- Headline
-
Nazi Eugenics Act Faces Protests
- Sub-Headline
- Opposition Growing to German Sterilization Law Which Starts Working Jan. 1.
- Publication Date
- Wednesday, December 27, 1933
- Historical Event
-
German Law Authorizes Sterilization for Prevention of Hereditary Diseases
This database includes 890 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 18
- Author/Byline
- AP
- Article Text
- BERLIN, December 27 (AP.)—A storm of opposition faces Nazi law reformers as their pet project, sterilization, goes into effect January 1.
Typical of the Nazi effort to extend complete dictatorship over the citizenry, it is only one of the many striking measures of legal reform scheduled for the new year, profoundly changing German criminal, civil and military law.
Sounding an alarm, Pope Pius condemned sterilization in a message to the world Saturday and it was expected this will be followed by a protest from Cardinal Bertram, reaching Germany's 30,000,000 Catholics from all pulpits of the faith in this country. Many Protestant clergymen are believed ready to join the opposition.
Eugenic Courts Created.
The law creates 1,700 eugenic courts to administer its provisions. It is the first of its kind to be applied on a national scale in modern history and is the nearest thing, sociologists say, since ancient times to the practice of leaving the fit to survive.
Elimination of the misfit by sterilization is the keystone of the Nazi racial policy. Time alone will tell whether, as the Nazis believe, Germany becomes a nation of efficient, physically superb specimens, who Hitler in his book, "My Fight," says are bound to become "masters of the earth." - History Unfolded Contributor
- Kara C.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: German Law Authorizes Sterilization for Prevention of Hereditary Diseases
- The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933-1939
- Mentally and Physically Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era
Bibliography
Aly, Götz, Peter Chroust, and Christian Pross. Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Bryant, Michael S. Confronting the "Good Death": Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005.
Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: "Euthanasia" in Germany c. 1900-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany, 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Caplan, Arthur L., editor. When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, 1992.
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich. Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press, 1995.
Kühl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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