On this date, 2 June
1948, 7 of the 23 defendants at the Doctors’ Trials who were sentenced to death were
executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison. I will post the information about
Hitler’s Personal Physician, Dr. Karl Brandt from Wikipedia.
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Portrait of Karl
Brandt as a defendant in the Medical Case Trial at Nuremberg. [Photograph
#06231]
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Born
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January 8, 1904
Mulhouse, Alsace-Lorraine |
Died
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June 2, 1948 (aged 44)
Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech |
Cause of death
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Execution by hanging
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Nationality
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German
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Occupation
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Personal physician of German dictator Adolf Hitler.
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Employer
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Adolf Hitler
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Known for
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Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation
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Political party
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National Socialist German Workers' Party
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Spouse(s)
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Anni Brandt, née Rehborn
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Children
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Karl Adolf Brandt
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Karl Brandt
(January 8, 1904 – June 2, 1948) was a German Nazi war criminal. He rose to the
rank of SS-Gruppenführer in the Allgemeine-SS and SS-Brigadeführer in the Waffen-SS.
Among other positions, Brandt headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia
program from 1939 onwards and was selected as Adolf Hitler's personal physician in August
1934. In 1942, he became Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. He was
involved in criminal human experimentation, along with his deputy Werner Heyde
and others. After World War II, Brandt was convicted of crimes against
humanity. He was hanged on June 2, 1948.
Early
life
Brandt
was born in Mulhouse in the then German Alsace-Lorraine territory (now in Haut-Rhin,
France) into the family of a Prussian Army officer. He became a medical doctor
and surgeon in 1928, specializing in head and spinal injuries. He joined the Nazi
Party in January 1932, and became a member of the SA in 1933. He became a
member of the SS in July 1934 and was appointed Untersturmführer. From the
Summer of 1934 forward, he was Hitler's "Escort Physician". Karl
Brandt married Anni Rehborn (born 1907), a champion swimmer, on March 17, 1934.
They had one son, Karl Adolf Brandt (born October 4, 1935).
Career
in the Third Reich
In
the context of the 1933 Nazi law Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses
(Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring), he was one of the
medical scientists who performed abortions in great numbers on women deemed genetically
disordered, mentally or physically handicapped or racially deficient, or whose
unborn fetuses were expected to develop such genetic "defects". These
abortions had been legalized, as long as no healthy Aryan fetuses were aborted.
On
September 1, 1939, Brandt was appointed by Hitler co-head of the T-4 Euthanasia
Program, with Philipp Bouhler. He received regular promotions in
the SS; by April 1944, Brandt was a SS-Gruppenführer in the Allgemeine-SS and a
SS-Brigadeführer in the Waffen-SS. On April 16, 1945, he was arrested by the Gestapo
for moving his family out of Berlin so they could surrender to American forces.
He was condemned to death by a court in Berlin. Brandt was released from arrest
by order of Karl Dönitz on May 2, 1945. He was placed under arrest by the
British on May 23, 1945.
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Jan Maria Michał Kowalski murdered at Hartheim Euthanasia Centre.
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Brandt's
medical ethics
Brandt's
medical ethics, particularly regarding euthanasia, were influenced by Alfred Hoche
whose courses he attended. Like many other German doctors of the period, Brandt
came to believe that the health of society as a whole should take precedence
over that of its individual members. Because society was viewed as an organism
that had to be cured, its weakest, most invalid and incurable members were only
parts that should be removed. Such hapless creatures should therefore be
granted a "merciful death" (Gnadentod). In addition to these
considerations, Brandt's explanation at his trial for his criminal actions -
particularly ordering experimentation on human beings - was that "...Any
personal code of ethics must give way to the total character of the war".
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Hitler's order for the
„Aktion T4“, which led to 70.000 people being killed.
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Life
in the inner circle
Karl
Brandt and his wife Anni were members of Hitler's inner circle at Berchtesgaden
where Hitler maintained his private residence known as the Berghof. This very exclusive group functioned as
Hitler's de facto family circle. It included Eva Braun, Albert Speer, his wife Margarete
Speer, Dr. Theodor Morell, Martin Bormann, Hitler's photographer Heinrich
Hoffmann, and Hitler's adjutants (and their wives) and secretaries. As members
of this inner circle, the Brandts had a residence near the Berghof and spent
extensive time there whenever Hitler was present. In his memoirs, Speer
described the familial but numbing lifestyle of Hitler's intimate companions
who were forced to stay up most of the night—night after night—listening to the
Nazi leader's repetitive monologues or to an unvarying selection of music.
Despite Brandt's personal closeness to Hitler, the dictator was furious when he
learned shortly before the end of the war that the doctor had sent Anni and
their son toward the American lines in hopes of evading capture by the
Russians. Only the intervention of Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer saved
Brandt from execution in the war's closing days. However, involvement in involuntary
euthanasia and Nazi human experimentation led to his conviction and execution
by the Allies on June 2, 1948.
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Death by hanging is
pronounced by a U.S. War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg upon Adolf Hitler's
personal physcian, 43-year old Karl Brandt. Brandt, who was also Reich
Commissar for Health and Sanitation, was indicted by the U.S. prosecution with
22 other Nazi doctors and SS officers on war crimes charges in the first case
of alleged criminals tried after the judgment in the International Military
Tribunal. The Tribunal found him guilty on all four counts charging him with
conspiracy in aggressive wars, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and
membership in the criminal SS organization. Among those criminal acts was his
participating in and consenting to using concentration camp inmates as guinea
pigs in horrible medical experiments, supposedly for the benefit of the armed
forces.
Brandt, who was
executioner of thousands of political, racial, and religious persecutees, was
hanged on June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison after the U.S. Military Commander
Gen. Lucius D. Clay and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the
Nuremberg Tribunal. In a long-winded speech that was finally muffled when the
black hood was thrown over his head, Brandt shouted arrogantly, "It is no
shame to stand on this scaffold; I have served my country as have others before
me."
Hitler was also once
imprisoned here in 1923, following his unsuccessful Munich putsch. He wrote
"Mein Kampf" during his confinement. [Original Descriptive Caption].
Date: 20 August 1947 Provenance: From Public Relations Photo Section, Office
Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Germany, APO 696-A, US Army. Photo
No. OMT-I-D-144. Citation: Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law
Library, Columbia University Law School, New York, N.Y. : TTP-CLS:
15-1-1-76.
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Trial
and execution
Brandt
was tried along with twenty-two others at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg,
Germany. The trial was officially titled United States of America v. Karl
Brandt et al., but is more commonly referred to as the "Doctors' Trial";
it began on December 9, 1946. He was charged with four counts: 1) conspiracy to
commit war crimes and crimes against humanity as described in counts 2 and 3;
2) War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent,
on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which
experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures,
atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the mass
murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as
aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections,
and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the
Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of concentration camp
inmates; 3) Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2
also on German nationals; 4) Membership in a criminal organization, the SS. The
charges against him included special responsibility for, and participation in,
Freezing, Malaria, LOST Gas, Sulfanilamide, Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration
and Bone Transplantation, Sea-Water, Epidemic Jaundice, Sterilization, and Typhus
Experiments.
After
a defense led by Robert Servatius, on August 19, 1947, Brandt was found guilty
on counts 2-4 of the indictment. With six others, he was sentenced to death by
hanging, and all were executed at Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948. Nine other
defendants received prison terms of between fifteen years and life, while a
further seven were found not guilty.
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