part one.

So I finally finished part one of my book. I found this section extremely fascinating. Although the topic is extremely morbid and, I have to admit, causes me nightmares, I can't seem to put the book down. In  part one, Lifton examines Nazi racism and its intricacy. He discusses how biological determinism had an impact on the Nazi party and how that contributed to their prevalence in German society. The book goes into detail about the mass sterilization program, which began in the summer of 1933. The program sterilized over 350,000 people deemed unfit for propagation. Lifton goes on to discuss the euthanasia program of 1939, which was the secret killing by different mean like gassing, starvation, and injections. Under great protest, the program ended in 1941; although it only lasted 2 years, the program claimed 100,000 lives. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of part one was the fact that all the doctors that were interviewed for the book believed that they did nothing wrong -- they believed that they had to do away with "life unworthy of life." Who has the right to target a race and eliminate them from society? Although the Nazi party was in charge of a majority of Europe at one point, they did not have the right to exterminate a race from their area. The points and ideas brought up in this section were very interesting and I can't wait until I finish the preceding section.