Nazi eugenics

Nazi eugenics were a set of beliefs and rules that were very important to Nazi Germany during World War II. These beliefs said that the Aryan race was the master race – the best race of all – and all other races were inferior (not as good). There were also many other people who the Nazis believed were "life unworthy of life," like people with disabilities. These ideas about eugenics were at the center of the Nazis' beliefs and eventually helped lead to the Holocaust.^[1][2]

Because they did not want these "inferior" people in German society, the Nazis decided to get rid of them, using many different strategies. They began with people with disabilities. The Nazis forced more than 400,000 people with disabilities to be sterilized (to have surgery that would make it impossible for them to have children).^[3] They also killed over 300,000 people with disabilities in a program called Action T4.^[3][4][5] In this program, the Nazis sent people with disabilities to places like Hadamar ^[2] and Hartheim^[6] Euthanasia Centres to be killed. These people were killed with lethal injections and poison gas, in vans and gas chambers at the Euthanasia Centres.^[2]

Using what they learned by killing people with disabilities, the Nazis soon built extermination camps (death camps). The Nazis' goal was to use these death camps to exterminate (kill all of) the Jewish and Roma people in Europe.^[6] The Nazis also sent many other people who they thought were inferior to the death camps and to concentration camps, where they were forced to work as slaves.^[7]

1. ↑ Peter Longerich (15 April 2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Lifton, M.D., Robert Jay (1986). The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04904-4. Archived from the original on 2007-09-14. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} "Close-up of Richard Jenne, the last child killed by the head nurse at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
4. ↑ Kershaw, Ian (2001) [1991]. Hitler: Profiles in Power. Longman Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0582552777.
5. ↑ Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell (May 15, 2006). Cultural Locations of Disability. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226767321.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} Friedlander, Henry (1995). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2208-6.
7. ↑ Suzanne E. Evans (2004). Forgotten crimes: the Holocaust and people with disabilities. Ivan R. Dee. p. 93. ISBN 1566635659.