As explained by Ms. George and documented by posters from the day, the Nazis believed thoroughly in a vicious corruption of Malthusian economics. That is, they believed there would inevitably be shortages of food, and it should not be wasted on so-called undesirables, including mentally retarded people (who supposedly tended to reproduce much faster than careful, prudent Aryans of good mental health) and unemployed vagabonds, who were portrayed as weighing heavily on the shoulders of the German working man.

However, by what were described then as good, sensible Nazi economic policies, the “unfit” could be “controlled” and the available food could feed the blond gods and goddesses of the Thousand Year Reich. (Malthus had never recommended such actions, believing natural disasters and famines would control population.)

Image Credit... Illustration by Philip Anderson

Hadamar was closed in 1941 as a euthanasia center because of protests from a nearby Catholic bishop. Three of his priests were beheaded for passing out copies of his sermon. But then shortly thereafter, it was reopened for other nauseating killing purposes, one of which was to murder half-Jewish children who had one parent at a concentration camp and one at labor or at war.

The half-Jewish child would often be in a ward of some kind and would be, as Ms. George put it in Nazi terms, “a useless eater.” Just like mentally ill, divorced or unemployed people, this child would be consuming resources needed for good Aryans, and thus it was scientifically sensible to give them an overdose of barbiturates and bury them at the small graveyard near the mental hospital.

The logic was simple: Fewer “useless eaters,” more food for the Reich. Exhausted forced laborers from Russia and the Balkan states were killed there for the same reasons. (There are two Star of David gravestones in the cemetery and the doors are kept locked to prevent vandalism by neo-Nazis.)

As I thought about this horror show and walked among the markers, I wondered if we in America were unintentionally following any similarly sickeningly mistaken ideas. Is there some Thomas Malthus in our economics policy-making world who is proposing seemingly scientific theories that will eventually be misused to take innocent life?