Viktor Brack
Viktor Brack | |
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Doctors' trial | |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Viktor Hermann Brack (9 November 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a member of the
Early life and Nazi Party membership
Brack was born the son of a physician in Haaren (now part of Aachen) in the Rhine Province.[1] In 1928, he completed a degree in agriculture at the Technical University of Munich and shortly thereafter began managing the estate attached to his father's sanatorium; he also was a test driver for BMW.[1]
In 1929 at the age of 25, Brack became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the Schutzstaffel (SS). Throughout 1930 and 1931, Brack was one of Heinrich Himmler's personal drivers, having become acquainted with the Reichsführer-SS as a consequence of his father having delivered one of the SS leader's children.[1] Sometime in 1932, he became adjutant to Philipp Bouhler and by 1934, Brack was his chief of staff.[2] In 1936, he was appointed chief of Hauptamt II (main office II) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin.[3] The office handled matters concerning the Reich Ministries, Wehrmacht, NSDAP, clemency petitions and complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany.[4]
Aktion T4
Hauptamt II officials under Viktor Brack played a vital role in organising the killing of
In January 1940, Brack gave
On 3 April 1940, Brack explained to leading members of the German Council of Municipalities his justification for murdering persons deemed permanently mentally ill.[14] Among material considerations, Brack outlined how they "deprived" others of food (useless eaters), and unnecessarily took up space at hospitals for otherwise curable people.[14] Beyond those reasons, Brack added the ideological components of racial hygiene as grounds for their extermination, atop stressing the importance of the war effort above humanitarian factors.[15]
There were six principal killing centers; these resided at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Brandenburg, and Hadamar; most of which, historian Robert Lifton points out, "were in isolated areas and had high walls—some had originally been old castles—so that what happened within could not be readily observed from without."[16] Given the scale of the operation, Brack recruited personnel using his network of contacts and party connections to fully staff T4,[c] none of whom were forced to participate but volunteered their services.[18] The T4 killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945; from 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).[19][20][21]
Role in the Holocaust
During October 1941,
Dear Reichsführer, among tens of millions of Jews in Europe, there are, I figure, at least two to three millions of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labour problem presents us with, I hold the view that those two to three millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can, however, only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate.[23]
Brack only intended to spare these 2–3 million Jews capable of work provided they were accordingly sterilized.[24] Following these recommendations, Himmler ordered the procedure to be tested on prisoners in Auschwitz. Since Brack was transferred to an SS division, his deputy Blankenburg took over responsibility for the task and would "immediately take the necessary measures and get in touch with the chiefs of the main offices of the concentration camps".[25] When sterilization proved impracticable, this was rejected in favor of exterminating the Jews using poison gas, since the technical apparatus was already in place via T4 to kill unwanted "mentally ill" persons.[26] With the completion of the T4 euthanasia programme run by Brack, the Nazis dismantled the gas chambers previously used for that endeavor, shipped them east, and reinstalled them at Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Treblinka.[27] Brack subsequently took part in the administrative process of establishing extermination camps in occupied Poland.[28] It was personnel and equipment provided by Brack that were utilized to murder the Jews.[29][d]
Trial and execution
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Viktor_Brack.jpg/220px-Viktor_Brack.jpg)
Sometime in April 1945, Viktor Brack and his superior Phillip Bouhler were arrested.[30] During the Eichberg trial,[e] which concluded at Frankfurt on 21 December 1946, Brack was implicated for his role in recruiting physicians for the euthanasia killings.[31] At the Hadamar Trial—between 24 February 1947 until 21 March 1947—he was again implicated along with Dr. Karl Brandt for his involvement in the T4 programme.[31] Brack was known to radically enforce euthanasia, even terrorizing doctors and nurses to ensure they maintained the killing procedures, despite later claiming during the trials that he had never even heard of the T4 programme.[32]
During the trials, Brack insisted that euthanasia was a "humane measure" for incurably sick people and denied all knowledge of the Holocaust.[33] He contested his complicity in mass X-ray sterilizations until confronted by his signature on corresponding documents; meanwhile other administrators—Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers—testified against Brack, proving links between him, the Führer's Chancellery, and Hitler.[34] Nonetheless, Brack denied any anti-Semitism or involvement with killing Jews and avowed that he had joined the Waffen-SS in 1942 to distance himself from the regime.[35]
On 20 August 1947, Brack was sentenced to death.[36] He was executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison on 2 June 1948, stating at the gallows that he "wished for God to give peace to the world."[36]
References
Notes
- ^ In his role as an administrator of the T4 programme, Brack was codenamed "Jennerwein".[10]
- ^ Also see: Vernehmungsprotokoll der Sonderkommission des Hessischen Landeskriminalamtes Wiesbaden, V/1, April 4, 1960, "Tötung in einer Minute". „Mitschrift der Vernehmung und Fahndungsschreiben von Dr. phil. August Becker“ (in German)
- ^ As the liaison between the Führer's Chancellery and the Health Ministry, historian David Cesarini claims that it was Brack, who "developed the organization."[17]
- ^ While historians Robert Jay Lifton and Henry Friedlander assert that the T4 programme provided the "medical bridge to genocide" and were part of Nazi Germany's first "mass murder," Cesarini was not so convinced, arguing instead that it was Einsatzgruppen operations in Poland—particularly Operation Tannenberg—that formed the "bridge to genocide" and not compulsory euthanasia.[29]
- Doctors' trial
Citations
- ^ a b c Friedlander 1995, p. 68.
- ^ Stackelberg 2007, p. 186.
- ^ Friedlander 1995, p. 41.
- ^ Friedlander 1995, pp. 40–42.
- ^ Schafft 2004, pp. 159–163.
- ^ Hilberg 1985, pp. 225–226.
- ^ Schafft 2004, p. 160.
- ^ Friedlander 1995, p. 40.
- ^ Proctor 1988, pp. 206–208.
- ^ Lifton 1986, p. 141.
- ^ Friedlander 1995, pp. 41–42.
- ^ Proctor 1988, pp. 189–190.
- ^ Lifton 1986, pp. 71, 73–75, 100.
- ^ a b Kay 2021, p. 34.
- ^ Kay 2021, pp. 34–35.
- ^ Lifton 1986, p. 71.
- ^ Cesarani 2016, p. 282.
- ^ Friedlander 1995, p. 69.
- ^ Longerich 2010, p. 477.
- ^ Browning 2005, p. 193.
- ^ Proctor 1988, p. 191.
- ^ a b Lifton 1986, p. 79.
- ^ Friedmann 1977, p. 6.
- ^ Proctor 1988, p. 206.
- ^ International Military Tribunal 1949, p. 279.
- ^ Proctor 1988, p. 207.
- ^ Michalczyk 1994, p. 39.
- ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 106.
- ^ a b Cesarani 2016, p. 286.
- ^ Weindling 2004, p. 34.
- ^ a b Weindling 2004, p. 101.
- ^ Weindling 2004, pp. 222, 256.
- ^ Weindling 2004, pp. 158–159.
- ^ Weindling 2004, pp. 159, 173.
- ^ Weindling 2004, p. 253.
- ^ a b Weindling 2004, p. 302.
Bibliography
- Browning, Christopher (2005). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942. Arrow. ISBN 978-0-8032-5979-9.
- Cesarani, David (2016). Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 978-1-25000-083-5.
- ISBN 978-0-80782-208-1.
- Friedmann, Towish, ed. (1977). Himmlers Teufels: General SS- und Polizeiführer Globoćnik in Lublin und Ein Bericht über die Judenvernichtung im General-Gouvernement in Polen 1941–1944, Dokumenten-Sammlung (in German). Haifa: Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes. OCLC 654617673.
- Hilberg, Raul (1985). The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 0-8419-0910-5.
- International Military Tribunal (1949). Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946-April 1949. Vol. 2. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC 62569816.
- ISBN 978-0-300-26253-7.
- Lifton, Robert Jay (1986). The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-46504-905-9.
- Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
- Michalczyk, John J. (1994). Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward. ISBN 978-1-55612-752-6.
- Proctor, Robert (1988). Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674745780.
- Schafft, Gretchen E. (2004). From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-25207-453-0.
- Stackelberg, Roderick (2007). The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41530-861-8.
- Weindling, Paul J. (2004). Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical War Crimes to Informed Consent. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-23050-700-5.
- Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). ISBN 0-02-897500-6.