The Memories of Dr. Anschloss
Genre: Drama - Nazi Period/1973 America
Logline: An aged psychiatrist, now teaching at a university in America, overhears a doctor calling for the removal of the feeding tube of the psychiatrist’s student who suffered severe brain damage in an auto accident. This incident triggers his nightmarish memories of his role as a psychiatrist in the German euthanasia campaign in the German Weimar Republic and Hitler’s Third Reich in the 1930’s and early 1940’s.
Synopsis:
Present, United States, 1973: Hans Anschloss, a former Nazi psychiatrist escaped to America and now teaching at New York State Department of Psychiatry, is adamantly opposed to euthanasia. One night, his student, Eric, suffers severe brain damage in a car accident, and the doctors are ready to pull the plug. In an attempt to get Eric’s doctor and father to halt the death of Eric, Hans recounts to them his involvement in the German euthanasia campaign.
Flashback to Weimar and Nazi Germany: The young Hans Anschloss’s life is a symbol of Germany at the time: Germany has lost the First World War, thus demoralizing the German people. The Versailles Treaty of reparations creates a heavy financial burden on the populace. Hans and his sister Bertha, a Downs Syndrome child, see their parents lose their shopkeeping business in the face of competition from big business, and the heavy taxation. In utter despair, Hans’ parents commit suicide. Hans and Bertha are taken under the wing of their grandmother, Ilse, a feisty religious woman who will not allow the situation to overcome her spirit. Hans vows that he will overcome his parents’ suicide and overcome poverty. He applies himself and becomes a star pupil, winning a scholarship to a major university where he studies psychiatry. He also joins the Nazi Party, which promises "Bread and work for all", and makes him feel good about being a member of the "biologically and racially superior" German race. Hitler also promises to be the Savior of Germany.
Under the tutelage of Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s physician and the head of the euthanasia campaign, Hans rises in the medical ranks, gains material and professional success, meets Hitler, and acquiesces to the prevailing view that those mental patients deemed unfit to live be given "mercy" deaths "for the good of Germany". But soon Hans finds out that Hitler is a sham of a leader, who is addicted to drugs administered by the hated Doctor Morell, and that Hitler’s promises to protect Hans’ family is also a sham. Hans’ relatives and patients’ lives are endangered by the euthanasia program, which has extended itself not only to the hopelessly incurable, but to all those deemed undesirable and in opposition to Hitler. Hans must decide whether to remain in the program, or risk death by escaping to America with his mental patients and all those he loves.
Present, United States, 1973: Hans finishes telling his story to Eric’s father and his doctor. Eric’s father is convinced by Hans’ story to let Eric live.
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