Aktion T4

Killing the Disabled

Between January 1940 and August 1941 (before the Holocaust began), 70,273 physically and mentally disabled people – men, women, teens, boys, and girls – were murdered by the Nazis.

Though they never even laid eyes on the disabled person they were evaluating, the Nazi doctors read the medical files and, if from the words on the page, the person was deemed “unfit” or an “economic burden on society”, the doctor placed a red X at the bottom of the form.

Three doctors were to read each medical file, and when two of them made a red X on the page, the disabled person’s fate was sealed. Most were murdered within 1-2 hours.

Life Unworthy of Life

The phrase "life unworthy of life" was a Nazi designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime, had no right to live. Those individuals were targeted to be murdered by the state via involuntary euthanasia, usually through the compulsion or deception of their caretakers. The term included people with disabilities and later those considered grossly inferior according to the racial policy of Nazi Germany. This concept formed an important component of the ideology of Nazism and eventually helped lead to the Holocaust.

Aktion T4

The involuntary euthanasia program was given the name "Aktion T4," or "euthanasia," program and was officially adopted and put in action in 1939 through the personal decision of Adolf Hitler. Although the program ended officially in 1941 due to public protests, it was continued unofficially and more discreetly. The systematic extermination of certain cultural and religious groups, as well as people with physical and mental disabilities, continued in this manner until the end of World War II.

The methods used initially at German hospitals such as lethal injections and bottled gas poisoning were expanded to form the basis for the creation of extermination camps where cyanide gas chambers were purpose-built to facilitate the exterminations handicap, Jews, Romani, communists, anarchists, and political dissidents.

Historians estimate that 200,000 to 300,000 people were murdered under this program in Germany and occupied Europe.

The Villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4
Administrative Headquarters for Aktion T4

Gekrat - The Gray Busses

The Gemeinnützige Krankentransport known as "Gekrat", commonly translated as "Charitable Ambulance" was a subdivision of the Action T4 organization. The euphemistically named company transported sick and disabled people to the Nazi killing centers at Grafeneck Castle, Brandenburg, Schloss Hartheim, Schloss Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hadamar Euthanasia Centre.

The dark gray buses featured opaque or painted-over windows to hide the victims from public view. They were often staffed by SS men wearing white medical coats to create a false impression of legitimate medical transport.

The buses moved unsuspecting patients from regional psychiatric hospitals and asylums directly to the secret Aktion T4 killing centers where they were murdered.

Driver next to the notorious bus in 1940.
This photo was taken outside the Hartheim killing center.

Exposure

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, transferred them to private clinics beyond the reach of T4. Other doctors "re-diagnosed" patients so that they no longer met the T4 criteria, which risked exposure when Nazi zealots from Berlin conducted inspections.

Despite public protests in 1941, the Nazi leadership continued this program in secret throughout the war. About 275,000 to 300,000 people with disabilities were murdered between 1940 and 1945. The number of victims was originally recorded as 70,273, but the German Federal Archives reported that research in the archives of former East Germany indicated that the number of disabled victims in Germany and Austria from 1939 to 1945 was about 200,000 persons and that another 100,000 persons were victims in other European countries.

Victims of Aktion T4 (Official Data from 1985)

(Wikipedia)

T4 Center	Period	1940	1941	Total
Grafeneck	20 Jan – Dec 1940	9,839	---	9,839
Brandenburg	8 Feb – Oct 1940	9,772	---	9,772
Bernburg	21 Nov 1940 – 30 Jul 1943	---	8,601	8,601
Hartheim	6 May 1940 – Dec 1944	9,670	8,599	18,269
Sonnenstein	Jun 1940 – Sep 1942	5,943	7,777	13,720
Hadamar	Jan 1941 – 31 Jul 1942	---	10,072	10,072
Total by Year		35,224	35,049	70,273

In June 1945 the Hartheim statistics were found. The 39-page brochure contained monthly statistics of the gassing of mentally and physically handicapped patients (called "disinfection") carried out in the six killing centres.

The Hartheim statistics included a page on which it was calculated that "disinfecting 70,273 people with a life expectation of 10 years" had saved food in the value of 141,775,573.80 Reichsmarks.

Hartheim Killing Centre
Alkoven, Upper Austria near Linz

The legal basis for the program was a 1939 letter from Hitler, not a formal "Führer's decree" with the force of law. Hitler bypassed Conti, the Health Minister and his department, who might have raised questions about the legality of the program and entrusted it to Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt.

Nuremberg Documentation Centre Museum

The wording of the edict in English:

Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are entrusted with the responsibility of extending the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, so that patients who, after a most critical diagnosis, on the basis of human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen], are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death [Gnadentod]. — Adolf Hitler, 1 September 1939— 

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and genocide of approximately 17 million people, including six million European Jews who were the primary target of their genocide. The genocide of the Jews is also sometimes referred to as Shoah, a Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”

The Nazis also persecuted other groups, perpetrating a genocide, killing:

• more than 250,000 Roma and Sinti (derogatorily called “gypsies”) labeled "racially inferior"
• over three million Soviet prisoners of war
• nearly two million Poles
• millions of Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Serbs
• over 250,000 people with disabilities
• over 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses
• political opponents
• Freemasons
• thousands of men accused of homosexuality
• communists, socialists, trade unionists, anarchists, and other anti-Nazi political figures
• black people and Afro-Germans
• social outsiders and criminals

Doctors' Trial

Nuremberg, Germany,Dec 9, 1946 - Aug 20, 1947

Philipp Bouhler was arrested on 10 May 1945 by American troops. He committed suicide on 19 May 1945, while in the U.S. internment camp.

America v. Karl Brandt, et al., commonly known as the Doctors' Trial, was the first of the twelve trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity after the end of World War II. The accused were charged for their involvement in the Aktion T4 programme and Nazi human experimentation.

Courtroom - The Doctors' Trial

Karl Brandt

Karl Brandt was indicted in late 1946 and faced trial along with 22 others in the Doctors' Trial. Karl Brandt and six other defendants were executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison on 2 June 1948.

Karl Brandt (1904–1948) was a high-ranking German physician, a major general in the Schutzstaffel (SS), and Adolf Hitler's personal escort physician. Trained as a surgeon, Brandt joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became Hitler's personal physician in 1934, gaining immense power through his direct access to the dictator.

He was appointed by Philipp Bouhler to co-direct the regime's secret "euthanasia" program. He also oversaw civilian and military medical policy and authorized horrific human experimentation on concentration camp inmates.

He was sentenced to death by a U.S. military tribunal and hanged at Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948.

Karl Brandt (in the center, standing), Hitler’s physician
Defendants’ dock at the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg