JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 365
How does it come to be that Nazi doctors who did human experimentation and were convicted at Nurnberg, released early, and go on to extended medical careers and long lives? Case in point: Dr. Fritz Fischer, pictured here, convicted of crimes against humanity for performing terrible experiments on human beings; sentenced, relseased early, and then went on to a new career with an important pharaceutical company He may still yet be alive...
On the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht—the night of the broken glass, Crystal Night, the night on 9/10 November 1938 that the Nazis became the major physical offensive against the Jewish people--I’m thinking about how the German institutionalization of anti-Semiotics came to be. On that night 90 Jews were murdered, 200 Synagogues burned, and 25,000 other Jews rounded up for the first deportations to the concentration camps.
It was also the horror of thousands of businesses and homes being completely ransacked, cudgeled, broken, by tens of thousands of Stormtroopers throughout the Reich; the beginning of the Great Terror. (The map below shows the cities in which Synagogues were destroyed during Krstallnacht.)
Part of the reason for this hatred was that Hitler desperately needed a common, routable foe as a rallying
point for similarly-minded miscreants; another part was that there was considerable inferior work already being done on the behalf of racial-needs people. Mein Kampf was Hitler’s blueprint for returning Germany to power—a position that was not possible without the removal of the Jewish people, the group that had defeated the Reich in WWI and who would continue to do so as long as they were allowed to continue. These ideas were not especially needed during the Halcyon days of the Weimar Republic, but come the hyperinflation and the Crash of 1929, the ideas started to look pretty good to the voting population. The mortar for these puerile thoughts came via eugenics and racial studies that had been (basically) started in other countries—notably with the otherwise-fantastic Sir Francis Galton in England, and then a little later with the popular but intellectually challenged Popenoe in the United States—and began to take hold in Germany by the early 1930’s.
For example, human biologist and eugenicist Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (16 July 1896 – 8 August 1969) was concerned with "racial hygiene" and twin research. He became the director of what would become the prestigious "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre, und Eugenik" (KWIfA) ("Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics") in Berlin and the "Institut für Erbbiologie und Rassenhygiene" ("Institute for Genetic Biology and Racial Hygiene"), while he was on his way to forming the racial identity of the Nazi party. Also along the way he became the benefactor and benefiter of the work of his pupil Josef Mengele—partners in one of the century’s most horrendous crimes against humanity.
A not-terribly undercurrent and philosophical foundation to the anti-Semitic policies with the Nazis was the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Gr. Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) or "Sterilization Law". This was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, which allowed the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" (Gr. Erbgesundheitsgericht) suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene movement: Ernst Rüdin, Arthur Gütt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.
The basic provisions of the 1933 law allowed for the forcible sterilization of: (A) Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of a surgical operation (sterilization), if the experience of medical science shows that it is highly probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect. (B) For the purposes of this law, any person will be considered as hereditarily diseased who is suffering from any one of the following diseases:– (1) Congenital Mental Deficiency, (2) Schizophrenia, (3) Manic-Depressive Insanity, (4) Hereditary Epilepsy, (5) Hereditary Chorea (Huntington’s), (6) Hereditary Blindness, (7) Hereditary Deafness, (8) Any severe hereditary deformity. (C) Any person suffering from severe alcoholism may be also rendered incapable of procreation.
The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilization laws in the United States, which generally were only applicable on people in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.
The nadir of the worst idea in history—if there is such a thing—came at the hands of the doctors who were following the instructions and recommendations of Mengele and his mentor von V as well as administrators such as Himmler and the political manifestation in the form of Hitler. This of course were the medical “experiments” conducted on living human beings in the concentrations camps. Ostensibly, the experiments were carried out for (non-molecular) genetic research, which was unspeakable and flawed, stupid, overall. The rest of it was supposed to have martial use, research done for the betterment of German soldiers in battle, or for furthering of the German race.
The experiments, as outlined by the The Doctors' Trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
The experiments were classified into the following categories, the procedures not really defined by the word “evil”:
A) High-Altitude Experiments
B) Freezing Experiments
C) Malaria Experiments
D) Lost (Mustard) Gas Experiments
E) Sulfanilamide Experiments
F) Bone, Muscle, and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation Experiments
G) Sea-Water Experiments
H) Epidemic Jaundice Experiments
I) Sterilization Experiments
J) Spotted Fever (Fleckfieber) Experiments
K) Experiments with Poison
L) Incendiary Bomb Experiments
What is not known, generally, is that of those doctors who weren’t hanged, the rest went on to serve truncated sentences, and then, for most of them, survived their lenient incarceration to take up medicine again, living to good, determined, ripe-old age.
These people included:
Dr. Hubertus Strughold (15 June 1898-1987). Brought to the US right after the war in Project Paperclip, became the father of American Space medicine (and who copied the term). Very prestigious award named for him as well as a library. After his medical experimentation history and involvement at Dachau was revealed, things changed for his legacy. Americanism Medal from the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Wilhelm Beiglböck (October 10, 1905—November 22, 1963), Internist. The consulting physician to the Luftwaffe, member of the NSDAP and member of the SA (SA Obersturmbannführer); for seawater experiments in Dachau concentration camp. Sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, commuted to 10 years. From 1952 - 1963 he served as the chief physician at Hospital of Buxtehude.
Gerhard Rose (November 30, 1886 – January 13, 1992) was an expert on tropical medicine who was tried for war crimes at the end of World War II. Sentenced to 20 years, released in 1955.
Siegfried Adolf Handloser (25 March 1895 - 3 July 1954) was a Doctor and Lieutenant General of the German Armed Forces Medical Services, Chief of the German Armed Forces Medical Services. Did nothing bout concentration camp experimentation.
Herta Oberheuser (15 May 1911– 24 January 1978) was a physician at the Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1940 until 1943. “She worked there under Dr. Karl Gebhardt supervision participating in gruesome medical experiments (sulfanilamide as well as bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation) conducted on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polish political prisoners in the camp. “Oberheuser killed healthy children with oil and evipan injections, then removed their limbs and vital organs. The time from the injection to death was between three and five minutes, with the person being fully conscious until the last moment. She performed some of the most gruesome and painful medical experiments, focusing on deliberately inflicting wounds on the subjects. In order to simulate the combat wounds of German soldiers fighting in the war, Herta Oberheuser rubbed foreign objects, such as wood, rusty nails, slivers of glass, dirt, or sawdust into the wounds.” She worked as a family physician with a tidy practice until she was identified by a former inmate, and then her life changed….
Helmut Poppendick (January 6, 1902(1902-01-06)– January 11, 1994) Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police, and sentenced to 10 years for experimentation at Ravenbruck. Commuted.
Karl August Genzken (born June 8, 1885 – October 10, 1957), conducted human experiments on prisoners of several concentration camps. He was a Major General of the Waffen-SS and the Chief of the Medical Office of the Waffen-SS. Convicted, commuted, released 1954.
Kurt Blome (1894 - 1969) was a high-ranking Nazi scientist before and during World War II. He was a deputy of the Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. In his autobiography, Arzt im Kampf (Physician in Struggle), Blome equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death, and specialized in bacteriological warfare, and of course, plague. Vast experience in experimentation on living humans.
Fritz Fischer (born October 5, 1912) was a German medical doctor who, under the Nazi regime, had participated in "medical experiments" conducted on inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. He joined the SS in 1934 and became a member of the NSDAP in June 1937. In 1940, he became a physician at Ravensbrück concentration camp as a surgical assistant to Karl Gebhardt, who was hanged for his crimes against humanity. He was given a life sentence at the Doctors Trial, his sentence reduced to 15 years in 1951 and subsequently released in March 1954. Fischer returned to practice medicine and started a new career at the chemical company Böhringer in Ingelheim, where he would stay until his retirement. How nice.
Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Some of its popular products include Dulcolax, Fleet, Alophen, Correctol, Carter's Little Pills,
Zinetac, Zantac and FLowmax. I wonder how many of these products or the developments leading up to them passed under the gaze of Dr. Fischer.
Ernst Rüdin (April 19, 1874 - October 22, 1952), was a Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist and eugenicist, and is known as one of the fathers of racial hygiene and father of NAZi ideology. It was Rudin who wrote the official commentary for the racial policy of Nazi Germany: "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" (described above); and was awarded medals from the Nazis and Adolf Hitler personally.
Fritz A Lenz (March 9, 1887– July 6, 1976) was a geneticist and influential specialist in "racial hygiene" (also called eugenics) during the Third Reich, one of the leading German theorists of "scientific racism" which legitimized the Nazi racial policies, starting with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.
Eugen Fischer (July 5, 1874 – July 9, 1967) was a professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics . He was one of those responsible for the Nazi German scientific theories of racial hygiene that legitimized the extermination of Jews, sent an estimated half a million Gypsies to their death in the Porajmos, and led to the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of other individuals, deemed racially defective, such as the Rhineland Bastards, the mentally ill, and the mentally retarded.
Getting back to my original question,
How does it come to be that Nazi doctors who did human experimentation and were convicted at Nurnberg, released early, and go on to extended medical careers and long lives?
I just don’t know.
Why should Wernher von Braun be venerated? Why should we have given a pass to Ford Motor Corp and Occidental Petroleum for their trading with the enemy offenses? Why tolerate the Nazi past of American Avery Brundage, the long-serving president of the International Olympic Committee? Why bother with the traitor Ezra Pound, who broadcast vile messages from Italy for some years from Italy during WWII? And on and on, and on. Scratch the surface of international economics and the Nazis, and the story gets ugly and deep very quickly. I bet few people associate Bayer with the dimly-punished horror company that spawned it—I.G. Farben.
Perhaps it is all too much. Perhaps it isn’t.
I would like to know when this stuff matters, and when it doesn’t. And why.
NOTE:
Verdicts and Sentences of the Naxi experimentalists at The Doctors Trial (1946):
Wilhelm Beiglboeck
Consulting Physician to the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of fifteen years; reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.
Viktor Brack
Senior Colonel in the SS and the Chief Administrative Officer in the Chancellery of the Fuehrer. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by Hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
Karl Brandt
He was the personal physician to Hitler. He was active in the SS and the Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. Brandt was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
Rudolf Brandt
Brandt was a Personal Administrative Officer to Himmler. He was found guilty on counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria
Herman Brecker-Freyseng
Brecker-Freyseng was the Captian of Medical Services of the Air Force and Chief of the Department for Aviation Medicine of the Chief of Medical Services of the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of twenty years
This sentence was reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.
Fritz Fischer
Fischer was a Major in the Waffen SS and an Assistant Physician to Gebhardt at the hospital at Hohenlychen. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.
Karl Gebhardt
Gebhardt was the personal physician to Himmler and the president of the German Red Cross. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
Karl Genzken
Genzken was Chief of the Medical Department, a part of the Waffen SS. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
This sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years in prison.
Siegfried Handloser
Medical
Inspector of the Army and Chief of Medical Services of the Armed
Forces. Handloser was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
This sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years in prison.
Waldemar Hoven
Hoven was Chief Doctor of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
Joachim Mrugowsky
Mrugowsky was the Chief Hygienist of the Reich Physicians SS and Police and of the Institute of the Waffen SS. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
Herta Oberheuser
Oberheuser was a physician at Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp and an Assistant Physician to Gebhardt at the hospital at Hohenlychen. Oberheuser was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of twenty years
This sentence was reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.
Helmut Poppendick
Poppendick was a Senior Colonel in the SS. He was found guilty on Count IV.
Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of ten years
This sentence was reduced on appeal to time served.
Gerhard Rose
Rose was the Brigadier General of Medical Services of the Air Force. He was also Vice president of the Chief of the Department for Tropical Medicine. He was Hygienic Adviser for Tropical Medicine to the Chief of Medical Services of the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.
Oskar Schroeder
Schroeder was the Lieutenant General of Medical Services. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.
Wolfram Sievers
Sievers was a colonel in the SS and Director of the Institute for Military Scientific Research. He was also the Deputy Chairman of the Managing Board of Directors of the Reich Research Council. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
Sentence: Death by hanging
Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria
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