1940s – Nazi Use of Involuntary Euthanasia Changes Public Perception of Euthanasia in the US

“When the 1940s dawned, many in the euthanasia movement believed it was only a matter of time before euthanasia became legal in the United States…

But euthanasia advocates were in for a surprise… World War II broke out, and as Hitler’s war machine Marched eastward across Europe…news of Nazi atrocities against mental patients and handicapped children filtered back to America… As word spread in the late 1940s, the euthanasia movement found itself increasingly on the defensive, scrambling to deny that the form of euthanasia it supported was the same as Nazi murder.”