Legitimation

A close observer notes that 14f13 was initially aimed at exterminating those in the camps who had psychiatric disturbances; and that, given the crudeness of the deceptions employed it is difficult to understand why Himmler did not trust his own camp doctors to execute the selections, since with the criteria applied any SS sergeant could have acted with the same competence .. . . [and] the expert professors could have put on their signatures in Berlin18. The answer I believe, lies in the powerful Nazi impulse sometimes conscious and at other times inchoate to bring the greatest degree of medical legitimation to the widest range of killing.
--Robert Jay Lifton, "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing And The Psychology Of Genocide", p. 138