Karl Brandt

German physician

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July 16, 2026

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Karl Brandt was a German physician and a key figure in the Nazi T4 Program, a euthanasia initiative that systematically killed individuals deemed "unfit to live." Adolf Hitler empowered Brandt and Philipp Bouhler to expand physicians' authority to grant "mercy killings" to incurable patients, backdating the order to the start of World War II.1

The T4 Program, named after its Berlin address, involved the German psychiatric community in identifying and killing those with a "life unworthy of living," often based on economic productivity rather than solely genetic or infirmity criteria. Victims were referred to as "burdensome lives" and "useless eaters". Initially using starvation and lethal injection, the program later adopted asphyxiation by poison gas in disguised shower chambers.1

The T4 Program's killings were a precursor to the Holocaust, with its killing centers foreshadowing extermination camps. Brandt was later tried and convicted at the Nuremberg trials for his role in these atrocities.12

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T4 Program
Karl Brandt and Chancellery chief Philipp Bouhler were “charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians…so that patients considered incurable, according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing.”
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Karl Brandt and Chancellery chief Philipp Bouhler were “charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians…so that patients considered incurable, according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing.”
Read More