Viktor Brack

Victor Brack
Brack's photograph for the Nuremberg trial
Born	Viktor Hermann Brack 9 November 1904 Haaren, Rhine Province, German Empire
Died	2 June 1948(1948-06-02) (aged 43) Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech, German Reich
Cause of death	Execution
Occupation	Chief of Office II: Affairs of the Party, State, and the Armed Forces in the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP
Criminal penalty	Death by hanging
Motive	Nazism
Conviction(s)	Crimes against humanity

Viktor Hermann Brack (9 November 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a German Nazi war criminal, the organiser of the Euthanasia Programme, Action T4, where the Nazi state systematically murdered over 70,000 disabled German and Austrian people. Following this, Brack was one of the men responsible for the gassing of Jews in the extermination camps, and he conferred with Odilo Globocnik about the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 and executed in 1948.

From a middle-class family, he became a member of the NSDAP and SS from the age of 25, and held increasing positions of responsibility in Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. He was a senior colonel in the SS by the age of 35.

Brack was born to a middle-class family in Haaren (now part of Aachen) in the Rhine Province. He was educated in local schools.

In 1929 at the age of 25, Brack became a member of the NSDAP and the SS. By 1936, he was appointed chief of Office 2 (Amt II) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin. The office handled matters concerning the Reich Ministries, armed forces, Nazi Party, clemency petitions and complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany. On 9 November 1940, Brack was promoted to the grade of SS-Oberführer (senior colonel).

In December 1939, Brack gave August Becker the task of arranging gas-killing operations of mentally ill patients and other people whom the Nazis deemed "life unworthy of life", which became known as Action T4. The program was related to popular early 20th-century ideas of eugenics and improving the race, not allowing disabled or mentally ill people to reproduce. Initially the doctors in the program sterilized people, then murdered nearly 15,000 German citizens at Hadamar Euthanasia Centre under an extension of this program.