy supported my applications for grants to underwrite the research and writing of this project. He generously placed me in contact with his colleagues in Germany and Austria, whose considerable knowledge of Nazi euthanasia enriched my project enormously.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the staffs of the World War II Records Division at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. Thanks should also be given to the staff of the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands in Vienna, Austria.

I would like to express my deep appreciation for the warmth and tutelage of Dick de Mildt and C. F. Rüter of the Institute for Criminal Law in Amsterdam. Without their pioneering work in assembling the texts of the postwar German verdicts, the present study would assuredly have never come into existence. Thanks are also due to the assistance rendered by three dear friends, Eckhard Herych, David McEvoy, and Robert Kunath, for their insightful comments on my research.

I greatly appreciate the advice given me at the beginning of the project by Christopher Browning to focus on a specific Tatkomplex rather than the sprawling and unmanageable spectrum of Nazi criminality. Gerhard Weinberg encouraged my efforts and furnished me with excellent materials concerning the postwar prosecution of Nazi war crimes.

Finally, I would like to give my profound thanks to the two organizations that provided generous financial support of my research and writing: the National Science Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (through the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship). A specific debt of gratitude is owed to John Perhonis of the National Science Foundation’s Ethics and Value Studies section for his helpful guidance and encouragement.