ECT & The Nazis

Welcome to The Cadaver’s Lesson, a podcast exploring the strange, fascinating, and unsettling history of medicine. In this episode, we confront one of the darkest chapters in psychiatric history: the rise of electroconvulsive therapy—and its transformation under the Nazi regime from a medical treatment into a mechanism of control.

Developed in 1938 as a therapy for severe psychiatric illness, ECT was initially seen as a breakthrough. But in Nazi Germany, psychiatry was reframed through the ideology of racial hygiene, where mental illness was no longer something to treat, but something to eradicate. Under these policies, ECT became less about healing and more about enforcement—used not only in hospitals, but within concentration camps themselves.

We explore how medical professionals operated in a system where the line between therapy and execution was deliberately blurred. Some physicians attempted to use ECT as genuine treatment, even in the camps. Others participated willingly in practices that violated every principle of medical ethics. Together, these stories reveal how easily medicine can be reshaped by power, fear, and ideology.

By revisiting the history of ECT under Nazism, we honor those who were silenced—and remind ourselves why understanding medical history matters. Because progress without memory is dangerous, and awareness is the first safeguard against repetition.

New episodes drop Mondays, with companion historical case episodes on Fridays.
Follow along, stay curious, and remember—

Some medical treatments are remembered not for the suffering they relieved…
but for the suffering they revealed.

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Class is dismissed.

📚 References

1. For the Museum Project MUSE article:
Czech, H., Ungvari, G. S., Uzarczyk, K., Weindling, P., & Gazdag, G. (2020). Electroconvulsive therapy in the shadow of the gas chambers: Medical innovation and human experimentation in Auschwitz. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 94(2), 244–266. https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2020.0036

2. For the PMC (PubMed Central) article:
Rzesnitzek, L., & Lang, S. (2017). ‘Electroshock therapy’ in the Third Reich. Medical History, 61(1), 66–88. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5206950/