the Württemberg police force. He had joined the uniformed police (Orpo) in 1910 before the onset of World War I. Wirth rose to become the captain of detectives () of the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) in Stuttgart. Aktion T4 At the end of 1939, Wirth, along with other Kripo police officers, was detached from the police for service with the Action T4 "euthanasia" program. These police officers served as nonmedical supervisors at the killing centers of the euthanasia program, and Wirth was chief among them. At the age of fifty-five, Wirth was among the oldest personnel involved in T-4. Wirth first set up office procedures at the "euthanasia" center at Grafeneck Castle in Württemberg. Shortly thereafter Wirth was transferred to administrative director of the killing centre at Brandenburg an der Havel in Prussia (the medical director was Dr. Irmfried Eberl). In December 1939 or January 1940, Wirth was present when twenty to thirty German mental patients were subjected to the first known gassing experiment using carbon monoxide. This is where the idea to disguise the gas chambers as showers was introduced. Wirth continued to participate as a troubleshooter in the T-4 killing centers. For instance, when at Brandenburg a group of suspecting mental patients refused to enter the (disguised) gas chamber, Wirth coaxed them into the room by telling them that they had to enter it in order to receive clothing. But Wirth's most intimate connection with T-4 was at the Hartheim killing centre, where he was chief of the office staff and director of personnel. At Hartheim, Wirth oversaw paperwork as head of the registry office, directed the killing process as the individual responsible for security, and commanded the junior staff as director of personnel. Wirth was coarse and brutal, feared by his subordinates and known to use any means necessary to ensure a smooth killing operation. When four female patients at Hartheim were suspected of having contracted typhus, Wirth shot them to prevent the spread of disease to the staff. Wirth's responsibility for murdering Jews began in September 1940, when handicapped Jews were first gassed at Brandenburg. In mid-1940, Wirth was appointed as an inspector of a dozen killing facilities in the Third Reich. He frequented the Hartheim killing centre, where Franz Stangl worked. Stangl, who was later the commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps, described Wirth in a 1971 interview: Wirth was a gross and florid man.