In 1940, Nazi Germany had began using gas chambers to kill the unfit after being advised to do so by U.S. eugenicists
Support for the killing of the unfit began to slowly spead in the U.S. after 1911. in 1935, Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize-winning physician at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City wrote In his book Man the Unknown that âshould be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases.â Note that the successful pharmaceutical industry esblished by Auschwitz nerve gas creator IG Farben motivated John D. Rockefeller to fund the restructuring of American medical school. Additionally, In the late 19th century, John D. Rockefellerâs buisness advisor Fredrick Gates had him to open a medical research institute, Carrellâs place of education.
Nazi Germany began killing its mentally ill with âproper gasesâ in January 1940. It did so based on a simple eugenics rationale: Four months earlier, it had invaded Poland, and killing the mentally ill promised to free up hospital beds for the wounded, and also spare the state the expense of feeding them. Over the course of eighteen months, the Nazis gassed more than 70,000 mental patients. Program administrators even calculated the resultant financial benefits, carefully itemizing the foodâbread, margarine, sugar, sausage, and so onâno longer being consumed by those who had been killed.
Hitler called a halt to this systematic killing of the mentally ill on August 24, 1941; the gas chambers were dismantled and sent to concentration camps in the East, where they were reassembled for the killing of Jews and others âdevoid of value.â A path that had begun seventy-five years earlier with Francis Galtonâs study of the superior traits of the ruling English elite (see Eugenics began with SIr Francis Galtonâs assumption that desirable traits could be selected for in humans by selectively breeding the population), and had then wound its way through the corridors of American science and society, had finally arrived at Auschwitz.
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2002). Mad in America Chapter 3. UNFIT TO BREED (p. 103). New York, NY: Basic Books.