Editing Karl Brandt (section)

== [[Nazi]] career ==
After the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, a law justifying the sterilisation of those deemed defective or racially impure, was passed by the Reich Ministry of the Interior under [[Wilhelm Frick]] in 1933, Brandt was responsible for performing abortions on women whose offspring were believed to be at risk of developing the above defects. On 1 September 1939, Hitler appointed Brandt deputy head of the newly established [[Action T4]] program, serving under [[Philipp Bouhler]]. Under the T4 program, handicapped children were systematically [[Murder|Murdered]] at extermination centres disguised as clinics under the direction of Bouhler, Brandt and [[Viktor Brack]].

In 1945, as Nazi Germany was invaded by the Allies, Brandt attempted to move his family out of Germany. As a result, he was arrested by the [[Gestapo]] for disobeying Hitler's order that none of his officials were permitted to retreat. Brandt was condemned to death, but his sentence was suspended by the intervention of [[Heinrich Himmler]] and [[Albert Speer]], and [[Karl Dönitz|Karl Donitz]] later ordered his release during his brief tenure as Fuhrer. Brandt was arrested by British troops soon after.