Refusing the economic enthymeme: Bishop von Galen’s sermons against Aktion T-4

This essay critically interprets a set of 1941 sermons delivered by Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster, in opposition to the quasi-secret Nazi T-4 program that authorized the execution of the hospitalized, institutionalized, disabled, and sick population of Germany—those deemed “life unworthy of life.” Aktion T-4 killed 300,000 people, and tragically, its techniques were implemented in the Final Solution despite its official shuttering. Nazi sterilization and extermination propaganda employed an “economic enthymeme,” which argued that the hospitalized and sick have a net-negative social value, and must be eliminated to balance Germany’s budget. Von Galen undermined the Nazi position by revealing the open-ended potential for the killing program, and refusing to bargain within the terms of economic rationality to justify human existence. Additionally, von Galen built a legal case against the program, which implicated its perpetrators as murderers, and bystanders as complicit, as well as a religious case, in which he demonstrated the moral backing behind the Christian commandment “Thou shall not kill” independent of his authority as a church leader. Although the bishop and the program have complicated afterlives, these sermons nevertheless offer sophisticated strategies to oppose eugenicist and biologically racist policies.