www.sturejohannesson.com — © ABC News, December 21, 2005

ABC News: Sweden launched a probe on Wednesday to understand how eugenics, a theory on improving the human race used by Nazi Germany to justify the Holocaust, became broadly accepted in the Nordic State in the early 20th century. Sweden is now known for its strong social welfare system and outspoken advocacy for human rights, but in the past it has experimented with social engineering. This led to abuses such as the forcible sterilization of around 60 000 women in 1936-76.

  In 1922, the National Institute for Race Biology was founded with support from a range of political parties. The first of its kind in the world, the institute investigated whether race was a determining factor in illness or human character traits.

  Swedish authorities took the first steps toward a “racial hygiene” policy in 1921, when the State Institute for Race Biology was founded in Uppsala. It was the first institute of this kind in the world and a pattern for Kaiser Wilhelm Institute fur Rassenhygiene in Berlin, Germany. In 1934 the Swedish parliament adopted a law authorizing sterilization of the “mentally ill”. This legislation was extended in 1941 to allow sterilization to combat “antisocial behavior”.