May 26, 1933

Nazi eugenics

The Reich government enacts a criminal-law amendment affecting consensual eugenic sterilization

The law did not contain the words "sterilization" or "eugenics." Its operative clause was a single sentence about consent and "good morals."

A criminal-code amendment, not a eugenics statute

On 26 May 1933 the Reich government enacted the Law Amending Criminal-Law Provisions, a broad criminal-code measure rather than a dedicated sterilisation statute.

Its new section 226a said that bodily injury performed with the affected person's consent was unlawful only when the act nevertheless offended "good morals". The text did not expressly mention sterilisation or eugenics.

It was signed by Adolf Hitler with the ministers Franz Gürtner, Wilhelm Frick and Werner von Blomberg, published on 29 May, and took effect on 1 June.

How the clause worked

Historians and medical scholars interpret section 226a as making consensual sterilisation for approved eugenic purposes legally possible, while allowing other voluntary sterilisations to be condemned as contrary to Nazi morality.

A procedure's legality therefore turned not merely on the patient's consent but on whether the state considered its purpose morally acceptable.

That significance is a historical interpretation of the section and of Nazi enforcement policy; the statute itself never named the practice.

The other law, seven weeks later

No compulsory sterilisation programme began on 26 May. The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, enacted on 14 July 1933 and effective 1 January 1934, created the Hereditary Health Courts and authorised compulsory sterilisation.

The legislating actor in both cases was the Reich government under the Enabling Act system, not the Nazi Party acting as a legislature, as the listing frames it.

An estimated 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised under the July law.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The date and text of the May 26 amendment are secure. What requires qualification is the event’s traditional label: the statute never named sterilization or eugenics, and its significance for eugenic sterilization is a historical interpretation of section 226a and Nazi enforcement policy.