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Under the T4 program, the incurable, the physically or
mentally impaired, those with psychological problems and the

elderly were killed to ensure so-called racial purity. Children,
women and the elderly were subjected to the gas chambers, sim-
ply for being members of a different race, while thousands of
innocent people of the same race were slaughtered for being
viewed as weak and powerless. Hitler initiated this ruthless
campaign in 1939. The killings continued officially until 1941,
but on an unofficial basis until the final Nazi defeat in 1945.
T4 contained measures known as "Geheime Reichssache"
(Secret Reich Matters), and those charged with implementing
them were obliged to remain silent. One reason why little infor-
mation could be obtained about euthanasia in Nazi Germany is
that later, the personnel trained and employed within the pro-
gram were sent as soldiers to the most dangerous fronts. The
resistance partisans in Yugoslavia were known for killing enemy
troops rather than taking them prisoner. Most witnesses to the
euthanasia were sent to that particular front and eliminated.

In Fundamental Outline of Racial Hygiene, Alfred Ploetz was
one of the first to speak about the killing of the sick and handi-
capped. According to Ploetz, from the point of view of "the pro-
tection and hygiene of the race," it was a grave error for the sick
and weak to be protected and cared for (which is exactly what
should happen in a healthy society). According to his perverted
thinking, the weak were being protected and kept alive when
they ought to be eliminated. Ploetz was sufficiently heartless as
to maintain that the doctors' board should immediately kill a
handicapped or flawed newborn baby with a low dose of mor-
phine.
Others followed in Ploetz's footsteps. In 1922 the jurist Karl
Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published a book
supporting euthanasia titled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung leben-

The Social Weapon: Darwinism