Adolf Hitler signed a memorandum authorizing involuntary euthanasia in October 1939 to serve as the legal basis for Aktion T4, the Nazi forced euthanasia program. Its purpose was to assure the doctors and nurses who took part in the euthanasia program would not be prosecuted for murder. During the postwar trials of these same individuals, they attempted to use this decree as a justification for their actions.
Contents
Background
In July 1939 Hitler gave Karl Brandt and Philipp Bouhler the task of organizing the adult euthanasia program. (The children's euthanasia program had already begun in 1938.) In late July and August 1939, and Brandt and Bouhler assembled a group of doctors, all of whom were staunch advocates of euthanasia, to attend a series of meetings in Berlin that would help them plan and execute the adult euthanasia program. Bouhler told them that euthanizing the mentally disabled would create hospital space for the impending war and free up doctors to care for the wounded. He also told them that Hitler had not published a euthanasia law because it would used as propaganda against Germany but reassured them that they would not be prosecuted for participating in the euthanasia program. However, there were still concerns about the legality of euthanasia, as under German law illegally killing a human being was a capital offense. At a meeting about the euthanasia program in September 1939, Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery (German: Reichskanzlei) and Hitler's legal advisor, pushed for the euthanasia program to have a solid legal basis. According to Lammers, Hitler gave him the task of drafting a euthanasia law, but Hitler decided not to promulgate the law because he was afraid that it would cause an uproar.
Since there would be no law formally authorizing the euthanasia program, doctors, nurses, and public health officials were afraid of criminal liability if they participated in it. To assuage their fears, Hitler's Chancellery (German: Kanzlei des Führers or KdF) asked Hitler to authorize the euthanasia program in writing. He agreed, and the KdF prepared a written statement on his own stationery. He signed it in October 1939 but backdated it to September 1, 1939.
Use in postwar trials
When those who had participated in the euthanasia program were tried and charged with murder following the end of the war in 1945, they appealed to this decree, arguing that it gave their actions a legal basis. However, while American military tribunals accepted the decree as a legal basis for euthanasia, no West German court accepted the degree as a valid law.
Hadamar trial
In the U.S. Hadamar trial of October 1945, the Americans prosecuted seven defendants who had worked at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre. However, they did not charge them with murdering the mentally disabled but rather with killing Polish and Russian workers who were sick with tuberculosis. The Americans presumed that the euthanasia program had a legal basis in German law (the "Memorandum Authorizing Involuntary Euthanasia"), meaning that for the Americans, prosecuting the staff at Hadamar for killing the mentally disabled would infringe on the sovereignty of the Third Reich. In their trials of German war criminals and perpetrators of atrocities, the Americans were concerned above all to maintain U.S. sovereignty by not setting a precedent for one nation to interfere in the domestic affairs of another.