The general respect, in which doctors were held, sunk in view of the decreasing level of general education and ability of the doctors. This was partly due to the constant occupation of the physicians’ time with Party functions, especially the time-consuming Party formations and marches which made it impossible for young physicians to develop scientific interests, so that recent graduates increasingly lost understanding and inclination for serious scientific study and long-range research. Medical School and Medical Training Under the Nazis On paper, medical training under the Nazis differed little from that of the pre-Nazi era. However, its fundamental spirit was ruinously distorted and medical standards suffered a dismal decline. Medical students had to be “Aryan,” and were required to belong to the National Socialist Students’ League. The students’ entire course of studies was constantly interrupted by the demands of the various party organizations to which they were forced to belong. A student whose knowledge of the racial theories and Nuernberg laws was not sufficient would fail his medical examinations. Chairs in the universities were filled in many cases by Nazi so-called “professors” who might or might not have a scientific background. The true scientific societies under the Nazi regime became less and less active, and the Nazi professors in the universities devoted more time and interest to their SA or SS organizations than to the teaching of medicine. These Nazi professors would don their brown SA or black SS uniforms on all possible occasions, exchanging them proudly for their academic gowns at all academic celebrations and meetings. The worst Nazi politicians, like Streicher, were given the free run of university clinics, such as at Erlangen. This submissiveness to lay politicians led to a general decline of respect for German academic medicine not only on the part of their own public and abroad but even on the part of the very same politicians before whom they kowtowed. This went so far that Streicher, when addressing a full faculty meeting at the University of Erlangen in 1936, called the assembled professors “complete idiots” to their faces. This was by no means an isolated occurrence.