This, perhaps, was the final contribution of Nazism to genetics: it placed the ultimate stamp of shame on eugenics. The horrors of Nazi eugenics inspired a cautionary tale, prompting a global reexamination of the ambitions that had spurred the effort. Around the world, eugenic programs came to a shamefaced halt. The Eugenics Record Office in America had lost much of its funding in 1939 and shrank drastically after 1945. Many of its most ardent supporters, having developed a convenient collective amnesia about their roles in encouraging the German eugenicists, renounced the movement altogether.
