About this episode

This episode explores how Nazi Germany's forced sterilization program was influenced by American laws and scientific frameworks.

On July 14, 1933, Nazi Germany signed a law mandating the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. What most people don't know is that the Nazis built that program on American blueprints, laws, court decisions, and scientific frameworks developed in the United States and admired in Berlin. In this episode, we follow the paper trail from American universities and state legislatures to a Berlin signing ceremony and then to the Nuremberg trials, where Nazi lawyers cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent in their own defense. The story isn't about monsters. It's about what happens when credentialed experts become certain they know enough to make irreversible decisions about other people's bodies and how democratic societies build roads they never intended to travel.

People in this episode

Host: Richard G Backus

Topics covered

• forced sterilization
• Nazi Germany
• American influence
• legal precedents
• ethical decisions
• democratic societies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nazi Germany, U.S. Supreme Court

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