Doctors' Trial



The Doctors' Trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms. The trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).

20 of the 23 defendants were medical doctors (Brack, Rudolf Brandt, and Sievers being Nazi officials) and all were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation.

The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal I, were Walter B. Beals (presiding judge) from Washington, Harold L. Sebring from Florida, and Johnson T. Crawford from Oklahoma, with Victor C. Swearingen, a former special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, as an alternate judge. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor and the chief prosecutor James M. McHaney. The indictment was filed on October 25 1946; the trial lasted from December 9 that year until August 20, 1947. Of the 23 defendants, seven were acquitted and seven received death sentences; the remainder received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.

Indictment
The accused faced four charges:


 * 1) Conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity as described in counts 2 and 3;
 * 2) War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, and participation in the mass murder of concentration camp inmates.
 * 3) Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals.
 * 4) Membership in a criminal organization, the SS.

The SS had been declared a criminal organization by the IMT.

All defendants pled not guilty.

The tribunal largely dropped count 1, stating that the charge was beyond its jurisdiction.

Defendants
I &mdash; Indicted  G &mdash; Indicted and found guilty

Those sentenced to death were hanged on June 2, 1948 in Landsberg prison, Bavaria.

Generally, the difference between receiving a prison term and the death sentence was membership of "an organization declared criminal by the judgement of the International Military Tribunal", the SS.