Lest we forget: Aktion T4 (Nazi Germany's killing of "less desirable")

[steve2470]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4

Aktion T4 (German, pronounced [akˈtsi̯oːn teː fiːɐ]) was a postwar name for mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany.[4] The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with T4.[5][c] Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death" (Gnadentod).[7] In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note", backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to implement the programme.

The killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945; from 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).[8] The number of victims was originally recorded as 70,273 but this number has been increased by the discovery of victims listed in the archives of the former East Germany.[9][d] About half of those killed were taken from church-run asylums, often with the approval of the Protestant or Catholic authorities of the institutions.[10] The Holy See announced on 2 December 1940 that the policy was contrary to the natural and positive Divine law and that "the direct killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is not allowed" but the declaration was not upheld by some Catholic authorities in Germany. In the summer of 1941, protests were led in Germany by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens von Galen, whose intervention led to "the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any policy since the beginning of the Third Reich", according to Richard J. Evans.[11]

Several reasons have been suggested for the killings, including eugenics, racial hygiene and saving money.[12] Physicians in German and Austrian asylums continued many of the practices of Aktion T4 until the defeat of Germany in 1945, in spite of its official cessation in August 1941. The informal continuation of the policy led to 93,521 "beds emptied" by the end of 1941.[13][e] Technology developed under Aktion T4 was taken over by the medical division of the Reich Interior Ministry, particularly the use of lethal gas to kill large numbers of people, along with the personnel of Aktion T4, who participated in Operation Reinhard.[17] The programme was authorised by Hitler but the killings have since come to be viewed as murders in Germany. The number of people killed was about 200,000 in Germany and Austria, with about 100,000 victims in other European countries.[18]

[demigoddess]

1. I was born a few years after WWII. Studied WWII in school

and lots of 50s movies on the subject. When I was a kid, young kid, I dreamed I was in a concentration camp and they were experimenting on changing how joints worked. Elbows to be precise. How I felt in that dream was almost exactly how I feel today with this virus and the orange cheeto in charge. We all must be experiencing what people did at that time.

[Igel]

2. I haven't heard anybody talking this.

I've heard that in case of something that can help one person but if there are 2 people needing it, somebody has to decide.

Could flip a coin. Could have some philosophy guiding it, even if just "first come, first serve." Every decision has some bias, some drawback, because ultimately the controller of the resource has to decide who gets it and who doesn't.

Most views are utilitarian, which tends to be harshly rationalist.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

3. Trump is telling us to go to work,socialize

Go die for money ,the market.

He keeps Hitler's book my life on his nightstand for fucks sake.

[appalachiablue]

4. 'Life Unworthy of Life' Lebensunwertes, no right to live, in Nazi Germany

Eugenics was studied and adopted in Britain, the US, Spain, Germany and more since the late 19th c. Germans were also aware of how Native Americans were detained and abused in camps, fed rations as low as 500- 800 calories per day.

- (Wiki). The phrase "life unworthy of life" (in German: 'Lebensunwertes Leben') was a Nazi designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime of the time, had no right to live. Those individuals were targeted to be euthanized by the state, usually through the compulsion or deception of their caretakers. The term included people with serious medical problems and those considered grossly inferior according to the racial policy of Nazi Germany. This concept formed an important component of the ideology of Nazism and eventually helped lead to the Holocaust.[1] It is similar to but more restrictive than the concept of "Untermensch", subhumans, as not all "subhumans" were considered unworthy of life (Slavs, for instance, were deemed useful for slave labor).

The euthanasia program was officially adopted in 1939 and came through the personal decision of Adolf Hitler. It grew in extent and scope from Aktion T4 ending officially in 1941 when public protests stopped the program, through the Action 14f13 against concentration camp inmates. The euthanasia of people with disabilities continued more discreetly until the end of World War II. The methods used initially at German hospitals such as lethal injections and bottled gas poisoning were expanded to form the basis for the creation of extermination camps where the gas chambers were built from scratch to conduct the extermination of the Jews, Romani, communists, anarchists, and political dissidents.[2][3][4]...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life



-Euthanasia propaganda poster from Germany c. 1939 stating how much it costs in Reichsmarks to keep this person alive.