Paul Nitsche

Hermann Paul Nitsche (25 November 1876 to 25 March 1948) was a German psychiatrist who endorsed the Third Reich's euthanasia programme and later headed the Medical Office of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. He was born in Colditz in Saxony, the son of the psychiatrist Hermann Nitsche, received his medical licence in 1901 and a professorship in 1925. He was deputy director of the Sonnenstein Clinic from 1913 to 1918 and its director from 1928 to 1939. A strong supporter of eugenics and euthanasia, he joined the Nazi Party only in May 1933 and was driven less by Nazi racial ideology than by his own support of racial science and a vision of progressive medicine. In 1940 he became deputy director of the Action T4 Medical Office under Werner Heyde, and in December 1941 he succeeded Heyde as its head, corresponding with mental health institutions about registering and transferring patients to be killed. Arrested on 4 November 1945, he was tried in 1947 and condemned to death for crimes against humanity under Allied Control Council Law No. 10 for killing over one thousand people. He was executed by guillotine in Dresden on 25 March 1948.