[legitster]

As a complication, it's important to state that concentration camps were not against international laws at the time! Pursing racist and eugenic policies was in vogue, and many of Germany's concentration camps were toured and audited by the Red Cross before the war!

It's because of the holocaust that we thankfully have changed our collective attitude about such things. But in 1939, people's knowledge of the racial atrocities happening was very restricted, so I don't think we can underrate just how naïve some people where at the time.

[marcosdumay]

I don't think eugenics by means of killing people was ever widely considered moral or even a gray area.

What happened a lot at the beginning of WWII was that people didn't know what was happening at the concentration camps. And yes, there were some twisted moral templates at the time based on racism and dehumanization.

[shadowgovt]

> I don't think eugenics by means of killing people was ever widely considered moral or even a gray area.

Oof, how I wish that were true. You may be interested in Pernick, Martin (1999): The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915.

Several nations (the US included) were well on their way to "Great Society" ideas of shaping the next generation by controlling genetics (be that in who reproduced or who was allowed to live). A lot of experiments ended abruptly when the Allies reached the camps, and a lot of politically-powerful institutions have kicked dirt over their own pasts to try and help people forget that's where we were headed.

(Quite a few experiments did not; forced sterilization wasn't outlawed in the US until, IIRC, the eighties).

[xhkkffbf]

You might want to read a bit more about Margaret Sanger and her little project called "Planned Parenthood."

[xhkkffbf]

Indeed, the US had their own camps that they filled with Japanese, Germans, Italians and a few others. Of course they were relatively nicer to the people placed in the camps.