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Karl Brandt

Karl Brandt, the lead defendant in the medical trial

Karl Brandt was Hitler's personal physician. He was also Major General Reich Commissioner for Health & Sanitation and a member of the Reich Research Council.

Brandt was charged with four counts:

1. Common design or conspiracy.
2. War crimes.
3. Crimes against humanity.
4. Membership in criminal organizations.

As part of Count II above, Brandt was charged with special responsibility for, and participation in, the following medical experiments on concentration camp inmates:

• High altitude
• Freezing
• Malaria
• Mustard gas
• Sulfanilamide
• Bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation
• Seawater
• Epidemic jaundice
• Sterilization
• Spotted fever
• Euthanasia

Before he was sentenced to death, he boasted that he was "one German the Americans will never hang." He offered his body for medical experiments after being sentenced to death. His offer was rejected.

Next to the gallows, he made his final speech, stating his conviction that his sentence was, "nothing but political revenge ... It is no shame to stand on this scaffold. I served my fatherland as others before me ..." He was 43.

Interestingly, Brandt, as well as others, were hung in the same prison in Landsberg, Germany in which Hitler was confined after the Beer Hall Putsch and where he wrote Mein Kampf.