Aktion 14f13 (2)

For five months both operations (Aktion T4 and Aktion 14f13) were running in parallel and largely followed the same very much criminal process. Actually, de-jure the latter was even more criminal than the former, because Hitler’s letter (of questionable legality) that authorized Aktion T4 said nothing about KL.

Viktor Brack assembled a panel of psychiatrists and physicians who (unlike the Aktion T4 experts who worked with reports only) personally visiting KL to select sick and incapacitated prisoners for euthanasia.

The reason for personal visits was plain and simple – unlike institutions that sent reports to Aktion T4 doctors, KL simply could not do it because it did not have qualified psychiatrists (or physicians for that matter).

As experts had to examine the subjects themselves (and as there were far more KL inmates than patients in mental institutions), Aktion 14f13 panel employed far more experts.

Hence the list of “medical perpetrators” was quite long and included a number of prominent and distinguished professionals – professors Werner Heyde and Hermann Paul Nitsche and doctors Friedrich Mennecke, Curt Schmalenbach, Horst Schumann, Otto Hebold, Rudolf Lonauer, Robert Müller, Theodor Steinmeyer, Gerhard Wischer, Viktor Ratka and Hans Bodo Gorgaß.

Still, to speed up the process, KL commandants made a preliminary list of Ballastexistenzen (“dead weight prisoners”) themselves thus pre-selecting inmates for euthanasia. However, the experts had the right (and often exercised it) to expand these lists including inmates that commandants could have overlooked.

The final lists included all inmates who had been unable to work for a certain period of time or was substantially incapacitated and would not be able to ever return to work.

These lists were then were sent to central T4 office in Berlin where the final euthanasia decisions were made. Those selected for “special treatment” were transported either by bus (using the special transportation company) or by train to the nearest killing center.

There they were examined for gold teeth by a prison doctor and labeled appropriately before being led (usually using some type of ruse) into a gas chamber, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide – usually less than 24 hours after arrival.

Orderlies of the killing center in question removed gold teeth from the mouths of the cadavers (these were considered Reich’s property and thus were sent to Berlin HQ). After this procedure was completed, the bodies were incinerated in the center’s crematorium.

The murders were carried out by the same staff and using the same means as used previously in Aktion T4. A few administrative details were changed, in that the deaths were recorded by members of the respective camp administration (not medical doctors); they informed relatives of the deaths, claiming illness (usually pneumonia) as the cause.

To avoid even the possibility of resistance, condemned inmates were told (rather convincingly) they would go to a “recovery camp”, where they would have light duties. However, as the belongings of murdered victims were sent back to the camp warehouse for sorting (a really dumb idea), some inmates had to be taken to gas chambers by force.

Aktion 14f13 was launched sometime in April 1941 when the first known selection of “unproductive ballast” took place at Sachsenhausen. By the summer, at least 400 prisoners from that camp had been killed. During the same period, 450 prisoners from Buchenwald and 575 prisoners from Auschwitz were gassed at the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre.

Between September and November 1941, 3,000 prisoners from Dachau and several thousand inmates from Mauthausen and neighboring KL Gusen, were gassed at Hartheim.

The Ballastexistenzen from the Flossenbürg, Neuengamme and Ravensbrück camps were also selected and killed. After November, another 1,000 prisoners from Buchenwald, 850 from Ravensbrück and 214 from Groß-Rosen, were gassed at Sonnenstein Castle and Bernburg. From March to April 1942, some 1,600 women were selected at Ravensbrück and gassed at Bernburg.

The death toll of Aktion 14f13 is estimated at about 20,000 making it a “mini T4” (the latter killed about ten times more). The main reason for that is that, unlike mental institutions, KL were factories that produced highly valuable products.

Consequently, with a constantly increasing demand for labor (especially after the commencement of the “final solution tom a Jewish question”) camp commanders increasingly focused on getting as much as possible value out of every inmate. Which predictably imposed strict restrictions on selections (and thus on euthanasia).

In April of 1944 the KL-Inspectorate (the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the internment camps of the Third Reich) made the next logical step. From that date on, selection of the inmates to be euthanized became the responsibility of camp administrations, usually the camp doctor.

Some Ballastexistenzen were killed in the camp (usually by lethal injection); others were sent to a death camp (i.e. the one that had a gas chamber, such as Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen or Auschwitz).

Still others (including no longer useful forced laborers from Eastern Europe, Soviet POWs and even some Hungarian Jews) were gassed at Hartheim. The last prisoner transport to Hartheim was on December 11, 1944, ending the operation (thankfully) for good.

The gas chambers at Hartheim were destroyed and traces of their use were removed, as much as possible and the castle was used as an orphanage (of all purposes).

Like its “bigger sister” (Aktion T4), Action 14f13 was an extensive operation; consequently, the list of perpetrators (i.e. guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and felony murder) is quite long.

The key individuals that initiated and managed this murderous operation are:

• Heinrich Himmler – SS Reichsfuhrer; ordered planning and execution of Action 14f13. Committed suicide (?) after being captured by the Allies
• Philipp Bouhler – Reichsleiter and SS-Obergruppenfuhrer; ordered resources of Aktion T4 to be delivered to Heinrich Himmler to be used in Aktion 14f13. Committed suicide to avoid trial for his crimes.
• Viktor Brack – SS-Oberführer; chief of Hauptamt II of the KdF and the COO of Aktion T4; delivered the resources of the latter to Heinrich Himmler. Tried, convicted and executed for crimes against humanity.
• Werner Heyde – SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain); chief of staff of the medical department in the SS-Hauptamt (headquarters); one of the top managers of the medical side of Aktion T4 (and the key member of the panel of medical experts that selected inmates for euthanasia). Committed suicide to avoid trial for his crimes.
• Horst Schumann – SS-Sturmbannführer (major); key member of the panel of medical experts that selected inmates for euthanasia. Arrested only in 1970 but quickly released due to “heart condition and generally deteriorating health”. Given the fact that he lived for 11 more years, he was possibly released because he had acquired valuable knowledge on radiation poisoning (he conducted experiments of that nature in Auschwitz)
• Richard Glücks – SS-Gruppenführer; Concentration Camps Inspector; managed the administrative side of Aktion 14f13. Committed suicide (?) on May 10^th, 1945.

Again, like its “bigger sister” (Aktion T4) made no material contribution to the Nazi war effort. It only consumed highly valuable resources (including time and energy of SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler). Consequently, it was a colossal blunder – Nazis would have been much better off by just feeding and otherwise helping sick prisoners (or, better, by having them released as due to ill health they were no longer a security risk).

Aktion 14f13 (1)

Aktion 14f13 was in many ways similar to Aktion T4 – the Nazi program of involuntary euthanasia of mentally ill, disabled, disfigured and inmates of hospitals and nursing homes deemed incurable by psychiatrists or physicians and thus judged to be unworthy of being members of Nazi society (which was considered a privilege by the Nazis). I will cover this program in appropriate detail in one of the next subsections.

So similar, in fact that I initially decided to include its description into the section on Aktion T4. However, I subsequently changed my mind as the victims of Aktion 14f13 fell into a very specific category – KL inmates. Consequently, I decided cover it in the section on Nazi internment camps.

The name of this mass murder project was reputedly coined by SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler and was based on SS record-keeping system, “14” for the Concentration Camps Inspector, “f” for the German word deaths (Todesfälle) and “13” for the means of killing, in this case gassing in the T4 killing centers (Hartheim, Bernburg and Sonnenstein) used by the project.

Aktion 14f13 (also referred to as “invalid euthanasia” or “prisoner euthanasia”) was triggered and driven by the same murderous (and equally deficient) Nazi logic as Aktion T4. By the time it was commenced in April of 1941, the Second Great War was already in full swing.

So not surprisingly, all KL were labor camps (forced labor and hard labor). Hence the camp administration (of any camp) considered valuable (and thus worthy of keeping alive) only those inmates that could work (in other words, were sufficiently productive).

All those who were not, were considered “useless mouths” and thus were condemned to “Sonderbehandlung” (“special treatment”) which was the euphemism for involuntary euthanasia (i.e. death).

This program was longer than Aktion T4 – it was in operation from 1941 to 1944 and later covered other groups of concentration camp prisoners. It was (not surprisingly) initiated by SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler who was ultimately in charge of all KL.

In late March of 1941, impressed by the results achieved by Aktion T4 by that time (he personally witnessed gassing of euthanasia victims in Poland), he approached Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, head of the KdF (Hitler Chancellery) and the nominal CEO of Aktion T4 (as I will later prove beyond the reasonable doubt, the actual CEO was Adolf Hitler himself).

In this fateful meeting, SS-Reichsfuhrer asked for Bouhler’s assistance in relieving KL (run by the SS) of “wasteful ballast” – sick prisoners and others no longer able to work and thus create value for the Nazi regime and the war effort.

In reality, “asked” is probably not the right word as by that time Bouhler already had the rank of Obergruppenführer (an equivalent of a three-star general in the SS) and thus was Himmler’s subordinate.

Consequently, it is far more likely that the Reichsfuhrer simply ordered Bouhler to provide the necessary assistance (personnel, tools, technologies, facilities, etc.) to the SS (of which he was a member since 1933).

At the end of 1941 Bouhler will be ordered by Himmler to provide assistance to a far more grandiose project – physical extermination of all Jews in German-controlled territories.

Being an SS-General, Bouhler had no other choice but to obey the order. Which was not a problem for him at all – he deeply and sincerely (and erroneously) believed that to win the existential war, the Third Reich simply had to physically eliminate all “unproductive ballast”.

So he called Viktor Brack, the head of Hauptamt II of the KdF (and the Chief Operating Officer of Aktion T4) and told him to implement Himmler’s order. Brack was also an SS officer (the Oberführer – senior colonel) and also a deep and sincere believer in the vital necessity of eliminating the “ballast”.

So he got to work – right then and there, wasting no time.

KL – the Crimes

Contrary to a very popular misconception, in Nazi Germany interment itself was legal as it was authorized by the infamous “Reichstag Fire Decree” which was issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg February 28^th, 1933 – on the next day after the Reichstag Fire and abolished the habeas corpus and thus made it possible for both Kripo and Gestapo to indefinitely keep any individual in custody (i.e. in an internment camp).

After this decree was issued, the detained no longer had the right to report his or her detention to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether the detention is lawful. Thus making internment without trial de-facto legal.

However, the treatment of KL inmates was very much illegal, because they were beaten, tortured (physically and emotionally), undernourished (by the end of the war to the point of starvation) and otherwise mistreated. And sometimes even murdered (which in official reports was typically disguised as suicides or accidents)

Worse, just about every KL had a resident killer – typhoid, which in large KL killed thousands (if not tens of thousands) of inmates. Consequently, KL officers were guilty of at least criminally negligent mass manslaughter/homicide.

However, officers in some KL (Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Dachau, Mauthausen, Gusen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Groß-Rosen and some others) were guilty of not just manslaughter, but of a very much premeditated mass murder. Capital murder. Murder one. Others were guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, felony murder or accessory to murder.

This mass murder was in many ways similar to Nazi euthanasia campaign (Aktion T4) that I will cover in appropriate detail in one of the next sections. It had a similar name (Action 14f13 which I will cover below) and used a very similar process and the facilities (including gas chambers) in the same killing centers – Bernburg, Sonnenstein and Hartheim.

Another heinous crime was sexual slavery. Women from the Ravensbrück c Auschwitz camps (the KL component of the latter) were forced to work in brothels established by the SS for camp inmates. These institutions were used mostly by camp Kapos (supervisors/administrators), “prisoner functionaries” and (of course) the criminal element.

“All of the above” was illegal because neither Weimar Constitution (in force during all 12 years of the Third Reich) nor any laws passed by Nazi government allowed KL officers to abuse, beat and torture (let alone murder) inmates.

This fact made it possible for the Allies to prosecute, try, and convict dozens male and female KL officers and guards. For example, out of 45 defendants at the Belsen trial 11 were sentenced to death, three were sentenced to 15 years in jail, five to 10 years, three to 1 to 5 years and ten (more than one in five) were acquitted.

KL – Key Misconception

Nowadays, just about everyone associates the ominous (and way too general) term “concentration camp” with the Nazi regime and the Third Reich. Consequently, one of the most popular myths about Nazi Germany is that it had invented the idea of a concentration camp (and the corresponding term).

This is simply not true. Although the Nazis used these facilities on the largest scale (by far) in human history (they had up to 755,000 simultaneous internees in 15,000 concentration camps), it did not invent the idea (or even the term for that matter). And were not the first to use it – again by far.

The term “concentration camp” was coined not by a German, but by a Spanish general and government official – Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, – a Spanish general who served as the Governor General of the Philippines and Cuba. It was in the latter capacity that in 1897 he has established the “re-concentration camps” (as he called them).

General Weyler (of Prussian descent, believe it or not) was appointed Governor General of Cuba for a very specific purpose – to crush the Cuban rebellion (actually, the Cuban War of Independence) that by that time went on and off for thirty years.

Weyler quickly realized that because rebels were (predictably) supported by the local population that had no desire to be part of a Spanish Empire, he had no other choice but to separate the former from the latter thus denying the insurgents access to vital supplies (and the ability to blend in with the civilians).

This “separation” in practical terms meant deportation of all local populations from rebel-infested and subsequent “reconcentration” in “safe havens” (i.e. internment camps) guarded by loyal Spanish troops.

As this “separation” was vehemently opposed (and resisted whenever possible) by Cuban civilians, it was a war crime (crime against humanity), plain and simple. Nevertheless, by the end of 1897, General Weyler relocated over 300,000 locals into areas nearby large cities in Cuba.

Such massive relocation (especially combined with total lack of concern for the welfare of civilians being deported), obviously, resulted in thousands and thousands of deaths (which for all practical purposes was mass murder).

Although initially this deportation (“evacuation”) of local civilians delivered a heavy blow to the rebels, in the end it did not crush the rebellion. First, the Philippines rebelled – which forced Weyler to move his elite troops from Cuba.

Then, Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was assassinated in June of 1897. Weyler lost his principal supporter in Spain and was replaced in Cuba by the more conciliatory Ramón Blanco y Erenas who promptly ended “separations”.

Which did not help either as in April of 1898 the Spanish-American war broke out. It (quite predictably) resulted in the destruction of Spanish Atlantic and Pacific fleets and in the independence of both Cuba and the Philippines.

General Weyler went on to become the Minister of War in the Spanish government and died peacefully in Madrid on October 20^th, 1930 at a ripe old age of ninety-two. He did not see the Nazi reincarnation of his concentration camp idea (but most likely knew about the Soviet one).

Although Valeriano Weyler invented the term “concentration camp”, he was not the first to put the idea in practice. The first concentration camps were established by the United States government in 1830s (a whole hundred years before Dachau) during the genocide (let’s call a spade a spade) of Native Americans in their conquest of the American version of Lebensraum (which in terms of death toll was no better than Nazi Generalplan Ost).

Actually, it was from the Americans that General Weyler learned about the “separation” anti-guerilla strategy (although they did not yet use the term “concentration camp”).

Despite his eventual defeat, Weyler’ “separation” strategy was deemed by the British valuable enough to be extensively used during the Second Boer War in South Africa.

British strategy was far more brutal than the Spanish one as it was combined with the “Scorched earth” policy (which made it an even more monstrous war crime). It included (but was not limited to) systematic destruction of crops, slaughtering of livestock, burning down of homesteads and farms, the poisoning of wells and salting of fields.

It was also far more extensive than the one employed by the Americans in the “Wild West” and by the Spanish in Cuba. For the first time in history of concentration camps, its system of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans covered the whole nation and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated. Over 26,000 Boer civilians (mostly women and children) died in those camps.

Nazis were not the first German government to establish concentration camps either. Between 1904 and 1907, the Imperial German Army operated concentration camps such as the Shark Island, Swakopmund and Lüderitz Bay camps in German South-West Africa (now Namibia).

Initially established as a tool to suppress the Herero-Nama rebellion, these camps subsequently were transformed into slave labor camps where the natives were forced to work for German military and settlers.

The mortality rate in these camps was horrible – over 50% (some say up to 75%) of inmates eventually died. The total number of victims is estimated of about 25,000.

The closest thing to Nazi concentration camp system was (unsurprisingly) set up in the Soviet Russia less than a year after the Bolsheviks came to power. The first such camps were established in May of 1918 and on July 23^rd, 1918, Leon Trotsky – a commander-in-chief of Soviet Armed Forces (and a Jew) signed an order that stipulated that these camps will be used

“to isolate and eliminate class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements, whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat”

Which for all practical purposes meant that these camps were from the very beginning planned as not just internment camps (or even labor camps) but full-fledged death camps – 25 years before Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor.

By the end of the Civil War in Russia in 1922, there were 315 such camps in existence – already an extensive system. They ultimately became the core of the infamous GULAG where from four to six million inmates perished. Making its death toll almost exactly equal to the one of the Holocaust.

KL – Definition

The generally accepted and widely used term “concentration camp” is actually all but useless for a historian because it tells nothing whatsoever about the functions of this entity.

It simply states that for some reason (unknown from the term proper) someone concentrated (i.e. placed) a certain number or individuals (hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands?) into some kind of a camp (military? prison? labor? tourist?). It also does not tell whether the individuals in question went to the camp voluntarily or at gunpoint (or were coerced in some other way).

Consequently, it does not distinguish between several very different types of camps – labor camps (for voluntary labor, forced labor or both), POW camps where prisoners-of-war are interned for the duration of the latter, death camps used for extermination of a certain category of individuals (i.e. Jews), prison camps (where inmates were sent after they were tried in a court of law, convicted and sentenced to a certain number of years of hard labor), and internment camps.

In this section, I will cover the last category of Nazi camps (which, incidentally, were also forced labor camps in most cases). I will analyze in appropriate detail other types of Nazi camps in sections devoted to the corresponding Nazi crimes.

The term “internment camp” is crystal clear because it states right then and there that (1) individuals are interned – i.e. are placed in the camp against their will and without trial – i.e. without going through the proper legal process, without any legal charges or even the intent to press any charges; and (2) this incarceration facility (let’s be blunt) is modeled after a military camp.

The latter means that the inmates are held not in civilian-style prison buildings, but in military-style barracks (usually) or tents – if the camp in question is a temporary one.

The fundamental difference between a concentration camp and a prison camp is that it is used for preventive detention, not punishment (although both can and are usually used for “re-education” – i.e. brainwashing).

In other words, the inmate of the prison camp is sent there by the verdict issued by a criminal court (i.e. as a punishment for his or her actions that violate the criminal code of the corresponding nation). The inmate in the concentration camp is interned there because he or she is determined a security risk by the security service (e.g. political police or the military) – not by the courts. Both, however, could (and usually were) be established as (slave) labor camps where inmates are forced to work for the corresponding government.

Consequently, the Soviet GULAG (again contrary to a very popular misconception) was a system (vast network, actually) not of concentration camps, but of prison camps as technically inmates were sent there not by the Soviet political police (Cheka, GPU, NKVD or GUGB), but by the courts. Kangaroo courts, that’s for sure, but still formally the courts.

However, in this section and in the remaining chapters of this book, I will use the official Nazi abbreviation KL (from Konzentrationslager) which will be used both in singular and in plural, depending on the context.

Although the official German term is translated into English as “concentration camp”, in this section it will refer to Nazi internment camps (in reality, forced labor camps and forced labor parts of death camps), but not to extermination camps, prison camps or POW camps which will be covered in other sections of this chapter.

Aktion T4 – Aftermath

By the time Aktion T4 was officially suspended (not terminated, but indefinitely suspended), mass murder of Jews in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union was already in full swing. And it appears that the decision to exterminate all Jews in German-controlled territories had already been made and begun to be implemented.

As with the euthanasia program almost two years earlier, victims were initially shot by either SS-men of Einsatzgruppen or (more often) by local willing collaborators – Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Russians, etc.

However (again like two years earlier), it was quickly found out that murder by a firing squad was too cumbersome, expensive (in terms of ammunition spent) and emotionally and psychologically hard on the SS personnel (even when they were only witnesses to the shootings).

Again, it was decided that a much more efficient method of mass murder was needed. Not surprisingly, poison gas was chosen as a replacement – first in stationary gas chambers and then also in mobile gas vans.

Which immediately created a strong demand for professionals with the necessary knowledge and experience – which could be only found in Aktion T4 personnel. Which creates another possible explanation for the sudden suspension of the euthanasia program right when the need for these professionals in other, far more important project, became evident.

In other words, Adolf Hitler suspended Aktion T4 not because he felt threatened by Bishop von Galen and his followers and not because the initial quota of 70,000 euthanized has been achieved, but simply because they had “far bigger fish to fry”, to put it bluntly.

This theory is supported by the irrefutable fact that Aktion T4 was suspended, not terminated. Which makes complete sense if we assume that the “final solution of the Jewish question” had obvious priority over the “final solution of the problem of mentally sick”.

After all, Hitler and his henchmen (incorrectly) believed that they were fighting the existential war with the “Jewish race”, not with mentally and/or physically handicapped. Hence they planned to suspend Aktion T4 to free up resources for the more important job and after it is done they would go back and complete the initial one.

Hence it is no surprise that over the next few months (by the end of 1941 at the latest), all key personnel and high-ranking officials, as well as gassing technology and the techniques used to deceive victims, were transferred to RSHA which was designated as the primary agency tasked with implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question”.

Although I tend to think that Adolf Hitler made the decision to totally and completely annihilate all Jews in German-controlled territories sometime in July of 1941, it is very much possible that this option of making these territories Judenrein (“cleansed of Jews”) was considered much earlier.

After all, for some reason in December 1939, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler decided to witness one of the gassings of mental patients (in Fort VII in Posen), although (1) he tried to avoid attending such events as much as possible; and (2) officially the SS was in no way tasked with Aktion T4 (it was the Party project).

The only logical explanation that comes to mind is simple and straightforward – already in 1939 Himmler was of the opinion that the “final solution of the Jewish question” (which had to be resolved one way to the other) would require total and complete extermination of Jews. And was actively looking for the most efficient tools, methods, processes and personnel.

So after the official (and very much real given the needs of the Holocaust project) suspension of Aktion T4 its key personnel only changed jobs – and continued to design, build, operate and maintain gas chambers, move thousands and thousands of victims to their deaths, manage killing centers, etc., etc.

Which for most of them quite predictably did not end well – most of the T4 (and Holocaust) perpetrators met untimely and violent deaths. Some were killed in action or were assassinated; many committed suicide; quite a few were arrested by the Allies, prosecuted for crimes against humanity, tried, (mostly) convicted and either executed or imprisoned.

A handful managed to escape justice; some were acquitted or received light sentences of even a “slap on the wrist” (sometimes Allied and especially the West German justice worked in even more mysterious ways than God Himself).

Aktion T4 became arguably the most thoroughly investigated, prosecuted and tried crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis (possibly because it was by far the best-documented so gathering evidence was almost effortless).

All-in-all seven trials were held – in Hadamar, Nuremberg (the so-called Doctor’s trial), Frankfurt am Main (there were actually four trials), Grafeneck, Hartheim and Klagenfurt with sentences ranging from a few years in jail to death by hanging or a guillotine.

On 29 June 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Mystici corporis Christi, in which he condemned the fact that in Greater Germany

“physically deformed people, mentally disturbed people and hereditarily ill people have at times been robbed of their lives”

Following this, in September 1943, a bold but long overdue condemnation was read by bishops from pulpits across Greater Germany, denouncing the killing of

“the innocent and defenseless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent”

The German national memorial to the people with disabilities murdered by the Nazis was opened in 2014 in Berlin. It is located in the pavement of a site next to the Tiergarten park, the location of the former villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin – the headquarters of Aktion T4.

Aktion T4 – The Perpetrators

As Action T4 implementation system was quite extensive, the list of even key perpetrators of this heinous crime is quite long:

1. Adolf Hitler – ordered extermination of all “undesirable” patients – children and adults, men and women, citizens of Greater Germany and of occupied territories
2. Heinrich Himmler – as SS-Reichsfuhrer, was ultimately in charge of Einsatzgruppen, death squads that emptied mental institutions on German-occupied territories by either shooting or gassing their patients/inmates
3. Reinhard Heydrich – as Director of RSHA, formed and executed strategic com Werner Blankenburg mand of Einsatzgruppen
4. Philipp Bouhler – SS Obergruppenfuhrer, Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP, he was tasked by a written order of Adolf Hitler to be responsible for all administrative matters of Aktion T4
5. Dr. Karl Brandt – SS-Gruppenführer in the Allgemeine SS, Hitler’s “escort doctor” and member of his “inner circle“, he was tasked by a written order of Adolf Hitler to be responsible for all medical matters of Aktion T4
6. Viktor Brack – SS-Oberführer (senior colonel), he was chief of Hauptamt II (main office II) in the Chancellery of the Führer, which was running most of the Aktion T4 activities in Germany (with the exception of the murders carried out by orders of Gauleiters of certain regions)
7. Werner Blankenburg – SA-Oberführer (senior colonel), he was head of the Section IIa in KdF and Brack’s right-hand (and eventually his successor)
8. Erwin Lambert – SS-Unterscharführer (corporal); master mason and building trades foreman, he supervised construction of the gas chambers for the Action T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hadamar killing centers
9. August Becker – SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant), he was a chemist employed by the RSHA. He helped design the gas vans with and personally participated in a number of gassings of mental patients
10. Heinrich Gross – head of the Am Spiegelgrund children’s psychiatric clinic personally responsible for the murder of 789 patients
11. Dr. Werner Heyde – head of the SS medical department and director of the medical office of Aktion T4. which handled the registration, evaluation, and selection of patients for adult euthanasia and had a front organization called the Reich Cooperative for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes
12. Hermann Nitsche– deputy director of Aktion T4 Medical Office
13. Herbert Lange – SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and the officer with Einsatzgruppe VI that murdered (by shooting and gassing) over 6,000 patients in mental hospitals in Poland, emptying these facilities
14. Albert Widmann – SS-Sturmbannführer, a chemist with Kripo who designed the first gas chambers (and the gassing process) used in Fort VII in Poland and subsequently in Brandenburg euthanasia center (and attended the latter). He also designed a gas chamber and process that used automobile engine exhaust as the source of carbon monoxide (these were subsequently used in Operation Reinhard death camps)
15. Arthur Nebe – SS-Gruppenführer and commander of Einsatzgruppe B. He ordered and supervised the gassing experiment that used a stationary gas chamber and used car engine exhaust as the source of carbon monoxide
16. Franz Schwede-Coburg, Gauleiter of Pomerania – ordered the deportation of 1,400 patients from five Pomeranian hospitals to several locations in occupied Poland, where they were shot or gassed by the Einsatzgruppen.
17. Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia, sent 1,600 mental patients to the same destination and the similar fate
18. Professor Max de Crinis wrote the Euthanasia Letter which was signed by Adolf Hitler and thus provided (ostensibly) legal foundation for Aktion T4
19. Christian Wirth – SS-Sturmbannführer, manager of the team of nonmedical supervisors at the killing centers of the euthanasia program
20. Dr. Irmfried Eberl – SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) was an Austrian psychiatrist and medical director of the euthanasia institutes in Brandenburg and Bernburg
21. Professor Werner Catel was one of the members of a three-doctor expert panel in the program of euthanasia of children. Two other members were Dr. Hans Heinze and Dr. Ernst Wentzler
22. Ernst Illing was the director of the Vienna Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic for Children Am Spielgrund, where he killed about 200 children (together with his associate Dr. Marianne Türk)

It is important to note that “all of the above” were volunteers – no one was ever coerced into participating in the euthanasia program.

Why did they volunteer? Mostly because they deeply and sincerely (and erroneously) believed that they were doing the right (and very patriotic) thing – helping their country win the existential war.

Amoral scientists (just about all the Nazi ones were) wanted to solve the problem or conduct research – and did not care about nature of the problem, the morality of solutions or the fate of the subjects.

Aktion T4 Implementation System

Contrary to a very popular misconception, it was not the Holocaust but Aktion T4 that designed, developed and implemented a radically new concept of mass murder – the industrial murder.

For the first time in human history, the planners of this horrendous crime not only made the decision to eliminate the whole social group (it happened 25 years or so in Turkey) but engineered, built and used an very much industrial system for annihilating the “undesirable” demographic group.

Contrary to another very popular misconception, the Holocaust was but a “version 2.0” of Aktion T4, albeit on a far grander scale – and thus with a far bigger number of victims.

Why did the perpetrators of Aktion T4 choose the industrial (i.e. engineering) approach to their extermination program? My guess is that it is because of the specific feature of German mentality and character – to find the most efficient solution (and process, if required) to the task at hand. In other words, to impose the most effective and efficient (“doing the right thing in the right way”) Ordnung on this task.

Even if this task happens to be mass murder. The latter is true, of course, only if the “organizational engineer” in question deeply and sincerely believes that he (it was always a “he”) is doing the right thing.

Which was exactly the case with the architects, engineers and managers of Aktion T4 (and subsequently of the Holocaust – they were often the same individuals). They deeply and sincerely believed that Germany was already fighting an existential war (this was correct) and to win this existential war, they had to physically exterminate the whole social group – mentally and/or physically sick, deformed or handicapped (the hopelessly unproductive individuals).

The latter belief was dead wrong; hence, Aktion T4 was not only a monstrous crime, but also a colossal blunder. Not a “mother of all Nazi blunders”, of course (that was the Night of the Long Knives), but still a gigantic blunder.

The biggest mystery (and there were lots of them in the Third Reich) of any mass murder or any other major crime committed by the Nazis is Hitler’s role in the crime in question.

Der Führer was highly skilled in leaving no paper trail whatsoever and his closest partners in crime either died (Himmler, Heydrich, Globocnik, Buhler) before the Allies could bring them to justice (although about the death of the SS-Reichsfuhrer I am not so sure) or went missing (Gestapo Müller).

Consequently while the medium- and low-level decisions, actions and operations are relatively well-known, what really happened at the very top in Aktion T4 (and other Nazi criminal projects) is still a mystery.

Hence reconstructing the comprehensive implementation system for the Nazi involuntary euthanasia program can be only approximate and rely far more on logic and common sense than on irrefutable facts and hard evidence (because there simply isn’t any).

My reconstruction of the Aktion T4 implementation system is presented in Figure X. It demonstrates (IMHO, beyond the reasonable doubt, given the totality of knowledge about the Third Reich) that the real CEO of the Aktion T4 project was Adolf Hitler himself. Who is, therefore, legally guilty of mass murder as the one who gave orders (albeit undoubtedly only oral ones – with one exception).

Most likely, Adolf Hitler not only ordered head of Hitler’s Chancellery Philipp Bouhler and his “escort physician” Dr. Karl Brandt to euthanize mental and physical patients considered hopelessly incurable.

But personally ordered SS-Reichsführer Adolf Hitler to have SS-Einsatzgruppen add to the list of “undesirables” to be exterminated a wholly new category – mental patients (in other words, empty mental hospitals in Poland, Bohemia and Moravia and subsequently in the Soviet Union).

Although Himmler was known to expand his authority to commit mass murders, this was something he had to get authorization from Adolf Hitler as nominally mentally sick were far outside the responsibilities of the SS.

It is also very likely that Hitler personally ordered the Gauleiters of German provinces situated near former Polish border to empty their mental asylums by shipping their patients/inmates to Poland to be shot or gassed by the SS-Einsatzgruppen.

The Gauleiters, obviously, had to request support of the SS for making these shipments as both police and regional SS units (the only ones that could do the job) were under control of SS-Reichsfuhrer, not Gauleiters.

Adolf Hitler also ordered Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick to issue directives that compelled doctors and managers of adult and children’s mental hospitals, asylums and other institutions to report names of patients/inmates who suffer from certain conditions to the Aktion T4 experts.

Thus the ultimate authority for the euthanasia program was not Hauptamt II (Main Office II) of the KdF (Hitler’s Chancellery), but Adolf Hitler himself. Hauptamt II (i.e. its head Viktor Brack) was, indeed the decision-making agency for all aspects of the Aktion T4 except decisions and actions by the Gauleiters inside Germany and all decisions and actions on the occupied territories.

The “Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses” was nothing more than a front organization, a mere post box established specifically to conceal the highly uncomfortable fact for the Führer that his personal Chancellery was running a mass murder operation – and thus committing an enormous crime against humanity.

Although Bouhler was titular head of the whole operation, in fact he had little to with it unless his authority was needed in dealing with other government agencies. Dr. Brandt dealt only with the medical aspects of the operation, and continued to run his medical practice.

Which at the end did not help either of them – Philipp Bouhler was forced to commit suicide to escape the guaranteed hangman’s noose and Karl Brandt was executed for his role in Aktion T4.

 

Aktion T4 Implementation System – Diagram

Aktion T4 – Timeline

Date	Event
1920	Psychiatrist  Alfred Hoche and jurist Karl Binding publish a book “Allowing the destruction of life unworthy of living”
01/30/1933	Adolf Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor of Germany
03/23/1933	German Parliament passes the Enabling Act, giving Hitler the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag
07/14/1933	Hitler’s Cabinet passes the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” mandating the forced sterilization of for people with certain diseases thought to be hereditary
06/30/1934	Hitler and his associates commit their first mass murder
08/19/1934	Adolf Hitler officially becomes Der Führer
1935	Hitler declares his intention to radically solve the problem of mentally sick in the event of a war
06/1939	Parents of Gerhard Kretschmar petition Hitler to euthanize their son and to make child euthanasia legal in Germany
07/25/1939	Gerhard Kretschmar is euthanized on Hitler’s orders
08/18/1939	Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses is established
08/18/1939	Reich Minister of the Interior requires reporting all children with specified disabilities to T4 authorities
09/01/1939	Nazi Germany invades Poland
09/1939	Einsatzgruppen start shooting mental patients in Poland
10/1939	Hitler authorizes Aktion T4 with a letter backdated to 09/01/39
10/1939	Mental patients from German hospitals sent to Poland and shot
10/1939	The first killing with carbon monoxide takes place in Poland
12/1939	The first euthanasia center set up in Brandenburg an der Havel
07/01/1940	The first killing facility for children is established
12/02/1941	Vatican issues decree condemning Aktion T4
02/1941	The first public protest against Aktion T4 takes place in Absberg
06-07/41	Bishop von Galen condemns Aktion T4 in his sermons
08/24/41	Adolf Hitler officially suspends Aktion T4
End of 1941	Aktion T4 personnel transferred to Operation Reinhard
05/29/41	Last involuntary euthanasia performed in Germany