Doctors' Trial

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Doctors' Trial
Courtroom at the trial, 12 December 1946
Court	Palace of Justice, Nuremberg
Full case name	United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al.
Started	9 December 1946 (1946-12-09)
Decided	20 August 1947
Court membership
Judges sitting	Walter B. Beals (presiding) Harold L. Sebring Johnson T. Crawford Victor C. Swearingen (alternate)

The Doctors' Trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists 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 US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "subsequent Nuremberg trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).^[1]

Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors and were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. The indictment was filed on 25 October 1946; the trial lasted from 9 December that year until 20 August 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.