How insane asylums led to Nazi gas chambers | Andrew Scull and Lex Fridman

Summary by Krater

A guest on a podcast discusses the dark history of eugenics, forced sterilization laws in the United States, and the role of psychiatry in Nazi Germany, including the T4 program.

From the video

Answers: What is the history of eugenics, forced sterilization, and psychiatry's role in Nazi Germany?

• history of eugenics
• forced sterilization in the United States
• Buck v. Bell Supreme Court ruling
• Nazi T4 program and psychiatric euthanasia
• Rockefeller Foundation funding of psychiatry
• Ernst Rüdin and psychiatric genetics

What it concludes

• Over 30 U.S. states enacted forced sterilization laws before the Nazis adopted their own in 1933, directly inspired by American models.
• California led U.S. forced sterilizations before WWII and sent eugenics literature to German officials.
• The 1927 Supreme Court ruling upholding sterilization in Buck v. Bell was cited by Nazis in their Nuremberg defense.
• The T4 program systematically murdered between 200,000 and 300,000 mental and physical patients using gas chambers disguised as showers.
• The Rockefeller Foundation made psychiatry its top funding priority around 1930, directing $11.5 million over a decade and funding research in 23 countries.
• Ernst Rüdin pioneered psychiatric genetics under Kraepelin, co-authored the 1933 Nazi sterilization law, and helped justify the killing of psychiatric patients.