Thread by @marinamaral2

#OnThisDay in 1933, the Nazi eugenics programme begins with the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring requiring the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders - many of which were not, in fact, genetic.

"(1) Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of a surgical operation, if the experience of medical science shows that it is probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect."

"(2) For the purposes of this law, any person will be considered as hereditarily diseased who is suffering from any one of the following diseases:

a. Congenital Mental Deficiency
b. Schizophrenia
c. Manic-Depressive Insanity
d. Hereditary Epilepsy

e. Hereditary Chorea (Huntington’s)
f. Hereditary Blindness,
g. Hereditary Deafness,
h. Any severe hereditary deformity.
i. Any person suffering from severe alcoholism may be also rendered incapable of procreation."

The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilization laws in the United States, which generally were only applicable on people in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.

Propaganda slide featuring two doctors working at an unidentified asylum. The caption reads, “Life only as a burden.” Germany, 1934. — US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Marion Davy

The 1933 law created a large number of "Genetic Health Courts", consisting of a judge, a medical officer, and medical practitioner, which "shall decide at its own discretion after considering the results of the whole proceedings and the evidence tendered".

This poster from a eugenics exhibition in the 1930s reads, “Sterilization is Liberation, Not a Punishment. // “Who would want to be responsible for this?”

If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilized, the decision could be appealed to "Higher Genetic Health Court". If the appeal failed, the sterilization was to be carried out, with the law specifying that "the use of force is permissible".

In the first year of the law's operation, 1934, 84,600 cases were brought to Genetic Health Courts, with 62,400 forced sterilizations. Nearly 4,000 people appealed against the decisions of sterilization authorities; 3,559 of the appeals failed.

In 1935, it was 88,100 trials and 71,700 sterilizations. By the end of the Nazi regime, over 200 "Genetic Health Courts" were created, and under their rulings over 400,000 people were sterilized against their will. t.ly/6Cla