Today when we think of Castles, we think of ruined medieval fortifications and structures
that were involved in conflicts such as the English Civil War, or when Kings went to conquest.
However we don’t associate Castles being used to a hugely significant effect during
the Second World War.
However, within the Third Reich and Hitler’s Germany, there was one castle which was used
for a horrific program of mass killing and extermination.
So join us today as we look as Schloss Hartheim or Hartheim Castle, the Castle used by the
Nazis for Mass Murder.
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Hartheim Castle is found close to Linz in Austria, where Adolf Hitler grew up.
Hitler moved here during his childhood, and spent most of his youth in the area before
he left for Vienna.
It’s found in the middle of the Eferding Basin that runs by the River Danube, and it
had a rich history.
A castle or house stood there as early as the 12th century, and it passed through the
hands of several owners.
Up until the 1300s, the site was just one tower and then a house was added and it was
fortified by a small wall complete with ramparts and ditches for defence.
Eventually it fell into the hands of the Aspen family, who created the castle that stands
today.
It’s seen as a prominent renaissance castle, and its a large four winged castle with towers
in the corner of each, with a prominent tower in one corner.
As the centuries rolled on, the castle fell into a rather poor state of affairs and it
needed a number of replacement ceilings.
However the castle began to be converted in the early 1900s, and vast renovation took
place there to convert the former renaissance castle to become an institution for mentally
ill people.
However in 1939, Adolf Hitler following his seizure of power within Germany issued a decree
regarding Euthanasia.
The goal of the Nazi Euthanasia programme was to kill those people within the Third
Reich with mental and physically disabilities, and in this mindset the Aryans would cleanse
the population of those deemed by Nazi race laws to be have been genetically defective
and a burder to society.
In the spring and summer of 1939, a number of planners began to consider the secret killing
operations targeting first disabled children.
By August all doctors, nurses and midwives were to report newborn children or children
with mental or physical disabilities.
They then in October began to encourage parents of children to admit their children to a number
of paediatric clinics in Germany and Austria.
These were the children killing wards, where medical staff murdered young children by lethal
injection or by starvation.
As the scope of the operation widened, they included youths up to 17 years old, and at
least 10,000 children were killed.
The Euthanasia programme then expanded, and it became known as the Action T4 Programme,
and there were six different gassing installations set up for adults to be murdered inside of.
These were gas chambers in which mentally and physically disabled adults would be killed
inside of.
Buses or trains transported patients to their deaths, in these killing centuries, and within
hours of them arriving they died inside the gas chambers.
In all it’s phases its believed that the Euthanasia programme instilled by the Nazis
claimed the lives of 250,000 people.
Hartheim Castle was one of these centres where gas chambers were installed and where thousands
were killed inside the walls.
It’s estimated that between May 1940 and December 1944 that approximately 30,000 people
with physical and mental disabilities were killed at Hartheim Castle by gassing or by
lethal injections.
This also included 12000 prisoners who were sent from concentration camps such as Dachau
and Mauthausen to be killed.
A large amount of women from Ravensbruck were also sent to the castle to be gassed in 1944.
The killings at the castle continued even when the law regarding euthanasia was rescinded,
and Jews communists and others considered undesirable were killed there.
Those who worked inside camps and were deemed unfit to work were also executed at the Castle.
This saw Hartheim become a lart of the Action 14f13 plan where concentration camp prisoners
were executed.
On average, well over 1000 mentally and physically disabled people were being executed at Hartheim
in the months that it was linked to the Action T4 programme, and the bodies of those were
then burned inside the crematoria.
The Castle was regularly visited by notorious Nazi doctors such as Karl Brandt who carried
out inspections of the facility and also helped in the killings.
The use of the gas chambers was operated by doctors at the time, so those who were previously
responsible for saving lives were not taking them.
Many doctors used fake names to hide their real identities in documents, knowing that
after the war their crimes of mass murder would catch up to them.
The Head Doctor at Hart Heim was Rudolf Leonauer who worked for 5 years there, and the deputy
head was Georg Renno.
There were many other members of staff that worked there.
Erwin Lambert oversaw the building of the gas chambers and crematorium at the castle,
and there were other doctors involved in the killing process.
Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl who worked there as managers later became commandants
of Sobibor and Treblinka Extermination Camps.
There were other lower ranking staff who were there to help the killing process.
Whilst inside the castle, even the second cousin of Adolf Hitler was killed inside of
the gas chambers and a number of priests and members of the clergy in occupied lands particularly
Poland were killed.
As the Second World War came to an end, to hide the crimes that were committed at Hartheim
Castle, the extermination centre was closed and it was restored to becoming a sanitorium.
The Nazis then also cleared any evidence of the crimes that had been committed there,
They tired to mask the crimes and they tore down the majority of the infrastructure involved
in the killing process.
They tried to conceal what had truly happened there, but many of the doctors and members
of staff who took part in the killing at Hartheim Castle were imprisoned and sentenced to death
after being found guilty of crimes against humanity and murder.
The castle was later converted into apartments, but today castle remains a memorial to those
thousands of people who were murdered inside of the castle at the hands of the Nazis.
So Hartheim Castle is a castle with an incredibly dark and sadistic history linked to one of
the most evil regimes that the world has ever seen.
When you look at the building from the outside, without knowing it’s history you would regard
it as a beautiful renaissance castle, but the crimes that occurred there have tarnished
it as a site associated like Auschwitz and concentration camps with mass murder and depravity.
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