Euthanasia trials
The Euthanasia trials (German:
Euthanasie-Prozesse) were legal proceedings against the main perpetrators and
accomplices involved in the euthanasia killings of the Nazi era in Germany. The first euthanasia trial was held by the
United States in October 1945 to prosecute doctors and nurses at the Hadamar
Euthanasia Centre for killing Polish and Russian workers sick with tuberculosis
in summer 1944. Euthanasia was a tangential issue at the Nuremberg Doctors'
Trial, held by the United States from December 1946 to August 1947, as only
four of its twenty-three defendants were charged with participation in the
euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt
Blome. Brandt, Brack, and Hoven were convicted, sentenced to death, and
executed; Blome was acquitted. There was a euthanasia trial held in the Soviet
occupation zone in Dresden in June 1947 to prosecute those who had worked at
the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in Pirna. There were 15 defendants, including
Paul Nitsche, the director of the T4 Medical Office (German: Medizinische
Abteilung). Four of the defendants, including Nitsche, were sentenced to death
and executed.
Hadamar trial (1945):
The U.S. Hadamar trial, officially
titled U.S. v. Alfons Klein et al., was held between October 8 and October 15,
1945. The defendants were former workers at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre in
Hadamar, Hesse-Nassau. The euthanasia
center in Hadamar was a mental hospital before World War II began in Europe in
1939. Starting in September 1939, it served both as a mental hospital and as a
hospital for German soldiers and POWs. At the end of 1940 it was selected to
replace the Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre, which was closed in December 1940. Over
the next nine months at least 10,000 mentally disabled Germans were gassed at
Hadamar. The euthanasia killings of mental patients temporarily stopped in
August 1941, and the gas chambers were dismantled. Killing the mentally disabled resumed in August
1942 and resulted in 3,000 to 3,500 additional deaths, though now narcotic
overdoses were used instead of gassing. At this time, Hadamar began killing
mentally disabled German children and healthy half-Jewish children (German:
Mischlingkinder); the facility also began killing concentration camp prisoners
as part of Action 14f13. In the summer of 1944 Hadamar became a killing center for hundreds
of conscripted Polish and Russian workers who had tuberculosis. It was occupied
by American troops on March 26, 1945. Although five different groups were
killed at Hadamar over the course of the war, the U.S. Hadamar trial only
sought to prosecute those responsible for murdering the sick Polish and Russian
workers.The seven defendants in the trial were Alfons Klein, Adolf Wahlmann,
Heinrich Ruoff, Karl Willig, Irmgard Huber, Philip Blum, and Adolph Merkel. Klein,
Ruoff, and Willig were sentenced to death, while the other defendants were
sentenced to hard labor for terms ranging from life to twenty-five years.
Nuremberg Doctors' Trial (1946-1947):
The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial took
place from December 9, 1946 to August 20, 1947 at the Nuremberg Palace of
Justice before an American military court. Its primary purpose was to prosecute
Nazi doctors for their involvement in torturous medical experiments performed
in German concentration camps during the war; prosecuting those who had
participated in the euthanasia programme was of secondary importance to the
Americans. Thus, only four of the twenty-three defendants were charged with
murdering the mentally ill as part of the euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt,
Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt Blome. All of them except for Blome were
convicted and executed. In the Doctors' Trial, as in the 1945 Hadamar trial,
the American prosecution insisted that euthanasia was an offense against
international law, not a targeted campaign to purge German society of
"unworthy life." This allowed the United States to convict Brandt and
the others for their participation in the euthanasia programme without
comprising its national sovereignty. The
U.S. was able to do so by claiming that the purpose of euthanasia was to free
up resources for Germany's war machine, thus making euthanasia a war crime that
aided Nazi Germany's illegal campaign of aggressive war.
Background:
The Doctors' Trial took place
after the first International Military Tribunal (IMT). In January 1946, Telford
Taylor, the U.S. Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, began planning to hold a
second IMT to try German industrialists and financiers in the U.S. zone of
occupation, but reconsidered when he realized the Russians would insist on
holding the trial in the Russian zone of occupation, presided over by a Soviet
judge. Since a trial held under such circumstances would be politically
unpopular in the United States, Taylor instead decided in August 1946 to hold a
trial based on criminal experiments on concentration camp prisoners. This
decision was based on evidence uncovered during the IMT trial of Hermann Göring
that showed that Luftwaffe doctors had performed cruel experiments on these
prisoners, as well as Wolfram Sievers' admission at the IMT that there was a
"Jewish skeleton collection" consisting of bones from murdered Jewish
concentration camp prisoners. In May 1946, when Taylor was still considering
holding a second IMT, his office tasked James McHaney with heading an
investigative group to gather evidence about SS and German health care leaders.
McHaney's group found much evidence of medical crimes, in addition to the evidence
already assembled by the IMT prosecution team. The abundant evidence, combined
with the fact that a number of leaders responsible for these medical crimes
were in American and British custody, led Taylor to think that it would be easy
to try and convict these individuals.
Trial of Karl Brandt:
Brandt was the highest-ranking defendant
indicted in the Doctors' Trial. He was an inviting target for the American
prosecution because of his personal relationship with Hitler, his leading role
in the euthanasia programme, and his role in medical experiments at Dachau
concentration camp. In 1938, he and Philipp Bouhler had been commissioned by
Hitler to run the children's euthanasia programme, in 1939, Hitler gave the two
of them the task of organizing and running the adult euthanasia programme as
well. (Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler's
Chancellery (German: Kanzlei des Führers or KdF), was not indicted in the
Doctors' Trial because he had committed suicide in May 1945.) Brandt claimed
that he was a humanitarian idealist who participated in the euthanasia
programme because he wanted to relieve the suffering of terminally ill
patients. He also claimed that he had nothing to do with killing the mentally
disabled after the euthanasia programme officially ended in August 1941.The
American prosecution did not agree with Brandt that euthanasia was a
"humanitarian measure," and even he admitted that the primary
motivation behind the second or "wild" phase of euthanasia was
economic rather than humanitarian; according to Brandt, this economic rationale
was to kill "useless eaters" in order to conserve food and medical
resources for the German military.
Trial of Victor Brack:
Victor Brack was Bouhler's deputy in Hitler's
Chancellery, and as such he played a major role in organizing the euthanasia
programme in 1939 and the Final Solution (German: die Endlösung) in 1941.
Unlike in the 1945 Hadamar trial, in Brack's case the American prosecutors were
interested in the links between the euthanasia programme and the Nazis' attempts
to exterminate other groups they deemed "unworthy of life." In
Brack's pre-trial questioning, the American interrogators disputed his claim
that the euthanasia programme ended in 1941, maintaining that it was just a
"general test" (German: Generalprobe) for the Third Reich's other,
larger extermination campaigns. Brack vehemently denied that the two events
were linked and claimed that Hitler did not have the Final Solution in mind
when he ordered the euthanasia programme to begin in 1939.The main disagreement
between Brack and his interrogators was over the motive behind Nazi euthanasia.
Brack claimed that it was to give "incurable" cases a "mercy
death"; his interrogators maintained that it was undertaken for economic
reasons, to free up medical resources for the Germany army as it waged
aggressive war, as well as to test killing methods and psychologically harden
personnel for other mass murders. Brack and his lawyer attempted to use the
"collision of duties" defense (German: Pflichtkollision), also called
the "sabotage" theory of criminal wrongdoing, to prove his innocence.
Since he could not deny that he had taken part in the euthanasia programme, he
argued that he committed the crime of helping to murder some disabled Germans
and Jews in order to prevent even more from being murdered. That is, he claimed
his involvement in euthanasia and the Final Solution was a cover so that he
could secretly sabotage it from within. In the end, his efforts to invoke a
sabotage defense could not overcome the incriminating evidence against him,
which proved that he had assigned euthanasia personnel from the T4 programme to
Operation Reinhard (the annihilation of Poland's Jews) and that he had
volunteered to provide gas vans to murder Jews incapable of work.
Trial of Kurt Blome:
Kurt Blome was the deputy surgeon
general of the Third Reich and was in charge of Germany's biological weapons
programme. He was arrested by American troops in Munich on May 17, 1945. The U.S. Chemical Warfare Service, the agency
in charge of the U.S. biological weapons programme, saw great value in
appropriating the expertise of Nazi scientists and using it for their own
purposes. As Hitler's top biological weapons expert, Blome was seen as the most
important Nazi scientist for the Chemical Warfare Service to interrogate.[26]
They wanted to include him in Operation Paperclip, a secret postwar U.S.
project that brought hundreds of Nazi scientists to America so that they could
continue their military research for the U.S. government. However, this plan
had to be abandoned, or at least postponed, when the Soviets unexpectedly
announced on August 12, 1946 that Walter Schreiber, the former surgeon general
of the Third Reich, was going to testify against the defendants at the
International Military Tribunal, which
he did on August 26, 1946. Much of his testimony focused on Kurt Blome and his
research on the plague, even thought Blome was not on trial. Schreiber claimed
that Blome had engaged in torturous human medical experiments during the war. As
a result of Schreiber's unusual testimony, Blome was arrested and sent to the
prison complex at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice on August 28, 1946. He was no
longer being considered for Operation Paperclip, as he was now going to be a
defendant in the upcoming Doctors' Trial, which began on December 9, 1946. Although Blome had been in charge of Germany's
biological weapons programme, that was not in itself a crime. However, the
prosecution had many documents in which Blome repeatedly discussed his plans to
conduct plague research on human beings. In his defense, Blome argued that he
had intended to experiment on human beings but never actually did so. The
prosecution could not find any witnesses to testify against Blome, a fact that
he used to argue his innocence. Additionally, Blome's wife Bettina researched
experiments conducted by the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development
(OSRD) during the war, including malaria experiments on prisoners at Terre
Haute. The defense counsel Robert Servatius found an article from Life magazine
from June 1945 that described experiments performed by the OSRD on 800 U.S.
prisoners during the war. Servatius read the entire article in the courtroom.
Because it discussed U.S. Army experimentation on prisoners, it significantly
weakened the prosecution's case, as it made them look like hypocrites; they
were prosecuting German doctors for involvement in the same kinds of
experiments American doctors were engaged in. The Nuremberg judges made this
statement about Blome's acquittal: "It may well be that defendant Blome
was preparing to experiment on human beings in connection with bacteriological
warfare, but the record fails to disclose that fact, or that he ever actually
conducted the experiments."
Verdict:
The U.S. military tribunal
hearing the case accepted the prosecution's theory that euthanasia was
motivated by economic, political, and racial concerns. It agreed with the
prosecution that Nazi euthanasia was designed to get rid of "useless
eaters" in order to conserve food and medical resources for the German
military. It held that the euthanasia programme initially only targeted the
mentally disabled but gradually expanded to the Jews and concentration camp
prisoners, and that this expansion to include other groups occurred during the
second or "wild" phase of euthanasia.The tribunal found Brandt,
Brack, and Hoven guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity under Control
Council Law #10 and sentenced them to death by hanging. Their appeals against
their sentence were unsuccessful, and they were hanged on June 2, 1948 at
Landsberg Prison in Bavaria.
Frankfurt trials (1946-1948):
There were four trials at the
Frankfurt high court between 1946 and 1948 for people involved in the Nazi
euthanasia programme. Amongst the 44 defendants were doctors, nursing sisters
and male nurses from the Hadamar, Eichberg and Kalmenhof institutions who had
been involved in the killing of patients. Six death sentences were passed and
19 were given gaol sentences. In the end, the death sentences were not carried
out and all bar two of those convicted were pardoned.
Dresden trial (1947):
The Dresden trial took place in
the Soviet occupation zone to prosecute those who had worked at the Sonnenstein
Euthanasia Centre in Pirna. Paul Nitsche, the director of the T4 Medical Office
(German: Medizinische Abteilung),[37] was one of the 15 defendants. He was
sentenced to death. The Dresden state attorney
presented the indictment against the defendants on January 7, 1947. They
included Dr. Paul Nitsche, Dr. Alfred Schulz, Dr. Günther Langer, Dr. Robert
Herzer, Dr. Emil Eichler, and Dr. Ernst Leonhard; the nurses Hermann Felfe,
Erhardt Gäbler, Paul Räpke, Elsa Sachse, and Marie-Luise Pusclimann. The trial
was originally supposed to begin in February 1947 but was pushed back to summer
1947. The Dresden trial ran from 16 to 25 June 1947 and was held in public.[38]
The trial attracted considerable attention due to the presence of the media and
the Saxon newspaper, Sächsische Zeitung reported the proceedings daily. Nitsche,
Leonhardt, Felfe and Gäbler were sentenced to death on December 20, 1945. Räpke
received a life sentence, Herzer 20 years, Dr. Langer and Sachse 15 years, and
Wedel and Ackremann 8 years. Puschmann and Fridrich were sentenced to three
years' imprisonment. The defendants Dr. Walther, Dr. Schulze, and Martha
Friedrich were acquitted.
Grafeneck trial (1949):
After several years of preparation the
Grafeneck trial began in summer 1949 at Hohentübingen Castle. Eight defendants
were accused of participating in the murder of over 10,000 patients at the
Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre. The accused were: Otto Mauthe, Max Eyrich (former
state youth doctor), Alfons Stegmann (former doctor in the Zwiefalten
Sanatorium), Meta Fauser (senior female doctor at Zwiefalten), Jakob Wöger and
Hermann Holzschuh (official at the registry office), Heinrich Unvertau (former
nurse) and nursing sister, Maria Appinger.
Hartheim trial:
The main Hartheim trial tried 61
defendants, including medical directors, Georg Renno and Rudolf Lonauer. The
case against 13 of the accused was withdrawn, and the trial was adjourned for
22 defendants because they could not be found. Charges were also dropped
against seven defendants who had died. Two accused were given prison sentences,
the case against 13 more was taken forward into another trial and the fate of
the remaining three is still unknown. Sentence was passed on 7 July 1947. The
state prosecution had sought the death sentence in eleven cases, but only four
were passed. The sentences on the nursing sisters were generally more lenient
than had been asked for. The death sentences were carried out in March 1948 in
Dresden. Those with long prison sentences were released in 1956 as part of an
amnesty.
Klagenfurt trial:
The Austrian psychiatrist and
senior doctor in the Klagenfurt euthanasia programme, Franz Niedermoser, was
brought to trial before the Klagenfurt Division of the Graz People's Court. He
was found guilty of having ordered the killing of at least 400 patients. In
addition he was accused of the forced mistreatment of patients, with complete
disregard for human dignity, often leading to the death of the victims.
Niedermoser was sentenced to death by hanging on 4 April 1946 and his property
confiscated. The sentence was carried out on 24 October 1946 in the Klagenfurt
State Court. Head nurse, Eduard Brandstätter, head sister, Antonie Pachner, and
head nurse, Otillie Schellander, who were accomplices, were also sentenced to
death by hanging. On the day of his sentencing, Brandstätter committed suicide.
Pachner and Schellander had their sentences commuted to long gaol terms. On 8
April 1951 Antonie Pachner died in prison, but Schellander was released as part
of a further pardon on 1 April 1955. Nurses Paula Tomasch, Julie Wolf, Ilse
Printschler and Maria Cholawa as well as a head nurse, who were all involved in
the torture of patients, were given long gaol sentences, some in combination
with financial penalties.
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