The term was first used in post- war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The killings took place from September until the end of World War II in Europe in ; from , to , people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia now the Czech Republic. The Holy See announced on 2 December that the policy was contrary to divine law and that "the direct killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is not allowed" but the declaration was not upheld by all Catholic authorities in Germany.
Several reasons have been suggested for the killings, including eugenics , racial hygiene , and saving money. The informal continuation of the policy led to 93, "beds emptied" by the end of The number of people killed was about , in Germany and Austria, with about , victims in other European countries. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sterilisation of people carrying what were considered to be hereditary defects and in some cases those exhibiting what was thought to be hereditary "antisocial" behaviour, was a respectable field of medicine.
Canada , Denmark , Switzerland and the US had passed laws enabling coerced sterilisation. Studies conducted in the s ranked Germany as a country that was unusually reluctant to introduce sterilisation legislation. In July , the " Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring " prescribed compulsory sterilisation for people with conditions thought to be hereditary, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy , Huntington's chorea and "imbecility".
Sterilisation was also legalised for chronic alcoholism and other forms of social deviance. The law was administered by the Interior Ministry under Wilhelm Frick through special Hereditary Health Courts Erbgesundheitsgerichte , which examined the inmates of nursing homes, asylums, prisons, aged-care homes and special schools, to select those to be sterilised. The policy and research agenda of racial hygiene and eugenics were promoted by Emil Kraepelin.
The more severely burdened should not propagate themselves If we do nothing but make mental and physical cripples capable of propagating themselves, and the healthy stocks have to limit the number of their children because so much has to be done for the maintenance of others, if natural selection is generally suppressed, then unless we will get new measures our race must rapidly deteriorate.
