9. After organizing the “mercy killings” of 300,000 handicapped people, Philipp Bouhler took his own life rather than face justice
Philipp Bouhler (b. 1899) was a senior Nazi official, serving as a Reichsleiter (National Leader) within the Nazi Party and as Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer. Spending five years in the Bavarian Cadet Corps, Bouhler fought in the First World War and suffered severe injuries. Joining the Nazi Party in 1922, with the membership number of #12, within three months he had risen to become deputy manager of the organization.
After the reformation of the party in 1925 Bouhler had further risen to the position of Reich Secretary, becoming a Reich Leader after the Machtergreifung; Bouhler also joined the SS in 1933 with the rank of Gruppenführer, rising to Obergruppenführer by 1936. As chairman of the Official Party Inspection Commission for the Protection of National Socialist Literature, Bouhler was responsible for determining which writings were suitable for German society and from 1934, as Hitler’s Chancellery, was in charge of all private and public communications from the Führer.
However it was Bouhler’s collaboration with SS physician Karl Brandt which had the greatest impact, together designing the Nazi’s euthanasia program “Aktion T4” under which mentally and physically disabled persons were granted “mercy” through state mandated killings. The implementation of “Aktion T4”, beginning in September 1939 until the end of the war, took place under Bouhler’s personal supervision and provided vital information which was later applied to the industrialized murders of the Holocaust. Under the program, an estimated 200,000 people were murdered in Germany and Austria with a further 100,000 in Eastern Europe.
Captured by American troops at Schloss Fischhorn on May 10 1945, along with his wife Helene who would commit suicide by jumping from a window, Bouhler committed suicide by cyanide at a US internment camp near Zell-am-See.