Indeed. The Nazis took special care when occupying Eastern Europe to seek out and kill anyone who could qualify as an intellectual (see https://en.wikipedia.org

Indeed. The Nazis took special care when occupying Eastern Europe to seek out and kill anyone who could qualify as an intellectual (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion). They wanted to reduce the Slavic peoples of the east to a slave caste, a dumb, unthinking labor force suitable only for hard manual labor. So anyone who had demonstrated a facility for the work of the mind -- scientists, artists, teachers, civil servants, and so forth -- had to go.