Leonardo Conti (24 August 1900-6 October 1945) was the Reich Health Leader from 1939 to 1944, succeeding Gerhard Wagner.
Biography[]
Leonardo Conti was born in Lugano, Switzerland in 1900, the son of a Swiss-Italian father and a German mother. He studied in Germany and became involved in the voelkisch movement, the Viking League, the Kapp Putsch of 1920, and the Sturmabteilung in 1923. Conti served as the SA's first physician, treating future Nazi martyr Horst Wessel. Conti later joined the SS, and he served on the Prussian State Council before serving as Reich Health Leader from 1939 to 1944. During that time, he advocated for the "euthanasia" of Germans who were of "unsound mind", and he was also responsible for forced sterilizations and human experiments. He hanged himself in his Nuremberg cell before he could be tried for war crimes on the war's end.