On June 2, 1933, Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced the formation of an Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy to plan the course of Nazi racial policy. The Sterilization Law passed in the summer of 1933, allowing for compulsory sterilization on “”eugenic indications””. In 1934, Der Erbarzt was founded as a supplement to the Deutsches Arzeblatt to provide a forum for discussion of methods, criteria, and grounds for sterilization. In the first year of the sterilization law (1934), genetic health courts received 84,525 applications for sterilization. The total number of people sterilized during the Nazi period is close to 400,000.

The enthusiasm with which courts prosecuted “”genetic inferiors”” differed in different parts of the country. IQ tests developed by psychologists such as Wilhelm Stern and F. con Rohden to measure “”practical intelligence”” were used to determine who should be sterilized. Some historical evidence of sterilizations performed in early years of the law included cases of feeble-mindedness, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and alcoholism. The sterilization program was brought largely to an end around 1939, following the onset of World War II. The Sterilization Law was widely hailed as a signal example of the Nazi government’s determination to put a halt to German racial “”degeneration””. These measures were dramatic, but not unprecedented.

In the fall of 1935 Hitler signed into law a series of three measures – the so-called Nuremberg Laws-to further “”cleanse”” the German population from unwanted elements. The Reich Citizenship Law distinguished between citizens (of German blood) and residents (Jews and single women). The Blood protection law forbid marriage or sexual relations between non-Jews and Jews, and later extended to all “”non-Aryans””. The law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People required all couples to submit to a medical examination before marriage to see if “”racial damage”” might be involved; the law forbade marriage or sexual relations between “”genetic infirmities”” as specified in the Sterilization Law. When the Nuremberg Laws were announced, German medical journals applauded the measures. The Deutsches Arzteblatt saluted the Blood Protection Law as a measure of “”historic importance””, arguing the law would help protect the German “”body”” against further encroachment of “”foreign racial elements”” and help to “”cleanse the body of our Volk””.

By 1939, Hitler had authored a secret memo certifying to allow specific doctors to grant Gnadentol. By August of 1941, when the first phase of this practice was brought to an end, over 70,000 patients from more than a hundred German hospitals had been killed, in an operation that provided the stage rehearsal for the subsequent destruction of Jews, homosexuals, communists, Gypsies, Slavs, and prisoners of war. Methods of what was soon termed “”mercy killing”” included injections of morphine, tablets, and gassing with cyanide or chemical warfare agents. Poisons were commonly administered slowly, over several days or weeks, so that the cause of death could be disguised as pneumonia, bronchitis, or some other complication of the injections. One other brutal form of persecution for which hygiene was used as a pretest was the confinement of Jews to the ghettos beginning around 1940. This was known as the “”final solution””.

It is possible, of course, in hindsight, to separate analytically the sterilization programs, the destruction of the mentally ill, and the destruction of Germany’s racial minorities. The fact is, however, that each of these programs was seen as a step in a common program of racial purification. And the whole ruling class of Germany was committed to the execution of this crime.

^{Adapted from Racial Hygiene Medicine Under the Nazis by Robert N. Proctor, 1988}
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