Euthanasia trials

The Euthanasia trials (German: Euthanasie-Prozesse) were legal proceedings against the main perpetrators and accomplices involved in the "euthanasia" murders 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 killing centre for the murder of Polish and Russian workers sick with tuberculosis in summer 1944. All seven defendants were found guilty, and three were executed. 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 23 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.

The U.S. Hadamar trial, officially titled U.S. v. Alfons Klein et al., was held between 8 and 15 October 1945. The defendants were former workers at the Hadamar killing center 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 26 March 1945.

Although five different groups were killed at Hadamar over the course of the war, the U.S. military was not allowed to try many of the defendants. Prior to a charter by the Nuremberg trials, which introduced crimes against humanity as a charge, they were not allowed to prosecute Hadamar personnel for murdering German citizens.

However, officials found a loophole, and instead sought to prosecute multiple suspects for murdering 476 sick Polish and Russian workers, who were considered Allied nationals. The seven defendants in the trial were Alfons Klein, Adolf Wahlmann, Heinrich Ruoff, Karl Willig, Irmgard Huber, Philipp Blum, and Adolf Merkle. Klein, Ruoff, and Willig were sentenced to death and hanged one by one at a prison in Bruchsal on 14 March 1946. Wahlmann was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour due to his old age (he was nearly 70) and poor health. The other three defendants were sentenced to hard labour terms ranging from 25 years to 35 years.

At the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, one of the crimes charged was the euthanasia program. Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick was sentenced to death for, among other charges, his responsibility for the deaths of 275,000 disabled patients under the banner of the euthanasia program. Frick's death sentence was carried out on 16 October 1946 alongside nine others passed down by the tribunal.

The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial took place from 9 December 1946 to 20 August 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 23 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.