Karl Brandt (1904 – 1948)

Karl Brandt is one of the leading players in the National Socialist »euthanasia« crimes. Born the son of an officer's family in Alsace in 1904 and raised in Dresden, Brandt studied medicine in Jena, Freiburg and Berlin. In 1932, he joined the NSDAP, and a year later the SA. In the SS, which he joined in 1934, Brandt was appointed SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of the Waffen-SS.

In October 1939, Hitler appointed him, his accompanying physician since 1934, the person responsible for organizing the »euthanasia« killings, together with Philip Bouhler. Brandt was not only responsible for the patient killings in the context of »Aktion T4«, but, as Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation from 1942, also for those carried out as part of »Aktion Brandt«. This involved the patients of state hospitals and nursing homes being relocated and killed to free up beds for military hospitals and alternative hospitals (Ausweichkrankenhäuser).

Due to his responsibility for the »euthanasia« crimes and numerous medical experiments carried out in the concentration camps, Brandt was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial in 1947 and executed in the prison for war criminals in Landsberg am Lech on 2 June 1948.