eventually refined by medical scientists to include euthanasia. The driving force was the elimination of perceived degeneracy at various levels – genetic, social, identity and practice, and the elimination of such genetic material in society. Lifton wrote about this in his book The Nazi Doctors: [...] sexology and defense of homosexuality [...] were aspects of "sexual degeneration, a breakdown of the family and loss of all that is decent," and ultimately the destruction of the German Volk. [...] medicine was to join in the great national healing mission, and the advance image of what Nazi doctors were actually to become: the healer turned killer. [...] Sterilization policies were always associated with the therapeutic and regenerative principles of the biomedical vision: with the "purification of the national body" and the "eradication of morbid hereditary dispositions." Sterilization was considered part of "negative eugenics" [...] It is argued that the number of gay people who perished in the Holocaust was quite low in comparison to other Holocaust victims, and confined to Germany itself, based on estimates that of 50,000 gay people who came before the courts, between 5,000 and 15,000 ended up in concentration camps. However, many of those who came before the courts were directed (or volunteered) to undergo sterilisation/castration; they would be included with others who, in line with the historic shift in German society (that started with Westphal, and developed through Krafft-Ebing to Magnus Hirschfeld, of homosexuality being seen as having a neurological, endocrinological or genetic basis), were treated for homosexuality as a medical rather than criminal matter. Those treated by psychiatrists and thereby included in the T4 project to eliminate people with alleged medical disorders would not be reflected in the rates of those dealt with as criminals. After the Second World War, the United States became more intolerant of homosexuality, but many gay men and lesbians decided to reveal their gay identities after meeting others in the military. Many gay bars and villages were created, and a whole gay subculture formed. Campaigns for gay rights began to develop, initially in the UK. Towards the end of the 1960s homosexuality began to be decriminalised and de-medicalised in areas such as the UK, New Zealand, Australia, North America and Europe, in the context of the sexual revolution and anti-psychiatry movements. Organized opposition to gay and lesbian rights began in the 1970s. Public opinion Societal attitudes towards homosexuality vary greatly in