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moments in history
When mass murder was social policy

Nazi eugenics were based on ‘improvement through exclusion’, Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hademar in
where disabled people were seen as bad for the nation’s health Germany and Hartheim in Austria.
Hitler officially stopped Aktion T4 in the
so had to be eradicated, says Susanna Shapland summer of 1941. Despite secrecy and

subterfuge, there had been protests from
parents and church leaders, and concern
he eugenics movement, with its over the effect of T4 on the nation’s morale.
theory of eliminating the “unfit” However, this stopped only the systematic
Tthrough selective breeding to murder of disabled people. The programme
improve a “race”, provided the continued unofficially as “wild euthanasia”,
philosophical basis for Adolf Hitler’s ideas. with victims shot or starved, often away
Many western governments passed from the Nazi heartlands. Entire asylum
eugenics-influenced laws advocating populations were wiped out in Poland and
compulsory sterilisation and regulating the occupied Soviet Union.
marriage in the early 20th century. It is estimated that, in all, around
German eugenics was underpinned by a 300,000 disabled people were killed
belief in “improvement through exclusion”, under the Nazi regime.
which saw certain marginalised people as
detrimental to the nation’s health. Paving the way for the Holocaust
The way to deal with such people was set Aktion T4 laid the groundwork for the
out in 1920 tract Allowing the Destruction Holocaust. Under T4, the methods for
of Life Unworthy of Living by psychiatrist efficiently killing hundreds of humans at a
Alfred Hoche and jurist Karl Binding. They time were trialled and honed.
employed both emotional and economic Crowd control via deception, processing
arguments for the elimination of several bodies for organs and valuables and killing
groups, including “incurable idiots”. The Poster promoting Nazi eugenics programmes: by gas chamber were all perfected in T4.
text was well received among the race “60,000 reichsmark is what this hereditarily ill Key personnel who worked in the killing
hygienists of interwar Germany. person will cost the people’s community in his centres brought this knowledge with them
When Hitler became chancellor of lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too” when they were moved to run death camps.
Germany in 1933, he was determined to Hundreds of physicians, nurses, civil
turn the country into what he called a physicians the power to give the servants and other professionals allowed
“community of the people”. In this so-called “incurable” a “mercy death”. T4 to function – yet very few were held
community, there would be no room for A vast bureaucratic structure of responsible for their crimes.
those seen as weakening the nation. euphemistically named front organisations The majority of T4 physicians, whose
He was quick to pass laws for the was created to assist in identifying, authority acted to soothe popular concerns
compulsory sterilisation of those deemed to diagnosing, transporting and destroying over the legitimacy of their murderous
be carrying “hereditary disabilities”, whether hundreds of thousands of disabled adults work, returned to their posts after the war,
physical, mental or intellectual. Under the and children, then cover up their murders unrepentant, while the medical profession
Law for the Prevention of Offspring with via a system of form letters and forged closed ranks around them. Many nurses
Hereditary Diseases 1933, around 500,000 death certificates. walked free because they claimed they
people were forcibly sterilised. The process began with amassing a vast were merely following orders.
Those designated “feeble-minded” were amount of information on all the disabled Meanwhile, survivors of sterilisation and
by far the main victims of this law, making citizens, from newborns to adults in the killing wards have largely been denied
up 52.9% of all those sterilised in 1934. But institutions. This information was then compensation, and a memorial to the
Hitler’s real goal was to exterminate rather used to decide who was “unworthy of life”. victims of T4 was erected only in 2014. n
than regulate those he deemed “unfit”. Disabled children were the first to be
killed under T4. If selected for death, they Further reading
Murder made formal were transported to a killing ward and given T4 memorial website. www.t4-denkmal.de/
In 1939, the parents of Gerhard a lethal injection or starved to death, unless Atherton H, Schwanninger F (2019) Finding Ivy: a
Kretschmer, an “idiot” born with severe they met their end in a medical experiment. life worthy of life. Community Living 33(1):18-19
physical disabilities, asked Hitler for Their bodies were ransacked and organs Binding K, Hoche A (tr Modak C) (2012) Allowing
permission to kill their son. sold to the highest bidder; some physicians the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life.
The process and personnel involved in amassed vast collections of organs from Greenwood, Wisconsin: Suzeteo Enterprises
Gerhard’s death informed what became murdered children, which they used in Evans SE (2004) Forgotten crimes: the Holocaust
and People with Disabilities. Chicago: Ivan R Dee
known as Aktion T4, named after the research over the 20th century. Between Gellately R, Stoltzfus N, eds (2001) Social
“euthanasia” programme’s headquarters 5,000 and 25,000 children died under T4. outsiders in Nazi Germany. Princeton:
at 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin. Under T4, The systematic murder of disabled adults Princeton University Press Wikimedia Commons
Hitler authorised SS men Dr Karl Brandt came next. At least 100,000 were killed in Sheffer E (2018) Asperger’s children: the origins
and Philipp Bouhler to grant certain gas chambers at Grafeneck, Brandenburg, of autism in Nazi Vienna. New York: WW Norton

30 Vol 33 No 3 | Spring 2020 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk