Background
Philip Bouhler was born in Munich on 11th September 1899.
Philip Bouhler was born in Munich on 11th September 1899.
From 1919 to 1920, he studied philosophy for four semesters and in 1921 became a contributor in the publishing house that put out the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter.
After the war he worked for the Völkischer Beobachter. Bouhler was an early member of the Nazi Party and by 1925 was its business manager. He held the post for the next nine years and was given the rank of Lieutenant General.
In 1933 Bouhler was elected to the Reichstag as a deputy for the electoral district of Westphalia. The following year he became head of the police in Munich. Later he became Hitler's chief of chancellery. He also became chairman of the censorship committee that issued lists of approved and condemned books.
Karl Brandt was responsible for the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health that was used to introduce compulsory sterilization. In August, 1939 the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenially Based Diseases was established. Euthanasia was employed to deal with the incurably insane or the physically handicapped. Brandt and Bouhler were put in charge of this programme that Hitler said would result in the "racial integrity of the German people."
The euthanasia programme was known as T-4 and began in autumn 1939. According to Ulf Schmidt, the author of Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor, the first person to die as a result of the T-4 programme was Gerhard Kretschmar, a child born on 29th February 1939. Documents show that the parents, who lived in the south-eastern region of Saxony, petitioned Adolf Hitler asking for the child to be "put to sleep". Brandt claimed "it was a child who was born blind, an idiot - at least it seemed to be an idiot - and it lacked one leg and part of one arm."
Carbon monoxide gas was selected as the means of death and several asylums were equipped with chambers for this purpose. Between October 1939 and August 1941, T-4 killed over 70,000 people. As the Second World War progressed the euthanasia program was used to exterminate people said to be biologically inferior, such as Jews, Poles, Russians and Gypsies.
Philip Bouhler committed suicide before he could be captured by the Allies on 19th May 1945.