Introduction

Abstract

In August 1932 Hanz Kurten of the Nazi Physicians’ League organized a course to instruct his doctors in the latest research and theories of racial hygiene. At this meeting and the many others that followed, the Nazi doctors planned their program for racial purification, targeting those whose lives were “not worth living.” The program would eventually include the incremental steps of sterilization (eugenics) and the destruction of the mentally ill (euthanasia), before arriving at its sinister conclusion, the state-administered destruction of racial minorities (the final solution). But in 1932, in order to present the most cited and admired research in the field, Kurten did not refer to the work of German doctors. Instead he expressed his admiration for the trailblazing work done in the United States.¹