No, it started before, in the teens and twenties, and inspired the Nazis to some extent, who then took it to an industrial scale to the point of killing those deemed undesirable outright.
State eugenics boards were fairly common as were state-ordered sterilizations. It was regarded as a progressive, enlightened thing at the time, but is painted as being anything but now. The progressives have now progressed to just killing them in the womb, and are horrified at the actions of their ideological predecessors, feigned by the knowledgable among them, genuine among the naive.
There was actually a medical journal, “Journal of Eugenics” published in the early 1900s. One university I attended had the entire publication run of that journal in the library. I remember picking one up and thumbing through it; unfortunately, I do not remember what I read there.
Eugenics was considered the wave of the future, until the Nazis came along. Its adherents then changed its name, but the belief system is still with us.
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