Action T4 was a program, also called
Euthanasia Program, in
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
spanning October 1939 until August 1941, during which physicians killed 70,273 people specified in
Hitler'sAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
secret memo of September 1, 1939 as suffering patients "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination", but described in a denunciation of the program by
Cardinal GalenBlessed Clemens August Graf von Galen was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He received his education in Austria at the Stella Matutina . After his ordination he worked in Berlin at Saint Matthias, where he became close friends with Nuncio Eugenio...
as long-term inmates of mental asylums "who may appear incurable".
The Nuremberg Trials found evidence that German physicians continued the extermination of patients after October 1941 and evidence that about 275,000 people were killed under T4.
The codename T4 was an abbreviation of "Tiergartenstraße 4", the address of a villa in the
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
borough of
TiergartenThe Berliner Tiergarten is the name of both a large park in the centre of Berlin and a locality within the borough of Mitte. Before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin...
which was the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege). This body operated under the direction of
Philipp BouhlerPhilipp Bouhler was a Nazi German government official, SS-Obergruppenführer, head of the Führer's Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4....
, the head of Hitler's private chancellery, and Dr
Karl BrandtKarl Brandt was selected the personal physician of Adolf Hitler in August 1944 and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia program from 1939. As Major General Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation he was involved in criminal human experimentation, along with his deputy Werner Heyde...
, Hitler's personal physician. This villa no longer exists, but a plaque set in the pavement on Tiergartenstraße marks its location.
The euthanasia decree, written on Adolf Hitler's personal
stationeryStationery has historically meant a wide gamut of materials: paper and office supplies, writing implements, greeting cards, glue, pencil case etc.-History of stationery:...
and dated 1 September 1939, reads as follows:
Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].
Background
It is argued by some scholars that the T4 program developed from the Nazi Party's policy of "
racial hygieneRacial hygiene is the selection, by a government, of the putatively most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation and a close alignment of public health with eugenics.Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of public health, but usually with an...
", the belief that the German people needed to be "cleansed" of "racially unsound" elements, which included people with disabilities. According to this view, the euthanasia program represents an evolution in policy toward the later Holocaust of the
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
: the historian
Ian KershawSir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich...
has called it "a vital step in the descent into modern barbarism".
It may be noted however that racial hygienist ideas were far from unique to the Nazi movement. The ideas of
social DarwinismSocial Darwinism refers to various ideologies based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies....
were widespread in all western countries in the early 20th century, and the
eugenicsEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
movement had many followers among educated people, being particularly strong in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The idea of sterilising those carrying hereditary defects or exhibiting what was thought to be hereditary anti-social behaviour was widely accepted, and was put into law in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
and other countries. Between 1935 and 1975, for example, 63,000 people were sterilised on eugenic grounds in Sweden.
The idea of enforcing "racial hygiene" had been an essential element of Hitler's ideology from its earliest days. In his book
Mein KampfMein Kampf, in English: My Struggle, is a book by Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology...
(1924), Hitler wrote:
- He who is bodily and mentally not sound and deserving may not perpetuate this misfortune in the bodies of his children. The völkische [people's] state has to perform the most gigantic rearing-task here. One day, however, it will appear as a deed greater than the most victorious wars of our present bourgeois era.
The Nazi regime began to implement "racial hygienist" policies as soon as it came to power. The July 1933 "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" prescribed compulsory
sterilisationSterilization is a surgical technique leaving a male or female unable to reproduce. It is a method of birth control. For non-surgical causes of sterility, see infertility.Common sterilization methods include:...
for people with a range of conditions thought to be hereditary such as
schizophreniaSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
,
epilepsyEpilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures...
,
Huntington's choreaHuntington's disease, chorea, or disorder , is an incurable neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and some cognitive functions, typically becoming noticeable in middle age. It is the most common genetic cause of abnormal involuntary writhing movements called chorea...
and "imbecility". Sterilisation was also mandated for chronic
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
and other forms of social deviance. This law was administered by the Interior Ministry under
Wilhelm FrickWilhelm Frick was a prominent Nazi official, serving as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, he was executed for war crimes.- Early life and family :...
through special Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte), which examined the inmates of nursing homes, asylums, prisons, aged care homes and special schools to select those to be sterilised.
It is estimated that 360,000 people were sterilised under this law between 1933 and 1939. There were some suggestions that the program should be extended to people with physical disabilities, but such ideas had to be expressed carefully given that one of the most powerful figures of the regime,
Joseph GoebbelsPaul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reichsminister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945...
, suffered from congenital
club footA clubfoot, Giles Smith syndrome or talipes equinovarus , is a birth defect. TEV is classified into 2 groups: Postural TEV or Structural TEV. Without treatment, persons afflicted often appear to walk on their ankles, or on the sides of their feet. It is a common birth defect, occurring in about one...
.
Philipp BouhlerPhilipp Bouhler was a Nazi German government official, SS-Obergruppenführer, head of the Führer's Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4....
himself was mobility impaired as a result of war wounds to his legs. After 1937 the acute shortage of labour in Germany arising from the crash rearmament program meant that anyone capable of work was deemed to be "useful" and was exempted from the law, and the rate of sterilisation declined.
Towards a policy of killing
Hitler was in favour of killing those whom he judged to be "
unworthy of lifeThe phrase "life unworthy of life" was a Nazi designation for the segments of populace that, according to the racial policy of the Third Reich, had no right to live and thus, were to be "exterminated." This concept formed an important component of the ideology of Nazism and eventually led to the...
". In a 1939 conference with health minister
Leonardo ContiLeonardo Conti was, as the "Reich Health Leader" , head of the Reich Physicians' Chamber , Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors' League and as main service leader of the Nazi Party leader of the Main Office for the People's Health...
and the head of the Reich Chancellery,
Hans LammersDr. Jur. Hans Heinrich Lammers was a prominent Nazi and head of the Reich Chancellery.Born in Lublinitz in Upper Silesia, the son of a veterinarian,...
, a few months before the euthanasia decree, Hitler gave as examples of "life unworthy of life" severely mentally ill people who could only be bedded on sawdust or sand because they "perpetually dirtied themselves", or who "put their own excrement into their mouths, eating it and so on".
Both his physician, Dr Karl Brandt, and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers, testified after the war that Hitler had told them as early as 1933, at the time the sterilisation law was passed, that he favoured killing the incurably ill, but recognised that public opinion would not accept this. In 1935 Hitler told the Reich Doctors' Leader, Dr Gerhard Wagner, that the question could not be taken up in peacetime: "Such a problem could be more smoothly and easily carried out in war", he said. He intended, he wrote, "in the event of a war radically to solve the problem of the mental asylums". The outbreak of war thus opened up for Hitler the possibility of carrying out a policy he had long favoured.
The war also gave this issue a new urgency in the eyes of the Nazi regime. People with severe disabilities, even when sterilised, still needed institutional care. They occupied places in facilities which would soon be needed for wounded soldiers and people evacuated from bombed cities. They were housed and fed at the expense of the state and took up the time of doctors and nurses. All this the Nazis found barely tolerable even in peacetime, and totally unacceptable in wartime. As a leading Nazi doctor, Dr Hermann Pfannmüller, said: "The idea is unbearable to me that the best, the flower of our youth must lose its life at the front in order that feebleminded and irresponsible asocial elements can have a secure existence in the asylum".
Even before the Nazis came to power, the German eugenics movement had an extreme wing, led by
Alfred HocheAlfred Erich Hoche was a German psychiatrist well-known for his writings about eugenics and euthanasia.- Life :...
and
Karl BindingKarl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was a German jurist known as a promoter of the theory of retributive justice. His influential book, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwertem Lebens , written together with the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, was used by the Nazis to justify their T-4 Euthanasia Program.-...
, who as early as 1920 had advocated killing those with lives judged to be "life unworthy of life" (lebensunwertes Leben). Germany in the years after World War I was particularly susceptible to ideas of this kind. They interpreted Darwinism to suggest that a nation must promote the propagation of "beneficial" genes and prevent the propagation of "harmful" ones. Lifton notes: "The argument went that the best young men died in war, causing a loss to the
Volk of the best available genes. The genes of those who did not fight (the worst genes) then proliferated freely, accelerating biological and cultural degeneration". The state, the eugenicists argued, must intervene to prevent this.
These views had gained ground after 1930, when the
DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
caused sharp cuts in funding to state mental hospitals, creating squalor and overcrowding. Most German eugenicists were already strongly nationalist and anti-Semitic, and embraced the Nazi regime with enthusiasm. Many were appointed to positions in the Health Ministry and German research institutes, and their ideas were gradually adopted by the majority of the German medical profession, from which Jewish and communist doctors were soon purged.
During the 1930s the Nazi Party carried out a campaign of propaganda in favour of "euthanasia". The National Socialist Racial and Political Office (NSRPA) produced leaflets, posters and short films to be shown in cinemas, pointing out to Germans the cost of maintaining asylums for the incurably ill and insane. These films included
The Inheritance (Das Erbe, 1935),
The Victim of the Past (
Opfer der VergangenheitOpfer der Vergangenheit was a Nazi propaganda film made in 1937. This movie was a sequel to Erbkrank , which showed horrific images of lunatics in German asylums in order to bolster public support for the planned euthanasia policy for the mentally ill...
, 1937), which was given a major premiere in Berlin and was shown in all German cinemas, and
I Accuse (Ich klage an, 1941), which was based on a novel by Dr Helmut Unger, a consultant for the child euthanasia program. Catholic institutions, which could be expected to resist bitterly the killing of their patients, were progressively closed and their inmates transferred to already overcrowded state institutions, where the squalid conditions provided further ammunition for campaigns in favour of euthanasia.
Killing of children
In May 1939, when Hitler had already decided to attack
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in the summer or autumn of that year, the parents of a severely deformed child (recently identified as
Gerhard KretschmarGerhard Herbert Kretschmar , was a German child born with severe disabilities. After receiving a petition from the child's parents, the German ruler Adolf Hitler authorised one of his personal physicians, Dr Karl Brandt, to have the child killed...
), born near
LeipzigLeipzig is, with a population of 515,459, the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany.-Origins:Leipzig's name is derived from the Slavic word Lipsk, which means "settlement where the lime trees stand"....
, wrote to Hitler seeking his permission for their child to be put to death. Hitler approved this, and authorised the creation of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses (
Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden), headed by Karl Brandt, his personal physician, and administered by Herbert Linden of the Interior Ministry and an SS officer,
Viktor BrackViktor Brack was the organiser of the Euthanasia Programme, Operation T4, where the Nazi state systematically murdered disabled German people...
. Brandt and Bouhler were authorized to approve applications to put children in similar circumstances to death.
This precedent was used to establish a program of killing children with severe disabilities from which the guardian consent element soon disappeared. From August the Interior Ministry required doctors and midwives to report all cases of newborns with severe disabilities. Those to be killed were "all children under three years of age in whom any of the following 'serious hereditary diseases' were 'suspected':
idiocyStupidity, or dumbness, is the property a person, action or belief instantiates by virtue of having or being indicative of low intelligence or poor learning abilities. Stupidity is distinct from irrationality because stupidity denotes an incapability or unwillingness to properly consider the...
and
Down syndromeDown syndrome , Down's syndrome , trisomy 21, or trisomy G is a chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. It is named after John Langdon Down, the British doctor who described the syndrome in 1866...
(especially when associated with blindness and deafness);
microcephalyMicrocephaly is a neurodevelopmental disorder in which the circumference of the head is more than two standard deviations smaller than average for the person's age and sex. Microcephaly may be congenital or it may develop in the first few years of life...
; hydrocephaly; malformations of all kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal column; and paralysis, including
spasticCerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development....
conditions". The reports were assessed by a panel of medical experts, of whom three were required to give their approval before a child could be killed.
Various methods of deception were used to gain consent – particularly in Catholic areas where parents were generally uncooperative. Parents were told that their children were being sent to "Special Sections" for children where they would receive improved care. The children sent to these centres were kept for "assessment" for a few weeks and then killed by
lethal injectionLethal injection refers to the practice of injecting a criminal with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of executing the subject...
, their deaths recorded as "
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory illness of the lung. Frequently, it is described as lung parenchyma/alveolar inflammation and abnormal alveolar filling with fluid ....
". Autopsies were usually performed, and brain samples were taken to be used for medical research. This apparently helped to ease the consciences of many of those involved, since it gave them the feeling that the children had not died in vain and that the whole programme had a genuine medical purpose.
Once war broke out in September 1939, the program became less rigorous in its process of assessment and approval. It expanded to include older children and adolescents. The conditions covered also expanded and came to include "various borderline or limited impairments in children of different ages, culminating in the killing of those designated as juvenile delinquents. Jewish children could be placed in the net primarily because they were Jewish; and at one of the institutions, a special department was set up for 'minor Jewish-Aryan half-breeds'". At the same time, increased pressure was placed on parents to agree to their children being sent away. Many parents suspected what was really happening, especially when it became apparent that institutions for children with disabilities were being systematically cleared out, and refused consent. They were threatened that they would lose custody of all their children, and if that did not suffice the parents themselves could be threatened with call-up for "labour duty". By 1941 over 5,000 children had been killed.
Killing of adults
Brandt and Bouhler soon developed plans to expand the program to adults. In July 1939, they had held a meeting attended by Dr
Leonardo ContiLeonardo Conti was, as the "Reich Health Leader" , head of the Reich Physicians' Chamber , Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors' League and as main service leader of the Nazi Party leader of the Main Office for the People's Health...
, Reich Health Leader and state secretary for health in the Interior Ministry, and Professor
Werner HeydeWerner Heyde was a German psychiatrist. He was one of the main organizers of Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program.- Education :Heyde completed his Abitur in 1920...
, head of the SS medical department. This meeting had made preliminary arrangements for a national register of all institutionalised people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities.
The first adults with disabilities to be killed by the Nazi regime, however, were not Germans but Poles, as the SS men of
EinsatzkommandoEinsatzkommando refers to a sub-group of the five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads — 3,000 men — responsible for systematically killing Jews and Soviet political activists behind the Wehrmacht lines of Operation Barbarossa...
16 cleared the hospitals and mental asylums of the "Wartheland", a region of western Poland which was earmarked for incorporation into Germany and resettlement by ethnic Germans following the German conquest of Poland. In the
DanzigGdańsk, also known by its German name Danzig , is a city on the Baltic coast in northern Poland, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area....
(now
GdańskGdańsk, also known by its German name Danzig , is a city on the Baltic coast in northern Poland, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area....
) area, some 7,000 Polish inmates of various institutions were shot, while 10,000 were killed in the
GdyniaGdynia is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport at Gdańsk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea....
area. Similar measures were taken in other areas of Poland destined for incorporation into Germany. At
PosenPoznań is a city in west-central Poland with over 557,264 inhabitants . Located on the Warta River, it is one of the oldest cities in Poland, making it an important historical centre and a vibrant centre of trade, industry, and education. Poznań is Poland's fifth largest city and fourth biggest...
(occupied
PoznańPoznań is a city in west-central Poland with over 557,264 inhabitants . Located on the Warta River, it is one of the oldest cities in Poland, making it an important historical centre and a vibrant centre of trade, industry, and education. Poznań is Poland's fifth largest city and fourth biggest...
), hundreds of patients were killed by means of
carbon monoxideCarbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas, yet very toxic to humans. It consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, connected by a covalent double bond and a dative covalent bond...
gas in an improvised
gas chamberA gas chamber is an apparatus for killing, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used. Gas chambers were used as a method of execution for...
developed by Dr Albert Widmann, chief chemist of the German Criminal Police (Kripo). In December 1939, the SS head,
Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Luitpold Himmler , one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, served as Chief of the German Police and Minister of the Interior...
, witnessed one of these gassings, ensuring that this invention would later be put to much wider uses.
The idea of killing "useless" mental patients soon spread from occupied Poland to adjoining areas of Germany itself, probably because Nazi Party and SS officers in these areas were most familiar with what was happening in Poland. These were also the areas where Germans wounded from the Polish campaign were expected to be accommodated, creating a demand for hospital space. The
GauleiterA Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Etymology:...
of
PomeraniaPomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East. It is inhabited...
, Franz Schwede-Coburg, dispatched 1,400 patients from five Pomeranian hospitals to Poland, where they were shot. The
GauleiterA Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Etymology:...
of
East PrussiaEast Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia...
,
Erich KochErich Koch was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, and Reichskomissar in Ukraine from 1941 until 1943. His orders caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.-Early life and First World War :Koch was born in Elberfeld, today...
, likewise had 1,600 patients killed. In all, more than 8,000 Germans were killed in this initial wave of killings. These were carried out on the initiative of local officials, although Himmler certainly knew and approved of them.
The program for killing adults with mental or physical disabilities began with a letter from Hitler issued in October 1939. The letter charged Bouhler and Brandt with "enlarging the authority of certain physicians, to be designated by name, in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgement, are incurable, can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death." The letter was backdated to 1 September to provide "legality" to the killings already carried out, and to link the program more definitely to the war, giving it a rationale of wartime necessity. It is important to note that this letter, which provided the sole legal basis for the program, was not a formal "Führer decree", which in Nazi Germany had the force of law. For this reason Hitler deliberately bypassed Health Minister Conti and his department, who were held to be not sufficiently imbued with National Socialist ruthlessness and who might have raised awkward questions about the legality of the program, and entrusted it to his personal agents Bouhler and Brandt.
The program was administered by Brack's staff from Tiergartenstraße 4, under the guise of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care, supervised by Bouhler and Brandt. Others closely involved included Dr Herbert Linden, who had been heavily involved in the children's program, Dr
Ernst-Robert GrawitzErnst-Robert Grawitz was a German physician in Nazi Germany during World War II.- Early life :Grawitz was born in Charlottenburg, in the western part of Berlin, Germany.- Career :...
, chief physician of the SS, and
August BeckerAugust Becker was during the Nazi regime in Germany an SS lieutenant colonel and chemist in the Central Reich Security Office...
, an SS chemist. These officials chose the doctors who were to carry out the "operational" part of the program. They were chosen for their political reliability, professional reputation, and known sympathy for radical eugenics. They included several who had proved their worth in the child-killing program, such as Unger, Heinze, and Hermann Pfannmüller. The new recruits were mostly psychiatrists, notably Professor
Carl SchneiderCarl Schneider , professor at Heidelberg University, chairman of its department of Psychiatry, director of its clinic, was a senior researcher for the Action T4 Euthanasia program....
of Heidelberg, Professor
Max de CrinisProfessor Max de Crinis held a Chair in psychiatry in Cologne and Berlin, and was a medical expert for the T4 Euthanasia Program.An Austrian, he joined the Nazi Party in 1931. Not only an SS member, he was the most outspoken and influential Nazi in German psychiatry, a psychiatric consultant at...
of Berlin and Professor
Paul NitscheHermann Paul Nitsche was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reich's euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program....
from the Sonnenstein state institution. Heyde became the operational leader of the program, succeeded later by Nitsche.
In early October all hospitals, nursing homes, old-age homes, sanatoria were required to report all patients who had been institutionalised for five years or more, who had been committed as "criminally insane", who were of "non-
AryanAryan is an English language loanword denoting variously*in historical or dated usage,**the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers, viz. the Iranian and Indo-Aryan peoples**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers,...
race", or who had been diagnosed with any of a list of specified conditions. These included
schizophreniaSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
,
epilepsyEpilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures...
, Huntington's chorea, advanced
syphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero.The...
, senile dementia,
paralysisParalysis is the complete loss of muscle function for one or more muscle groups. Paralysis can cause loss of feeling or loss of mobility in the affected area.-Causes:Paralysis is most often caused by damage to the nervous system, especially the spinal cord...
,
encephalitisEncephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain.Encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis.-Bacterial and other:It can be caused by a bacterial infection such as bacterial meningitis spreading directly to the brain , or may be a complication of a current infectious disease...
and "terminal neurological conditions generally". Many doctors and administrators assumed that the purpose of the reports was to identify inmates who were capable of being drafted for "labour service". They therefore tended to overstate the degree of incapacity of their patients, to protect them from labour conscription — with fatal consequences. When some institutions, mainly in Catholic areas, refused to co-operate, teams of T4 doctors (or in some cases Nazi medical students) visited them and compiled their own lists, sometimes in a very haphazard and ideologically motivated way. At the same time, all Jewish patients were removed from institutions and were killed during 1940.
As with the child inmates, the adults had their cases assessed by a panel of "experts", working at the Tiergartenstraße offices. The experts were required to make their judgments solely on the basis of the reports, rather than on detailed medical histories, let alone examinations. Sometimes they dealt with hundreds of reports at a time. On each they marked a
+ (meaning death), a
- (meaning life), or occasionally a
? meaning that they were unable to decide. Three "death" verdicts condemned the person concerned. As with the children, over time these processes became less rigorous, the range of conditions considered unsustainable grew broader, and zealous Nazis further down the chain of command increasingly made decisions on their own initiative.
At first patients were killed by lethal injection, the method established for killing children, but the slowness and inefficiency of this method for killing adults, who needed larger doses of increasingly scarce and expensive drugs and who were more likely to need restraint, was soon apparent. Hitler himself recommended to Brandt that carbon monoxide gas be used. At his trial, Brandt described this as a "major advance in medical history". The first gassings took place at Brandenburg an der Havel in January 1940, under the supervision of Widmann, Becker, and
Christian WirthChristian Wirth was a senior German police and SS officer during the program to exterminate the Jewish people of occupied Poland during World War II, known as Operation Reinhard...
, a Kripo (criminal police) officer who was later to play a prominent role in the "
final solutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
" extermination of the Jews. Once the efficacy of this method was established, it became standardised and was instituted at a number of centres across Germany. As well as Brandenburg, these included
GrafeneckGrafeneck is a small rural village in Germany, near the town of Münsingen, south-west of Stuttgart. Grafeneck Castle, which had previously been an asylum for crippled people, was turned by the Nazis into an extermination facility ....
in
Baden-WürttembergBaden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine—but one which has some of its major cities straddling the banks of the Neckar River...
{10,824 dead},
Schloss HartheimSchloss Hartheim was one of the Nazi "Euthanasia" killing centers where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. The "Euthanasia Institute" was located in the castle of Hartheim, in Alkoven, a district near Linz,...
near
LinzLinz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately 30 km south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube...
in
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
{over 8,000 dead}, Sonnenstein in Saxony {15,000 dead},
BernburgBernburg is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, capital of the district of Salzlandkreis. It is situated on the river Saale, approx. 30 km downstream from Halle. The town is dominated by its huge Renaissance castle featuring a museum as well as a popular, recently updated bear pit in its...
in
Saxony-AnhaltSaxony-Anhalt is one of the sixteen Bundesländer that make up the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of , and a population of 2.45 million...
and
HadamarHadamar is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany.Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Memorial...
in
HesseHesse is a state of Germany with an area of and just over six million inhabitants. The state capital is Wiesbaden. Hesse's largest city is nearby Frankfurt am Main.Hesse contributes the largest share to the Rhine Main Area....
{14,494 dead}. As well as killing patients from mental homes, nursing homes and sanatoria, these centres were also used to kill prisoners transferred from concentration camps in Germany and Austria.
Patients were transferred from their institutions to the killing centres in buses operated by teams of SS men wearing white coats to give an air of medical authenticity. To prevent the families and the doctors of the patients tracing them, they were often sent to "transit" centres in major hospitals where they were allegedly "assessed" before being moved again to "special treatment" centres. (The expression "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) was later widely employed as a euphemism for killing during the extermination of the Jews.) Families were sent letters explaining that owing to wartime regulations it would not be possible to visit relatives in these centres. In fact most of these patients were killed within 24 hours of arriving at the centres, and their bodies cremated. For every person killed, a death certificate was prepared, giving a false but plausible cause of death, and sent to the family along with an urn of ashes (random ashes, since the victims were cremated
en masse). The preparation of thousands of falsified death certificates in fact took up most of the working day of the doctors who operated the centres.
During 1940, the centres at Brandenburg, Grafeneck and Hartheim killed nearly 10,000 people each, while another 6,000 were killed at Sonnenstein. In all about 35,000 people were killed in T4 operations that year. Operations at Brandenburg and Grafeneck were wound up at the end of the year, partly because the areas they served had been "cleared" and partly because of public opposition. In 1941, however, the centres at Bernberg and Sonnenstein increased their operations, while Hartheim (where Wirth and
Franz StanglFranz Stangl was an SS-Obersturmführer, commandant of the Sobibór and of Treblinka extermination camps.-Early life:...
were successively commandants) continued as before. As a result, another 35,000 people were killed before August 1941, when the T4 program was shut down. Even after that date, however, the centres continued to be used to kill concentration camp inmates: eventually some 20,000 people in this category were killed.
In 1971 the Austrian-born journalist
Gitta SerenyGitta Sereny is an Austrian-born British biographer, historian and journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is a stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises.-Biography:...
conducted a series of interviews with
Franz StanglFranz Stangl was an SS-Obersturmführer, commandant of the Sobibór and of Treblinka extermination camps.-Early life:...
, who was in prison in
DüsseldorfDüsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the second most international and economically important centre of Germany, after Frankfurt, and is located in the center of the Rhein-Ruhr area, Europe's most populated metropolitan area...
after having been convicted of co-responsibility for killing 900,000 people as commandant of the
SobibórSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp set up in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Jews, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war , and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibor by rail, and...
and
TreblinkaTreblinka II was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II. Around 850,000 people - more than 99.5 percent of whom were Jews, but also other victims - were killed there between July 1942 and October 1943; the camp was closed after a revolt during which a few Germans...
extermination camps in
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Stangl gave Sereny a detailed account of the operations of the T4 program based on his time as commandant of the killing facility at the Hartheim "institute". He described how the inmates of various asylums were removed and transported by bus to Hartheim. Some were in no mental state to know what was happening to them, but many were perfectly sane and for them various forms of deception were used. They were told they were at a special clinic where they would receive improved treatment, and were given a brief medical examination on arrival. They were then induced to enter what appeared to be a shower block, where they were gassed with
carbon monoxideCarbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas, yet very toxic to humans. It consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, connected by a covalent double bond and a dative covalent bond...
(this ruse was later used on a much larger scale at the extermination camps).
Opposition
Hitler and his helpers were aware from the start that a program of killing large numbers of Germans with disabilities would be unpopular with the German public. Although Hitler had a fixed policy of not issuing written instructions for policies relating to what would later be classed as crimes against humanity, he made an exception when he provided Bouhler and Brack with written authority for the T4 program in his confidential October 1939 letter. This was apparently to overcome opposition within the German state bureaucracy – the Justice Minister,
Franz GürtnerFranz Gürtner was a German Minister of Justice in Adolf Hitler's cabinet, responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. Detesting the cruel ways of the Gestapo and SA in dealing with prisoners-of-war, he protested unsuccessfully to Hitler, but nevertheless stayed on in the...
, needed to be shown Hitler's letter in August 1940 to gain his cooperation.
Hitler told Bouhler at the outset that "the Führer's Chancellery must under no circumstances be seen to be active in this matter." There was a particular need for caution in Catholic areas, which after the annexations of Austria and the
SudetenlandSudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia associated with Bohemia.The name is derived from the...
in 1938 included nearly half the population of Greater Germany, and where public opinion could be expected to be hostile. In March 1940 a confidential report from the
SDThe Sicherheitsdienst was primarily the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the Gestapo, which the SS had infiltrated heavily...
in Austria warned that the killing program must be implemented with stealth "in order to avoid a probable backlash of public opinion during the war".
Opposition persisted within the bureaucracy. A district judge, Lothar Kreyssig, wrote to Gürtner protesting (correctly) that the T4 program was illegal (since no law or formal decree from Hitler had authorised it); Gürtner replied, "If you cannot recognise the will of the Führer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge." and had Kreyssig dismissed.
The Catholic Church had agreed to withdraw from all political activity in the
Concordat of 1933The Reichskonkordat is the concordat between the Holy See and Germany. It was signed on July 20, 1933 by Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli and Franz von Papen on behalf of Pope Pius XI and President Paul von Hindenburg respectively...
between Germany and the
Holy SeeThe Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, commonly known as the Pope, and is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and speaks for the whole Catholic...
, but the prospect of state-sanctioned mass killing of German citizens had not occurred to the Church in 1933, and such a challenge to fundamental Christian belief in the sanctity of human life posed a serious dilemma for German Catholics. In 1935 the Church had protested in a private memorandum against proposals to pass a law legalising euthanasia (in the true sense of the word): this was one reason the law was not enacted.
In January 1939, however, Brack commissioned a paper from Dr Joseph Mayer, Professor of
Moral TheologyMoral theology is a systematic theological treatment of Christian ethics. It is usually taught on Divinity faculties as a part of the basic curriculum.- External links :*...
at the
University of PaderbornThe University of Paderborn in Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany was founded in 1972. 14,700 students were enrolled at the university as of October 2005....
, on the likely reactions of the churches in the event of a state euthanasia program being instituted. Mayer – a longstanding euthanasia advocate – reported that the churches would not oppose such a program if it was seen to be in the national interest. Brack showed this paper to Hitler in July, and it may have increased his confidence that the "euthanasia" program would be acceptable to German public opinion. (When Gitta Sereny interviewed Mayer shortly before his death in 1967, he denied that he had approved of killing people with disabilities, but since no copies of this paper are known to survive, this cannot be determined.) This turned out not to be the case. In fact the T4 program was the sole example of an action by the Nazi regime which provoked large-scale public protests.
It was impossible to keep the T4 program secret, given that thousands of doctors, nurses (including Catholic nuns) and administrators were involved in it, and given that the majority of those killed had families who were actively concerned about their welfare. Despite the strictest orders to maintain secrecy, some of the staff at the killing centres talked about what was going on there. In some cases families could tell that the causes of death notified were false, e.g. when a patient was claimed to have died of
appendicitisAppendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is a medical emergency. All cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of peritonitis and shock...
, even though his appendix had been surgically removed some years earlier. In other cases several families in the same town would receive death certificates on the same day. In the towns where the killing centres were located, many people saw the inmates arrive in buses, saw the smoke from the crematoria chimneys, noticed that no bus-loads of inmates ever left the killing centres, and drew the correct conclusion. In Hadamar ashes containing human hair rained down on the town. In May 1941 the Frankfurt County Court wrote to Gürtner describing scenes in Hadamar where children shouted in the streets that people were being taken away in buses to be gassed.
During 1940 rumours of what was taking place spread, and many Germans withdrew their relatives from asylums and sanatoria to care for them at home – often with great expense and difficulty. In some places doctors and psychiatrists co-operated with families to have patients discharged, or, if the families could afford it, had them transferred to private clinics where the reach of T4 did not extend. (The class aspect of T4 should be noted: it was mainly working-class families whose relatives were in state institutions. Wealthy families could protect their disabled relatives by keeping them at home or in private clinics.) Other doctors agreed to "re-diagnose" some patients so that they no longer met the T4 criteria, although this ran the risk of exposure when the Nazi zealots from Berlin conducted inspections. In
KielKiel is the capital and most populous city of the northern German state Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of over 236,000 .Kiel is approximately to the north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore...
, Professor
Hans Gerhard CreutzfeldtHans Gerhard Creutzfeldt was a German neuropathologist, who first described the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. He was born in Hamburg/Harburg and died in Munich.- Biography :...
managed to save nearly all of his patients. For the most part, however, doctors co-operated with the program, either out of ignorance as to its true nature or out of agreement with Nazi eugenicist policies.
During 1940 protest letters began to arrive at the Reich Chancellery and the Ministry of Justice, some of them from Nazi Party members. The first open protest against the removal of people from asylums took place at
AbsbergAbsberg is a municipality in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany....
in
FranconiaFranconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a part of southern Thuringia, and a much smaller region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Heilbronn-Franken...
in February 1941, and others followed. The SD report on the incident at Absberg noted that "the removal of residents from the Ottilien Home has caused a great deal of unpleasantness", and described large crowds of Catholic townspeople, among them Party members, protesting against the action. Opposition to the T4 policy sharpened after the German attack on the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
in June 1941, because the war in the east produced for the first time large-scale German casualties, and the hospitals and asylums began to fill up with maimed and disabled young German soldiers. Rumours began to circulate that these men would also be subject to "euthanasia", although in fact no such plans existed.
During 1940 and 1941 some Protestant churchmen protested privately against T4, but none made any public comment.
Theophil WurmTheophil Wurm was the son of a pastor and was a leader in the German Protestant Church in the early twentieth century....
, the Lutheran Bishop of Württemberg, wrote a strong letter to Interior Minister Frick in March 1940. Others who privately protested were the Lutheran theologian
Friedrich von BodelschwinghFriedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior was a German theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior , founder of the Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.-Public health activities:Friedrich was the son of Reverend Friedrich von...
, who was director of the
Bethel InstitutionThe Bethel Institution is a hospital for the mentally ill in Bielefeld, Germany.During the Nazi Germany era, staff at the institution were mainly in opposition to the National Socialist party's T-4 Euthanasia Program....
for epileptics at
BielefeldBielefeld is a county borough in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located at on both the western and eastern slopes of the Teutoburg Forest. With its population of 326,000, it is the biggest city of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region...
, and Pastor Paul-Gerhard Braune, director of the Hoffnungstal Institution in Berlin. Both used their connections with the regime to negotiate exemptions for their institutions: Bodelschwingh negotiated directly with Brandt and indirectly with
Hermann GöringHermann Wilhelm Göring was a German politician, military leader and a leading member of the Nazi Party. Among many offices, he was Hitler's designated successor and commander of the Luftwaffe...
, whose cousin was a prominent psychiatrist. Braune had meetings with Justice Minister Gürtner, who was always dubious about the legality of the program, and later wrote a strongly worded letter to Hitler protesting against it: Hitler did not read it, but was told about it by Lammers. In general, however, the Protestant church was more enmeshed with the Nazi regime than was the case for the Catholics and was unwilling to criticise its actions.
The Catholic Church, which since 1933 had pursued a policy of avoiding confrontation with the Nazi regime in the hope of preserving its core institutions intact, became increasingly unable to keep silent in the face of mounting evidence about the killing of inmates of hospitals and asylums. Leading Catholic churchmen, led by
Michael Cardinal von FaulhaberMichael von Faulhaber was a Roman Catholic Cardinal who was Archbishop of Munich for 35 years, from 1917 to his death in 1952.-Early life and ordination:...
of
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
, wrote privately to the government protesting against the policy. In July 1941 the Church broke its silence when a pastoral letter from the bishops was read out in all churches, declaring that it was wrong to kill (except in self-defence or in a morally justified war). This emboldened Catholics to make more outspoken protests.
A few weeks after the pastoral letter was read out, the Catholic Bishop of Münster in
WestphaliaWestphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Bochum, Detmold, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Minden and Münster and included in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia....
,
Clemens August Graf von GalenBlessed Clemens August Graf von Galen was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He received his education in Austria at the Stella Matutina . After his ordination he worked in Berlin at Saint Matthias, where he became close friends with Nuncio Eugenio...
, publicly denounced the T4 program in a sermon, and telegrammed his text to Hitler, calling on "the Führer to defend the people against the
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
". "It is a terrible, unjust and catastrophic thing when man opposes his will to the will of God," Galen said. "We are talking about men and women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to live?" Robert Lifton says of this sermon: "This powerful, populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed throughout Germany — indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force pilots. Galen's sermon probably had a greater impact than any other statement in consolidating anti-'euthanasia' sentiment." Another Bishop, Franz Bornewasser of
TrierTrier is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle River. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC. Trier is not the only city claiming to be Germany's oldest, but it is the only one that bases this assertion on having the longest history as a city, as opposed to a mere...
, also sent protests to Hitler, though not in public. In August Galen was even more outspoken, broadening his attack to include the Nazi persecution of religious orders and the closing of Catholic institutions. He attributed the heavy allied bombing of Westphalian towns to the wrath of God against Germany for breaking His laws. Galen's sermons were not reported in the German press, but were widely circulated in the form of illegally printed leaflets. Local Nazis asked for Galen to be arrested, but Goebbels told Hitler that if this happened there would be an open revolt in Westphalia.
By August the protests had spread to Bavaria. According to Gitta Sereny, Hitler himself was jeered by an angry crowd at
HofHof is a city located on the banks of the Saale in the northeastern corner of the German state of Bavaria, in the Franconia region, at the Czech border and the forested Fichtelgebirge and Frankenwald upland regions....
– the only time he was opposed in public during his 12 years of rule. Despite his private fury, Hitler knew that he could not afford a confrontation with the Church at a time when Germany was engaged in a life-and-death war, a belief which was reinforced by the advice of Goebbels,
Martin BormannMartin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
, head of the Party Chancellery, and
Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Luitpold Himmler , one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, served as Chief of the German Police and Minister of the Interior...
, head of the SS. Robert Lifton writes: "Nazi leaders faced the prospect of either having to imprison prominent, highly admired clergymen and other protesters — a course with consequences in terms of adverse public reaction they greatly feared — or else end the program." Himmler said: "If operation T4 had been entrusted to the SS, things would have happened differently", because "when the Führer entrusts us with a job, we know how to deal with it correctly, without causing useless uproar among the people."
On 24 August 1941 Hitler ordered the cancellation of the T4 program, and also issued strict instructions to the Gauleiters that there were to be no further provocations of the churches for the duration of the war. The invasion of the Soviet Union in June had opened up new opportunities for the T4 personnel, who were soon transferred to the east to begin work on a vastly greater program of killing: the "
final solutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
of the Jewish question". But the winding up of the T4 program did not bring the killing of people with disabilities to an end, although from the end of 1941 the killing became less systematic. Lifton documents that the killing of both adults and children continued to the end of the war, on the local initiative of institute directors and party leaders. The methods reverted to those employed before the gas chambers were employed: lethal injection, or simple starvation. Kershaw estimates that by the end of 1941 75,000 to 100,000 people had been killed as a result of the program, but that further tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates, and people judged incapable of work, were killed in Germany between 1942 and 1945 (this figure does not include the Jews who were deported to their deaths in 1942 and 1943). Hartheim, for example, continued to kill people sent to it from all over Germany until 1945.
Postwar events
In December 1946, an American military tribunal (commonly called the
Doctors' TrialNot to be confused with the Doctors' Plot.The Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S...
) tried 23 doctors and administrators for their roles in war crimes and crimes against humanity. These crimes included the systematic killing of those deemed "unworthy of life", including the mentally disabled, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired. After 140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the submission of 1,500 documents, in August 1947 the court pronounced 16 of the defendants guilty. Seven were sentenced to death and executed on 2 June 1948. They included Dr
Karl BrandtKarl Brandt may refer to:* Karl Brandt * Karl Brandt...
and
Viktor BrackViktor Brack was the organiser of the Euthanasia Programme, Operation T4, where the Nazi state systematically murdered disabled German people...
.
The indictment read in part:
Also in 1945, seven staff members of the Hadamar institute were tried for the killing of Soviet and Polish nationals, but not for the large-scale killing of German nationals at the institute. Alfons Klein, Karl Ruoff and Wilhelm Willig were sentenced to death and executed, the other four were given long prison sentences.
Philipp BouhlerPhilipp Bouhler was a Nazi German government official, SS-Obergruppenführer, head of the Führer's Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4....
and
Leonardo ContiLeonardo Conti was, as the "Reich Health Leader" , head of the Reich Physicians' Chamber , Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors' League and as main service leader of the Nazi Party leader of the Main Office for the People's Health...
killed themselves in captivity in May 1945, while Dr
Ernst-Robert GrawitzErnst-Robert Grawitz was a German physician in Nazi Germany during World War II.- Early life :Grawitz was born in Charlottenburg, in the western part of Berlin, Germany.- Career :...
killed himself shortly before the fall of Berlin. Dr Friedrich Menneke died in 1947 while awaiting trial.
Paul NitscheHermann Paul Nitsche was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reich's euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program....
was tried and executed by an East German court in 1948.
Werner HeydeWerner Heyde was a German psychiatrist. He was one of the main organizers of Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program.- Education :Heyde completed his Abitur in 1920...
, after having escaped detection for 18 years, killed himself in 1964 before being brought to trial. Dr
Heinrich GrossHeinrich Gross was an Austrian psychiatrist, medical doctor and neurologist, best known for his proven involvement in the killing of at least nine children with physical, mental and/or emotional/behavioral characteristics considered "unclean" by the Nazi regime. His role in hundreds of other...
and
Werner BlankenburgWerner Blankenburg was head of the Section IIa in the Kanzlei des Führers in Nazi Germany, and thus one of the main responsible persons for the National Socialist "Euthanasia"-program Action T4, the annihilation of the Polish Jews in the "Aktion Reinhard", and the experiments with castration by...
also escaped justice.
August BeckerAugust Becker was during the Nazi regime in Germany an SS lieutenant colonel and chemist in the Central Reich Security Office...
was initially sentenced to three years after the war, then in 1960 was tried again and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He served very little of the later term because of an early release due to ill-health and died in 1967.
T4 and euthanasia
The program is commonly described as one of "
euthanasiaEuthanasia refers to the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Many different forms of euthanasia can be distinguished, including animal euthanasia and human euthanasia, and within the latter, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia...
," and this expression was used at the time by some of the officials responsible for carrying the program out, but it had little in common with euthanasia as this term is usually defined. It was not motivated by concern for the welfare of the people concerned or by a desire to release them from suffering – most of those killed were not suffering. It was carried out primarily according to the dictates of "racial hygiene" ideology, and secondarily to reduce the cost to the state of maintaining people with disabilities at a time when the overwhelming financial priority of the regime was rearmament. It was nearly always carried out without the consent of the people concerned or their families.
Professor Robert Lifton, author of
The Nazi Doctors and a leading authority on the T4 program, makes clear the difference between this program and genuine euthanasia. He explains that the Nazi version of "euthanasia" was based on the work of Adolf Jost, who published
The Right to Death (Das Recht auf den Tod) in 1895. Lifton writes: "Jost argued that control over the death of the individual must ultimately belong to the social organism, the state. This is in direct opposition to the Anglo-American concept of euthanasia, which emphasizes the individual's ‘right to die' or 'right to death' or 'right to his or her own death,' as the ultimate human claim. In contrast, Jost was pointing to the state's right to kill."
Dr Stuart Stein of the
University of the West of EnglandThe University of the West of England is a university based in the English city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, about five miles north of the city centre...
writes:
External links