It was, in fact, the extermination of the incurably ill and the mentally defective that prompted the most effective episcopal protest against the actions of the Nazi regime. In a sermon at the St. Lamberti Church at Munster, Cardinal Galen publicly revealed the facts of the top-secret euthanasia programme, and cried out: ‘Woe unto the German people when not only can innocents be killed, but their slayers remain unpunished!’ Details of the mercy-killing of about 70,000 patients were thereafter disseminated by word of mouth and clandestine publication. The effect of this revelation was such that within a few weeks of Galen’s sermon an order from the Fuhrer put a halt to the euthanasia programme, temporarily at any rate. Mercy-killings were in fact spasmodically continued but Church officials scotched the attempt to start the programme again on a mass scale by refusing to fill in questionnaires from the Ministry of the Interior on the health of asylum inmates. Anxious not to make martyrs of well-known Church leaders, the regime took no action against Galen, but, significantly, executed three Catholic priests at Lubeck who had distributed the text of Galen’s sermon among soldiers.

Richard Grunberger, The 12 Year Reich

While the Nazi extermination of Jewish people took place primarily on Polish territory, the murder of people with disabilities (viewed by the Nazi regime as “invalid” individuals) became public knowledge because it took place on German soil and interfered directly in Catholic and Protestant welfare institutions. Church leaders who opposed it – chiefly Bishop Galen and Theophil Wurm, the Lutheran Bishop of Württemberg – were able to rouse widespread public opposition. The regime initiated its euthanasia program in 1939. It targeted people with dementia, cognitive/mental disabilities, mental illness, epileptic, physical disabilities, children with Down’s Syndrome and people with similar afflictions. The programme systematically murdered more than 70,000 people between September 1939 and August 1941. After 1941 the killing continued unofficially, with the total number of deaths estimated at 200,000.

• Peter Hoffmann; The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane’s; London (1977); pg. 24
• Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Blessed Clemens August, Graf von Galen; web April 2013.
• Anton Gill; An Honourable Defeat; A History of the German Resistance to Hitler; Heinemann; London (1994), pg. 60
• (1994), Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany, C.1900 to 1945 CUP Archive; ISBN 0521477697

• From Wikipedia where there is lots more. The page was last updated August 1, 2022

It’s all such garbage. Since “healthcare” is batting zero cures 80 years later, I’m going to guess ‘incurably ill’ meant anybody foolish enough to get tangled up with licensed buffoons 80 years ago as well. 200,0000…that’s a day’s work, certainly no more than a week’s work, for some of these modern asshats. Who won that war?

A Closer Look at Mental Health in Germany – The Borgen Project

https://borgenproject.org › The Blog

Feb 28, 2021 — Germany has similar rates of mental illness to other developed nations, with around 31% of Germans diagnosed with at least one mental illness.

Health of people with impairments and disabilities in Germany

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles › PMC9009066

by F Prütz · 2022 — A large part of the population is affected by impairments and disabilities. Around 13% of people in Germany have an officially recognised disability, …