SOURCE 1: International Hygiene Exhibition, 1911 promotional poster: The eugenics movement pre-dated Nazi Germany. A 1911 exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden included a display on human heredity and ideas to improve it. The exhibition poster features the

Enlightenment’s all-seeing eye of God, adapted from the ancient Egyptian “Eye of Ra,” symbolizing fitness or health.–Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

SOURCE 2: Dr. Otmar von Verschuer examines twins at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. As the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s Department for Human Heredity, Verschuer, a physician and geneticist, examined hundreds of pairs of twins to study whether criminality, feeble-mindedness, tuberculosis, and cancer were inheritable. In 1927, he recommended the forced sterilization of the “mentally and morally subnormal.” Verschuer typified those academics whose interest in Germany’s “national regeneration” provided motivation for their research.–Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem

SOURCE 3: "Adolf Hitler as the Doctor of the German Nation," National Health Guardian, 1935. Rudolf Hess referred to Nazism as "applied biology."–National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD

SOURCE 4: Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into “races” based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene.–US Holocaust Memorial Museum

SOURCE 5: Heads of racial types, created by anthropologists from plaster molds of the faces of living subjects, were mass-produced in Nazi Germany for use in exhibitions and racial hygiene classes. These heads portray the “Dinaric” (Balkan), “Negro” and “Jewish” racial types.–Blinden-Museum an der Johann-Agust-Zeune-Schule fur Blinde, Berlin

SOURCE 6: A popular health manual, German Gold (1942) advised: “Mothers, you must absolutely avoid alcohol and nicotine during pregnancy and when nursing. They hinder, they harm, they disrupt the normal course of pregnancy. Drink fruit juice. Fruit juice is nutritious and restorative!” Producing healthy, “fit” mothers and children was an overriding aim of the Third Reich.–US Holocaust Memorial Museum

SOURCE 7: Nazi officials at the “The Miracle of Life” exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.–National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

SOURCE 8: A clandestine photograph taken by a farmer who lived in the vicinity of Hartheim, showing smoke rising from the chimney of the crematorium. Operation T-4 targeted mostly adult patients in private, state, and church-run institutions. From January 1940 to August 1941, more than 70,000 people were killed by gassing in one of six specially staffed and equipped facilities in Germany and Austria. By the end of World War II, an estimated 200,000 adults were murdered in various “euthanasia” programs.–Verein Schloss Hartheim, Alkoven, Austria; photo by Wolfgang Schuhmann; Diakonie-Kork Epilepsiezentrum, Kehl-Kork, Germany

SOURCE 9: “Don’t Go Blindly into Marriage!” Eugenics had the support of many scientists worldwide, including the US. This drawing illustrated a 1924 pamphlet that urged couples to be informed about the health, including genetic health, of prospective spouses. This image was first published by Louisiana’s Department of Health.–US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden

SOURCE 10: Students at the Berlin School for the Blind examine racial head models circa 1935. Students were taught Gregor Mendel’s principles of inheritance and the purported application of those laws to human heredity and principles of race. During the Third Reich, German born deaf or blind, like those born with mental illnesses or disabilities, were urged to submit to compulsory sterilization as a civic duty. –Blinden-Museum an der Johann-August-Zeune-Schule für Blinde, Berlin

SOURCE 11: Dr. Eugen Fischer reading Heredity Journal. Dr. Eugen Fischer, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity from 1927 to 1942, authored a 1913 study of the racially mixed children of Dutch men and Hottentot women in German southwest Africa. Fischer opposed “racial mixing,” arguing that “Negro blood” was of “lesser value” and that mixing it with “white blood” would bring about the demise of European culture. After 1933, Fischer adapted his institute’s activities to serve Nazi antisemitic policies. He taught courses for SS doctors, served as a judge on Berlin’s Hereditary Health Court, and provided hundreds of opinions on the paternity and “racial purity” of individuals, including the Mischlinge offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish German couples.–Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem

SOURCE 12: Dr. Ernst Wentzler treats a child with rickets. Dr. Wentzler’s Berlin pediatric clinic served many wealthy families and high-ranking Nazi officials. Although Wentzler developed methods to treat premature infants or children with severe birth defects, he supported ending the lives of the “incurably ill” and served as a primary coordinator of the pediatric “euthanasia” program, evaluating patient forms and ordering the killing of several thousand children.–National Library of Medical Science, Bethesda, MD

SOURCE 13: “You Are Sharing the Load! A Hereditarily Ill Person Costs 50,000 Reichsmarks on Average up to the Age of Sixty,” reproduced in a high school biology textbook by Jakob Graf. The image illustrates Nazi propaganda on the need to prevent births of the “unfit.” –US Holocaust Memorial Museum