Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring
The economic strain of the Great Depression led Protestant charities and some members of the German medical establishment to advocate compulsory sterilization of the "incurable" mentally and physically disabled, people the Nazis called "Lebensunwertes Leben" (life unworthy of life). On 14 July 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses"), the Sterilization Law, was passed. "The New York Times" reported on 21 December that year: "400,000 Germans to be sterilized". There were 84,525 applications from doctors in the first year. The courts reached a decision in 64,499 of those cases; 56,244 were in favor of sterilization. Estimates for the number of involuntary sterilizations during the whole of the Third Reich range from 300,000 to 400,000.