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For the Nazis, the individual was completely subordinated to the Volk. The victims of T4 were considered genetically inferior, so they would not give birth of the Germans of tomorrow, and also unable to work for the present needs of their Volk, so for the Nazis they served no purpose, and were thus killed.
To be considered a useless mouth to feed, being disabled was not enough. After all, a woman who has lost a leg in an accident can still serve her people and fatherland by giving birth to a lot of soldiers and soldier-birthers. Only being disabled because of a genetic disease was worthy of death by CO poisoning in a van, because in that case she might contaminate the gene pool of the next generation.
The difference between eugenics and Rassenhygiene seems like a particularly fine hair to split.
Eugenics is basically: "Not all genetic variants are equally valuable and we should strive to increase the quality of our gene pool."
Rassenhygiene is: "The gene pool (not that they had the word, but certainly an equivalent concept) of our noble Volk is under assault from both without and within. Other, lesser races try to contaminate our noble bloodlines with their inferior heritage, and undesirable traits manifest themselves sometimes even within pure-blooded families. Like dog breeders, we must therefore prevent our women from coupling with inferior men and cull anyone whose blood would weaken the German Volk no matter their heritage."
If this does not convince you, consider the positive eugenics the Nazis engaged in. Lebensborn was the program led by Himmler himself. This included finding racially superior children among the Untermenschen in the occupied territories, which were then kidnapped and Germanized (or gassed, if they the SS doctors thought they had genetic problems or were not racially valuable enough to contribute to the Volk).
So I am with @self_made_human here, Nazi Germany went all-in on both positive and negative eugenics, albeit with a clear flavor of racial purity.
Noted. My basic point is this: numerous Western nations practiced eugenics back then, including Germany. With the exception of the latter, these policies did not entail extermination or open racial discrimination anywhere. To address these two Nazi policies and then categorize them as ‘eugenics’ is thus biased and frankly propagandistic in my view.
Unfortunately or not, that applies to eugenics as a whole. At its core it’s a collectivist policy that subordinates the autonomy of the individual to the interests of ‘the people’, putting an obvious strict limit on reproductive freedom if it is deemed necessary.
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