Originally posted by mossme89
reply to post by camaro68ss

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By this logic, we should not give politicians quality health care either. I'm pretty sure many of them qualify as "mentally retarded." Anyone else with me on this?

AN OPEN SECRET On July 14, 1933, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” This law called for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. With the law’s passage the Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against the disabled, regularly labeling them “life unworthy of life” or “useless eaters” and highlighting their burden upon society.

The term “euthanasia” (literally, “good death”) usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however, “euthanasia” referred to the systematic killing of the institutionalized mentally and physically disabled. The secret operation was code-named T4, in reference to the street address (Tiergartenstrasse 4) of the program's coordinating office in Berlin.

Ashes from cremated victims were taken from a common pile and placed in urns without regard for accurate labelling. One urn was sent to each victim's family, along with a death certificate listing a fictive cause and date of death. The sudden death of thousands of institutionalized people, whose death certificates listed strangely similar causes and places of death, raised suspicions. Eventually, the Euthanasia Program became an open secret.

On August 18, 1939, the Reich Ministry of the Interior circulated a decree compelling all physicians, nurses, and midwives to report newborn infants and children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability. At first only infants and toddlers were incorporated in the effort, but eventually juveniles up to 17 years of age were also killed. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 5,000 physically and mentally disabled children were murdered through starvation or lethal overdose of medication.

The plan was set in motion when the Nazi regime issued numerous laws and regulations during the 1930's to implement its eugenic and racial program. German science was rapidly synchronized with Nazi ideology, especially after "any scientists opposed, as well as those with the wrong background, were fired." Friedlander cites a couple of cases in which scientists actually took a harder line toward the unfit than Himmler himself, who wanted to spare illegitimate children.

Although "Blood Protection Laws" were a crucial steppingstone toward the final solution, Jews and Gypsies were not the immediate targets. The exclusion of Jews, a significant group of German people, took a number of years. The sterilization of the handicapped, however, could begin immediately, and in 1934 the courts imposed sterilization in 62,463 cases.

By 1939, the period of sterilization was ending, the period of the killings had begun. Although the party and the state sometimes struggled over who had the final say-so in implementing "euthanasia," the killing system depended on the cooperation of bureaucrats, physicians, nurses, and staff, all of whom deluded the parents of those who were killed to the financial gain of the state. Many physicians were eager to use the deaths to advance their own training as well as their economic and professional status; the euthanasia killings served as a laboratory for the "advancement of science." Friedlander concludes that it is "not surprising that Mengele used Auschwitz as a research laboratory."