Action T4 was the Nazis’ attempt to save money / the Aryan race by “euthanizing” tens of thousands of “unfit” individuals. It last till the concentration camps and a more efficient (I hate to use that word) killing system was set up.
Anyway, did it change anything? Is there any evidence that Germany has any less (or more) inherited disorders?
I’m pretty certain the answer is a combination of “no” and “there’s no way to tell,” owing to the presence of sporadic mutation, teratogens, recessive genes, and vast movements of people in the last 70 years. Nonetheless, I’m curious. Anyone want to take a stab?
I am not aware of any studies, but it would be pretty much impossible for a program that only killed a few tens of thousands over a period of a few years to have had any significant effect on a population of about 70 million. Many “unfit” individuals may have had defects due to developmental causes rather than genetics. For those defects due to recessive genes, the pool of genes remaining in the population would have been many times larger than those showing the defect.
And of course you would have to place this in the context of the immense population loss in the course of the war. Germany lost more than 4 million soldiers, who would have been among the fittest of the population, plus perhaps a million or more civilians, whose deaths would have been essentially at random. Compared to these figures, killing a few tens of thousands of defectives would be trivial.
the people who got killed by that program were inmates of mental institutions - not a category of people likely to reproduce a lot in the best of circumstances. Plus, one also wonders if there were many women among them since for women it is usually easier to get support from family or from significant others and avoid ending up institutionalized even if they are unable to function properly in society by themselves. So my WAG would be that the talk about the gene pool there was pure BS for (internal) propaganda reasons whereas the whole point was cost savings.
What must have had more of an impact was compulsory sterilization which, per Nazi eugenics - Wikipedia , affected 400,000 people. A lot of them may have been women who lived normal lives but fit the checklist for the, shall we say, preventative medical measures of the universal healthcare system of the day.
If you presented the same idea to the public tomorrow, a large proportion would not only support the idea but would want to expand it to anyone on welfare.
And yet, it has historically been the Progressives who loved it so much. But as always, the Left ever forgets its sins and then blames then on the opposition.
Hitler??? Leftist??? “The devil can quote scripture for his purpose.”
Thanks, Colibri.
I would back up the earlier post - compared to the sizeable loss of prime specimens in the Army, and random city bombing deaths, the eradication of those unlikely to breed anyway would probably have a minimal result.
If these were true genetic problems, then they are the result of combining two faulty genes. Unless an effort were made to sterilize anyone related who might share one of those defective genes, but showed no symptoms - the gene pool remains as “polluted” as ever.
Plus, many problems are developmental or cause-unknown; nobody is really sure what causes some mental illnesses, and especially back then, things like German (!!) measles were a cause of birth deformities. We know that Down’s for example is a developmental accident that can happen to any child.
So certainly, the target “purpose” was misguided in that it would not really have the desired result. As a cost savings, I’m sure it worked; but not invading Europe would probably have been a much more effective savings.
Eugenics seems somewhat logical if done right. (That’s the catch!!)
I have minimal problem with sterilizing people who are demostrably and incurably permanently incapable of caring for children or providing for them. However, if we were to adopt a policy like “sterlize the incurably metally retarded” - first, often the cause is not genetic, so don’t call it “eugenics” if it’s not genetic; second, some conditions (i.e. schizophrenia) may be controlled by medication and may sometime in the future be truly cured - so “permanently incapable” is subjective. Who knows? Some clever person may determine a way to grow brain cells and cure what we think of as incurable…
In a way it’s a blessing for the person too, since it removes the need to supervise their sexual activity to prevent pregnancy; however, nowadays there are implants and other reversible methods.
To get back to the OP, it’s a far cry from that to “kill all of them.”
SOme people with true genetic issues are self-limiting too. TO the extent that we can test for Tay-Sachs or sickle-cell or Downs, or do so in utero, is probably already having an effect -and possibly a greater one than the reich’s.
The Russian invasion may have had an effect if the Russians had a serious medical screening process for Army applicants’ fitness. More likely it was just ability to survive the rigors of the front which did the fitness selecting.
