Label:
Eugen Fischer, about 1938
Description:
DNAi location:
Chronicle>In the Third Reich>taking the torch
Hitler read Fischer's textbook Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene while in prison at Landsberg and used eugenical notions to support the ideal of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). When he came to power in 1933, Hitler charged the medical profession with the task of implementing a national program of race hygiene – a key element of which was passage of an act permitting involuntary sterilization of feebleminded, mentally ill, epileptics, and alcoholics. Within a year, more than 50,000 sterilizations were ordered, and doctors competed to fill sterilization quotas. By the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, an estimated 400,000 people had been sterilized.
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