The Hidden Victims of National Socialist Germany: Forced Sterilization and Persecution of Overlooked Groups

By @greywarden100
Posted on June 4, 2025

History often buries stories that deserve to be told. The atrocities of National Socialist Germany didn’t just target one group—they cast a wide net of cruelty, rooted in a twisted ideology of racial “purity.” Today, I want to shine a light on one of their earliest and most insidious policies—the forced sterilization law of 1933—and the groups it devastated: disabled people, Roma, and Black Germans. I’ll also dig into the broader persecution of other groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and explore how the United States, including the Ku Klux Klan, played a role in shaping these policies—with direct evidence from Hitler’s own words in Mein Kampf. This is a story of pseudoscience, hatred, and lives destroyed. Let’s dive into the facts.

The 1933 Sterilization Law: A Weapon of Control

On July 14, 1933, just months after the National Socialists seized power, they passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. This wasn’t just a law—it was a tool to control who could exist. It mandated forced sterilizations for anyone deemed “unfit” to pass on their genes. We’re talking about people with disabilities, mental illnesses, or anything the National Socialists could label as “hereditary feeblemindedness.” The law listed nine conditions, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, and even alcoholism, but its vague criteria meant almost anyone could be targeted.

By 1945, an estimated 400,000 Germans were forcibly sterilized, often without consent or proper medical justification. Hereditary Health Courts, stacked with National Socialist loyalists, decided who would lose their ability to have children. This was about enforcing their vision of a “perfect” Aryan society. Their propaganda called these victims a “burden,” with one 1934 slide describing disabled people as “life only as a burden.” It’s chilling to think about.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Eugenics and the Nazi ‘Racial Hygiene’ Program.”

Who Did the National Socialists Target?

The 1933 law was a blunt instrument, wielded against multiple groups. Here’s who they went after:

• Disabled People: They were the primary target. If you had a physical or mental condition—whether real or just given a vague diagnosis—you were at risk. The National Socialists saw disabled people as a drain on society. This mindset led to the T4 euthanasia program, which murdered around 200,000–250,000 disabled individuals. The sterilization law was the first step, stripping away their right to a family before taking their lives.

• Roma (Gypsies): The Roma and Sinti, often called “Gypsies” at the time, faced brutal discrimination. The 1933 law didn’t name them explicitly, but its vague terms like “asocial” or “feebleminded” were used to justify sterilizing Roma starting in 1934. The National Socialists’ campaign against them, known as the Porajmos, killed up to 500,000 Roma. They were rounded up in camps like Marzahn before the 1936 Olympics and later sent to death camps. Their suffering deserves more attention.

• Black Germans: This is a story too often ignored. Black Germans, particularly mixed-race children from the post-World War I Rhineland occupation (derogatorily called “Rhineland Bastards”), were targeted for sterilization. In 1937, about 385 mixed-race adolescents were forcibly sterilized, often under horrific conditions. Hans Hauck, a Black German born in 1920, was sterilized without anesthesia and barred from marrying or having relationships with Germans. Black Germans were a small community—around 24,000 in the 1920s—but they faced the same racial hatred, with some ending up in camps or worse.

Sources:

• African American Registry, “Black History and Germany: Nazi Sterilization.”
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Sinti and Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era.”
• Clarice G. James, Double Trouble: The Burden of Race and Disability in Nazi Germany (2019).

A Wider Net of Persecution

The National Socialists’ racial ideology didn’t stop at one group. Their pseudoscientific obsession with “racial hygiene” targeted disabled people, Roma, Black Germans, political dissidents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others labeled “undesirable.” The T4 program gassed over 70,000 disabled people in specialized killing centers. Roma were deported en masse to camps like Auschwitz. Black Germans, though fewer in number, faced sterilization and sometimes death.

Jehovah’s Witnesses faced particularly harsh treatment because they refused to conform to National Socialist demands. Their faith demanded political neutrality and allegiance only to God, which clashed with the regime’s totalitarian ideology. They wouldn’t salute the swastika, join National Socialist organizations, vote in elections, or serve in the military—actions the regime saw as subversive. As early as April 1, 1935, the National Socialists banned their organization, the Watchtower Society, across Germany. Regional governments, especially in Bavaria and Prussia, broke up their meetings, seized their literature, and occupied their offices. A special Gestapo unit was created to track them, infiltrating their Bible study groups and compiling a registry of members.

The persecution was relentless. Over 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned, with around 2,800 sent to concentration camps like Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz, where they were forced to wear purple triangles to identify them. About 1,500 died, with 400 executed—often beheaded or shot—for refusing military service or denouncing the regime. Many were tortured to force them to sign declarations renouncing their faith, but most held firm. Families like the Kusserows in Bad Lippspringe endured repeated arrests and searches, with some members sent to camps for distributing religious materials. The National Socialists even targeted their children, taking them away to be reeducated in state facilities. Despite this, many Witnesses continued their religious activities underground, risking everything for their beliefs.

This was a regime that thrived on excluding anyone who didn’t fit their narrow vision of “purity.” It’s a stark reminder that hate doesn’t stop at one target when it’s given power.

Sources:

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.”
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany: From the 1890s to 1945.”
• Detlef Garbe, Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im ‘Dritten Reich’ (1999).

The American Connection: U.S. Eugenics, the KKK, and National Socialist Germany

The National Socialists didn’t invent their eugenics program in a vacuum—they drew heavily from the United States, a global leader in eugenics by the early 20th century. American sterilization laws, enacted in 33 states, targeted the “unfit”—often the disabled, mentally ill, or poor—with California sterilizing around 20,000 people between 1909 and 1979. The 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell upheld these practices, giving them legal legitimacy. American eugenicists like Harry H. Laughlin, whose Model Eugenic Sterilization Law shaped U.S. policies, were celebrated in Germany, with Laughlin receiving an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936 for his work on “racial cleansing.”

The National Socialists’ 1933 sterilization law, which affected over 400,000 Germans, was directly inspired by U.S. models, particularly in California and Virginia. German race hygienists studied these laws, adapting them to their “Aryan” ideology. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, became a hub for this exchange, with American eugenicists like C.M. Goethe boasting in 1934 that their work shaped National Socialist policies. Adolf Hitler’s admiration for American eugenics is clear in his own words in Mein Kampf (Volume 2, Chapter 2), where he wrote: “There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the American Union, in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigration on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalization, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the folkish state.” Here, Hitler praised the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which used eugenic principles to limit “undesirable” groups, seeing it as a step toward the racially “pure” society he envisioned.

But let’s not oversimplify—eugenics was a global movement, and Germany had its own pioneers like Alfred Ploetz, who coined “racial hygiene” in 1895. The National Socialists likely used American examples to justify plans they already had, rather than copying them outright. Still, the connection is undeniable, and it’s chilling to see Hitler’s own words endorsing American policies as a model for his regime’s racial agenda.

The Ku Klux Klan also played a role in this story, though not directly with National Socialist Germany. In the 1920s, the KKK embraced eugenics as “scientific” backing for its white supremacist agenda, targeting Black Americans, immigrants, and Catholics as threats to the “Nordic” race—a concept the National Socialists later adopted. The KKK promoted eugenic ideas through its newspaper, Fiery Cross, and supported policies like the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act, which National Socialist lawyers later studied. Eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, whose work the KKK championed, testified for that Act, claiming “new” immigrants were genetically inferior—a claim that resonated with National Socialist racial hygiene. American eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard, praised by the KKK, also influenced the National Socialist concept of the “untermensch” with his 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.

There’s no evidence the KKK directly collaborated with National Socialist Germany, but their shared obsession with racial purity amplified eugenic ideas in the U.S., which the National Socialists then drew upon. This connection forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about how American racism, including the KKK’s ideology, contributed to the global spread of eugenics—and the horrors it enabled in National Socialist Germany.

Sources:

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933–1939.”
• Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (1994).
• Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003).
• Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (1943).

Why We Need to Remember

The forced sterilization law of 1933 wasn’t a one-off. It was the National Socialists testing how far they could go in controlling lives. Disabled people, Roma, Black Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses—they were all victims of this pseudoscientific nightmare, fueled in part by American ideas the KKK helped spread, as Hitler himself admitted in Mein Kampf. By remembering their stories, we honor their humanity and remind ourselves what hate can do when unchecked. History isn’t just a lesson; it’s a warning.

References:

1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Eugenics and the Nazi ‘Racial Hygiene’ Program.” 2019
2. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Sinti and Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era.” 2019
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.” 2019
4. African American Registry. “Black History and Germany: Nazi Sterilization.” 2019
5. James, Clarice G. Double Trouble: The Burden of Race and Disability in Nazi Germany. 2019
6. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany: From the 1890s to 1945.” 2022
7. Garbe, Detlef. Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im ‘Dritten Reich.’ 1999
8. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933–1939.” 2022
9. Kühl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. 1994
10. Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. 2003
11. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. 1943