Adolf Hitler had war aims for transcending the German domination of Europe. In the event of war he could carry out policies which peacetime conditions rendered difficult to conceal, even in a totalitarian state. Hitler believed that the German people were not yet hard enough to accept these policies, though he hinted at them in both his writings and in public speeches.
Hitler wanted to eliminate from the national community the " racially unfit ", individuals with hereditary diseases and the congenitally ill. In a secret decree of august 1939, Hitler ordered the right to be extended to qualified physicians to grant a " charitable death " to the "incurably ill " persons put to death between 1939 and the autumn of 1941 ran as high as 100.000. But as a result of public uproar provoked in part by Bishop Galen of Munster, the programme was terminated in 1941.
One of Goebbels major tasks was the mobilisation of the German media for justifying measures taken by the regime. In the case of the "euthanasia" programme the Nazis had to be especially careful about popular sensibilities. The film produced to bring the nation to accept legal murders committed by the state, was by far more palatable to the average German than the actual murders would have been. I Accuse concerns a young women stricken with multiple sclerosis a disease which turns her into a human vegetable before killing her. There is no cure for the women, but she is afraid of the agony of dying. Her husband accedes to her request that he kill her. The husband is put on trial, when he emotionally sums up the case by declaring that he is now the accuser, and that there is something wrong with the present law. The film gives the impression that the audience must decide as to the rights and wrongs of this problem. But audiences left the theatre feeling sympathy for the accused, clever propaganda had brought this opinion about.
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