What is truth in a world filled with lies? What is sanity when everyone in charge seems mad? How can good people survive in a system where everyone is compromised and corrupted? These are the questions Friedrich Deich examines in The Sanity Inspectors, his novel about a German psychiatrist struggling to stay faithful to his Hippocratic oath (‘First, do no harm’) when the Nazi regime has begun its campaign to rid its population of the ‘undesirables’: Jews, the insane, the feeble and mentally handicapped. Doctor Vossmenge, Deich’s protagonist, is eventually forced to join the Luftwaffe as a medical officer. There, he attempts to subvert the system from within by releasing reluctant airmen from service through bogus diagnoses. His scheme, however, ultimately leads to his arrest and a death sentence. Vossmenge’s crisis of conscience is illuminated by a running correspondence with a Lutheran pastor who tries to alert him to the moral consequences of his choices. The Sanity Inspectors continues the mission of Recovered Books series to rescue exceptional books long unavailable to today’s readers.
