Medical and Racial Propaganda

Nazi Medical and Racial Policies

The Nazi Party professed to be a movement of law and order. Its propaganda frequently referred to the German democracy’s supposed failure to address crime and social problems. Not surprisingly, the Nazis argued that much of the country’s problems stemmed from the failure to use radical corrective measures to stop those problems at their source.

Schooled in eugenic thought, the Nazis argued that crime and social problems were rooted in biological and racial causes, not the environment. To cure such ills, the Nazis advocated radical medical and racial policies.

Propaganda to Induce Fear

Nazi propagandists and “race hygienists” whipped up fears that crime and degeneracy would grow unless immediate action was taken. This 1936 propaganda chart, “The Terrible Legacy of a Female Drunkard (Alcoholic),” depicts the social threat posed by severe alcoholism.

It uses crude stereotypes to show that, over the course of 83 years, a female alcoholic would have 894 descendants. Of that number, 40 would live in a poor house (almshouse), 67 would be hardened criminals, 7 would be murderers, 181 would be prostitutes, and 142 would be beggars. Of the 894 descendants, 437 (close to 50 percent) would be “asocial” and would cost the state 5 million Reichsmarks (about $2.5 million in 1936, or more than $40 million in 2022).

Propaganda such as this aimed to promote public support for the regime’s law of July 14, 1933, which called for the sterilization of people suffering from severe alcoholism. In common with other forms of eugenic propaganda, it used a cost-benefit analysis to justify those radical measures.