August 24, 1941 – World War II: Hitler halts the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally and physically ill
On August 24, 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered the discontinuationof the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally and physically ill in response toprotests in Germanyled by the Bishop of Munster, Clemens von Galen. Pope Pius XII had earlierdenounced the program, stating in December 1940 it violated Divine law and thatthe “killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is notallowed”. Despite the official stoppage in August 1941, the euthanasia programsecretly continued until Germany’sdefeat in 1945. It was launched in September 1939.
T4 (later given the name “Aktion T4” after the war) was NaziGermany’s program of mass killing of the severely mentally and physically illpeople in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and occupied territories, Austria,Poland, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day CzechRepublic). The reasons for its implementation were eugenics, reduce suffering,racial purification, and cost savings for the government.
In the latter stages, patients were killed en masse withcyanide poison in gas chambers.
(Taken from Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)
Genocide and slavelabor Because of the failure of Operation Barbarossa and succeedingcampaigns, Germanywas unable to implement the planned mass-scale transfer of targeted populationsto the Russian interior. Elimination ofthe undesired populations began almost immediately following the outbreak ofwar, with the conquest of Poland. The killing of hundreds of thousands ofcivilians occurred in hundreds of incidents of massacres and mass shootings intowns and villages, reprisals against attacks on German troops, scorched earthoperations, civilians trapped in the cross-fire, concentration camps, etc.
By far, the most famous extermination program was theHolocaust, where six million Jews, or 60% of the nine million pre-war EuropeanJewish population, were killed in the period 1941-1945. German anti-Jewish policies began in theNuremberg Laws of 1935, and violent repression of Jews increased at theoutbreak of war. Jews were rounded upand confined to guarded ghettos, and then sent by freight trains toconcentration and labor camps. Bymid-1942, under the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” decree, Jews weretransported to extermination camps, where they were killed in gaschambers. Some 90% of Holocaust victimswere Jews. Other similar exterminationsand repressions were carried out against ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Poles,and other Slavs and Romani (gypsies), as well as communists and other politicalenemies, homosexuals, Freemasons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. In Germany itself, a clandestineprogram implemented by German public health authorities under Hitler’s orders,killed tens of thousands of mentally and physically disabled patients,purportedly under euthanasia (“mercy killing”) procedures, which actuallyinvolved sending patients to gas chambers, applying lethal doses of medication,and through starvation.
Some 12-15 million slave laborers, mostly civilians fromcaptured territories in Eastern Europe, were rounded up to work in Germany,particularly in munitions factories and agriculture, to ease German laborshortage caused by the millions of German men fighting in the various frontsand also because Nazi policy discouraged German women from working in industry. Some 5.7 million Soviet POWs also were usedas slave labor. As well, two millionFrench Army prisoners were sent to labor camps in Germany,mainly to prevent the formation of organized resistance in France and for them to serve as hostages to ensurecontinued compliance by the Vichygovernment. Some 600,000 Frenchcivilians also were conscripted or volunteered to work in German plants. Living and working conditions for the slavelaborers were extremely dire, particularly for those from Eastern Europe. Some 60% (3.6million of the 5.7 million) of Soviet POWs died in captivity from variouscauses: summary executions, physical abuse, diseases, starvation diets, extremework, etc.
