FTR-32 Fascism, Eugenics and Euthanasia (Four 30-minute segments) $17.00 for both parts.
As the debate over physician assisted suicide intensifies in the United States and elsewhere, it is increasingly important to understand some of the far-reaching political implications of this issue. This program focuses on the relationship between the international eugenics movement and the international euthanasia movement, as well as their seminal influence on the Nazi racial laws and extermination programs. The Third Reich’s racial laws were profoundly influenced by American eugenics philosophy and legislation. In turn, the eugenics movement in Germany gave rise to the "T-4" euthanasia program, which was the beginning of and the operational foundation of Nazi genocide. Among other issues, the broadcast discusses the seminal American influence on the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Ill Progeny" (the first of the Nazi racial laws) and discusses the Knauer case. The latter was the euthanizing of a deformed child (at the request of the parents). This killing opened the judicial door to official, state authorized killing in Nazi Germany. (There is a similar case working its way through the U.S. court system, as of early 1995.) (See also: FTR #’s 32_02, 102.) (Recorded on 1/26/97.)

FTR-32 Part II The Right to Die Movement
In Nazi Germany, the extermination programs which resulted in the horrors of Auschwitz began with the "T-4" euthanasia program. The precedent that opened the door for state-authorized killing and that led to the euthanasia program and the extermination of the Jews and others was the Knauer case. In the Knauer case, Hitler authorized the termination of a seriously deformed infant at the request of its parents. This program examines the issue of physician-assisted suicide and the right-to-die movement against the background of the Nazi euthanasia experience. (The Nazi euthanasia program and the Nazi racial laws were an outgrowth of the international eugenics movement and were strongly influenced by American eugenics thinking and legislation.) In addition to examining the pending legal decisions concerning physician assisted suicide and the views of Dr. Timothy Quill (one of the leading advocates of euthanasia), the broadcast highlights the graduation of physician assisted suicide into the termination of disabled people and the chronically ill and elderly. In particular, the broadcast discusses the precedent established in the Netherlands (which legalized physician-assisted suicide). In that country, all the legal guidelines which physicians were required to observe have become obsolete through systematic violation. The Dutch program, which should inform the American experience in this regard, has gravitated down the "slippery slope" and has become ominously reminiscent of the Third Reich’s T-4 program. (See also: FTR #’s 32, 102.) (Recorded in March of 1997.)