“OUR STARTING POINT IS NOT THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WE DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO THE VIEW THAT ONE SHOULD
FEED THE HUNGRY, GIVE DRINK TO THE THIRSTY, OR CLOTHE THE NAKED . . . . OUR OBJECTIVES ARE ENTIRELY
DIFFERENT: WE MUST HAVE A HEALTHY PEOPLE IN ORDER TO PREVAIL IN THE WORLD.”
—Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, 1938
NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
(from the Holocaust Memorial Museum)
During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often
deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.
Seven-year-old Jacqueline Morgenstern, later a victim of tuberculosis medical experiments at the
Neuengamme concentration camp. She was murdered just before the liberation of the camp. Paris,
France, 1940.
Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided
into three categories. The first category consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the
survival of Axis military personnel. In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and
from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude
experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from
which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using
prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater
potable.
The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries
and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. At the German concentration camps
of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and sera
for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever,
and infectious hepatitis. The Ravensbrueck camp was the site of bone-grafting experiments and
experiments to test the efficacy of newly developed sulfa (sulfanilamide) drugs. At Natzweiler and
Sachsenhausen, prisoners were subjected to phosgene and mustard gas in order to test possible
antidotes.
The third category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets
of the Nazi worldview. The most infamous were the experiments of Josef
Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele conducted medical experiments on
twins. He also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as
did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how
different "races" withstood various contagious diseases. The research of
August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish
racial inferiority."
Other gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals were a series of sterilization
experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck. There, scientists tested a number
of methods in their effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilization of
Jews, Roma, and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable.
The Experiments
High altitude
In 1942, Sigmund Rascher and others conducted high-altitude experiments on prisoners at Dachau. Eager to find out how best to save German
pilots forced to eject at high altitude, they placed inmates into low-pressure chambers that simulated altitudes as high as 68,000 feet and
monitored their physiological response as they succumbed and died. Rascher was said to dissect victims' brains while they were still alive to show
that high-altitude sickness resulted from the formation of tiny air bubbles in the blood vessels of a certain part of the brain. Of 200 people
subjected to these experiments, 80 died outright and the remainder were executed.
Freezing
To determine the most effective means for treating German pilots who had become severely chilled from ejecting into the ocean, or German
soldiers who suffered extreme exposure on the Russian front, Rascher and others conducted freezing experiments at Dachau. For up to five hours
at a time, they placed victims into vats of icy water, either in aviator suits or naked; they took others outside in the freezing cold and strapped them
down naked. As the victims writhed in pain, foamed at the mouth, and lost consciousness, the doctors measured changes in the patients' heart
rate, body temperature, muscle reflexes, and other factors. When a prisoner's internal body temperature fell to 79.7°F, the doctors tried
rewarming him using hot sleeping bags, and scalding baths. Some 80 to 100 patients perished during these experiments.
Twins
In an effort to find ways to more effectively multiply the German race, Dr. Josef Mengele performed experiments on twins at Auschwitz in hopes of
plumbing the secrets of multiple births. After taking all the body measurements and other living data he could from selected twins, Mengele and
his collaborators dispatched them with a single injection of chloroform to the heart. Of about 1,000 pairs of twins experimented upon, only about
200 pairs survived.
Bone, muscle, and joint transplantation
To learn if a limb or joint from one person could be successfully attached to another who had lost that limb or joint, experimenters at Ravensbruck
amputated legs and shoulders from inmates in useless attempts to transplant them onto other victims. They also removed sections of bones,
muscles, and nerves from prisoners to study regeneration of these body parts. Victims suffered excruciating pain, mutilation, and permanent
disability as a result.
Poison
Researchers at Buchenwald concentration camp developed a method of individual execution by injecting Russian prisoners with phenol and
cyanide. Experimenters also tested various poisons on the human body by secreting noxious chemicals in prisoners' food or shooting inmates with
poison bullets. Victims who did not die during these experiments were killed to allow the experimenters to perform autopsies.
Tuberculosis
To determine if people had any natural immunities to tuberculosis, and to develop a vaccine against the disease, Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer injected live
tubercle bacilli (bacteria that are a major cause of TB) into the lungs of inmates at the Neuengamme concentration camp. About 200 adult subjects
died, and Heissmeyer had 20 children from Auschwitz hung in an effort to hide evidence of the experiments from approaching Allied forces.
Phosgene
In an attempt to find an antidote to phosgene, a toxic gas used as a weapon during World War I, Nazi doctors exposed 52 concentration-camp
prisoners to the gas at Fort Ney near Strasbourg, France. Phosgene gas causes extreme irritation to the lungs. Many of the prisoners, who according
to German records were already weak and malnourished, suffered pulmonary edema after exposure, and four of them died from the experiments.
Seawater
Dr. Hans Eppinger and others at Dachau conducted experiments on how to make seawater drinkable. The doctors forced roughly 90 Gypsies to
drink only seawater while also depriving them of food. The Gypsies became so dehydrated that they reportedly licked floors after they had been
mopped just to get a drop of fresh water. The experiments caused enormous pain and suffering and resulted in serious bodily injury.
The Doctors Trial
On December 9, 1946, at Nuremburg, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German
physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Nazi Germany,
German physicians planned and enacted the "Euthanasia" Program, the systematic killing of those they deemed "unworthy of
life." The victims included the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired. Further, during
World War II, German physicians conducted pseudoscientific medical experiments utilizing thousands of concentration camp
prisoners without their consent. Most died or were permanently crippled as a result. Most of the victims were Jews, Poles,
Russians, and also Roma (Gypsies). After almost 140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the
submission of almost 1,500 documents, the American judges pronounced their verdict on August 20, 1947. Sixteen of the doctors
were found guilty. Seven were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 2, 1948. This became known as the Doctors Trial.
Before announcing the guilt or innocence of each defendant, the judges confronted the difficult question of medical
experimentation on human beings. Several German doctors had argued in their own defense that their experiments differed
little from previous American or German ones. Furthermore they showed that no international law or informal statement
differentiated between legal and illegal human experimentation. This argument worried Drs. Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander,
American doctors who had worked with the prosecution during the trial. On April 17, 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a
memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes which outlined six points defining legitimate research. The verdict
of August 19 reiterated almost all of these points in a section entitled "Permissible Medical Experiments" and revised the original
six points into ten. Subsequently, the ten points became known as the "Nuremberg Code."
The Nuremburg Code:
1.
The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
2.
The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or
means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3.
The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the
natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of
the experiment.
4.
The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5.
No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will
occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6.
The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to
be solved by the experiment.
7.
Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even
remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8.
The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care
should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9.
During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has
reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage,
if he has probably cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him
that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
Project Paperclip: Dark side of the Moon
By Andrew Walker
BBC News
Sixty years ago the US hired Nazi scientists to lead pioneering projects, such as the
race to conquer space. These men provided the US with cutting-edge technology
which still leads the way today, but at a cost.
The end of World War II saw an intense scramble for Nazi Germany's many technological
secrets. The Allies vied to plunder as much equipment and expertise as possible from the
rubble of the Thousand Year Reich for themselves, while preventing others from doing the
same.
The range of Germany's technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in
1945.
Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the
groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories, even as Germany was losing the war.
And it was the US and the Soviet Union which, in the first days of the Cold War, found themselves in a race against time to uncover
Hitler's scientific secrets.
In May 1945, Stalin's legions secured the atomic research labs at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the suburbs of Berlin,
giving their master the kernel of what would become the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal.
US forces removed V-2 missiles from the vast Nordhausen complex, built under the Harz Mountains in central Germany, just before
the Soviets took over the factory, in what would become their area of occupation. And the team which had built the V-2, led by
Wernher von Braun, also fell into American hands.
Crimes
Shortly afterwards Major-General Hugh Knerr, deputy commander of the US Air Force in Europe, wrote: "Occupation of German
scientific and industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we have been alarmingly backward in many fields of research.
"If we do not take the opportunity to seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it and put the combination back to work
promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt to cover a field already
exploited."
Thus began Project Paperclip, the US operation which saw von Braun and more than 700
others spirited out of Germany from under the noses of the US's allies. Its aim was simple:
"To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources
to the Soviet Union."
Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18
November, the first Germans reached America.
There was, though, one major problem. Truman had expressly ordered that anyone found
"to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its
activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism" would be excluded.
Under this criterion even von Braun himself, the man who masterminded the Moon shots, would have been ineligible to serve the US.
A member of numerous Nazi organisations, he also held rank in the SS. His initial intelligence file described him as "a security risk".
And von Braun's associates included:

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Arthur Rudolph , chief operations director at Nordhausen, where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles. Led
the team which built the Saturn V rocket. Described as "100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type".
Kurt Debus , rocket launch specialist, another SS officer. His report stated: "He should be interned as a menace to the
security of the Allied Forces."
Hubertus Strughold , later called "the father of space medicine", designed Nasa's on-board life-support systems. Some of
his subordinates conducted human "experiments" at Dachau and Auschwitz, where inmates were frozen and put into lowpressure chambers, often dying in the process.
All of these men were cleared to work for the US, their alleged crimes covered up and their backgrounds bleached by a military
which saw winning the Cold War, and not upholding justice, as its first priority.
And the paperclip which secured their new details in their personnel files gave the whole operation its name. Sixty years on, the
legacy of Paperclip remains as vital as ever.
With its radar-absorbing carbon impregnated plywood skin and swept-back single wing, the 1944 Horten Ho 229 was arguably the
first stealth aircraft.
The US military made one available to Northrop Aviation, the company which would
produce the $2bn B-2 Stealth bomber - to all intents and purposes a modern clone of the
Horten - a generation later.
Cruise missiles are still based on the design of the V-1 missile and the scramjets powering
Nasa's state-of-the-art X-43 hypersonic aircraft owe much to German jet pioneers.
Cook says that such technology "could be so destructive that it would endanger world
peace and the US decided to keep it secret for a long time".
But, while celebrating the undoubted success of Project Paperclip, many will prefer to
remember the thousands who died to send mankind into space.