.4 million votes cast on the party's behalf clinched 107 seats in the Reichstag, as compared to the 12 seats held the year before. Mengele grew ever more interested in eugenics, the study of genetic reasons for human deformities and imperfections. In 1931, Mengele became a member of the Steel Helmuts, a veteran servicemen organization who held many of the same beliefs of Hitler, however was not yet affiliated with the Nazi party. Despite Josef's disinterest in the Nazi party, his father, Karl Sr., did take an interest, diabolically scheming to further his business. In Munich, Hitler began influencing many medical experts and academic scholars of the times through his passionate speeches about "unworthy lives," and race purification. One such scholar, Dr. Ernst Rudin, lectured to Mengele on a regular basis at the University, planting the seed that would one day create a cold-blooded killer. Rudin outwardly supported Hitler, believing that "unworthy" individuals should not live and doctors hold the responsibility of "taking care" of those "unworthy" people. In fact, Rudin's boisterous views were heard loud and clear by Hitler himself, and in 1933, Rudin was recruited to play an intricate part in creating the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health. The law demanded the sterilization of individuals exemplifying unfit characteristics, like physical abnormalities, manic depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia, hereditary blindness, or Huntington's disease. Surrounded by scientifically racial propaganda, Josef became increasingly interested in genetic abnormalities and diseases, and sought out, through his research, to prove his assertion. In years to come, it is this burning desire to prove his assertions about human genetics and abnormalities that would turn him into the cold-hearted monster of Auschwitz. Soon after the Nazis gained complete power in 1933, the SA absorbed the Steel Helmuts organization, yet, ironically, Mengele, ...
