Aktion T4

Aktion T4 was a campaign of mass murder carried out in Nazi Germany. It targeted people with physical disabilities and those with mental illnesses. The name "T4" is an abbreviation for Tiergartenstrasse 4. This was the address of a Chancellery department in Berlin. This office recruited and paid the staff involved in the killings.

The program was based on the Nazi policy of "racial hygiene." This was the belief that the German people needed to be cleansed of "racial enemies." These enemies included the disabled and the mentally ill. Nazi leaders believed these people were not useful to the state. They also wanted to save money by reducing the cost of asylums. Some leaders believed that only the strongest genes should be passed on to future generations.

The mechanism of the program relied on medical authority. Certain physicians were authorized to select patients. They chose people deemed "incurably sick" after a critical medical examination. These doctors would then administer what they called a "mercy death." To hide their actions, they often used deceit. They told parents that children were going to "special sections" for better treatment. Instead, the children were killed using toxic chemicals like phenol.

The killings followed a specific sequence of administrative steps. In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note." This document was backdated to September 1, 1939. It gave permission to his physician, Karl Brandt, and Philipp Bouhler, to begin. The program included the creation of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses. This committee helped identify children with conditions like Down syndrome or physical malformations.

There were several distinct stages and locations used for the killings. Extermination centers were set up at six existing psychiatric hospitals. These locations included Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein.

The program also targeted infants. More than 5,000 children were killed by 1941. Some doctors even suggested killing by gradually decreasing food supplies.

History shows that the program grew out of earlier medical ideas. In the early twentieth century, sterilization was a common medical field. Laws in countries like the United States and Canada allowed coerced sterilization. In 1933, Germany passed the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring." This law led to the compulsory sterilization of about 360,000 people between 1933 and 1939. The T4 program was a much more violent escalation of these earlier policies.

The scale of Aktion T4 was immense. Between 275,000 and 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals. This occurred in Germany, Austria, occupied Poland, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Originally, records showed 70,273 victims, but new evidence from East German archives increased this number. About 200,000 victims were in Germany and Austria, while 100,000 were in other European countries.

Many people protested against these actions. The Holy See announced in 1940 that killing innocent people was against divine law. In 1941, Clemens von Galen, the bishop of Münster, led widespread protests. His intervention was one of the strongest protests against Nazi policy. Despite these protests, the killings continued informally until 1945. The technology used in T4, such as lethal gas, was later used in other mass murder operations. After the war, many perpetrators were tried and convicted for crimes against humanity.