The Mentally Ill Under Nazi Occupation in France

Abstract

40,000 psychiatric patients starved to death in France during the Nazi Occupation. Were they deliberately starved by the Vichy government because they were considered "useless mouths"? Did they die because hospital directors paid no attention to the equitable distribution of what were already substandard rations? To whom or to what can these deaths be attributed? Although the Vichy government enacted no deliberate plan to eliminate the mentally ill, lack of interest in the country's weakest members during a time of crisis led to tragic consequences.