One of the doctors most responsible for implementing this doctrinal shift in Nazi medical policies was Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician and the head of the Third Reich’s euthanasia program. Buried among the thousands of documents from Brandt’s trial at Nuremberg is this damning quote: “A strict selection by exterminating the insane or incapable—in other words, the scum of society—would solve the whole problem in one century, and would enable us to get rid of the undesirable elements who people our prisons, hospitals, and lunatic asylums.” Although the passage articulated Brandt’s
...more
