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These horrific war crimes reveal a humanity that isn\u2019t good or bad, but absolutely sadistic.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Human nature is an amorphous thing: Optimists and pessimists can look at the same human history and present diametrically opposed assessments of the human spirit.<\/p>\n The optimist will point to acts of selflessness and historical displays of a collective will toward waging progress in making their case that human nature is essentially \u201cgood.\u201d The pessimist will present ceaseless wars, slavery, and a host of other social ills peppering human history to construct a human nature that is more savage than humane.<\/p>\n Both are correct in their evaluations of the human condition. But it is acts of particularly relentless, unfettered violence that shock both the optimist and pessimist. These acts present not a humankind that is basically good, bad, or a little bit of both, but one that is absolutely sadistic.<\/p>\n Here are four of those very acts, war crimes that highlight the inhumanity of, well, humanity:<\/p>\n In August 1939, healthcare providers throughout Germany received a missive from the Reich Ministry of the Interior. The note stipulated that all physicians, nurses, and midwives report newborn infants (under the age of three) who appeared to suffer from severe mental or physical disabilities.<\/p>\n Two months later, in October, these health experts started suggesting that parents send disabled children to certain pediatric clinics in Germany and Austria for treatment. The catch was that children sent to these clinics would not be helped; they would be killed.<\/p>\n This program \u2014 started by Adolf Hitler and which eventually comprised the near totality of Germany\u2019s psychiatric community \u2014 was called the T4 program<\/a>, coming from the address of the enterprise: Tiergartenstrasse 4.<\/p>\n T4 essentially created a \u201cdeath panel\u201d: A bureaucracy of physicians was charged with deciding who had a \u201clife unworthy of life<\/a>,\u201d and who did not. To make such a decision, T4 planners distributed surveys to public health officials, hospitals, institutions, and elderly homes, placing particular emphasis on establishing the patient\u2019s ability to work.<\/p>\n Nazi emphasis on productivity shaped much of their justification for euthanasia. Indeed, they argued that funds could \u201cbetter\u201d be used on those who were not insane or suffering from a terminal illness \u2014 and that those who did led \u201cburdensome lives\u201d or were \u201cuseless eaters\u201d were fit only to die.<\/p>\n And that they did. Patients were shipped off to these \u201cclinics,\u201d where they entered \u201cshower facilities\u201d that were actually gas chambers. Dead bodies were disposed of in ovens. Their ashes were placed in urns and sent back to their families, along with a falsified account of their death.<\/p>\n The T4 program \u2014 which \u201cofficially\u201d ended in 1941 and which the U.S. Holocaust Museum estimates<\/a>killed at least 5,000 physically and mentally disabled German children \u2014 was a chilling vision of things to come. It was Germany\u2019s first mass killing program, preceding the extermination camps that took shape some years later.<\/p>\nT4 Euthanasia Program<\/h2>\n
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