In the fall of 1933, a few months after the sterilization law was passed, Germany's minister of justice proposed a law that would allow "mercy killing" or euthanasia. Like the sterilization law, it was widely discussed at home and abroad. In a front-page story about the proposal, The New York Times quoted a Nazi official who claimed the law would "end the tortures of incurable patients" "in the interests of true humanity." The courts would decide who was incurable in much the way they determined who would be sterilized.² Although few Germans objected to the sterilization law, many religious leaders were outraged at the idea of murdering "the unfit."

As a result of an outcry from ministers and priests, the proposal was quietly tabled, but Adolf Hitler refused to give up on it. Throughout the 1930s, he and Joseph Goebbels, his minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, built support for the "euthanasia" program by describing epileptics; alcoholics; individuals with birth defects, hearing losses, mental illnesses, and personality disorders as well as those who were visually impaired, or suffered from certain orthopedic problems, as "marginal human beings."

Hitler and Goebbels did not invent propaganda. The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to counter Protestant teachings in the 1600s. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I. Hitler and Goebbels employed it in similar ways. They, too, wanted to counter the teachings of their opponents, shape public opinion, and build loyalty. But they took the idea to new extremes.

Click here to view examples from the Nazis' propaganda campaign.