IIn 1922 Alfred Hoche a German psychiatrist co-authored a document demanding the extermination of persons he believed were a burden to society. In 1933 Adolph Hitler followed up on this by introducing obligatory sterilization of people with diseases he believed to be inheritable including mental retardation, schizophrenia, affective psychosis, and alcoholism. In July 1939 a plan was developed with the assistance of leading psychiatrists for the extermination of this group of people. Torrey and Yolken in their analysis of the literature believe that the entire population of people with schizophrenia (between 220,000 and 295,000 people) living in Germany at the time were either sterilized or killed. After the invasion of Poland the systematic murders of patients in various psychiatric hospitals were carried out. There are reports of only two psychiatrists who chose to stay with their patients and both perished. This plan to eliminate schizophrenia did not succeed probably because it is not entirely a genetic disease. We should never forget those whose lives were taken during this time and how and why they they were killed.