I Accuse came out just before Galen preached his devastating sermon, and it reached a national audience. By January 1945, 15.3 million people had gone to see it, but not all necessarily connected the intimate drama revolving around the dilemma of a patient’s choice with the wholesale killing actually under way in the wards of Germany’s asylums. Where people did make the connection, particularly in the Münsterland and Passau, the film flopped. But the fact that it was otherwise very successful indicates that Germany was not fully focused on the reality of medical killing. Both knowledge and
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