December 9, 1946: The Doctors’ Trial of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials begins.
Two months after the end of the main Nuremberg Trials, which put twenty-three of Nazi Germany’s most powerful political, military, and financial leaders on trial for war crimes, the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials began. These eventually came to include trials specifically conducted for justices, members of the SS death squads, high-ranking generals, and ministry officials, but the first to begin was the Doctors’ Trial.
Officially, it was entitled United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al., Karl Brandt being the head of the T-4 euthanasia program, Hitler’s personal physician, Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation, and one of twenty-three men charged by the tribunal with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and inhumane medical experimentation. Another relatively well-known figure among the accused was Karl Gebhardt, a high-ranking SS surgeon who, at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, performed fatal experiments on prisoners that involved breaking their legs and intentionally infecting the wounds in order the prove the uselessness of the drug sulfonamide. Waldemar Hoven, who was also sentenced to hang along with the previous two, performed experiments on prisoners with typhus. Wolfram Sievers was a leader of the Ahnenerbe and founded the organization’s institute for medical research for military purposes. The institute performed the notorious high-altitude experiments at Dachau, along with freezing temperature experiments and amputations without anaesthesia. Sievers also authorized the creation of a skeleton collection, which was achieved through the maceration of dozens of Jewish, Polish, and other prisoners. There was one man, now synonymous with Nazi medical experimentation, who was notably absent from the Doctors’ Trial - Josef Mengele. Mengele evaded capture and eventually escaped to Argentina, never answering for his crimes, which included vivisections on pregnant women and horrifying experiments conducted on twins.
Seven of the accused were ultimately sentenced to death. One, Kurt Blome, was spared the gallows and gave information to American officials regarding his research at Dachau, later to be hired by an American government research group under Operation Paperclip.