Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the nearly twenty SS doctors (including Josef Mengele, Horst Schumann and Carl Clauberg) who worked in the medical sections of Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945.

According to Lifton "...Among the boys it was Eduard who came most under the father’s influence in becoming meticulous, obedient, and unusually conscientious and reliable — traits that continued into his adult life.

He never smoked or drank and was described as compassionate and "soft" in his responses to others..."[3] The Wirths family was not known to be anti-semitic or sympathetic to radical nationalist politics.

He entered the Waffen SS in 1939, saw action in Norway and the Russian Front and was classified as medically unfit for combat duty in the spring of 1942 after having a heart attack.

Coincidentally, in 1942, Josef Mengele was also wounded at the Russian Front, pronounced medically unfit for combat, and promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer before being assigned to Auschwitz.

He was appointed on the basis of his reputation as a competent doctor and committed Nazi who would be capable of stopping the typhus epidemics that had increasingly affected SS personnel at Auschwitz.

At the same time, Wirths approved of harsh treatment of Jewish people and he recommended Josef Mengele for promotion in August 1944.

Wirths considered Mengele as of "open, honest, firm … [and] absolutely dependable" character and "magnificent" intellectual and physical talents; of the "discretion, perseverance, and energy with which he has fulfilled every task … and … shown himself equal to every situation"; of his "valuable contribution to anthropological science by making use of the scientific materials available to him"; of his "absolute ideological firmness" and "faultless conduct [as] an SS officer"; and personal qualities as "free, unrestrained, persuasive, and lively" discourse that rendered him "especially dear to his comrades".

"[7] In 1943 the impact on inmates of Wirths' actions at Auschwitz resulted in his receiving a Christmas card from Hermann Langbein, a political prisoner who worked with him, which contained the message “In the past year you have saved here the lives of 93,000 people.

[16]Perhaps illustrative of Wirths' commitment to medical 'leadership' was his tendency while at Auschwitz to drive about in a car flying a Red Cross flag as well as his enthusiasm for acting as a marriage counselor and personal adviser to other SS personnel.

first seized on a career as a military doctor and officer in the German elite troops of the SS, because he desperately wanted to become a member of the upper class; eventually to provide his future wife with a "decent marriage".