Karl Brandt (8 January 1904 – 2 June 1948) was the Reich Commissioner for Sanitation and Health of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler's physician. Brandt was involved in the planning of Action T4, a program of involuntary euthanasia against prisoners of World War II, and he was hanged after the Doctors Trial in 1948.
Biography[]
Karl Brandt was born on 8 January 1904 in Mulhouse, Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire to a family of Prussians. Brandt became a head and spinal surgeon in 1928 and became an SS Untersturmfuhrer, serving as the escort physician of the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself. Under Nazi Germany, he aborted fetuses deemed handicapped, mentally or physically disabled, or racially deficient, and on 1 September 1939 he was given control over Action T4, the forced euthanasia program that German scientists were working on; he used carbon monoxide for mass exterminations. After the war, he was charged with crimes against humanity in the Doctors' Trial and was hanged in Landsberg Prison on 2 June 1948.