This poster reads: "60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazines of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP." (about 1938)

Action T4 (German: Aktion T4) was a program in Nazi Germany officially between 1939 and 1941, during which the regime of Adolf Hitler systematically killed between 75,000 to 250,000 people with intellectual or physical disabilities. Performed unofficially after 1941, the killing became less systematic.^[1] The codename T4 was an abbreviation of “Tiergartenstraße 4”, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten which was the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege).^[2] This body operated under the direction of Philipp Bouhler, the head of Hitler’s private chancellery,^[3] and Dr Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. This villa no longer exists, but a plaque set in the pavement on Tiergartenstraße marks its location. Image File history File links EnthanasiePropaganda. ... Image File history File links EnthanasiePropaganda. ... A 100 Reichsmark banknote from Germany of 1935 (http://www. ... A genetic disorder is a disease caused by abnormalities in genes or chromosomes. ... The Nazi swastika The National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party was a political party that was led to power in Germany by Adolf Hitler in 1933. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Hitler redirects here. ... Look up disability in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum on Tiergartenstaße: in the foreground, a plaque set into the pavement commemorates the victims of the T-4 euthanasia programme. ... This article is about the capital of Germany. ... Tiergarten (Animal Garden) is a large park and a former borough of Berlin, since 2001 a part of the expanded borough Mitte. ... Philipp Bouhler (born 11 September 1899 in Munich; died 19 May 1945 in Dachau (suicide)) was a Nazi German government official, head of the Führers Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4. ... Brandt at the Doctors Trial Karl Brandt (January 8, 1904 – June 2, 1948) was the personal physician of Adolf Hitler and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia programme from 1939. ...

The T4 program developed from the Nazi Party’s policy of “racial hygiene,” the belief that the German people needed to be “cleansed” of “racially unsound” elements, which included people with disabilities. The program set important precedents for the later Holocaust of the Jews of Europe: the historian Ian Kershaw has called it “a vital step in the descent into modern barbarism.”^[4] The National Socialist German Workers Party (German: , or NSDAP, originally known as the DAP (this changed in 1920) and commonly known as the Nazi Party), was a political party in Germany between 1920 and 1945 that was known as the German Workers Party before the name was changed in 1920. ... Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of scientific racism) is the selection, by a government, of the most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation (selective breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics. ... For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Professor Sir Ian Kershaw (born April 29, 1943 in Oldham, Lancashire, England) is a British historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler. ...

Background

The idea of enforcing “racial hygiene” had been an essential element of Hitler’s ideology from its earliest days. Hitler seems to have had a lifelong horror of mental illness and physical deformity. In his discussions with Bouhler and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers, Hitler referred to people who “perpetually dirtied themselves” and who “put their own excrement in their mouths.”^[5] More generally, Hitler frequently used medical metaphors for those he sought to remove from the German “racial community” – he referred to the Jews as a bacillus which must be killed or a cancer which must be excised. Likewise, he saw the disabled as a “diseased element” in the German racial body. In the minds of Hitler and other Nazis, the need to “cleanse” the German race was inseparable from the rest of the Nazi project. Hans Heinrich Lammers (May 27, 1879 - January 4, 1962) was a prominent Nazi and head of the Reich Chancellery. ...

In his book Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler wrote: Mein Kampf (English translation: My Struggle) is a book by the German-Austrian politician and dictator Adolf Hitler which combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitlers Nazi political ideology. ...

He who is bodily and mentally not sound and deserving may not perpetuate this misfortune in the bodies of his children. The völkische [racial] state has to perform the most gigantic rearing-task here. One day, however, it will appear as a deed greater than the most victorious wars of our present bourgeois era.^[6]

The Nazi regime began to implement racial hygienist policies as soon as it came to power. The July 1933 “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” prescribed compulsory sterilisation for people with a range of conditions thought to be hereditary such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea and “imbecility”. Sterilisation was also mandated for chronic alcoholism and other forms of social deviance.^[7] This law was administered by the Interior Ministry under Wilhelm Frick through special Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichten), which examined the inmates of nursing homes, asylums, prisons, aged care homes and special schools to select those to be sterilised. Sterilization can mean: Sterilization (surgical procedure) - an operation which renders an animal or human unable to procreate Sterilization (microbiology) - the removal of microbiological organisms This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Huntingtons disease (HD), also known as Huntington disease and previously as Huntingtons chorea and chorea maior, is a rare inherited neurological disorder affecting up to almost 8 people per 100,000. ... Alcoholism is the consumption of, or preoccupation with, alcoholic beverages to the extent that this behavior interferes with the drinkers normal personal, family, social, or work life, and may lead to physical or mental harm. ... Dr. Wilhelm Frick (March 12, 1877 â€“ October 16, 1946) was a prominent Nazi official. ...

It is estimated that 360,000 people were sterilised under this law between 1933 and 1939. The law was used punitively in some cases, against women convicted of prostitution, for example (although the regime may have been concerned with eliminating congenital syphilis^[8]). Some people with non-hereditary disabilities were also affected, despite the lack of logic this entailed. There were some suggestions that the program should be extended to people with physical disabilities, but such ideas had to be expressed carefully given that one of the most powerful figures of the regime, Joseph Goebbels, suffered from congenital club foot. Philipp Bouhler himself was very lame as a result of war wounds to his legs. After 1937 the acute shortage of labour in Germany arising from the crash rearmament program meant that anyone capable of work was deemed to be “useful” and was exempted from the law, and the rate of sterilisation declined.^[9] Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation: IPA: ) (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was a German politician and Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the National Socialist regime from 1933 to 1945. ... Club foot. ... Philipp Bouhler (born 11 September 1899 in Munich; died 19 May 1945 in Dachau (suicide)) was a Nazi German government official, head of the Führers Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4. ...

It may be noted that racial hygienist ideas were far from unique to the Nazi movement, although Hitler expressed them in an extreme form. The ideas of social Darwinism were widespread in all western countries in the early 20th century, and the eugenics movement had many followers among educated people, being particularly strong in the United States. The idea of sterilising those carrying hereditary defects or exhibiting what was thought to be hereditary anti-social behaviour was widely accepted, and was put into law in the United States, Sweden, Switzerland and other countries. Between 1935 and 1975, for example, 63,000 people were sterilised on eugenicist grounds in Sweden.^[10] Social Darwinism is the idea that Charles Darwins theory can be extended and applied to the social realm, i. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ...

Towards a policy of killing

A plaque set in the pavement at No 4 Tiergartenstraße commemorates the victims of the Nazi "euthanasia" program.

Hitler had always been in favour of killing those whose lives he judged to be “unworthy of life.” Both his physician, Dr Karl Brandt, and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers, testified after the war that Hitler had told them in 1933, at the time the sterilisation law was passed, that he favoured killing the incurably ill, but recognised that public opinion would not accept this.^[11] In 1935 he told the Reich Doctors’ Leader, Dr Gerhard Wagner, that the question could not be taken up in peacetime: “such a problem could be more smoothly and easily carried out in war,” he said. He intended, he wrote, “in the event of a war radically to solve the problem of the mental asylums.”^[12] Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1200x1600, 320 KB) Summary Photo by User:Adam Carr, May 2006 Licensing I, the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1200x1600, 320 KB) Summary Photo by User:Adam Carr, May 2006 Licensing I, the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. ... Gerhard Wagner (born 18 August 1888 in Neu-Heiduk, Upper Silesia, now in Poland; died 25 March 1939 in Munich) was the first Reich Doctors Leader (Reichsärzteführer) in the time of Nazi Germany. ...

The outbreak of war thus opened up for Hitler the possibility of carrying out a policy he had long favoured. The war also gave this issue a new urgency in the eyes of the Nazi regime. People with severe disabilities, even when sterilised, still needed institutional care. They occupied places in facilities which would soon be needed for wounded soldiers and people evacuated from bombed cities. They were housed and fed at the expense of the state and took up the time of doctors and nurses. All this the Nazis found barely tolerable even in peacetime, and totally unacceptable in wartime. As a leading Nazi doctor, Dr Hermann Pfannmüller, said: "The idea is unbearable to me that the best, the flower of our youth must lose its life at the front in order that feebleminded and irresponsible asocial elements can have a secure existence in the asylum."^[13]

Even before the Nazis came to power, the German eugenics movement had an extreme wing, led by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding, who as early as 1920 had advocated killing those judged to be “unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben).^[14] Germany in the years after World War I was particularly susceptible to ideas of this kind. They interpreted Darwinism to suggest that a nation must promote the propagation of "beneficial" genes and prevent the propagation of "harmful" ones. Lifton notes: "The argument went that the best young men died in war, causing a loss to the Volk of the best available genes. The genes of those who did not fight (the worst genes) then proliferated freely, accelerating biological and cultural degeneration."^[15] The state, the eugenicists argued, must intervene to prevent this. Alfred Erich Hoche (August 1, 1865 - May 16, 1943) was a German psychiatrist well-known for his writings about eugenics. ... Karl Binding Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was born on April 6, 1841 as the third child of Georg Christoph Binding and Dorothea Binding in Frankfurt(Main), Germany. ... Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is a prominent American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. ...

These views had gained ground after 1930, when the Depression caused sharp cuts in funding to state mental hospitals, creating squalor and overcrowding.^[16] Most German eugenicists were already strongly nationalist and anti-Semitic, and embraced the Nazi regime with enthusiasm. Many were appointed to positions in the Health Ministry and German research institutes, and their ideas were gradually adopted by the majority of the German medical profession, from which Jewish and left-wing doctors were soon purged.^[17] For other uses, see The Great Depression (disambiguation). ...

During the 1930s the Nazi Party carried out a campaign of propaganda in favour of “euthanasia.” The National Socialist Racial and Political Office (NSRPA) produced leaflets, posters and short films to be shown in cinemas, pointing out to Germans the cost of maintaining asylums for the incurably ill and insane. These films included The Inheritance (Das Erbe, 1935), The Victim of the Past (Opfer der Vergangenheit, 1937), which was given a major premiere in Berlin and was shown in all German cinemas, and I Accuse (Ich klage an, 1941), which was based on a novel by Dr Helmut Unger, a consultant for the child euthanasia program.^[18] Catholic institutions, which could be expected to bitterly resist the killing of their patients, were progressively closed and their inmates transferred to already overcrowded state institutions, where the squalid conditions provided further ammunition for campaigns in favour of euthanasia. Opfer der Vergangenheit (Victims of the Past) was a Nazi propaganda film made in 1937. ...

Killing of children

Schloss Hartheim, one of the main T4 killing centers

In May 1939, when Hitler had already determined to attack Poland in the summer or autumn of that year, the parents of a severely deformed child born near Leipzig wrote to Hitler seeking his permission for their child to be put to death.^[19] Hitler approved this, and authorized the creation of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden), headed by Karl Brandt, his personal physician, and administered by Herbert Linden of the Interior Ministry and an SS officer, Viktor Brack. Brandt and Bouhler were authorized to approve applications to put children in similar circumstances to death.^[20] Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2614x2245, 1109 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Action T4 Schloss Hartheim ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2614x2245, 1109 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Action T4 Schloss Hartheim ... Schloss Hartheim was one of the Nazi Euthanasia killing centers where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. ... Leipzig ( ; Sorbian/Lusatian: Lipsk from the Sorbian word for Tilia) is, with a population of over 506,000, the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. ... In 1929, Viktor Brack became a member of the NSDAP and the SS. In 1936, he was supervising operation of the office 2 (Amt 2) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin, that office examined complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany. ...

This precedent was used to establish a program of killing children with severe disabilities from which the guardian consent element soon disappeared. From August the Interior Ministry required doctors and midwives to report all cases of newborns with severe disabilities. Those to be killed were "all children under three years of age in whom any of the following 'serious hereditary diseases' were 'suspected': idiocy and mongolism (especially when associated with blindness and deafness); microcephaly; hydrocephaly; malformations of all kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal column; and paralysis, including spastic conditions."^[21] The reports were assessed by a panel of medical experts, of whom three were required to give their approval before a child could be killed.^[22] Down syndrome or trisomy 21 (usually Downs Syndrome in British English[1]) is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. ... Hydrocephalus (water-head, term derived from Greek) is an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, usually due to blockage of CSF outflow in the ventricles or in the subarachoid space at the base of the brain. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Various methods of deception were used to gain consent – particularly in Catholic areas where parents were generally uncooperative. Parents were told that their children were being sent to “Special Sections” for children where they would receive improved care.^[23] The children sent to these centres were kept for "assessment" for a few weeks and then killed by lethal injection, their deaths recorded as "pneumonia". Autopsies were usually performed, and brain samples were taken to be used for medical research. This apparently helped to ease the consciences of many of those involved, since it gave them the feeling that the children had not died in vain and that the whole program had a genuine medical purpose.^[24]

Once war broke out in September 1939, the program became less rigorous in its process of assessment and approval. It expanded to include older children and adolescents. The conditions covered also expanded and came to include "various borderline or limited impairments in children of different ages, culminating in the killing of those designated as juvenile delinquents. Jewish children could be placed in the net primarily because they were Jewish; and at one of the institutions, a special department was set up for 'minor Jewish-Aryan half-breeds'".^[25] At the same time increased pressure was placed on parents to agree to their children being sent away. Many parents suspected what was really happening, especially when it became apparent that institutions for children with disabilities were being systematically cleared out, and refused consent. They were threatened that they would lose custody of all their children, and if that did not suffice the parents themselves could be threatened with call-up for "labour duty."^[26] By 1941 over 5,000 children had been killed.^[27]

Killing of adults

Brandt and Bouhler soon developed plans to expand the program to adults. In July 1939, they had held a meeting attended by Dr Leonardo Conti, Reich Health Leader and state secretary for health in the Interior Ministry, and Professor Werner Heyde, head of the SS medical department. This meeting had made preliminary arrangements for a national register of all institutionalised people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities. Leonardo Conti (born 24 August 1900 in Lugano; died 6 October 1945 (suicide) in Nuremberg) was, as the Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer), head of the Reich Physicians Chamber (Reichsärztekammer), Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund or NSDÄB) and as main service leader... Werner Heyde (aka Fritz Sawade) (born April 25, 1902 in Forst, died February 13, 1964 in Frankfurt) was a German psychiatrist. ...

The first adults with disabilities to be killed by the Nazi regime were not however Germans but Poles, as the SS men of Einsatzkommando 16 cleared the hospitals and mental asylums of the “Wartheland”, a region of western Poland which was earmarked for incorporation into Germany and resettlement by ethnic Germans following the German conquest of Poland. In the Danzig (now Gdańsk) area, some 7,000 Polish inmates of various institutions were shot, while 10,000 were killed in the Gdynia area. Similar measures were taken in other areas of Poland destined for incorporation into Germany.^[28] At Posen (now Poznań), hundreds of patients were killed by means of carbon monoxide gas in an improvised gas chamber developed by Dr Albert Widmann, chief chemist of the German Criminal Police (Kripo). In December 1939, the SS head, Heinrich Himmler, witnessed one of these gassings, ensuring that this invention would later be put to much wider uses.^[29] Einsatzkommando is a German military term with the literal translation of mission commando, roughly equivalent to the English term task force. The Nazi-era Einsatzkommando refers to a subgroup of the four Einsatzgruppen, killing squads in Operation Barbarossa that were responsible for carrying out mass executions behind the German lines. ... Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen) was the name given by Nazis to the territory of Greater Poland which was occupied, annexed and directly incorporated into the German Reich after defeating the Polish army in 1939 (as opposed to the General Government, GG). ... Motto: Nec temere, nec timide (No rashness, no timidness) Coordinates: , Country Poland Voivodeship Pomeranian Powiat city county Gmina GdaÅ„sk Established 10th century City Rights 1263 Government  - Mayor PaweÅ‚ Adamowicz Area  - City 262 km²  (101. ... Motto: Nec temere, nec timide (No rashness, no timidness) Coordinates: , Country Poland Voivodeship Pomeranian Powiat city county Gmina GdaÅ„sk Established 10th century City Rights 1263 Government  - Mayor PaweÅ‚ Adamowicz Area  - City 262 km²  (101. ... Gdynia (IPA: , German: (until 1939 and after 1945) / Gotenhafen (1939-1945); Kashubian: ) is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport at GdaÅ„sk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea. ... Coordinates: , Country Voivodeship Powiat city county Gmina PoznaÅ„ Established 8th century City Rights 1253 Government  - Mayor Ryszard Grobelny Area  - City 261. ... Coordinates: , Country Voivodeship Powiat city county Gmina PoznaÅ„ Established 8th century City Rights 1253 Government  - Mayor Ryszard Grobelny Area  - City 261. ... Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. ... For other uses, see Gas chamber (disambiguation). ... Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( ; 7 October 1900–23 May 1945) was commander of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and the Nazi hierarchy. ...

The idea of killing “useless” mental patients soon spread from occupied Poland to adjoining areas of Germany itself, probably because Nazi Party and SS officers in these areas were most familiar with what was happening in Poland. These were also the areas where Germans wounded from the Polish campaign were expected to be accommodated, creating a demand for hospital space. The Gauleiter of Pomerania, Franz Schwede-Coburg, dispatched 1,400 patients from five Pomeranian hospitals to Poland, where they were shot. The Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, likewise had 1,600 patients killed. In all, more than 8,000 Germans were killed in this initial wave of killings. These were carried out on the initiative of local officials, although Himmler certainly knew and approved of them.^[30] A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP (more commonly known as the Nazi Party) or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau. ... Pommern redirects here. ... Franz Schwede (born 5 March 1888 in Drawöhnen near Memel, East Prussia, now Dreverna near KlaipÄ—da, Lithuania; died 19 October 1960 in Coburg) was a well-known National Socialist politician. ... A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP (more commonly known as the Nazi Party) or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau. ... East Prussia (German: Ostpreu en; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of Kingdom of Prussia, situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia. ... Erich Koch (June 19, 1896, Elberfeld - November 12, 1986, Barczewo) was a Gauleiter of the NSDAP in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, and Reichskomissar in Ukraine from 1941 until 1944. ...

The program for killing adults with mental or physical disabilities began with a letter from Hitler issued in October 1939. The decree charged Bouhler and Brack with “enlarging the authority of certain physicians, to be designated by name, in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgement, are incurable, can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.”.^[31] The letter was backdated to 1 September to provide “legality” to the killings already carried out,^[32] and to link the program more definitely to the war, giving it a rationale of wartime necessity.^[33] It is important to note that this letter, which provided the sole legal basis for the program, was not a formal "Führer decree", which in Nazi Germany had the force of law. For this reason Hitler deliberately bypassed Health Minister Conti and his department, who were held to be not sufficiently imbued with National Socialist ruthlessness and who might have raised awkward questions about the legality of the program, and entrusted it to his personal agents Bouhler and Brandt.^[34] is the 244th day of the year (245th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

The program was administered by Brack’s staff from Tiergartenstraße 4, under the guise of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care, supervised by Bouhler and Brandt. Others closely involved included Dr Herbert Linden, who had been heavily involved in the children's program, and Dr Ernst-Robert Grawitz, chief physician of the SS. These officials chose the doctors who were to carry out the "operational" part of the program. They were chosen for their political reliability, professional reputation, and known sympathy for radical eugenics. They included several who had proved their worth in the child-killing program, such as Unger, Heinze, and Hermann Pfannmüller. The new recruits were mostly psychiatrists, notably Professor Carl Schneider of Heidelberg, Professor Max de Crinis of Berlin and Professor Paul Nitsche from the Sonnenstein state institution. Heyde became the operational leader of the program, succeded later by Nitsche.^[35] Prof. ... Hermann Paul Nitsche (born November 25, 1876 in Colditz, died March 25, 1948 in Dresden) was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reichs euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program. ...

In early October all hospitals, nursing homes, old-age homes, sanatoria were required to report all patients who had been institutionalised for five years or more, who had been committed as “criminally insane”, who were of “non-Aryan race”, or who had been diagnosed with any of a list of specified conditions. These included schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, advanced syphilis, senile dementia, paralysis, encephalitis and “terminal neurological conditions generally”. Many doctors and administrators assumed that the purpose of the reports was to identify inmates who were capable of being drafted for "labour service". They therefore tended to overstate the degree of incapacity of their patients, to protect them from labour conscription - with fatal consequences.^[36] When some institutions, mainly in Catholic areas^{[citation needed]}, refused to co-operate, teams of T4 doctors (or in some cases Nazi medical students) visited them and compiled their own lists, sometimes in a very haphazard and ideologically motived way.^[37] At the same time, all Jewish patients were removed from institutions and were killed during 1940.^[38] Aryan (/eÉ™rjÉ™n/ or /ɑːrjÉ™n/, Sanskrit: ) is a Sanskrit and Avestan word meaning noble/spiritual one. ... Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by Treponema pallidum. ... Dementia (from Latin demens) is progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain, commonly caused by a viral infection. ...

As with the child inmates, the adults had their cases assessed by a panel of "experts," working at the Tiergartenstraße offices. The experts were required to make their judgments solely on the basis of the reports, rather than on detailed medical histories, let alone examinations. Sometimes they dealt with hundreds of reports at a time. On each they marked a + (meaning death), a - (meaning life), or occasionally a ? meaning that they were unable to decide. Three "death" verdicts condemned the person concerned. As with the children, over time these processes became less rigorous, the range of conditions considered unsustainable grew broader, and zealous Nazis further down the chain of command increasingly made decisions on their own initiative.^[39]

At first patients were killed by lethal injection, the method established for killing children, but the slowness and inefficiency of this method for killing adults, who needed larger doses of increasingly scarce and expensive drugs and who were more likely to need restraint, was soon apparent. Hitler himself recommended to Brandt that carbon monoxide gas be used.^[40] At his trial, Brandt described this as a "major advance in medical history".^[41] The first gassings took place at Brandenburg an der Havel in January 1940, under the supervision of Widmann and Christian Wirth, a Kripo (criminal police) officer who was later to play a prominent role in the “final solution” extermination of the Jews. Once the efficacy of this method was established, it became standardised and was instituted at a number of centres across Germany. As well as Brandenburg, these included Grafeneck in Baden-Württemberg, Schloss Hartheim near Linz in Austria, Sonnenstein in Saxony, Bernburg in Saxony-Anhalt and Hadamar in Hesse. As well as killing patients from mental homes, nursing homes and sanatoria, these centres were also used to kill prisoners transferred from concentration camps in Germany and Austria. , Brandenburg an der Havel is a town in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. ... Christian Wirth (24 November 1885 - 26 May 1944) was a senior SS officer during the program to exterminate the Jewish people of occupied Poland during the Second World War, known as Operation Reinhard. ... The Kriminalpolizei was the professional detective service of Germany between 1936 and 1945. ... In a February 26, 1942, letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ... Small rural village near the town of Münsingen, south-west of Stuttgart. ... Location Coordinates , , Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE1 Capital Stuttgart Minister-President Günther Oettinger (CDU) Governing parties CDU / FDP Votes in Bundesrat 6 (from 69) Basic statistics Area  35,752 km² (13,804 sq mi) Population 10,741,000 (11/2006)[1]  - Density... Schloss Hartheim was one of the Nazi Euthanasia killing centers where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. ... The Poestlingberg church in Linz. ... Sonnenstein Clinic was a mental hospital located in Pirna, near Dresden, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. ... The Free State of Saxony (German: Freistaat Sachsen; Sorbian: Swobodny Stat Sakska) has a land area of 18,413 km² and a population of 4. ... Bernburg Castle Bernburg is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, capital of the district Bernburg. ... With an area of 20,447 km² and a population of 2. ... Hadamar the site of a former insane asylum used by the Nazis as the site of their T-4 Euthanasia Program, which performed mass sterilizations and mass murder of undesirable members of Nazi society, specifically the physically and mentally handicapped. ... Location Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE7 Capital Wiesbaden Largest city Frankfurt Minister-President Roland Koch (CDU) Governing party CDU Votes in Bundesrat 5 (from 69) Basic statistics Area  21,100 km² (8,147 sq mi) Population 6,077,000 (08/2006)[1]  - Density... It has been suggested that Internment be merged into this article or section. ...

Patients were transferred from their institutions to the killing centres in buses operated by teams of SS men wearing white coats to give an air of medical authenticity. To prevent the families and the doctors of the patients tracing them, they were often sent to "transit" centres in major hospitals where they were allegedly "assessed" before being moved again to "special treatment" centres. (The expression "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) was later widely employed as a euphemism for killing during the extermination of the Jews.) Families were sent letters explaining that owing to wartime regulations it would not be possible to visit relatives in these centres. In fact most of these patients were killed within 24 hours of arriving at the centres, and their bodies cremated.^[42] For every person killed, a death certificate was prepared, giving a false but plausible cause of death, and sent to the family along with an urn of ashes (random ashes, since the victims were cremated en masse). The preparation of thousands of falsified death certificates in fact took up most of the working day of the doctors who operated the centres.^[43]

During 1940, the centres at Brandenburg, Grafeneck and Hartheim killed nearly 10,000 people each, while another 6,000 were killed at Sonnenstein. In all about 35,000 people were killed in T4 operations that year. Operations at Brandenburg and Grafeneck were wound up at the end of the year, partly because the areas they served had been “cleared” and partly because of public opposition. In 1941, however, the centres at Bernberg and Sonnenstein increased their operations, while Hartheim (where Wirth and Franz Stangl were successively commandants) continued as before. As a result, another 35,000 people were killed before August 1941, when the T4 program was shut down. Even after that date, however, the centres continued to be used to kill concentration camp inmates: eventually some 20,000 people in this category were killed.^[44] Franz Stangl (March 26, 1908 – June 28, 1971) was an SS officer, commandant of the Sobibór and of Treblinka Nazi extermination camps. ...

In 1971 the Hungarian-born journalist Gitta Sereny conducted a series of interviews with Franz Stangl, who was in prison in Düsseldorf after having been convicted of co-responsibility for killing 900,000 people as commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps in Poland. Stangl gave Sereny a detailed account of the operations of the T4 program based on his time as commandant of the killing facility at the Hartheim “institute.”^[45] He described how the inmates of various asylums were removed and transported by bus to Hartheim. Some were in no mental state to know what was happening to them, but many were perfectly sane and for them various forms of deception were used. They were told they were at a special clinic where they would receive improved treatment, and were given a brief medical examination on arrival. They were then induced to enter what appeared to be a shower block, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide (this ruse was later used on a much larger scale at the extermination camps). Gitta Sereny (born March 13, 1921) is a Hungarian-born British biographer, historian and journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and abused children. ... The title of this article contains the character ü. Where it is unavailable or not desired, the name may be represented as Duesseldorf. ... Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. ... Treblinka II was a Nazi extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka were used in the Holocaust for the systematic genocide of people categorized as sub-humans by the Nazis. ... Extermination camps were one type of facility that Nazi Germany built during World War II for the systematic killing of millions of people in what has become known as the Holocaust. ... Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. ...

Opposition

Hitler and his colleagues were aware from the start that a program of killing large numbers of Germans with disabilities would be unpopular with the German public. Although Hitler had a fixed policy of not issuing written instructions for policies relating to what would later be classed as crimes against humanity^{[citation needed]}, he made an exception when he provided Bouhler and Brack with written authority for the T4 program in his confidential October 1939 letter. This was apparently to overcome opposition within the German state bureaucracy – the Justice Minister, Franz Gürtner, needed to be shown Hitler’s letter in August 1940 to gain his co-operation.^[46] This article is in need of attention. ... Franz Gürtner (August 26, 1881 - January 29, 1941) was a German Minister of Justice in Adolf Hitlers cabinet, responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. ...

Hitler told Bouhler at the outset that “the Führer’s Chancellery must under no circumstances be seen to be active in this matter.”^[47] There was a particular need for caution in Catholic areas, which after the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 included nearly half the population of Greater Germany, and where public opinion could be expected to be hostile. In March 1940 a confidential report from the SD in Austria warned that the killing program must be implemented with stealth “in order to avoid a probable backlash of public opinion during the war.”^[48] Sudetenland (Czech and Polish: Sudety) was the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the Western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia associated with Bohemia. ... Sicherheitsdienst (SD) sleeve insignia. ...

Opposition persisted within the bureaucracy. A district judge, Lothar Kreyssig, wrote to Gürtner protesting (correctly) that the T4 program was illegal (since no law or formal decree from Hitler had authorised it); Gürtner replied, “If you cannot recognise the will of the Führer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge,” and had Kreyssig dismissed.^[49]

The Catholic Church had agreed to withdraw from all political activity in the Concordat of 1933 between Germany and the Holy See, but the prospect of state-sanctioned mass killing of German citizens had naturally not occurred to the Church in 1933, and such a challenge to fundamental Catholic belief in the sanctity of human life posed a serious dilemma for German Catholics. In 1935 the Church had protested in a private memorandum against proposals to pass a law legalising euthanasia (in the true sense of the word): this was one reason the law was not proceeded with.^{[citation needed]} The Reichskonkordat is the concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich, signed in 1933. ...

In January 1939, however, Brack commissioned a paper from Dr Joseph Mayer, Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Paderborn, on the likely reactions of the churches in the event of a state euthanasia program being instituted. Mayer – a longstanding euthanasia advocate – reported that the churches would not oppose such a program if it was seen to be in the national interest. Brack showed this paper to Hitler in July, and it may have increased his confidence that a “euthanasia” program would be acceptable to German public opinion.^[50] (When Gitta Sereny interviewed Mayer shortly before his death in 1967, he denied that he had approved of killing people with disabilities, but since no copies of this paper are known to survive, this cannot be determined.)^[51] This turned out not to be the case. In fact the T4 program was the sole example of an action by the Nazi regime which provoked large-scale public protests. Ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing with right and wrong in human behaviour. ... The University of Paderborn (German: Universität Paderborn) in Paderborn, Germany, is a university with 13,900 students (as of 2004/07/02). ...

It was impossible to keep the T4 program secret, given that thousands of doctors, nurses and administrators were involved in it, and given that the majority of those killed had families who were actively concerned about their welfare. Despite the strictest orders to maintain secrecy, some of the staff at the killing centres talked - sometimes when drunk in bars - about what went on there. In some cases families could tell that the causes of death notified were false, as when a patient was said to have died of appendicitis when he had no appendix. In other cases several families in the same town would receive death certificates on the same day. In the towns where the killing centres were located, many people saw the inmates arrive in buses, saw the smoke from the crematoria chimneys, and drew the correct conclusion. In Hadamar ashes containing human hair rained down on the town.^[52] In May 1941 the Frankfurt County Court wrote to Gürtner describing scenes in Hadamar where children shouted in the streets that people were being taken away in buses to be gassed.^[53]

During 1940 rumours of what was taking place spread, and many Germans withdrew their relatives from asylums and sanatoria to care for them at home – often with great expense and difficulty. In some places doctors and psychiatrists co-operated with families to have patients discharged, or, if the families could afford it, had them transferred to private clinics where the reach of T4 did not extend. (The class aspect of T4 should be noted: it was mainly working-class families whose relatives were in state institutions. Wealthy families could protect their disabled relatives by keeping them at home or in private clinics.) Other doctors agreed to "re-diagnose" some patients so that they no longer met the T4 criteria, although this ran the risk of exposure when the Nazi zealots from Berlin conducted inspections. In Kiel, Professor Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt managed to save nearly all of his patients.^[54] For the most part, however, doctors co-operated with the program, either out of ignorance as to its true nature or out of agreement with Nazi eugenicist policies.^[55] , For the city in the United States, see Kiel, Wisconsin. ... Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt (June 2, 1885 - December 30, 1964) was a German neuropathologist. ...

During 1940 protest letters began to arrive at the Reich Chancellery and the Ministry of Justice, some of them from Nazi Party members. The first open protest against the removal of people from asylums took place at Absberg in Franconia in February 1941, and others followed. The SD report on the incident at Absberg noted that "the removal of residents from the Ottilien Home has caused a great deal of unpleasantness," and described large crowds of Catholic townspeople, among them Party members, protesting at the removal.^[56] Opposition to the T4 policy sharpened after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, because the war in the east produced for the first time large-scale German casualties, and the hospitals and asylums began to fill up with maimed and disabled young German soldiers. Rumours began to circulate that these men would also be subject to “euthanasia,” although in fact no such plans existed. Absberg is a town in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany. ... Franconia (German: Franken) is a historic region in modern Germany, which today forms three administrative regions of the German federal state of Bavaria: Lower Franconia (Unterfranken), Middle Franconia (Mittelfranken), and Upper Franconia (Oberfranken). ...

During 1940 and 1941 some Protestant churchmen protested privately against T4, but none made any public comment. Theophil Wurm, the Lutheran Bishop of Württemberg, wrote a strong letter to Interior Minister Frick in March 1940. Others who privately protested were the Lutheran theologian Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, who was director of the Bethel Institution for epileptics at Bielefeld, and Pastor Paul-Gerhard Braune, director of the Hoffnungstal Institution in Berlin. Both used their connections with the regime to negotiate exemptions for their institutions: Bodelschwingh negotiated directly with Brandt and indirectly with Hermann Göring, whose cousin was a prominent psychiatrist. Braune had meetings with Justice Minister Gürtner, who was always dubious about the legality of the program, and later wrote a strongly worded letter to Hitler protesting against it: Hitler did not read it, but was told about it by Lammers.^[57] In general, however, the Protestant church was deeply enmeshed with the Nazi regime and was unwilling to criticise its actions.^[58] Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1877-1946) was a German theologian and public health advocate. ... The Bethel Institution (Anstalt Bethel) was a hospital for the mentally ill in Bielefeld, Germany. ... Bielefeld is a district-free town in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. ... Hermann Wilhelm Göring ( ) (also Goering in English) (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, and commander of the Luftwaffe. ...

The Catholic Church, which since 1933 had pursued a policy of avoiding confrontation with the Nazi regime in the hope of preserving its core institutions intact, became increasingly unable to keep silent in the face of mounting evidence about the killing of inmates of hospitals and asylums. Leading Catholic churchmen, led by Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber of Munich, wrote privately to the government protesting against the policy. In July 1941 the Church broke its silence when a pastoral letter from the bishops was read out in all churches, declaring that it was wrong to kill (except in self-defence or in a morally justified war).^[59] This emboldened Catholics to make more outspoken protests. Memorial stone of von Faulhaber in the Munich Frauenkirche His Eminence Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (born March 3, 1869 in Klosterheidenfeld, Unterfranken, died June 12, 1952 in Munich) was Roman Catholic Archbishop of Munich for 35 years, from 1917 to his death in 1952. ... For other uses, see Munich (disambiguation). ...

A few weeks after the pastoral letter was read out, the Catholic Bishop of Münster in Westphalia, Clemens August Graf von Galen, publicly denounced the T4 program in a sermon, and telegrammed his text to Hitler, calling on “the Führer to defend the people against the Gestapo.” "It is a terrible, unjust and catastrophic thing when man opposes his will to the will of God," Galen said. "We are talking about men and women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to live?"^[60] Robert Lifton says of this sermon: "This powerful, populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed throughout Germany - indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force flyers. Galen’s sermon probably had a greater impact than any other one statement in consolidating anti-“euthanasia” sentiment."^[61] Another Bishop, Franz Bornewasser of Trier, also sent protests to Hitler, though not in public. In August Galen was even more outspoken, broadening his attack to include the Nazi persecution of religious orders and the closing of Catholic institutions. He attributed the heavy allied bombing of Westphalian towns to the wrath of God against Germany for breaking His laws. Galen’s sermons were of course not reported in the German press, but they were widely circulated in the form of illegally printed leaflets.^[62] Local Nazis asked for Galen to be arrested, but Goebbels told Hitler that if this happened there would be an open revolt in Westphalia.^[63] For other places with the same or similar names, and other uses of the word, see Munster (disambiguation) Münster is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. ... Westphalia (German: Westfalen) is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Bielefeld, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Münster, and Osnabrück and included in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. ... Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878-1946), German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. ... The   (contraction of Geheime Staatspolizei: “secret state police”) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. ... Trier (French: ; Luxembourgish Tréier) is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle River. ...

By August the protests had spread to Bavaria. According to Gitta Sereny, Hitler himself was jeered by an angry crowd at Hof – the only time he was opposed to his face in public during his 12 years of rule.^[64] Despite his private fury, Hitler knew that he could not afford a confrontation with the Church at a time when Germany was engaged in a life-and-death two-front war, a belief which was reinforced by the advice of Goebbels, Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Robert Lifton writes: "Nazi leaders faced the prospect of either having to imprison prominent, highly admired clergymen and other protesters — a course with consequences in terms of adverse public reaction they greatly feared — or else end the program."^[65] Himmler said: "If operation T4 had been entrusted to the SS, things would have happened differently,” because “when the Führer entrusts us with a job, we know how to deal with it correctly, without causing useless uproar among the people.”^[66] Hof is the name of the following places: a city in Bavaria, Germany: see Hof, Germany a district in Bavaria, Germany: see Hof (district) a municipality in Vestfold, Norway : see Hof, Norway a former municipality in Hedmark, Norway. ... Martin Bormann Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 - c. ... Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( ; 7 October 1900–23 May 1945) was commander of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and the Nazi hierarchy. ... SS or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force Steamship (SS) (ship prefix) The United States Secret Service A submarine not powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as listed by NATO reporting name Shortstop...

On 24 August 1941 Hitler ordered the cancellation of the T4 program, and also issued strict instructions to the Gauleiters that there were to be no further provocations of the churches for the duration of the war. The invasion of the Soviet Union in June had opened up new opportunities for the T4 personnel, who were soon transferred to the east to begin work on a vastly greater program of killing: the “final solution of the Jewish question.” But the winding up of the T4 program did not in fact bring the killing of people with disabilities to an end, although from the end of 1941 the killing became less systematic. Lifton documents that the killing of both adults and children continued to the end of the war, on the local initiative of institute directors and party leaders. The methods reverted to those employed before the gas chambers were employed: lethal injection, or simple starvation.^[67] Kershaw estimates that by the end of 1941 75,000 to 100,000 people had been killed as a result of the program, but that further tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates, and people judged incapable of work, were killed in Germany between 1942 and 1945 (this figure does not include the Jews who were deported to their deaths in 1942 and 1943). Hartheim, for example, continued to kill people sent to it from all over Germany until 1945. is the 236th day of the year (237th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see 1941 (disambiguation). ... In a February 26, 1942, letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ...

Postwar events

In December 1946, an American military tribunal (commonly called the Doctors Trial) tried 23 doctors and administrators for their roles in war crimes and crimes against humanity. These crimes included the systematic killing of those deemed "unworthy of life," including the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired. After 140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the submission of 1,500 documents, in August 1947 the court pronounced 16 of the defendants guilty. Seven were sentenced to death and executed on 2 June 1948. They included Dr Karl Brandt and Viktor Brack. Karl Brandt at the Doctors Trial The Doctors Trial was the trial of several Nazi medical researchers for war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg Code, following the Nuremberg Trials of military and political leadership figures. ... This article is in need of attention. ... is the 153rd day of the year (154th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Brandt at the Doctors Trial Karl Brandt (January 8, 1904 – June 2, 1948) was the personal physician to Adolf Hitler and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia programme from 1939. ... In 1929, Viktor Brack became a member of the NSDAP and the SS. In 1936, he was supervising operation of the office 2 (Amt 2) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin, that office examined complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany. ...

The indictment read in part:

14. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich, in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including German civilians, as well as civilians of other nations. The particulars concerning such murders are set forth in paragraph 9 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.^[68]

Also in 1945, seven staff members of the Hadamar institute were tried for the killing of Soviet and Polish nationals, but not for the large-scale killing of German nationals at the institute. Alfons Klein, Karl Ruoff and Wilhelm Willig were sentenced to death and executed, the other four were given long prison sentences.[1]

Philipp Bouhler and Leonardo Conti killed themselves in captivity in May 1945, while Dr Ernst-Robert Grawitz killed himself shortly before the fall of Berlin. Dr Friedrich Menneke died in 1947 while awaiting trial. Paul Nitsche was tried and executed by an East German court in 1948. Werner Heyde, after having escaped detection for 18 years, killed himself in 1964 before being brought to trial. Dr Heinrich Gross escaped justice. Werner Blankenburg also escaped justice. See [[2]]. Philipp Bouhler (born 11 September 1899 in Munich; died 19 May 1945 in Dachau (suicide)) was a Nazi German government official, head of the Führers Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4. ... Leonardo Conti (born 24 August 1900 in Lugano; died 6 October 1945 (suicide) in Nuremberg) was, as the Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer), head of the Reich Physicians Chamber (Reichsärztekammer), Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund or NSDÄB) and as main service leader... Prof. ... Hermann Paul Nitsche (born November 25, 1876 in Colditz, died March 25, 1948 in Dresden) was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reichs euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program. ... Werner Heyde (aka Fritz Sawade) (born April 25, 1902 in Forst, died February 13, 1964 in Frankfurt) was a German psychiatrist. ... Heinrich Gross (1914 – Dec. ...

T4 and euthanasia

The program is commonly described as one of “euthanasia,” and this expression was used at the time by some of the officials responsible for carrying the program out, but it had little in common with euthanasia as this term is usually defined. It was not motivated by concern for the welfare of the people concerned or by a desire to release them from suffering – most of those killed were not suffering. It was carried out primarily according to the dictates of “racial hygiene” ideology, and secondarily to reduce the cost to the state of maintaining people with disabilities at a time when the overwhelming financial priority of the regime was rearmament. It was nearly always carried out without the consent of the people concerned or their families. For mercy killings not performed on humans, see animal euthanasia. ...

Professor Robert Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors and a leading authority on the T4 program, makes clear the difference between this program and genuine euthanasia. He explains that the Nazi version of "euthanasia" was based on the work of Adolf Jost, who published The Right to Death (Das Recht auf den Tod) in 1895. Lifton writes: "Jost argued that control over the death of the individual must ultimately belong to the social organism, the state. This is in direct opposition to the Anglo-American concept of euthanasia, which emphasizes the individual’s “right to die” or “right to death” or “right to his or her own death,” as the ultimate human claim. In contrast, Jost was pointing to the state’s right to kill."^[69] Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is a prominent American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. ...

Dr Stuart Stein of the University of the West of England writes: The University of the West of England (abbrev. ...

The ninth edition of the Chambers Dictionary of the English language was published in 2003 by Chambers Harrap. ...

References

Werner Catel was one of three Nazi doctors considered an expert on the programme of euthanasia for children, the other two being Hans Heinze and Ernst Wentzler. ... Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn was a Nazi German psychiatrist and eugenicist. ... Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a very rare and incurable degenerative neurological disorder (brain disease) that is ultimately fatal. ...

Bibliography

• "Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany 1900-1945" Michael Burleigh (New York, 1995)
• "Nazi 'Euthanasia' Programs" in Dieter Kuntz, ed. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race by Michael Burleigh. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8078-2916-1
• Dokumente zur Euthanasie. by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3-596-24327-0, in German
• Euthanasie im NS-Staat. Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens by Ernst Klee. Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-596-24326-2, in German
• The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution by Henry Friedlander. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, 1995, ISBN 0-8078-2208-6.
• A Sign for Cain by Fredric Wertham. MacMillan Company, New York, 1967, ISBN 0-8488-1657-9
• Was sie taten. Was sie wurden by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3-596-24364-5, in German
• Thompson, D.: The Nazi Euthanasia Program, Axis History Forum, March 14, 2004. URL last accessed April 24, 2006.
• Burleigh, M. & Wippermann, W. The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 Cambridge University Press 1991
• BBC; The Nazis - A Warning From History, television documentary 1997

Henry Friedlander (1930-) is a American historian of the Holocaust noted for his arguments in favor of broadening the scope of victims of the Holocaust. ... Fredric Wertham Dr. Fredric Wertham (March 20, 1895 – November 29, 1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of mass media—comic books in particular—on the development of children. ... is the 73rd day of the year (74th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 114th day of the year (115th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Nazi eugenics
• Wrongful life

Nazi eugenics pertains to Nazi Germanys nazism and race social policies that placed the improvement of the race through eugenics at the centre of their concerns and targeted those humans they identified as Life Unworthy of Life, including but not limited to: criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ...

External links

• Website with photo of Philipp Bouhler and facsimile of Hitler’s letter to Bouhler and Brandt authorising the T4 program
• The complete text of Robert Lifton's The Nazi Doctors online
• List of Action T-4 personnel
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Final Solutions: Murderous Racial Hygiene 1939-1945
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Euthanasia Program
• Nazis euthanasia files made public by the BMJ/British Medical Association: files relating to the 200 000 euthanasia crimes