The statement that 'Nazis persecuted disabled people' is not entirely correct. It would be more accurate to state that the ideologues and officials of the Third Reich tried to minimize or even completely eliminate the societal impact of hereditary and congenital conditions present in the population, while continuing the social welfare policies introduced in the German Empire and Weimar Republic. Social policies in the Third Reich were characterized by the idea of Volksgemeinschaft ('people's community' or 'people's commonwealth') according to which people should cooperate on all levels, supporting themselves and making concessions for the good of the whole society. When applied to the question at hand, it generally meant that the people were obliged to support those who suffered injuries doing their duty (be it military or not) but at the same time it stigmatized people unable to productively contribute to the society (such as people congenitally ill, but also unemployed, addicts etc.). While the former notion remained in force until the end of Third Reich, at least in theory, the latter escalated quickly, culminating in an infamous 'T4 Aktion'.

On 14th July 1933, German lawmakers issued a statute mandating compulsory sterilization of all people suffering from conditions presented as hereditary in Law of for the Prevention of Hereditary Afflicted Offspring (ger. Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses). Contrary to the title, the conditions listed included hereditary ones (hereditary syndromes causing blindness, deafness, physical deformites, chorea [Huntington's diease] and epilepsy) but also severe psychiatric conditions, such as schizoprenia, depression, bipolar disorder or serious mental deficiency regardless of their etiology. Chronic alcoholism was considered a possible cause of compulsory sterilization at the discretion of Hereditary Health Court (ger. Erbgesundheitsgericht). In 1935 the reasons for sterilization were expanded to include all German nationals of African descent born in Germany after the Great War. Africans who migrated to Germany were not subjected to this law but as non-Aryans they were still persecuted after the amendment of The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (more commonly known as one of the 'Nuremberg Laws') issued on 26th November 1935.

The idea that some people are not worthy of living predates the Nazism by decades, first being formulated in Germany by the lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche who, in their book 'Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens' (Permission for Elimination of the Lifes Unworthy of Living) where they presented the idea that people with severe and untreatable psychological and psychiatrical conditions that make them unable to fend for themselves are a ballast to society and it is in the interest of the general population to eliminate such individuals. Still, Binding and Hoche did not invent such concepts as they were the product of eugenic ideas enjoying limited popularity since the late 19th century. They were, however, resonating well with the 'New People' (ger. Neues Volk) theme of the National Socialist propaganda and this is why Nazis incorporated it into their politics with Hitler recorded advocating the euthanasia of the 'weakest' children as early as in 1929. As mentioned above, this notion escalated and while in 1933 law proposed only compulsory sterilization, in the middle of 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, Reich Ministry of the Interior released confidential guidelines for reporting births of children that would be unable to live on their own (defined as showing significant psychosomatic conditions, such as micro- and hydrocephaly, absence of limbs, severe malformation, paralysis or cerebral palsy) with the suggestion that these children should be euthanized. To execute these guidelines, the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Conditions (ger. Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden) led by Dr. Karl Brandt (Hitler's personal physician) was founded few weeks later. Later in the same year, similar measures were taken to compile the lists of people 'criminally insane' (perpetrators of crime deemed unfit for trial and hospitalized) and those hospitalized for more that five years due to disorders deemed irrecoverable or terminal, such as severe epilepsy, chorea, paralysis, third-stage syphilis, dementia, schizophrenia etc. Over 70.000 of such patients were then killed between 1940 and 1941 in 'euthanasia centres'. In addition, all patients of psychiatric hospitals and similar facilities in conquered Poland were summarily executed. Many historians agree that the methods used for elimination of patients laid the groundwork for the operation of death camps and racial genocide later during the war.

Veterans of the Great War were not considered 'undesirable' in any way. Quite opposite. In 1933, Hans Oberlindober, head of the NSDAP Directorate for the Support of War Victims (ger. Referat Kriegsopferversorgung, from 1934 Nationalsozialistische Kriegsopferversorgung (NSKOV), a separate social welfare organisation affiliated with NSDAP), essentially Veteran Support, claimed that the government of the Weimar Republic were mistreating veterans and considered them as any other invalid while not recognizing the sacrifices they made for the country. In similar vein, after the eugenic laws went into force, Nazi publications stressed that these measures in no way apply to people who were disabled in the war or in workplace accidents. To secure support of the disabled veterans, NSDAP promised the veterans better pensions, various concessions and preferential employment in government office jobs. Despite these promises, the situation of veterans in the Third Reich did not change significantly in comparison with their treatment in Weimar Republic. Furthermore, many veterans receiving pensions due to psychological conditions resulting from wartime trauma (depression, anxiety, stress disorders etc.) were removed from the pension roll. In the final years of war, NSKOV even started to form the special units from lightly disabled veterans to bolster the faltering war effort. It goes without saying that the image of the veterans in an official propaganda was heavily sanitized and idealized so that it could be used as a recruitment aid rather than a deterrent.