Description

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Some 60 years after the Nuremberg trials, interest in the leading figures of the Third Reich continues unabated. Here, Ulf Schmidt recounts the meteoric rise of one of Hitler's most trusted advisers, Karl Brandt.

As Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation, Karl Brandt became the highest medical authority in the Nazi regime. He was entrusted with the killing of handicapped children and adults - the so-called 'Euthanasia' Program - and played a part in illegal medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. What drove a rational, highly cultured, idealistic and talented young medic to become responsible for mass murder and criminal human experimentation on a previously unimaginable scale? This riveting biography explores in detail the level of culpability of one of the most intriguing of the Nuremberg Nazis.

Ulf Schmidt presents an incisive study of Brandt's political power as a way of exploring the contradictions of Nazi medicine in which the care for wounded civilians and soldiers existed side by side with the murder of tens of thousands of unwanted people. Brandt's eventual capture and trial at Nuremberg in 1947 is also described in detail.

This book is the first major biography of Brandt, featuring substantial unseen documentation, and a lasting reminder of the horrors of the Third Reich.

About the Author

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Dr Ulf Schmidt is Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, Canterbury, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Research Associate at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford.