Dr. Karl Brandt Karl Brandt, Essay

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Apparently Brandt handled the medical needs of Bruckner well because Hitler made him "…his personal physician" and in time Brandt was given the rank of "major-general in the Waffen-SS" (Spartacus Educational).

Brandt helped establish the "Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health," which was a smokescreen for "compulsory sterilization" -- and in fact Brandt was in charge of the program ("Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenially-Based Diseases") that basically was established to kill those who were "insane" and the "physically handicapped" (Spartacus Educational). The JVL explains that Brandt's euthanasia program began in 1939, and deformed children along with the very old and insane were murdered by gas or lethal injections in "…nursing homes, hospitals and asylums" (JVL, 1).

During the Nuremberg Trials the prosecutors were "caught off guard by the numerous affidavits submitted by the defense" that testified to the quality of Brandt's "personal character" (Spiro, 382). If the defense thought there were be a positive response to all those affidavits -- notwithstanding the "…wholesale murder and cruel torture of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings" -- they were disappointed. Indeed, the chief counsel for the prosecution, Brigadier General Telford Taylor announced that the Nazi doctors had "willfully and without remorse" committed many murders, committed brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities and other heinous acts (Spiro, 381).

Eighty-five witnesses testified at the Trials, backing up the prosecution's assertions; in addition there were 1,471 pieces of "documentary evidence" and a total of 11,538 pages of testimony.

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The behavior of Brandt and the other Nazi doctors on trial was, according to General Taylor, "…the inevitable le outcome of that sinister undercurrent of German philosophy that preaches the supreme importance of the state and the complete subordination of the individual" (Spiro, 381). Brandt's lawyer "repeatedly" argued that the life of any individual "…was expendable if it helped ensure the continued existence of the community," Spiro continued. Everything done by Brandt was done "…in the interests of humanity" so the individual really had little or no meaning," Brandt's attorney insisted (Spiro, 381).

Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Nationalities Papers, Michael Bryant points out that over time, the "…restrictive use of euthanasia" for certain patients ended and under Brandt's leadership the Nazis began killing "healthier patients" (Bryant, 2009, 861). In fact the euthanasia program was extended to include: "Jewish patients"; those in concentration camps who became ill; and a group of what the Nazis called "asocials" (juvenile delinquents, tramps, prostitutes and panhandlers) (Bryant, 861). Bryant writes that Brandt's assertion that he was "motivated by high ideals" did not matter to the Tribunal; he was sentenced to death on August 19, 1947 (870).

Interestingly, while waiting to be hanged (he was executed on June 1, 1948) Brandt was imprisoned at the Landsberg fortress, where Hitler was incarcerated when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (Spiro, 383). Brandt offered his "living body for medical experiments," but the American authorities (heading the Trials).....

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