Aktion T4
Background
Aktion T4 was a postwar designation for a series of mass murders of the physically and mentally disabled and emotionally unstable carried out by Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1941, and continued unofficially until the end of the Third Reich in 1945. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with T4. Certain German physicians were authorized to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death" (Gnadentod).
Origin and Implementation
The program was named after Tiergartenstraße 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, the headquarters of the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege (General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care), led by Philipp Bouhler, the chief of Hitler's Chancellery, and Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician. The program was authorized by Adolf Hitler, but the killings have been performed by medical staff and police officers throughout Germany, Austria (then part of the Reich) and the occupied territories of Poland, and later in other European countries.
Victims and Methods
Victims of Aktion T4 included those with physical and mental disabilities, those deemed "racially undesirable", and those classified as "social misfits". The victims were identified by a reporting system established by the Reich Health and Welfare departments and were transported to killing centers where they were murdered, primarily through lethal injection or gassing. The program also included a component of forced sterilization, targeting those with hereditary illnesses.
Impact and Legacy
The Aktion T4 program represented one of the most extreme manifestations of the Nazi regime's ideological foundations, including the belief in racial purity, the devaluation of life deemed "unworthy of life" (Lebensunwertes Leben), and a drive towards cost-efficiency and rationalization of healthcare resources. The program served as a model for the subsequent genocides and exterminations carried out by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
See Also
Euthanasia - The practice of intentionally ending a life to relieve pain and suffering. Nazi eugenics - The Nazi Party's (NSDAP) policy of improving the genetic features of the human species by discouraging reproduction by persons who have genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits. Holocaust - The World War II genocide of the European Jews by Nazi Germany.