Only once was Karl Brandt seen active, and that is in the negotiations with Pastor von Bodelschwingh, which led to the result, amazing for us, that the defendant Karl Brandt won Bodelschwingh’s sympathy, and after the collapse the latter said in a radio interview that Brandt was an idealist but not a criminal.
But the defendant Karl Brandt took note of interrogation forms, he inspected a registrar’s office, and he co-signed the authority for physicians to execute euthanasia.
What could the defendant Karl Brandt learn from the forms?
The prosecution thinks that Jews and foreigners were to be affected in the first instance. The affidavit by the director of the Jewish lunatic asylum, in which all the insane Jews of Germany were concentrated, proves that this was not the case.
The prosecution says that all persons unfit for work were to be killed as “useless eaters”. But it is a fact that even work-houses were requested to give information only about cases of really grave insanity.
What did the defendant Karl Brandt know about the procedure?
He knew that the authorization which was issued was not an order given to the doctor, but only conferred on him the right to act on his own responsibility after the most careful consideration of the patient’s condition. This was a clause inserted in the ordinance of 1 September 1939 on Karl Brandt’s initiative.
The defendant Karl Brandt knew that the specialists, whom he did not know, were chosen by the Ministry of the Interior, and that the experts were eminent men in their special spheres.
The defendant Karl Brandt also knew that the authorities concerned saw no reason to object to the execution of the measure, and that even the chief jurists of the Reich declared the legal foundations to be irreproachable, after having been informed of the facts.
Within this framework the defendant Karl Brandt approved of official euthanasia and supported it.