In the early 1930’s, the mood in Germany was very grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country especially hard, and millions of people were out of work. Still fresh in the minds of many was Germany’s humiliating defeat fifteen years earlier during World War I. These conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also known as the Nazis. The party’s rise to power was rapid, and on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the head of the German government. When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, the widespread beliefs of racial purity and superiority of the Germanic race became prevalent in the minds of all members of society. A central policy of Hitler’s administration was the development and implementation of policies to protect the “superior race.” With the publication of Mein Kampf between 1924 and 1926, Hitler had declared the sacred racial mission of the German people to be “assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements and…slowly and surely raising them to a dominant position.”[1]
The fate of science under the Nazis was not primarily based on how they corrupted or abused science, but how the scientists themselves constructed the Nazi racial policy. The Nazi medical experiments represent only the tip of a much larger problem. In fact, the ideological structure we associate with National Socialism was deeply embedded in German biomedical science long before 1933, in which the biomedical scientists played an active, even leading role in the initiation, administration, and execution of Nazi racial programs. The steps that were taken to secure the purity of the Germanic race, from the non-Aryan legislation of April 1933, took aim at the Jews, through sterilization laws, civil service laws, marital health laws, the Nuremberg Laws, T4 euthanasia, wartime medical experiments, and mass murder. These methods attempted to cast a theory of race in biological terms, which was the product of the growing importance of science in European culture.
At the center of this tragedy, the medical experiments, is the murder of European Jews-men, women and children-killed not for the identity they affirmed or the religion they practiced, but because of their blood. Some of the other victims that were killed in substantial numbers were the Gypsies, Handicapped, Homosexuals, Political prisoners, Prisoners of War, and Slave laborers; all those considered to be enemies of the German state. The Nazi medical experiments performed on human subjects were a part of the regime’s “biomedical vision.” These experiments were performed on masses of people at various concentration camps and institutions throughout Nazi Europe and were seen as the acts of Germany’s biomedical vision. This vision intended to set the tone for the regime’s medicalized approach to “life unworthy of life.” Some of the experiments that were performed include tests on: sterilization, hypothermia, high altitude pressure, sea water injections, bone-grafting, cancer, mustard gas, artificial insemination, abortion and many diseases such as, typhus, malaria, hepatitis, influenza, spotted fever and yellow fever.
I will be explaining how these medical experiments were “normal” through Nazi ideology and how they are functions of Germany’s racial policy. The medical enterprises can all be traced back to race where the ethical codes of this policy justified the ultimate goal of Aryan survival. In the Nazi scheme of things, race was the overriding concern where the ethics and laws were breached to meet their ultimate goals. While medical experimentation utilizing human subjects is an acceptable and even necessary component of medical research, such experiments are traditionally subject to severe restrictions. In such a case, the victors, or those combating the German racial philosophies, held a position that followed the basic fundamentals of moral obligation. As for the Nazis, they ignored these fundamental medical ethics, striving to advance the “purity” of the Germanic race. The basis of the ethical principles and rules of these war crimes of a medical nature tried to prove that the end justifies the means, which in turn took priority over everything else. The focus of this paper will be on the war crimes of a medical nature and the ethical perspectives of the Nazi regime. The justification for the war crimes of a medical nature is not merely “scientific,” but based upon a greater context of race ideology. These Nazi racial theories lie at the heart of everything, which in turn became the main cause of the war crimes.
There are a number of books that treat the subjects of race, medicalized killing and genocide, as the underpinnings of the Nazi regime. The literature that is present today tends to focus on the views of the victors from World War II.
The first review of literature that I looked into was, Robert Jay Lifton’s book, The Nazi Doctors: Medicalized Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. This book primarily focused on the role of the physician. From this point of view, the physician is supposed to be a healer, which all cultures revere and depend on. And because of the idea of the ethical physician, Lifton examines the experiments from the standpoint of the regimes medical and political ideology. He not only looked at the whole scheme of things, but also looked at the individual physicians and their relationships to the human species. As I discovered in Lifton’s book, the participation in mass murder need not require emotions as extreme or demonic as would seem appropriate for such a project. But as human beings, these physicians, were actors and participants who manifested certain kinds of behaviors for which they were responsible. Ultimately, it has been said that among the Germans and many others, the horrid involvement of physicians during World War II was viewed as the most shameful of all Nazi behavior.
The literature pertaining to the regime’s racial underpinnings was Robert N. Proctor’s book, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. This literature explored the history of science under the Nazis, which generally concentrated on the Nazi destruction of science or the corruption of intellectual and liberal values. This book focuses on how scientists themselves participated in the construction of Nazi racial policy. Robert Proctor demonstrates that many of the political initiatives of the Nazis arose from within the scientific community, and that the medical scientists designed and administered key elements of National Socialist policy. The book presents the medical involvement is the sterilization and castration laws, the laws banning marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and the massive program to destroy “lives not worth living.”
The memory of the Holocaust has raised many questions regarding how one group of people can perpetrate such unspeakable horrors on another group. Answers have abounded from many directions, but James M. Glass in his book, Life Unworthy of Life: Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler’s Germany, argues that the answer lies within the rise of a particular ethos of public health and sanitation. He focuses on the “racial hygiene” that singled out the Jews as an infectious disease that had to be eradicated if the Aryan race were to survive. The most important segment of Glass’ book observed the people of the Third Reich, which became willing participants in the Final Solution. He noted how these people did not think of themselves as executioners, but as highly motivated actors in a culture-wide sanitation project with the objective of purifying blood and genes.
Ultimately, the extent of this literature was concerned with the history, medical ethics and philosophies of science, which assume to aid society in determining the true endeavors of the Nazi regime.
In trying to investigate the war crimes of a medical nature, Dr. Andrew Conway Ivy, the Consultant to the Secretary of War, at the Paris Meeting on July 31, 1946, reported that some of the German medical research personnel, directly responsible under Heinrich Himmler’s orders, carried out many of the medical experiments. Throughout this document, Ivy examines the ethics of the Nazi regime trying to set up a case for the Nuremberg Trials of 1946, giving arguments to why these “barbarities” may have occurred. In following this document, I will explain how the Nazis justified and rationalized these medical experiments based on race, while in turn focusing on how these “normative” behaviors were not very useful in advancing the goals of the Nazi regime.
This report, which was fielded by A.C. Ivy, an ethicist of medical experimentation, is based on a study of certain records of War Crimes, as well as with discussions and interrogations of German physicians, scientists and SS-administrators.[2] There are many studies which show that certain German physicians and scientists were involved in the perpetration of crimes and “barbarities” of a medical nature, which were classified into two categories; namely, non-experimental and experimental. The non-experimental crimes and “barbarities” may be classified as mass killings, murder to obtain selected skeletons, mutilation and brutality. The experimental crimes, on the other hand, are classified as those medical experiments, which were not conducted to avoid suffering and injury, but to cause death. Some of the experiments were devoid of adequate scientific design and were poorly executed by pseudo-scientists and untrained personnel.[3] Ivy also states that these experiments, from evidence available appeared to fall into three groups: (1) Those concerning Nazi racial theories, (2) Those concerned with combating particular medical problems associated with the war, and (3) Those which might be classified as “idle curiosity.”[4]
Ivy’s document, on the other hand, did not stress the importance that race ideology played in the German rationalizations for these crimes of a medical nature. He tended to focus on the ethics and laws of medicine in connection to these crimes. In his brief conclusion, Dr. Ivy states:
It seems clear that the physicians and scientists concerned directly or indirectly with procedures, which resulted in death, were ethically and legally involved in the commission of murder. Those who were concerned directly or indirectly with procedures, which resulted in injury, disability, suffering, and disease, were involved in the commission of mutilation, cruelty, and torture.
He notes how the Nazi physicians and scientists ignored ethical principles and rules, which have been well established by custom, social usage and the medical community. Many of these physicians were said to have used human beings with less consideration than that which was given to animals in using them as experimental subjects. Ivy noted that when Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler first came into power, they abolished animal experimentation by a decree. Race was the underlying motive for many of the experiments, which were performed.
In the formulation of their racial policies, the Nazi regime relied heavily upon the theory of Darwinism, which was published in the Origin of Species, in 1859. Darwin’s theory had suggested that people had evolved over time, and that the races of mankind diverged while adapting to the particular conditions in which they lived. Darwin’s theory of evolution, tried to prove that the genetic changes in a population lead to progressive improvements by the mechanism of natural selection. Darwin saw that although every organism has the potential to produce more offspring than are able to survive, only a limited number actually survive and produce their own offspring. With this notion he concluded that with those individuals which posses the superior physical, behavioral, or other attributes are more likely to survive than those that are not so well endowed.[5] This driving force identified as “Survival of the Fittest,” implied that by surviving, they have the opportunity to pass on their favorable characteristics to their offspring. And with this, the frequency of these characteristics will increase in the population, and the nature of the population as a whole will change.
In Germany, this theory was applied to the struggle for existence in the social life of human beings. The Nazis sought to stop what they saw as the beginnings of a supposed “degeneration” of the human species. This notion tries to prove that the evolutionary progress occurs mainly as a result of the elimination of the weak in the struggle to survive. It was thought that this came about because the “weak” had begun to destroy the natural order of existence, and because the poor and unfit were producing quicker than that of the talented and the fit. The primary goals of the Nazi regime was to increase the population size, differentiating between the valuable and worthless hereditary lines, establish a means to mend the declining birth rate, and to “save” the pureness of the Aryan race.
In German eyes, natural selection required policies that protected the “superior race,” while preventing the “inferior races” from mixing with those judged to be superior. Superior individuals will be more likely to survive and pass on these traits to their offspring, while the “weaker” individuals will eventually die off.[6] Hitler and the Nazi party claimed that one of their major goals was to apply this accepted “science” to society. Hitler stressed that to produce a better society, we must understand, and cooperate with science. Expunging of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the divine origin of humans from mainline German (liberal) theology and its schools, and replacing it with Darwinism, openly contributed to the acceptance of Social Darwinism that culminated in the tragedy of the Holocaust.[7] As the one race above all others, Aryans believed that their evolutionary superiority gave them not only the right, but also the duty to subjugate all other peoples. And because of this “right,” the Nazis believed that in order to advance the human race, they must not permit natural forces and chance to control evolution, but they must direct the process through scientific and medical means.
In a war to secure the future of the Germanic race, the Jews, a symbol of all humane values the Nazis opposed, could not be allowed to live. The first step in achieving this goal was to isolate the “inferior races: in order to prevent them from further contaminating the “Aryan” gene pool. The Nazis believed that they were simply applying facts, proven by science, to produce a superior race of humans as part of their plan for a better world: “the business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection-politics as applied biology.”[8] One of the basic National Socialist goals was formally to legalize anti-Semitism. The doctrine of the “racial enemy” was, of course, one of the vital components of the Nazi movement. As early as 1920, in its twenty-five-point program, the party had indicated that only racial comrades (Volksgenossen) could be citizens, and that Jews were excluded from this category. Furthermore, the program stated that only citizens should hold public office at any level. During the early 1930’s the Nazis had displayed their consistency and earnestness on this point by introducing Reichstag legislation to remove Jews from the civil service.[9] This is known as the “Law for the Reestablishment of a Professional Civil Service,” which went into effect in April 1933. By November 1939 the Racial Political Office had plans for the destruction of all Jews, except slave laborers and children of Aryan physical type.[10] Racial purification was as necessary to the regime as the conquest of land. The Jews were not the only people who were killed, but also those that were considered to be threats to the racial stock-the mentally ill, carriers of hereditary illnesses, and asocial types.
In the evolving psychosis of Nazi Germany, disease, which initially was defined as a mental or physical disorder, was extended to include race, specifically applied to the Jews. One of the most important institutions in the Nazi state was the Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt), established on May 1, 1934 “to coordinate and unify all schooling and propaganda in the areas of population and racial policy.”[11] The Office of Racial Policy, headed by D. Walter Gross, helped construct most of the principal racial programs such as the Sterilization Law, and the Nuremberg Laws.[12]
The second attack on all individual Jews in Germany came in September 1935, with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. These measures reduced the entire Jewish population of Germany. The stumbling block for the Nazi bureaucrats was the problem of how to define a Jew. In the Nuremberg Laws, the Jew was defined negatively as someone ineligible to German citizenship. The law provided that only persons of “German or related blood” could be citizens, and that citizenship was acquired by a grant of a certificate of citizenship. This law was called the “Law Respecting Reich Citizenship of September 15, 1935 (Reichsburgergesetz).”[13] Thus, Jews were robbed of their citizenship and became subjects of the state. The second Law, “Law for The Protection of German Blood and German Honor, (Gesetz zum Schutz des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre)” also introduced on September 15, 1935 forbade the marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and imposed heavy penalties for transgressions.[14] The Nazi government passed a third and final measure in this series on October 18, 1935, called the “Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People (Gesetz zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des Deutschen Volkes).” This law required couples to undergo medical examinations before marriage to determine whether or not “racial damage” might be involved; the law forbade marriage between individuals suffering from venereal disease, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, or any of the other “genetic infirmities: specified in the 1933 Sterilization Law.[15] Jews were also forbidden to employ female German servants under forty-five years of age and were forbidden to display the German flag. The next thirteen supplementary decrees, which followed, delineate the whole course of Hitler’s anti-Jewish war, down to the last decree published on July 1, 1943, when the Reich was supposedly purged of all Jews.[16] For the first time in history, Jews were subject to persecution not for their religious identity or practices, but solely for their Jewish birth.
On November 14, 1935, the term “Jew” came to embrace two categories: full-Jew and part-Jew. A “full-Jew” was defined as any person with three or four Jewish grandparents, and certain persons with two Jewish grandparents. A “part-Jew” was considered not a Jew, but a person of mixed Jewish blood. The “part-Jew” category was then defined further into two degrees. The first degree stated that any person with two Jewish grandparents who did not practice Judaism and was not married to a Jew was considered a half-Jew. The second degree stated that a quarter Jew had only one Jewish grandparent. This then racially divided Germany into the Aryans and Non-Aryans.
Race, by definition legitimized in the 1935 Nuremberg Laws for the Protection of German Blood, was considered hereditary and potentially subject to eugenic control. Race ideology dominated the thinking and action of a great majority of the German society. Anti-Semitism embraced and elaborated by Nazism was generalized throughout the culture, defining the Jew as a threatening, dangerous and poisonous other.[17] The supremacy of German blood guaranteed Germany’s victory in the struggle for racial domination, while it justified whatever treatments were imposed on the defeated races. So, the task of the Reich was to harness the German cause and to subjugate Germany’s enemies. Darwinism not only offered the Germans a meaningful interpretation of their recent military past, but also for future aggression. War was a positive force not only because it eliminated “weaker” races, but also because it weeded out the weaker members of the “superior” races. Hitler not only unabashedly intended to produce a superior race, but he openly relied on Darwinism thought in both his extermination and war policies.[18] Firmly convinced that Darwinian evolution was true, Hitler saw himself as the modern savior of mankind.
These racial theories were applied to the scientific and medical communities seeking specifically to underpin and advance the racial and ideological thoughts of the Nazi worldview. There is nothing darker or more menacing than the participation of physicians in mass murder. Those experiments, carried out in violation of the Hippocratic oath, mock the very idea of the ethical physician, of the physician dedicated to the well being of patients. This “medicalized killing” had a logic that was not only deeply significant for Nazi theory and behavior, but also for genocide as well. At the heart of the Nazi enterprise, then, is the destruction of the boundary between healing and killing. Because many of the records clearly establish that certain Nazi physicians and scientists performed experiments on human subjects without their consent and complete disregard for their human rights they have been tried in court for their atrocities.
These crimes against humanity were deemed an acceptable and even necessary component of medical research, in which the objectives of the medical experiments complied with the Nazi professional obligations, even though they breached all norms of medical ethics and violated the most accepted codes of professional conduct. The practice of medicine is a privilege, which carries important responsibilities. All doctors should observe the core values of the
profession which center on the duty to help sick people and avoid harm. The most accepted code of ethics, in the medical profession, is that of the Oath of Hippocrates, which the Nazi regime tended to ignore in many cases.
Oath of Hippocrates:
I SWEAR in the presence of the Almighty and before my family, my
teachers and my peers that according to my ability and judgment I
will keep this Oath and Stipulation:
TO RECKON all who have taught me this art equally dear to me as
my parents and in the same spirit and dedication to impart a
knowledge of the art of medicine to others. I will continue with
diligence to keep abreast of advances in medicine. I will treat
without exception all who seek my ministrations, so long as the
treatment of others is not compromised thereby, and I will seek the
counsel of particularly skilled physicians where indicated for the
benefit of my patient.
I WILL FOLLOW that method of treatment which according to my
ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and
abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. I will neither
prescribe nor administer a lethal dose of medicine to any
patient even if asked nor counsel any such thing nor perform
act or omission with direct intent deliberately to end a human
life. I will maintain the utmost respect for every human life
from fertilization to natural death and reject abortion that
deliberately takes a unique human life.
WITH PURITY, HOLINESS AND BENEFICENCE I will pass
my life and practice my art. Except for the prudent correction of an
imminent danger, I will neither treat any patient nor carry out any
research on any human being without the valid informed consent of
the subject or the appropriate legal protector thereof, understanding
that research must have as its purpose the furtherance of the health of that individual. Into whatever patient setting I enter, I will go for the benefit of the sick and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief or corruption and further from the seduction of any patient.
WHATEVER IN CONNECTION with my professional practice
or not in connection with it I may see or hear in the lives of my
patients which ought not be spoken abroad I will not divulge,
reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
WHILE I CONTINUE to keep this Oath unviolated may it be
granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art and science of
medicine with the blessing of the Almighty and respected by my
peers and society, but should I trespass and violate this Oath, may
the reverse be my lot.[19]
Although modified by religions and medical advances, the ideals of the Oath of Hippocrates remain in modern day oaths. The oaths represent the one common bond between physicians of the world, whether Jewish or gentile, German, French or Polish. The physicians swore not to aid in suicide and protect those they treat, from injury and injustice.
Human experimentation has been conducted according to certain ethical rules in all the countries of the world which have contributed to the progress of medical science, especially to the prevention, cure and control of disease and suffering. If the Nazis were to follow the rules and regulations of the medical community, it may be summarized as follows:
I. Consent of the human subject must be obtained. All subjects have been volunteers in the absence of coercion in any form. Before volunteering the subjects have been informed of the hazards, if any.
II. The experiment to be performed must be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and knowledge of the natural history of the disease under study. That the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment. That is, the experiment must be such as to yield results for the good of society unprocurable by other methods of study and must not be random and unnecessary in nature.
III. The experiment must be conducted:
(a) Only by scientifically qualified persons, and
(b) So as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury, and
(c) So, that, on the basis of the results of previous adequate animal experimentation, there is no reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur…[20]
The Nazis, working under and in cooperation with Heinrich Himmler, Dr. Brandt and many others used human beings with decidedly less consideration. Many of the victims died as a direct result of the experimentation, while others were murdered immediately following the experimental phase so that scientists could determine all physiological effects of the experiment by postmortem examination. The Nazis tried to prove that the basis of these experiments was that ultimate good was derived for the advancement of medicine. One of the ways that they tried to justify themselves was to say that the physicians who conducted these experiments were under orders from superiors and hence coercion. Another is that the experiments were performed on persons who were condemned to die, or who were going to be killed, legally or illegally; and since they were going to die some good should be derived from their death, even without the consent of the persons concerned.
With the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, there was a radicalization of Nazi attempts at bringing about their racial utopia. These experiments of a medical nature, were not focused primarily on the Jews, but were culminated through the T4 euthanasia, and sterilization programs.
The mass killing that took place in many of the concentration camps and institutions throughout Nazi Europe were part of a broad euthanasia program, which was practiced under the power of a secret order that Hitler issued on September 1, 1939. This order, which was signed by Dr. Franz Guertner, Minister of Justice of the Reich indicated that this provision for the extermination of the so-called “worthless” lives was an attempt to prevent degeneration in the National Socialist State. The order reads as follows:
Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M.D., are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons, who, according to human judgment, are incurable upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.[21]
The killing of the “useless eaters,” those people considered a dispensable commodity because of sickness or lack of work, was clearly seen a disregard of the sanctity of human life. Even as far back as the First World War, human life became a dispensable commodity, and hundreds of thousands of young, healthy, and active men had been sacrificed for reasons, which never became clear. After that gross disregard of human life and that mockery made of the sanctity of it—all the arrows shot by the great destroyers of conventional morality finally hit their targets. Life—regarded as nothing but a usable object during the years of carnage—came to be questioned from the point of view of its usefulness.
Since the cost of care for the unproductive in general and the insane especially could be—unlike racial hygiene or eugenics—more easily understood by the general public, the “useless eater” argument was more widely used than any of the others. A simple count of the recurrence of the different justifications for destruction of life might have convinced many that this was the underlying motive for the killing of the insane. It is undeniable that although cruel and cynical, it was the only motivation that could have been (and was in fact) extended, and with the practically unlimited possibilities of the totalitarian regime to isolate the “eugenically harmful” individuals. This was the only logical reason for killing the sick—to free the state from the burden of the expenses involved in their maintenance.
The association of euthanasia and war was not fortuitous. If the healthy could sacrifice their lives in time of war, then why should the sick not do the same? One American writer recognized this thinking as early as 1941, when he pointed out that the handicapped and mentally ill “were not killed for mercy. They were killed because they could no longer manufacture guns in return for the food they consumed; because beds in the German hospitals were needed for wounded soldiers; because their death was the ultimate logic of the national socialist doctrine of promoting racial superiority and the survival of the physically fit.”[22] The Nazis made this link explicit. On August 10, 1939, when Nazi leaders net to plan the euthanasia operation, Philipp Bouhler, head of the Party Chancellery, declared that the purpose of the operation was not only to continue the “struggle against genetic disease” but also to free up hospital beds and personnel for the coming war.[23] The underlying philosophy was simple: the patients would either be cured or killed. The euthanasia program was conducted through the sterilization and T-4 programs, which were practiced on both Jews and Germans alike.
This operation was given the code name T-4, derived from the address of the Nonprofit Patient Transport Corporation, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin. This program, by the end of 1941, when the gassing phase of the operation stopped, 70,273 individuals had been killed.[24] The program to destroy lives not worth living began in a relatively innocuous fashion. In the fall of 1938, a father by the name of Knauer wrote to Hitler asking that his child, born blind, retarded, and without an arm and a leg, be granted “mercy death,” or euthanasia. The case of Knauer provided a model on which other euthanasia actions would be carried out. In May 1939, only a few months later, Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician, notified Hans Hefelmann that Hitler had asked him (Brandt) to appoint an advisory committee to prepare for the killing of deformed and retarded children.[25] Hitler’s Chancellery was to be directly responsible for the operation; but to maintain secrecy; the project was organized under the cover name, Committee for the Scientific Treatment of Severe, Genetically Determined Illness (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschagtlichen Erfassung von erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden).[26] Methods of killing included injections of morphine, tablets, and gassing with cyanide or chemical warfare agents.
The first part of the children’s euthanasia was originally restricted to children up to three years old. But, by the autumn of 1941, the children’s euthanasia program had been expanded to include children up to seventeen years of age.[27] Jewish children were originally excluded from this operation, on the grounds that they did not deserve the “merciful act” of euthanasia.[28] However, in 1943, the program was broadened to include healthy children of unwanted races. Altogether, more than 5,000 children were killed in this first phase of the German euthanasia program.[29]
The child murders were only one part of a much larger program designed to rid Germany of its weak, handicapped, and “inferior.” To begin the process of adult euthanasia, Hans Hefelmann, on July 18, 1939, reported that Hitler had authorized Leonardo Conti to work out a plan for the extermination of all of Germany’s mental patients.[30] Three scientific/medical organizations were created: The Working Committee for Hospital Care, which provided letterhead for operation correspondence; The charitable Foundation for Institutional Care was responsible for arranging financial details; and The Nonprofit Patient Transport Corporation was responsible for transporting patients to extermination institutions.[31] The Working Committee for Hospital Care was responsible for overseeing the operation and kept meticulous records, which today we have an accurate account of how many were killed, and where.[32]
Killing Stations Period of Operation Numbers Killed
Operations on such a scale are not easy to keep quiet. By the summer of 1941, protests had become sufficiently frequent to cause a certain amount of concern among those administering the operation; and on August 24, 1941, Hitler ordered Brandt to stop gassing patients in psychiatric institutions.[33] The killings continued, however, throughout the war and even for some time after. One of the other ways in which the Nazi regime was able to keep their state racially pure was through the Sterilization program.
While in 1933 the propaganda was specifically directed toward the promoting of the sterilization laws, this time, by 1938, it became less specific in its campaign. It was in 1938 that the campaign against the “unworthy” and the “inferior” was revived, after a relative silence of a few years. At that time the medical leaders were fully informed about the Fuhrer’s intentions to proceed to the implementation of “destruction of unworthy life.” On July 14, 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhutung erbkranken Nachwuchses), also known as the Sterilization Law, sanctioned the assault on “inferior” blood and genes by professional practices without acknowledging it as a gross violation of the human body.[34] Instead it was seen as a moral action necessary to preserve the cultural body’s racial purity. An entire arm of the legal system, including administrative tribunals judging hereditary status, lawyers and judges trained in biology and law were, established to administer the new law premised on maintaining racial purity.[35]
In the first year of the Sterilization Law (1934), genetic health courts received 84,525 applications for sterilization: 42,903 for men and 41,622 for women. During the same period 64,499 decisions were handed down by the courts: 56,244 in favor of sterilization and 3,692 against; 4,563 requests were either retracted or postponed. The courts decided in favor of sterilization in over 90 percent of the cases heard.[36]
From about March 1943 to about January 1945 sterilization experiments were, conducted at the Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck concentration camps, and many other places. Early estimates of the total number of people sterilized during the Nazi period ranged from 300,000 to 350,000. The sterilization of these people required an enormous effort from Germany’s medical profession, and the research and engineering rapidly became one of the largest medical industries. The most common techniques of sterilization involved tubal ligation for women and vasectomy for men. Anticipating the importance of mass sterilization, physicians developed techniques that would allow more rapid sterilization on an outpatient basis, including: scarification of the fallopian tube tissue through injections of carbon dioxide, and exposure to X-rays. Germany’s massive sterilization program transformed the German medical profession.
Dr. A.C. Ivy figured that the number of doctors that participated in the medical experiments is near 70 or 80, but in actuality, it was many more. Ivy also concluded that the medical endeavors, of both experimental and non-experimental means, were a logical outcome of the German racial policies initiated as early as 1933. I am now going to use the medical experiments as a case study, which I intend to prove how the racial theories that the Nazis used, were false.
One of the most notorious doctors in Nazi Europe, was Dr. Joseph Mengele. Dr. Josef Mengele was the most decorated medical officer on the Auschwitz staff, he was considered the ‘Angel of Death or ‘Exterminating Angel.’ He was a master of his profession, a devil who took pleasure in his work. Prisoners who had been deported to Auschwitz usually met Mengele minutes after the freight trains left the main line. Sometimes, up to forty percent of a transport was dead on arrival, but the living were lined up in columns of five and slowly marched past a ‘selector’-in too many cases, Dr. Mengele. There he stood, deciding the fate of millions, within a matter of seconds, speaking only a few words, ‘to the left’ or ‘to the right.’ For him, the selections were a game.
Mengele’s mentor at medical school, Professor Otmar von Verschuer, was a ‘race scientist’ who recognized that hereditary biology and race hygiene were leading principles of statesmanship. Mengele in early 1943, around the time that Auschwitz was authorized to establish ‘an experimental physiological, pathological station,’ jumped at the chance to be camp doctor, and volunteered. “He was financed to experiment on twins, hunchbacks, dwarfs, midgets, fetuses, babies, children, women, men, Jews, Gentiles, gypsies: a doomed cross-section of the whole human race in the Third Reich.”[37]
Mengele is best known for his experiments on twins. “Scientists, Mengele once gloated, ‘have always been able to study twins after they have been born together. But only in the Third Reich can science examine twins who have died together.”[38] Sometimes, he would even dissect them when they were still alive. Mengele was convinced that twins held the key to unlocking the mysteries of genetics.
The appalling nature of Mengele’s medical experiments were based on the assumption that the Fatherland, Germany, would want to recoup its casualties by repopulating in Hitler’s Aryan image. According to a racial theory, all of the people that he tested were inferior beings and therefore detrimental to society. Mengele took himself to be one of the most important representatives of German medical science, but his experiments and observations were carried out in abnormal fashions. In the words of his captive assistant, Dr. Olga Lengyel:
When he made transfusions, he purposely used incorrect blood types. Of course, complications followed. He would inject substances and then ignore the results. But Mengele had no one to account to but himself. He did whatever pleased him and conducted his experiments like a mad amateur. He was not a savant. He had the mania of a collector.[39]
Mengele was beguiled by the notion of creating a superior race; the possibility of molding a perfect breed of Aryans.
The research of Dr. August Hirt, a professor of anatomy, at Strasbourg University had a similar purpose. He sought to examine skulls for cranial differences between races. Hirt accumulated a massive collection of skeletons; his victims handpicked and gassed at the nearby Natzweiler concentration camp, and delivered to him so that he could establish “racial inferiority” by means of anthropological study. Upon arrival at the Institute, the bodies were specially preserved in vats of alcohol according to Hirt’s instructions. Once preserved, Otto Bong, the Institutes autopsy technician, removed the flesh from some of the preserved bodies, and with the help of the laboratory assistants, catalogued the victims’ skeletal measurements.[40]
Another one of the medical experiments that was performed during the war, were tests on Hypothermia and re-warming. Dr. Sigmund Rascher, a member of both the Luftwaffe and the SS, led these experiments conducted on Dachau concentration camp prisoners. The goal of these experiments was to find the most successful means of reviving hypothermia victims.
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This study is said to have begun because during the war, pilots forced down into the cold waters of the North and Baltic seas and the Atlantic ocean underscored the need to develop protective clothing and effective re-warming and resuscitation methods, for immersion in very cold water without protection causes shock and death. The experimental procedure written by Dr. Rascher in an Interim Report on Hypothermia Experiments in the Dachau concentration camp started on August 15, 1942, is as follows:
The test subjects, dressed in complete flying uniform, winter or summer combination with an aviator’s helmet, were placed in water. A life jacket of rubber was used to prevent submerging. The experiments were carried out with temperatures between 2.5 and 12 degrees C (36-54 F). In one of the experimental series the back of the head and neck were above water, while in another experimental series the neck (brain stem) and the backs of the head were under water.
Electrical measurements gave hypothermia readings of 26.4 C (79.52 F) in the stomach and 26.5 C (79.7 F) in the rectum. Deaths occurred only when the brain stem and the back of the head were also chilled. Autopsies of such fatal cases always revealed substantial hemorrhaging, up to a half-liter, in the cranial cavity. The heat showed consistent extreme dilation of the right chamber. As soon as hypothermia reached 28 C (82.4 F) with these test subjects, they died without exception despite every effort at revival. The importance of heat-generating head and neck protection in the development of foam clothing was clearly proven by the described autopsy findings above.
Other important findings to be mentioned that were common in all experiments are: marked increase of the viscosity of the blood, marked increase of hemoglobin, an approximate fivefold increase of leukocytes, and invariable rise of blood sugar to twice its normal value.
During attempts to save persons in the state of hypothermia, it was shown that rapid re-warming was in all cases preferable to slow re-warming because, after being removed form the cold water, the body temperature continued to drop rapidly.
Gradual re-warming with animal or human bodies would be too slow. As measures to prevent hypothermia, only improvements in aviator clothing should be considered. The experiments have shown that pharmaceutical measures are probably unnecessary if the flier is still alive at the time of rescue.[41]
Dr. Sigmund Rascher in the spring of 1942 also conducted the next experiment that I am going to explain, that of the low-pressure or High Altitude experiments. In these tests, Rascher sought to simulate the atmospheric conditions that a pilot might encounter when falling from a plane without a parachute or oxygen mask. Using a specially designed low-pressure chamber provided by the German Air Force, Rascher locked victims inside the air-tight compartment and removed the oxygen source in order to observe the effects of sudden asphyxiation. Once the victims had either lost consciousness or died, their bodies were removed and held under water while autopsies were performed to determine the amounts of oxygen left in the brain and body cavities. In the interim report on the Low Pressure Chamber Experiments in the concentration camp of Dachau, Rascher reports that:
The subjects were brought under oxygen to an altitude of 8 km (26,000 ft) and each had to do 5 knee bends with and without oxygen. After a certain interval of time, moderate to severe altitude sickness occurred, and the subjects became unconscious. However, after a certain period of accustoming themselves to an altitude of 8 km (26,000 ft), all the subjects recuperated, regaining consciousness and the normal functions of their senses.
At first continuous experiments at altitudes higher than 10.5 km (34,000 ft) resulted in death. These experiments showed that breathing stopped after about 30 minutes, while in two cases the heart continued for another 20 minutes after breathing had stopped.
1. The question to be clarified is whether the theoretically established norms correspond with the results of practical experiments in regard to the duration of human life when breathing air with poor levels of oxygen and subjected to low pressure. It has been claimed that a parachutist who jumps from a height of 12 km (39,000 ft) would suffer very severe injuries, probably even die, due to lack of oxygen. Practical experiments on this issue have always been discontinued after a maximum of 53 seconds, since very severe altitude sickness occurs or occurred.
2. Experiments testing the duration of life of a human above the normal breathing limits 4.5-6 km (15,000-20,000 ft) have not been employed at all since it has been an established conclusion that the human experimental subject would suffer death.[42]
From February 1942 to April 1945 experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp in order to investigate immunization for and treatment of malaria. Healthy concentration camp inmates were infected by mosquitoes or by injections of extracts of the mucous glands of mosquitoes. After having contracted malaria the subjects were treated with various drugs to test their relative efficacy. Over 1,000 involuntary subjects were used in these experiments, where many of the victims died and others suffered severe pain and permanent disability.[43]
The Lost (Mustard) Gas experiments were performed at various times between September 1939 and April 1945. These experiments were primarily conducted at Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and other concentration camps for the benefit of the German Armed Forces to investigate the most effective treatment of wounds by Lost gas.[44] Lost is a poison gas. Wounds deliberately inflicted on the subjects were inflicted with this gas. Some of the subjects died as a result of these experiments while others suffered intense pain and injury.
The last of the experiments that I am going to explain are those, which were inflicted with spotted fever, conducted at Buchenwald and Natzweiler concentration camps. From December 1941 to February 1945, for the benefit of the German Armed Forces, to investigate the effectiveness of spotted fever and other vaccines.[45]
At Buchenwald numerous healthy inmates were deliberately infected with spotted fever virus in order to keep the virus alive; over 90 percent of the victims died as a result. Other healthy inmates were used to determine the effectiveness of different spotted fever vaccines and of various chemical substances. In the course of these experiments 75 percent of the selected number of inmates were vaccinated with one of the vaccines or nourished with one of the chemical substances, and after a period of 3 to 4 weeks, were infected with spotted fever germs. The remaining 25 percent were infected without any previous protection in order to compare the effectiveness of the vaccines and the chemical substances. As a result, hundreds of the persons experimented upon died.[46]
Experiments with yellow fever, smallpox, typhus, cholera, and diphtheria were also conducted at these concentration camps in a very similar fashion.
These experiments, among the many that were, performed, simply proved that these notorious crimes committed by the National Socialist regime were unethical by “universal” standards. Though the Nazi doctors tried to justify their actions because the race ideology required it, the International Military Tribunals at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46, where judges from the Allied powers—Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—presided over the hearings of twenty-three major Nazi criminals accusing the defendants on four charges. These are, Conspiracy, War Crimes in the form of medical experimentation on prisoners of war, Crimes Against Humanity through the murder and torture of thousands in the name of scientific research, and membership in Criminal Organizations as defined by the Tribunal. The indictment pertaining to medical war crimes, by the United States of America, as signed by Telford Taylor, Chief of Counsel for War crimes, charges that “the defendants participated in a common design or conspiracy to commit and did commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined in Control Council Law No. 10, duly enacted by the Allied Control Council on 20 December 1945.”[47] These crimes included murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhumane acts, as set forth in counts one, two, and three of the indictment. Certain defendants are further charged with membership in a criminal organization, as set fourth in count four of the indictment. (*For the full indictment of the war crimes trials of a medical nature, see the appendix.)
The overwhelming majority of post 1945 war crimes trials, however, involved lower level officials, and officers. Among them were concentration camp guards and commandants, police officers, and members of the mobile killing squads. Military courts in the British, American, French and Soviet zones of occupied Germany and Austria and in Italy tried these war criminals. Many others were tried by the courts of those countries where they had committed their crimes. Many war criminals were never brought to trial or punished.
At the conclusion of the trial of a medical nature, seven doctors were, given death by hanging, nine were given between 10 and 20-year prison terms, while the remaining seven were acquitted.
The theory of race is the key to understanding Nazi culture and policies from 1933 to 1945. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Nazis were able to forcibly put these theories into effect and radicalize their race ideology on a grand scale. It becomes evident, through history, that people fight wars to achieve power and domination. In the case of the German state, the Nazis pursued the goal of eliminating all “inferior” races. Ironically, the racial theories often ran counter to their own interests in winning the war. For example, the Nazis often used the trains to transport the prisoners to their deaths, while putting the armies, stationed on the Russian front, at a standstill. Many of the supplies that needed to get to the troops, got there too late, and ultimately caused their own downfall. Because they were so committed to their racial policies, the Nazis saw no harm in using “inferior” races in medical experiments designed to aid in their war efforts.
The experiments exposing victims to hypothermia and high altitude were designed to provide information to the German military efforts, while the anatomical and genetic experiments were ways of justifying their sense of racial superiority. The medical experiments were not conducted in secret, but were carefully documented and regarded with pride by the Nazi physicians involved. They did not question the ethics of their actions because of their firm belief in their own racial superiority.
Given that these medical experiments sprang from false theories of race, it is not surprising that they ultimately had no value. Race, is not a legitimate variable in treatment or medical experimentation. They tried to obtain moral results through immoral means.
