Lebensborn e.V. was a secret, SS-initiated, state-registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "healthy" Aryans, based on Nazi eugenics. Lebensborn was established by Heinrich Himmler, and provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of children by likewise "racially pure" and "healthy" parents, particularly SS members and their families. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalized by the Nazis for disabled and non-Germanic children, but strictly punished otherwise.
A Lebensborn birth house
Christening of a Lebensborn child, c. 1935–1936, Rhenish Hesse region
Kidnapping of Polish children during the Nazi-German resettlement operation in Zamość county
Polish children in Nazi-German labour camp in Dzierżązna near Zgierz
The social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany were composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed "undesirable".
Eugenics poster at the exhibition Wonders of Life in Berlin in 1935 showing demographic projections under the assumption of higher fertility of the "inferior" (Minderwertige) relative to the "superior" (Höherwertige)
Hitler's order for Action T4
Propaganda for Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too." from the Office of Racial Policy's Neues Volk.
A bus used to take patients to Hartheim Killing Facility
