page_title: Leonardo Conti
section_title: Action T4
hierarchical_section_title: Leonardo Conti / Action T4
caption_attribution_description: English: The Katyn Massacre, 1940 Professor Ferenc Orsós presenting a protocol of the International Medical Commision's work to Dr Leonardo Conti, German State Health Leader, during the meeting in Conti's office in Berlin. From left to right: 1st - Dr Vincenzo Palmieri, Professor of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at the University of Naples, Italy; 2nd - Dr Arno Saxén, Professor of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Helsinki, Finland; 4th - Dr Eduard Miloslavić, Professor of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at the University of Zagreb, Croatia; 5th - Dr Ferenc Orsós, Professor of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at the University of Budapest, Hungary 6th - Dr František Hájek, Professor of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at the University of Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Czech Republic) 7th - Dr Marko Markov, Reader of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria; 9th - Dr Alexandru Birkle, Reader at the Forensic Medicine and Criminology Institute in Bucarest, Romania; 12th - Dr Leonardo Conti, German State Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer), a host of the meeting; 13th - Dr Helge Tramsen, Prosecutor at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen, Denmark (behind Dr Conti);
context_page_description: Leonardo Conti, MD was the Reich Health Leader in Nazi Germany. The killing of many Germans who were of "unsound mind" is attributed to his leadership.
context_section_description: Leonardo Conti was a staunch promoter of a public medical administration strongly controlled by the Nazi state. Under his leadership, local health offices were further expanded to allow for a genetic control and selection of the population in order to remove "weak" elements for the improvement of the German race, a doctrine known as eugenics. The various programmes were the basis for "racial hygiene" a lethal part of the Nazi philosophy.
  Accordingly, he was co-responsible for the forced sterilization program, the racially motivated forced pregnancy interruptions, and ultimately the Action T4 program. It is also undisputed that Conti participated in human experiments.
  The Nazi involuntary euthanasia program involved the planned murder of mentally and physically impaired patients and started in September 1939 when the policy was approved by Hitler in a personal decree. He approved the euthanasia of a young disabled boy, Gerhard Kretschmar, at the request of his father, but approval was quickly extended to other disabled children, and then disabled adults. The approval of three doctors was needed for killing of any individual to proceed. The killings were conducted in many hospitals and asylums such as Hadamar Euthanasia Centre by a variety of methods, including enforced starvation, injection of lethal drugs, and gassing using carbon monoxide. Patients were carefully deceived to believe that they were simply taking a shower so as to entice them into the gas chamber, then locked in and asphyxiated through carbon monoxide poisoning. Although public protests led by Bishop Galen and others forced the policy to be officially suspended in 1941, it continued unofficially until the end of the war. 
  The program constituted the basis for the later programme of mass murder known as the Holocaust of Jews, Poles, Gypsies as well as other Slavs, and Russian POWs in camps such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek. Gassing with Zyklon B was used mainly at Auschwitz and Majdanek with over 1 million victims, and Carbon monoxide at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno, the main extermination camps. Such mass murder followed the earlier murders through gunfire by the Einsatzgruppen death squads. Many of the SS staff involved in the later murders developed their lethal methods during the Action T4 programme, overseen by Conti. Victims were deceived in the same way as in Action T4, using very elaborate means to convince them that no harm was intended to them.
  Conti was also involved in the forensic investigation into the Katyn massacre, and received a detailed report, known as the Katyn Commission on the discovery from an international team of experts.
caption: Conti being presented with a report on the Katyn massacre discovered by the Germans in 1943
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