Additional Nuremberg Trials
Following the initial Nuremberg Trials a series of following trials occurred, both in Nuremberg and in other locations throughout Europe. Each of the four occupying powers, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, was granted the authority to prosecute war criminals within their respective zones of occupation by the Allied Control Council in December 1945. Nuremberg fell within the American zone, and after the trials of the major war criminals was completed, the Americans used the Palace of Justice for a series of trials which lasted until 1949. Similar trials took place in the other zones.
The Americans conducted twelve trials within the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, the first being the Doctors Trials beginning in December 1946. Several of the trials ran concurrently with each other. In the subsequent Nuremberg trials the Tribunals and prosecutors were all Americans, the defense attorneys could be American or German (or other nationalities in some cases). In all, after initiating nearly 4,000 cases, the Americans brought 489 to trial, prosecuting over 1,600 defendants. Of these just over 1,400 were convicted, and nearly 200 were sentenced to death and executed. Almost 300 more were incarcerated for a period of time.
Officially the trials were known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) and many classed in groups (such as the Doctors Trials) were in themselves a series of trials. In the Doctors Trials, 23 German officials, 20 of them doctors of medicine, were tried for the crimes of human experimentation and murder. The other three were members of the Nazi bureaucracy who supported the experimentation. Had Josef Mengele not eluded custody he would likely have been tried in this group, as were some of his colleagues and correspondents. Several of the doctors were also charged with being members of the SS, declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal.
Most of the doctors had been involved, in varying degrees, with the Nazi research programs involving genetics research and euthanasia. The standard practice after creating or attempting to create abnormalities in children was to execute the victims. One of the doctors tried was Karl Brandt, one time personal physician to Adolf Hitler and co-leader of the Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program. Brandt had already been under the death penalty for the crime of fleeing crumbling Berlin in 1945, with his family, in an attempt to surrender to the British or Americans rather than be taken by the Russians. Taken to Kiel by the Gestapo, he was spared execution on the order of Admiral Doenitz.
At his trial, Brandt explained his support of the mass killings of disabled and maimed victims as a necessity of total war, which the Reich was engaged in for its life. Brandt, and six other Nazi doctors were convicted and sentenced to death, seven others were acquitted, and the remaining nine were imprisoned for sentences ranging from ten years to life. Nearly all of the prison sentences were later commuted. Brandt and the other six sentenced to death were executed by hanging in Landsberg Prison, Bavaria, on June 2, 1948. Brandt continue to shout justification for his acts and Nazi philosophy on the gallows even after the hood was placed over his head.