Editing Nazi Germany (section)

=== Other persecuted groups ===
{{Main|Aktion T4}}
[[File:Neues Volk eugenics poster, c. 1937 (brightened).jpeg|thumb|upright=0.9|Poster from the Nazi Party's [[Office of Racial Policy (Nazi Party)|Office of Racial Policy]]: "60 000 RM is what this person with hereditary illness costs the community in his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too."]]
Action T4 was a programme of systematic murder of the physically and mentally handicapped and patients in psychiatric hospitals that took place mainly from 1939 to 1941, and continued until the end of the war. Initially the victims were shot by the ''Einsatzgruppen'' and others; [[gas chamber]]s and [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s using [[carbon monoxide]] were used by early 1940.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=138–141}}{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=75–76}} Under the [[Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring]], enacted on 14 July 1933, over 400,000 individuals underwent [[compulsory sterilisation]].{{sfn|Kershaw|2008|p=295}} Over half were those considered mentally deficient, which included not only people who scored poorly on intelligence tests, but those who deviated from expected standards of behaviour regarding thrift, sexual behaviour, and cleanliness. Most of the victims came from disadvantaged groups such as prostitutes, the poor, the homeless, and criminals.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=47–48}} Other groups persecuted and murdered included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, social misfits, and [[Holocaust#The political left|members of the political and religious opposition]].{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=759}}{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=45}}