Chicago Sun Times March 23, 2005 BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN

In November 1940, just one month before his assignment was due to end and 13 months before Hitler declared
war on the United States, William L. Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin, began to uncover disquieting evidence of one aspect of the Nazi government’s then-unknown crimes against humanity. Oddly worded death notices began to appear in German provincial newspapers.

Shirer already suspected that the Nazis were contemplating a policy of the euthanasia of the mentally ill and incapacitated. He looked into the matter further. Shirer concluded that the Nazis were murdering the mentally ill.

It was a secretive and shameful business. Whatever Nazi theory held about the unfit, the Nazis feared the German people would resist the murder of innocent people with mental illnesses. Even in a society hardened by war and brutalized by Nazi propaganda, they took refuge in euphemisms. The official Nazi form letter sent to relatives included this sentence: “In view of the nature of his serious, incurable ailment, his death, which saved him from a lifelong institutional sojourn, is to be regarded merely as a release.”