Editing Aktion T4 (section)

==Killing of adults==

===Invasion of Poland===

{{see also|Invasion of Poland|Soldau concentration camp}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0309-501, Leonardo Conti.jpg|thumb|upright|left|''SS-Gruppenführer'' [[Leonardo Conti]] ]]
Brandt and Bouhler developed plans to expand the programme of euthanasia to adults. In July 1939 they held a meeting attended by Conti and Professor [[Werner Heyde]], head of the SS medical department. This meeting agreed to arrange a national register of all institutionalised people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities. The first adults with disabilities to be killed en masse by the Nazi regime were Poles. After the invasion on 1 September 1939, adults with disabilities were shot by the SS men of {{lang|de|[[Einsatzkommando]]}} 16, {{lang|de|[[Selbstschutz]]}} and {{lang|de|EK-Einmann}} under the command of SS-{{lang|de|Sturmbannführer}} Rudolf Tröger, overseen by [[Reinhard Heydrich]], during [[Operation Tannenberg]].{{sfn|Semków|2006|pp=46–48}}{{efn|The second phase of [[Operation Tannenberg]] referred to as the {{lang|de|Unternehmen Tannenberg}} by Heydrich's {{lang|de|Sonderreferat}}{ began in late 1939 under the codename {{lang|de|[[Intelligenzaktion]]}} and lasted until January 1940, in which 36,000–42,000 people, including Polish children, were killed in Pomerania before the end of 1939.{{sfn|Semków|2006|pp=42–50}}}}

All hospitals and mental asylums of the [[Wartheland]] were emptied. The region was incorporated into Germany and earmarked for resettlement by {{lang|de|[[Volksdeutsche#'Volksdeutsche' in German-occupied western Poland|Volksdeutsche]]}} following the German conquest of Poland.{{sfn|Friedlander|1995|p=87}} In the [[Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia|Danzig]] (now [[Gdańsk]]) area, some 7,000 Polish patients of various institutions were shot and 10,000 were killed in the [[Gdynia]] area. Similar measures were taken in other areas of Poland destined for incorporation into Germany.{{sfn|Browning|2005|pp=186–187}} The first experiments with the gassing of patients were conducted in October 1939 at [[Fort&nbsp;VII]] in [[Poznań|Posen]] (occupied Poznań), where hundreds of prisoners were killed by means of [[carbon monoxide]] poisoning, in an improvised [[gas chamber]] developed by [[Albert Widmann]], chief chemist of the German Criminal Police (Kripo). In December 1939, {{lang|de|[[Reichsführer-SS]]}} [[Heinrich Himmler]] witnessed one of these gassings, ensuring that this invention would later be put to much wider uses.{{sfn|Browning|2005|p=188}}

[[File:Fort VII Poznań RB8.JPG|thumb|Bunker No. 17 in artillery wall of [[Fort&nbsp;VII]] in [[Poznań]], used as improvised gas chamber for early experiments]]
The idea of killing adult mental patients soon spread from occupied Poland to adjoining areas of Germany, probably because Nazi Party and SS officers in these areas were most familiar with what was happening in Poland. These were also the areas where Germans wounded from the Polish campaign were expected to be accommodated, which created a demand for hospital space. The {{lang|de|[[Gauleiter]]}} of [[Pomerania]], [[Franz Schwede-Coburg]], sent 1,400 patients from five Pomeranian hospitals to undisclosed locations in occupied Poland, where they were shot. The {{lang|de|Gauleiter}} of [[East Prussia]], [[Erich Koch]], had 1,600 patients killed out of sight. More than 8,000 Germans were killed in this initial wave of killings carried out on the orders of local officials, although Himmler certainly knew and approved of them.{{sfn|Browning|2005|p=190}}{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=261}}

The legal basis for the programme was a 1939 letter from Hitler, not a formal "Führer's decree" with the force of law. Hitler bypassed Conti, the Health Minister and his department, who might have raised questions about the legality of the programme and entrusted it to Bouhler and Brandt.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=63–64}}{{efn|Several drafts of a formal euthanasia law were prepared but Hitler refused to authorise them. The senior participants in the programme always knew that it was not a law, even by the loose definition of legality prevailing in Nazi Germany.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=63–64}}}}

{{blockquote|Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are entrusted with the responsibility of extending the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, so that patients who, after a most critical diagnosis, on the basis of human judgment [''menschlichem Ermessen''], are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death [''Gnadentod''].|<small>Adolf Hitler, 1 September 1939</small>{{sfn|Miller|2006|p=160}}{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=63–64}}}}

The killings were administered by Viktor Brack and his staff from {{lang|de|Tiergartenstraße}} 4, disguised as the "Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutional Care" offices which served as the front and was supervised by Bouhler and Brandt.{{sfn|Padfield|1990|p=261}}{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=253}} The officials in charge included Herbert Linden, who had been involved in the child killing programme; Ernst-Robert Grawitz, chief physician of the SS and [[August Becker]], an SS chemist. The officials selected the doctors who were to carry out the operational part of the programme; based on political reliability as long-term Nazis, professional reputation and sympathy for radical eugenics. The list included physicians who had proved their worth in the child-killing programme, such as Unger, Heinze and Hermann Pfannmüller. The recruits were mostly psychiatrists, notably Professor [[Carl Schneider]] of Heidelberg, Professor [[Max de&nbsp;Crinis]] of Berlin and Professor [[Paul Nitsche]] from the Sonnenstein state institution. Heyde became the operational leader of the programme, succeeded later by Nitsche.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=64}}

===Listing of targets from hospital records===

[[File:Alkoven Schloss Hartheim 2005-08-18 3589.jpg|thumb|[[Hartheim Euthanasia Centre]], where over 18,000 people were killed]]
In early October, all hospitals, nursing homes, old-age homes and sanatoria were required to report all patients who had been institutionalised for five years or more, who had been committed as "criminally insane", who were of "non-[[Aryan]] race" or who had been diagnosed with any on a list of conditions. The conditions included schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, advanced [[syphilis]], [[senile dementia]], [[paralysis]], [[encephalitis]] and "terminal neurological conditions generally". Many doctors and administrators assumed that the reports were to identify inmates who were capable of being drafted for "labour service" and tended to overstate the degree of incapacity of their patients, to protect them from labour conscription. When some institutions refused to co-operate, teams of T4 doctors (or Nazi medical students) visited and compiled the lists, sometimes in a haphazard and ideologically motivated way.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=66–67}} During 1940, all Jewish patients were removed from institutions and killed.{{sfn|Browning|2005|p=191}}{{sfn|Padfield|1990|pp=261, 303}}{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=77}}{{efn|According to Lifton, most Jewish inmates of German mental institutions were dispatched to Lublin in Poland in 1940 and killed there.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=77}}}}

As with child inmates, adults were assessed by a panel of experts, working at the {{lang|de|Tiergartenstraße}} offices. The experts were required to make their judgements on the reports, not medical histories or examinations. Sometimes they dealt with hundreds of reports at a time. On each they marked a '''+''' (death), a '''-''' (life), or occasionally a '''?''' meaning that they were unable to decide. Three "death" verdicts condemned the person and as with reviews of children, the process became less rigorous, the range of conditions considered "unsustainable" grew broader and zealous Nazis further down the chain of command increasingly made decisions on their own initiative.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=67}}