A FORMER Nazi doctor grew rich promoting the drug that caused the world's worst medical disaster, according to a British thalidomide expert whose claims will be used in a global class action launched by Melbourne lawyer Peter Gordon.

Research by Dr Martin Johnson - chief executive of Britain's Thalidomide Trust - shows that former Nazi doctor Heinrich Muckter was paid huge bonuses before thalidomide was exposed in 1961 as the cause of thousands of deaths and terrible birth defects.

Dr Johnson's information is likely to generate compensation claims by hundreds of surviving victims.

Mr Gordon, his former firm Slater & Gordon and lawyers in America and Britain will ask courts in at least four countries to examine the past of Grunenthal, the company that developed thalidomide in post-war Germany.

Courts will hear that in one year alone Grunenthal paid Dr Muckter 22 times his annual executive salary after thalidomide was rushed on to the market without proper testing in the 1950s. Among other Nazis linked with Grunenthal was convicted war criminal Otto Ambros - later retained as an adviser by the British firm that sold the drug in Australia.

Lawyers for hundreds of alleged victims never before compensated will lead evidence suggesting that Grunenthal wrongly assured distributors, doctors and the public that its new sedative was safe for pregnant women.

This aggressive marketing campaign was despite the fact the drug had never been tested on pregnant mammals and was chemically similar to drugs known to harm embryos.

It also ignored the fact that the wife of a Grunenthal worker given samples of the drug had a baby born without ears on Christmas Day, 1956 - well before thalidomide's official release.

A dossier of documents suggests federal and state governments and medical authorities were apathetic if not negligent and this allowed Grunenthal and its distributors not to be blamed for the tragedy.

For legal reasons, comments cannot be published on this matter.