The Doctors' Trial (officially ''United States of America v.
Karl Brandt
Karl Brandt (8 January 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a German physician and ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) officer in Nazi Germany. Trained in surgery, Brandt joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became Adolf Hitler's escort doctor in August 1934. A member of ...
, et al.'') was the first of 12 trials for
war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
, Germany, after the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the
International Military Tribunal
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
, but took place in the same rooms at the
Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "
subsequent Nuremberg trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Twenty of the twenty-three defendants were medical doctors and were accused of having been involved in
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target po ...
and
mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. The
indictment
An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use the felonies concept often use that of a ...
was filed on 25 October 1946; the trial lasted from 9 December that year until 20 August 1947. Of the 23 defendants, seven were acquitted and seven received death sentences; the remainder received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.
Background
Twenty of the twenty-three defendants were medical doctors (
Viktor Brack
Viktor Hermann Brack (9 November 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) and a convicted Nazi war criminal, who was one of the prominent organisers of the euthanasia programme Aktion T4; this Nazi initiative resulted in the ...
,
Rudolf Brandt, and
Wolfram Sievers were
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
officials), and were accused of having been involved in
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target po ...
and
mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
Josef Mengele
, allegiance =
, branch = Schutzstaffel
, serviceyears = 1938–1945
, rank = '' SS''-'' Hauptsturmführer'' (Captain)
, servicenumber =
, battles =
, unit =
, awards =
, commands =
, ...
, one of the leading Nazi doctors, had evaded capture.
The judges, heard before Military Tribunal I, were
Walter B. Beals (presiding judge) from
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
,
Harold L. Sebring from
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, and
Johnson T. Crawford from
Oklahoma, with Victor C. Swearingen, a former special assistant to the
Attorney General of the United States, as an alternate judge. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was
Telford Taylor
Telford Taylor (February 24, 1908 – May 23, 1998) was an American lawyer and professor. Taylor was known for his role as lead counsel in the prosecution of war criminals after World War II, his opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and his o ...
and the chief prosecutor was James M. McHaney.
Indictment
The accused faced four charges, including:
# Conspiracy to commit
war crimes and
crimes against humanity as described in counts 2 and 3;
# War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on
prisoners of war and
civilians
Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not " combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant ...
of
occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed
murders, brutalities, cruelties,
tortures
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the
mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the
Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
inmates.
# Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals.
# Membership in a criminal organization, the
SS.
[ – Excerpts from the official trial record, opening and closing statements, and eyewitness testimony.]
The tribunal largely dropped count 1, stating that the charge was beyond its jurisdiction.
I — Indicted G — Indicted and found guilty
All of the criminals sentenced to death were
hanged
Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...
on 2 June 1948 at
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, af ...
.
For some, the difference between receiving a prison term and the death sentence was membership in the SS, "an organization declared criminal by the judgement of the International Military Tribunal". However, some SS medical personnel received prison sentences. The degree of personal involvement and/or presiding over groups involved was a factor in others.
See also
![Witnesses at Doctors' trial](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Witnesses_at_Doctors%27_trial.jpg)
*
Command responsibility
Command responsibility (superior responsibility, the Yamashita standard, and the Medina standard) is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes.
*
Declaration of Geneva
The Declaration of Geneva was adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Association at Geneva in 1948, amended in 1968, 1983, 1994, editorially revised in 2005 and 2006 and amended in 2017.
It is a declaration of a physician's dedicati ...
*
Declaration of Helsinki
The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH, fi, Helsingin julistus, sv, Helsingforsdeklarationen) is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed originally in 1964 for the medical community by the World Medical Association (WMA) ...
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Medical ethics
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Medical torture
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Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics refers to the social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany, composed of various pseudoscientific ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of ...
*
Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code (german: Nürnberger Kodex) is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in '' U.S. v Brandt'', one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the Second World War.
Tho ...
*
Nuremberg principles
*
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
*
Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger (27 April 1911 – 12 October 2009) was a German racial anthropologist, ethnologist, and explorer who worked for the ''Ahnenerbe''. In that role he participated in Ernst Schäfer's 1938–39 journey to Tibet, helped the Race and Sett ...
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Hans Conrad Julius Reiter
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Claus Schilling
Claus Karl Schilling (5 July 1871 – 28 May 1946), also recorded as Klaus Schilling, was a German tropical medicine specialist who participated in the Nazi human experiments at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II.
Though never a ...
*
Hermann Stieve
Hermann Philipp Rudolf Stieve (22 May 1886 – 5 September 1952) was a German physician, anatomist and histologist. Following his medical studies, he served in the German Army during First World War and became interested in the effect of stress a ...
*
List of medical ethics cases
Some cases have been remarkable for starting broad discussion and for setting precedent in medical ethics
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical eth ...
References
Further reading
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External links
* – Partial transcript from the trial
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{{Authority control
Nazi human subject research
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Nazi eugenics
Holocaust trials
United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals
1947 in case law
1947 in Germany