Within a year, 56,000 Germans had been sterilized; by 1935, 73,000; by 1939, 400,000, dwarfing the number of sterilizations performed in the United States. The procedure was so common that it had a nickname: Hitlerschnitte, “Hitler’s cut.” Americans took note. Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia’s Western State Hospital, lamented, “Hitler is beating us at our own game!”
