When the international system for the protection of human rights was developed after the second world war, it was largely in response to Nazi atrocities. The Nazis had held a collective belief that the German nation was a living organism and that its well-being was threatened by "useless eaters" and "life unworthy of life."[1] The German medical profession, 45% of whom belonged to the Nazi Party in the early 1930s, was empowered to tend to the health of the national organism. The psychiatric branch of the profession led the way by "medically killing" some 80,000 -- 100,000 hospitalised mental patients. The expertise the Nazi psychiatrists acquired in killing off their mental patients was later applied to Jewish people.

How Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Violates Basic Human Rights
By Richard Gosden