The history of medicine during National Socialism has primarily focused on the directly responsible perpetrators. What has been overlooked is that Nazi medicine could not have functioned without the often willingly provided assistance of many others working within the healthcare system. Nursing staff were also involved in various ways and with different responsibilities in maintaining and implementing a medical practice that was entirely in line with the National Socialist ideology of the "unequal value" of human beings. In Austria, after the "Anschluss" with Nazi Germany (1938), patients who were seen as a "burden" on society from the perspective of Nazi medicine found themselves in life-threatening situations. The concrete implications of this are evident in the post-war trials.