Sterilizations had begun January 1 of that year. Within forty-eight hours, the Reich Interior Ministry’s eugenics expert announced that the list would include a vast cross-section of the population-from children as young as ten to men over the age of fifty. The ministry added that the first to be sterilized would not be residents of “institutions,” but those who were “at large.” Quickly, the procedure became known as the Hitlerschnitte, or “Hitler’s cut.” During 1934, the Third Reich sterilized at least 56,000 individuals-approximately one out of every 1,200 Germans.
