Karl Brandt

Karl Brandt (January 8, 1904 - June 2, 1948) was the personal physician to Adolf Hitler and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia programme from 1939 and as Major General Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation he was involved in human experimentation, along with his deputy Werner Heyde and others.

He was born in Mühlhausen, Alsace (then in Germany). He became a medical doctor in 1928. He joined the NSDAP 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 he was Hitler's "Escort Physician". He received regular promotions in the SS, by January 1943 he was a major general. On April 16, 1945 he was arrested by the Gestapo, and was condemned to death by a court at Berlin. He was released from arrest by order of Doenitz on May 2, 1945. On May 23, 1945 he was placed under arrest by the British.

He 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 "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... [also] in connection with the planning and carrying out of the Nazi's T-4 Euthanasia Program of the German Reich... [and] with membership in the SS".

Judgment was pronounced on August 19, 1947. Brandt and six others were sentenced the death by hanging (all carried out at Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948), nine were given prison terms of fifteen years to life, and seven were found not guilty.

see also Nazi Germany