Background
Leonardo Conti was born in Lugano, Switzerland, on 24 August 1900. He was a son of a Swiss-ltalian father and a mother who subsequently became ‘Reich Leader of Midwives’.
Leonardo Conti was born in Lugano, Switzerland, on 24 August 1900. He was a son of a Swiss-ltalian father and a mother who subsequently became ‘Reich Leader of Midwives’.
Conti later studied medicine in Berlin (Friedrich Humboldt Universität, F.H.U) and Erlangen (Friedrich Alexander Universität, F.A.U). He became active in the völkisch movement, and co-founded an antisemitic paper called Kampfbund ("Struggle league"). He took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920. From 1923 he was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), becoming their first physician; one of his patients was Horst Wessel, who eventually became a martyr of the Nazi Party.
In November 1918 was a co-founder of the anti-semitic Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur and an active leader of the völkisch student movement. A member of the Freikorps, he participated in the Kapp putsch and belonged to the Old Guard of the Nazi Party, joining the SA in 1923 and becoming its first physician in Berlin. Conti built up and organized the medical services of the SA and also founded the Nazi Doctors’ Association in the Berlin district. A general practitioner of medicine in Berlin from 1927-he was the doctor of the Nazi ‘martyr' Horst Wessel -Conti joined the SS in 1930.
Two years later he became a delegate in the Prussian legislature and in April 1933 he was appointed a Prussian State Councillor by Goering. Head of the Public Health Department in the Reich Leadership from 1934, he was made Chief of the Berlin Health Service and put in charge of medical arrangements for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. A specialist on ‘race questions', Conti in an interview' following the Nazi decree of 1938, which forbade Jewish physicians to practise their profession except, among Jews, remarked: it is only the elimination of the Jewish element which provides for the German doctor the living space due to him.’
On 20 April 1939 Conti was appointed Reichsgesundheitsführer (Reich Health Leader) and State Secretary for Health in the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Originally put in charge of the euthanasia programme, he was quickly succeeded by Philip Bouhler; but as a protégé of Martin Bormann, he maintained his position as Reich Health Leader until August 1944. Elected a member of the Reichstag in August 1941, Conti was promoted in August 1944 to the rank of SS-Ober- gruppenführer. He hanged himself in his Nuremberg cell.
He joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) and, as an "old fighter" of the party, he was appointed by Hermann Göring to the Prussian State Council. Conti held the posts and titles of Head of the Reich Physicians' Chamber (Reichsärztekammer), Leader of the NSDÄB, and Leader of the Main Office for the People's Health. In 1937 he was elected to the presidency of the FIMS, the International Federation of Sports Medicine. The FIMS today considers this to have been "a black page' in their history. In 1939, Conti was appointed Reichsgesundheitsführer and State Secretary in the Interior Ministry. On 1 July 1941, as the Chief of Health in the Reich, he obtained the classification of Pervitin (see History and culture of substituted amphetamines) among the products defined by Reich law on opiates. It condemns the private use of Pervitin, but does not call into question its use for military purposes.