In 1981, a psychiatrist named Lorna Wing coined the term Asperger’s syndrome to describe a peculiar combination of normal or above-normal intelligence, obsessive interest in a few narrow topics, and a severe deficit of social skills. She had taken the name from the Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger, who did some of the earliest research on the connected condition of autism. In a new biography of Asperger, Edith Sheffer has uncovered his disturbing activities after Hitler took over Austria. Simon Baron-Cohen writes in his review:

Hans Asperger has long been recognized as a pioneer in the study of autism. He was even seen as a hero, saving children with the condition from the Nazi killing program by emphasizing their intelligence. However, it is now indisputable that Asperger collaborated in the murder of children with disabilities under the Third Reich. . . .

These findings cast a shadow on the history of autism, already a long struggle toward accurate diagnosis, societal acceptance, and support.

With insight and careful historical research, Sheffer uncovers how, under Hitler’s regime, psychiatry—previously, [at least in theory], based on compassion and empathy—became part of an effort to classify the population of Germany, Austria, and beyond as “genetically” fit or unfit. In the context of the “euthanasia” killing programs, psychiatrists and other physicians had to determine who would live and who would be murdered. It is in this context that diagnostic labels such as “autistic psychopathy” (coined by Asperger) were created.

Sheffer lays out the evidence, from sources such as medical records and referral letters, showing that Asperger was complicit in this Nazi killing machine. He protected children he deemed intelligent. But he also referred several children to Vienna’s Am Spiegelgrund clinic, which he undoubtedly knew was a center of “child euthanasia,” part of what was later called Aktion T4. . . . Sheffer argues that Asperger supported the Nazi goal of eliminating children who could not fit in with the Volk: the fascist ideal of a homogeneous Aryan people. . . . Nearly 800 children were killed in Am Spiegelgrund. Asperger went on to enjoy a long academic career, dying in 1980.

While roughly a third of Saudis are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in matters of technology and commerce, far fewer are willing to allow Israeli teams to compete within the kingdom—let alone support diplomatic normalization. These are just a few results of a recent, detailed, and professional opinion survey—a rarity in Saudi Arabia—that has much bearing on current negotiations involving Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. David Pollock notes some others:

When asked about possible factors “in considering whether or not Saudi Arabia should establish official relations with Israel,” the Saudi public opts first for an Islamic—rather than a specifically Saudi—agenda: almost half (46 percent) say it would be “important” to obtain “new Israeli guarantees of Muslim rights at al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif [i.e., the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem.” Prioritizing this issue is significantly more popular than any other option offered. . . .

This popular focus on religion is in line with responses to other controversial questions in the survey. Exactly the same percentage, for example, feel “strongly” that “our country should cut off all relations with any other country where anybody hurts the Quran.”

By comparison, Palestinian aspirations come in second place in Saudi popular perceptions of a deal with Israel. Thirty-six percent of the Saudi public say it would be “important” to obtain “new steps toward political rights and better economic opportunities for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” Far behind these drivers in popular attitudes, surprisingly, are hypothetical American contributions to a Saudi-Israel deal—even though these have reportedly been under heavy discussion at the official level in recent months.

Therefore, based on this analysis of these new survey findings, all three governments involved in a possible trilateral U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal would be well advised to pay at least as much attention to its religious dimension as to its political, security, and economic ones.