Therefore a corrective measure in favor of the better quality must intervene…for here a new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and health”.One of the first laws passed by the Nazis after taking power in 1933 was the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Defective Offspring, with language based partly on the eugenic sterilization law of California.Genetic health courts were established across Nazi Germany in which two doctors and a lawyer helped determine each case of who should be sterilized.Over the next four years, the Nazis forcibly sterilized an estimated four hundred thousand Germans.But simply sterilizing those with disabilities was not enough for the Nazis to realize their eugenic dreams.In 1939, they launched a secret operation to kill disabled newborns and children under the age of three.This program was then quickly expanded to include older children and then adults with disabilities considered to have lebensunwertes leben, or lives unworthy of life.Making clear the conceptual origins of these actions lay in scientifically and medically legitimated eugenics, medical professionals oversaw the murder of an ever-widening group of undesirables in “gassing installations” around the country.