The high rate of sterilization in Nazi Germany encouraged the U.S. and other countries to pick up the pace
The U.S. was boadly supportive of the eugenics legislation passed in Germany in 1933. Over the next six years, Germany sterilized 375,000 of its citizens. The pace of eugenic sterilization during this period picked up in the United States as well, and the Scandinavian countries also sterilized a number of their “defectives.” A eugenic treatment born in the United States had spread into a half dozen European countries. However, Germany was employing it with a fervor missing in the United States, which led some American eugenicists to fret that Hitler was now “beating us at our own game.” While America was “pussy-footing around” with the procedure, complained Leon Whitney, field secretary for the American Eugenics Society, Germany was making “herself a stronger nation.”
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2002). Mad in America Chapter 3. UNFIT TO BREED (p. 101). New York, NY: Basic Books.