Walter Schultze

Walter Schultze was born the son of a Bavarian Oberregierungsrat (senior government councilor). He attended Volksschule and a humanistic Gymnasium and obtained his Abitur at Landshut in 1912. He studied medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and was a student corps member of the Corps Isaria. Schultze participated in the First World War as a one-year volunteer from 1914. Initially, he served in the 2nd Royal Bavarian Heavy Cavalry Regiment and later as an aircraft observer with the Luftstreitkräfte. In 1917, he left military service as a severely war-disabled Oberleutnant, having been awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class and the Wound Badge. He returned to the university but joined the Freikorps Epp for a short time in 1919. He then completed his studies in medicine and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1919. == Weimar Republic years ==

As a member of a nationalist student organization, Schultze joined the German Workers' Party in 1919, which renamed itself the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1920. In 1921, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Party's paramilitary organization. He became a staff doctor of the SA regiment in Munich and, from March to November 1923, he was the chief of medical services in the SA High Command. == Career in Nazi Germany ==

After the Nazi seizure of power, Schultze was appointed State Commissioner for Health in the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior from March to November 1933. At that time, he was promoted to Ministerialdirektor and headed the Department of Health in the ministry from November 1933 to May 1945. In 1934, he was appointed as an honorary professor for public health at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and he also served as the president of the State Medical Academy in Munich. Schultze headed the university faculty department in the National Socialist Teachers League and sat on its Reichsleitung (national leadership board) from 1935 to 1943. He also was the head of Regional Group VII (Bavaria) in the German Red Cross. He attained the rank of SS-Gruppenführer on 30 January 1943. At the April 1938 parliamentary election, Schultze was elected from the Party electoral list as a deputy to the Reichstag and retained this seat until the fall of the Nazi regime. == Post-war life and prosecutions ==

At the end of the Second World War, Schultze was interned as a prisoner of war by American forces. As a Nazi physician, he had been involved in the Aktion T4 program of involuntary euthanasia that systematically killed physically and mentally disabled men, women and children. Schultze selected and ordered the transfer of patients from the sanatoriums and nursing homes in Erlangen and to the Hartheim killing centre. At least 380 cases of aiding and abetting the killing of disabled people were traced to him. Though not charged with the actual commission of the murders, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to three years in prison by the Munich Regional Court on 16 November 1948 for aiding and abetting manslaughter. He appealed for a revision of the sentence, and the state prosecutor recommended that the sentence be nullified and a new trial be held. This was delayed until 1960 by the defendant's inability to stand trial due to a lengthy illness. At his new trial, he was convicted and sentenced to four years at hard labor by a Munich court on 10 May 1960 for assisting in the murder of 380 mental patients. Schultze expressed no remorse, saying: "never for one moment did I feel that I had committed an injustice or crime". Schultze's appeal was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court at Karlsruhe on 21 January 1961. Walter Schultze died on 16 August 1979 in Krailling, near Munich. == References ==