Many German doctors were part of cruel and bloody experiments during the Nazi regime. In the end, only a few received sanctions.
Autopsy room in a Nazi concentration camp and print of the German Red Cross (1940). Photos: Shutterstock
During World War II, some German doctors executed painful experiments in prisoners of concentration camps. Many of the victims died.
When inhumane conditions, lack of consent, and questionable research standards came to light, the vast majority of modern scientists rejected the use of test results. experiments made in the fields.
Since Adolf Hitler arrived at the German Chancellery in 1933, the complicity and collective participation of health personnel have been combined to implement laws of racial segregation, protection of the Aryan race, forced sterilization programs, euthanasia programs for the mentally or physically disabled, experiments doctors on disabled and healthy prisoners and active murder of innocent prisoners.
Many German doctors and scientists supported the ideas of racial hygiene, even before the nazis they will come to power. But, in 1933, they began to put the regime’s emphasis on biology and heredity.
Los experiments focused on: the survival of military personnel, drug and treatment testing, and the advancement of racial goals of the nazis.
The medical profession in Nazi Germany
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany led a campaign to “cleanse” society of those they considered biological threats. To do this, the nazis they received help from doctors and geneticists, as well as from psychiatrists and anthropologists.
The racial health policies that these professionals developed began with the mass sterilization of many people in hospitals and other institutions, trying to exterminate the Jews in Europe.
Medical experiments in the Third Reich
Los experiments Doctors who took place during the Third Reich fall into these three categories:
1- experiments for the survival of military personnel
Los experiments they sought to facilitate the survival of military personnel. Doctors from the German Air Force and the Experimental Institution for German Aviation practiced experiments at the maximum high altitude from which the crew of a damaged aircraft could be dropped by parachute. They also experimented with freezing prisoners to find a treatment for hypothermia and other experiments to test the potabilization of sea water.
2- experiments to test drugs and treatments
Others experiments they were carried out to test drugs and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses to which German military personnel were exposed in the field.
With the inmates of the camps, German doctors tested immunization compounds and antibodies to prevent and treat diseases such as malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, yellow fever, among others. Other doctors experimented with bone grafts. They exposed prisoners to phosgene and mustard gases to test antidotes.
3- experiments for the advancement of racial goals
Los experiments most infamously executed by Josef Mengele, who carried them out on twins of all ages from Auschwitz. Other investigations purported to demonstrate “Jewish racial inferiority,” while others experiments they focused on the mass sterilization of Jews.
Notorious cases of cruelty Sigmund Rascher, Nazi doctor who killed many people by immersing them in ice water
Rascher was looking for hypothermia treatments for pilots shot down in the ocean.
The Nazi doctor immersed people in a tank of scented water to study the effects of cold on the body. He experimented on 300 prisoners and a hundred of them died.
Dr. Rascher also experimented with a decompression chamber, to simulate heights of up to 20 kilometers. Many died inside the chamber.
Herta Oberheuser, perversion and sadism
This nurse removed and re-implanted body parts to test recovery.
He was one of the cruelest personalities, with a sadism that led almost all the victims to death in the operating room.
He used sulfanomines, drugs that were supposedly used to treat bacterial infections and combat leprosy. In this case, they were used to check the effect on the prisoners.
To do this, Herta inflicted wounds similar to those of German soldiers on the battlefields. Then, they were infected with wood chips, glass, rusty nails or dirt to administer the medication topically.
The victims were called “kanichen” or “guinea pigs”. The nurse broke part of the prisoners’ limbs to see how muscle and nerve regeneration was taking place or if a transplant was needed. First, she would hit with a chisel or hammer, then sew up the affected parts, and then reopen the wounds to see the results.
After the war, only a few of these cruel characters were professionally sanctioned, since most continued to practice their profession.
Sources consulted: The country, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The vanguard y BBC