During the first half of the 20th century European civilization embarked on a journey into the abyss: it moved from being the epicenter of sophistication, civilization, high culture, and knowledge, to become home to the most savage episodes of collective-barbaric-violence ever witnessed in the history of mankind.
The Daily Beast: How WWI produced the Holocaust
Beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia Program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945 some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust.
