Preventing the Transmission of Hereditary Disease

Racism was a central ideological element of National Socialism, which aimed to develop a supposedly superior “Aryan based on the elimination of all supposedly inferior elements from the German “national body”.

The Nazi government introduced “racial hygiene” (eugenic) measures soon after the “seizure of power”. Such action was based on the “Law Preventing the Transmission of Hereditary Disease” of July 14, 1933. People with genetic disorders such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's disease, hereditary blindness, deafness or genetic abnormalities as well as alcoholism were subjected to forced sterilization once a specially constituted “genetic health court” so decided beforehand and entirely “legally”.

These comparatively early coercive measures with their irrationally fabricated biologistic context of justification became one of the first major touchstones of Christianity’s moral steadfastness (Nowak). During the twelve years of Nazi dictatorship, approximately 350,000 people with supposed “hereditary diseases” were thusly robbed of their capability to reproduce. These racially motivated coercive measures constituted the prelude for later “euthanasia programs”, the first major “policy of extermination” of people deemed “inferior” by the National Socialists.