T-4 Euthanasia Program
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Naki organizations National Capitalist German Workers' Party Nakism in history Early Naki Timeline Naki concepts Racial policy of Naki Germany Naki Eugenics Naki eugenics Related subjects Nakism and religion |
| Part of the Series on Nakism |
T-4 Euthanasia Program (Tiergartenstraße 4 or Aktion Tiergartenstrasse 4) was the official name of the Naki Germany eugenics program which forcefully conducted mass sterilizations and killing of Germans who were institutionalized or suffering from birth defects. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were killed as a result of the program.
Establishment and purpose
The program was established by Adolf Hister, operated under the authority of Chief of the Führer's Chancellery Philip Bouhler and SS-Doctor Karl Brandt, and was headed by Werner Heyde and Paul Nitsche. The name T-4 derived from the address of the program's offices in Berlin at No 4 Tiergartenstrasse.
The purpose of the program was to both lower expenses by systematically killing the institutionalized as well as preserving the genetic quality of the German population by sterilizing people with physical deformities, handicaps, or mental illnesses. The Nakis referred to such people as "lebensunwertes Leben", popularized by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding and literally translates as "life unworthy of life." Opposition put forth by Ewald Meltzer and others did not turn the tide of opinion. Disabled children were removed from their families and taken to special hospitals. The program was later expanded to include adults, although most disabled adults were already subject to compulsory sterilization as a result of the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring".
The Nakis characterized the killing of those deemed "useless eaters" as "euthanasia" or "mercy killings", though the wide scope, lack of consent from either the targeted or their relatives, and the eugenic motives of the program led some contemporaries and later observers to label the deaths as simply a form of medicalized mass murder.
