Siegfried Handloser

Siegfried Handloser
Handloser c. August 1942
Chief of the German Armed Forces Medical Services
In office 28 July 1942 – 13 August 1944
Personal details
Born	Siegfried Adolf Handloser (1885-03-25)25 March 1885 Konstanz, German Empire
Died	3 July 1954(1954-07-03) (aged 69) Munich, West Germany
Cause of death	Cancer
Parent(s)	Konstantin Handloser (father) Anna Maria (mother)
Alma mater	Kaiser Wilhelm Medicinal Academy University of Giessen
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire Nazi Germany
Branch/service	German Army
Rank	Generaloberstabsarzt
Battles/wars	World War I World War II

Siegfried Adolf Handloser (25 March 1885 – 3 July 1954) was a Nazi physician and convicted war criminal, convicted for overseeing medical atrocities at concentration camps.

He was convicted at the 1947 Doctors' Trial during the subsequent Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was ultimately reduced to a 20-year term, though Handloser was released in 1954 and died of cancer the same year.

Nazi Party membership

Born in Konstanz, he had been a member of the German Army Medical Service since the First World War.

Handloser joined the committee of the German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) in 1937 as a de facto Nazi emissary. In 1938, Handloser was promoted to the position of Army Group physician of the Nazi Army Group Command 3. In October, 1939, he was named honorary professor.

From February 1941 during World War II, he held the position of Chief of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht, the most important medical position in the Nazi Armed Forces and Waffen-SS. He was also Doctor Professor of Medicine and Generaloberstabsarzt (Four stars, NATO Rank OF-9) of the German Armed Forces Medical Services.

War crimes

Handloser attended a meeting on December 29, 1941, at which it was decided to conduct human experiments to test typhus vaccines at Buchenwald concentration camp. They resulted in the deaths of about 100 people.

Handloser actively operated the organization of forced prostitution in the territories occupied by the German Reich, in his position as chief of Wehrmacht Medical Service. Handloser strove to minimize the danger of venereal disease and to prevent "sexual intercourse with Jewish women."

Conviction and death

He was convicted by the American Military Tribunal No. 1 (the Doctors' Trial) in August 1947, and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was later reduced to 20 years, but in 1954 he was released shortly before dying of cancer in Munich at the age of 69.