Nazi Eugenics.
Did any Nazi Science produce anything of value?
Nazi Eugenics and racial hygiene
Adolf Hitler read racial hygiene tracts during his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison. He thought that Germany could only become strong again if the state applied to German society the principles of racial hygiene and eugenics.
Hitler believed the nation had become weak, corrupted by the infusion of degenerate elements into its bloodstream. These had to be removed quickly. He also believed that the strong and the racially pure had to be encouraged to have more children, and the weak and the racially impure had to be neutralized by one means or another.
The racialism and idea of competition, termed social Darwinism or neo-Darwinism in 1944, were discussed by European scientists and also in the Vienna press during the 1920s. Where Hitler picked up the ideas is uncertain. The theory of evolution had been generally accepted in Germany at the time but this sort of extremism was rare. In 1876, Ernst Haeckel had discussed the selective infanticide policy of the Greek city of ancient Sparta.
In his Second Book, which was unpublished during the Nazi era, Hitler praised Sparta, adding that he considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State". He endorsed what he perceived to be an early eugenics treatment of deformed children:
Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.
The Nazis based their eugenics program on the United States' programs of forced sterilization.
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, proclaimed on July 14, 1933, required physicians to register every case of hereditary illness known to them, except in women over forty-five years of age. Physicians could be fined for failing to comply.
In 1934 the first year of the Law's operation, nearly 4,000 people appealed against the decisions of sterilization authorities. 3,559 of the appeals failed. By the end of the Nazi regime, over 200 Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichten) were created, and under their rulings over 400,000 people were sterilized against their will.
The Hadamar Clinic was a mental hospital in the German town of Hadamar, which was used by the Nazi-controlled German government as the site of their T-4 Euthanasia Program. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927.
In its early years, and during the Nazi era, it was strongly associated with theories of eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by its leading theorists Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer, and by its director Otmar von Verschuer. Under Fischer, the sterilization of so-called Rhineland Bastards was undertaken. Grafeneck Castle was one of Nazi Germany's killing centers during the Euthanasia, today it is a memorial place dedicated to the victims of the Action T4.
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the German Nazi regime in its concentration camps during World War II. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there was never informed consent. Typically, the experiments resulted in death, disfigurement or permanent disability. At Auschwitz and other camps, under the direction of Dr. Eduard Wirths, selected inmates were subjected to various experiments which were supposedly designed to help German military personnel in combat situations, develop new weapons, aid in the recovery of military personnel that had been injured, and to advance the racial ideology backed by the Third Reich. Dr. Aribert Heim conducted similar medical experiments at Mauthausen. Carl Vaernet is known to have conducted experiments on homosexual prisoners in attempts to "cure" homosexuality. After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the Doctors' Trial, and revulsion at the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics.
According to the indictment at the Subsequent Nuremberg
Experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show the similarities and differences in the genetics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be unnaturally manipulated. The central leader of the experiments was Josef Mengele, who from 1943-1944 performed experiments on nearly 1,500 sets of imprisoned twins at Auschwitz. Only 200 individuals survived these studies. While attending University of Munich (located in the city that remained one of Adolf Hitler's focal points during the revolution) studying philosophy and medicine with an emphasis on anthropology and paleontology, Mengele stated: "this simple political concept (fascism) finally became the decisive factor in my life". Mengele's new found admiration for the "simple political concept" led him to mix his studies of medicine and politics as his career choice. Mengele received his PhD for a thesis entitled "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups", which suggested that a person's race could be identified by the shape of the jaw. The Nazi organization saw his studies as talents, and Mengele was transferred to the German Auschwitz concentration camp located in Poland on May 30, 1943. Contrary to common belief, Mengele was not the only doctor at Auschwitz nor was he even the highest-ranking physician: SS captain Dr. Eduard Wirths was the physician in charge at
From about September 1942 to about December 1943 experiments were conducted at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, for the benefit of the German Armed Forces, to study bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and bone transplantation from one person to another. Sections of bones, muscles, and nerves were removed from the subjects without use of anesthesia. As a result of these operations, many victims suffered intense agony, mutilation, and permanent disability.
In 1941, the Luftwaffe conducted experiments with the intent of discovering means to prevent and treat hypothermia. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to five hours. Another study placed prisoners naked in the open air for several hours with temperatures as low as -6°C (21°F). Besides studying the physical effects of cold exposure, the experimenters also assessed different methods of rewarming survivors.
The freezing/hypothermia experiments were conducted for the Nazi high command to simulate the conditions the armies suffered on the Eastern Front, as the German forces were ill-prepared for the cold weather they encountered. The principal locales were Dachau and Auschwitz. Dr Sigmund Rascher, an SS doctor based at Dachau, reported directly to Heinrich Himmler and
From about February 1942 to about April 1945, experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp in order to investigate immunization for treatment of malaria. Healthy inmates were infected by mosquitoes or by injections of extracts of the mucous glands of female mosquitoes. After contracting the disease, the subjects were treated with various drugs to test their relative efficiency. Over 1,000 people were used in these experiments, and of those, more than half died as a result.
At various times between September 1939 and April 1945, experiments were conducted at Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and other camps to investigate the most effective treatment of wounds caused by mustard gas. Test subjects were deliberately exposed to mustard gas and other vesicants (e.g. Lewisite) which inflicted severe chemical burns. The victims' wounds were then tested to find the most effective treatment for the mustard gas burns.
From about July 1942 to about September 1943, experiments to investigate the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent, were conducted at Ravensbrück. Wounds inflicted on the subjects were infected with bacteria such as Streptococcus, Clostridium perfringens (the causative agent in gas gangrene) and Clostridium tetani, the causative agent in tetanus. Circulation of blood was interrupted by tying off blood vessels at both ends of the wound to create a condition similar to that of a battlefield wound. Infection was aggravated by forcing wood shavings and ground glass into the wounds. The infection was treated with sulfonamide and other drugs to determine their effectiveness.
From about July 1944 to about September 1944, experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp to study various methods of making sea water drinkable. At one point, a group of roughly 90 Roma were deprived of food and given nothing but sea water to drink by Dr. Hans Eppinger, leaving them gravely injured. They were so dehydrated that others observed them licking freshly mopped floors in an attempt to get drinkable water.
From about March 1941 to about January 1945, sterilization experiments were conducted at Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and other places by Dr. Carl Clauberg. The purpose of these experiments was to develop a method of sterilization which would be suitable for sterilizing millions of people with a minimum of time and effort. These experiments were conducted by means of X-ray, surgery and various drugs. Thousands of victims were sterilized. Aside from its experimentation, the Nazi government sterilized around 400,000 individuals as part of its compulsory sterilization program. Intravenous injections of solutions speculated to contain iodine and silver nitrate were successful, but had unwanted side effects such as vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain, and cervical cancer. Therefore, radiation treatment became the favored choice of sterilization. Specific amounts of exposure to radiation destroyed a person’s ability to produce ova or sperm. The radiation was administered through deception. Prisoners were brought into a room and asked to complete forms, which took two to three minutes. In this time, the radiation treatment was administered and, unknown to the prisoners, they were rendered completely sterile. Many suffered severe radiation burns.
In or around December 1943 and October 1944, experiments were conducted at Buchenwald to investigate the effect of various poisons. The poisons were secretly administered to experimental subjects in their food. The victims died as a result of the poison or were killed immediately in order to permit autopsies. In September 1944, experimental subjects were shot with poisonous bullets, suffered torture and often died.
From around November 1943 through to circa January 1944, experiments were conducted at Buchenwald to test the effect of various pharmaceutical preparations on phosphorus burns. These burns were inflicted on prisoners using phosphorus material extracted from incendiary bombs.
In early 1942, prisoners at Dachau concentration camp were used by Rascher in experiments to aid German pilots who had to eject at high altitudes. A low-pressure chamber containing these prisoners was used to simulate conditions at altitudes of up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft). It was that Rascher performed vivisections on the brains of victims who survived the initial experiment. Of the 200 subjects, 80 died outright, and the others were executed.
Mengele's experiments were intended to be a contribution to his second doctorate, the Habilitation, which all German academics needed to qualify for a university professorship. Under Verschuer's guidance, he selected twins from the trainloads of Jews who arrived and injected them with chemicals to see if they reacted differently from one another. He collected prisoners with physical abnormalities, such as heterochromia - having a different color in each eye - to investigate if their condition was hereditary. He treated gipsy and other children for starvation-related diseases, using vitamins and sulphonamides, to see if there were hereditary differences in their response to the therapy.
Mengele's work was pure research, without any obvious practical application. He gained his notoriety from his willingness to kill his subjects under certain circumstances - such as settling an argument about a diagnosis by executing patients and performing an autopsy. However, most survivors remembered him not for his experiments but for his ruthless and brutal behavior - indeed, it was logical that they should be sacrificed in the interests of the survival and triumph of the German race, just as that race had to be strengthened by the elimination of the inferior, degenerate elements within it. After all, German medical science had uncovered the causes of several major diseases and contributed massively to improving the health of the population over the previous decades. Surely, therefore, it was justified in eliminating negative influences as well?
Professor Evans is talking about racial hygiene, which was closely aligned with eugenics, in which races were characterized as inferior and superior based on traits that scientists came to think of as indicating inferiority or superiority. Indeed, racial hygiene was very popular in Germany and many other European countries beginning decades before Hitler assumed power. Indeed, German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz first coined the phrase in 1895 to describe what is in essence race-based eugenics. Not surprisingly, the Nazis found racial hygiene to be very appealing and grafted it onto their ideology. These days, it is obvious that racial hygiene is pseudoscience, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was considered a perfectly reputable science, and indeed many universities had academic departments devoted to it, not just in Germany. Against this backdrop, with their nation engaged in total war and steeped in propaganda and ideology that proclaimed the Jews to be a "cancer" or an "infection" threatening the health of the volk, physicians and scientists really did come to believe that the enemies of the Nazi state were subhuman.
Did Nazi science produce anything of value despite the repugnant methods?
Oddly enough, despite their adherence to the dubious science of racial hygiene, Nazi medicine and science did produce some rather amazing advances. Indeed German physicists and engineers developed what was in essence the first Cruise missile (the V-1) and the precursor to the intercontinental missile (the V-2). German medical scientists identified the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer more than two decades before the Surgeon General's warning and undertook public health programs to help people quit smoking. Indeed, in his book, The Nazi War On Cancer, Robert Proctor describes, well, a Nazi War On Cancer in which many of the public health measures taken were both progressive even by today's standards and decades ahead of their time. (Indeed, I keep meaning to do a post on this topic, and I keep somehow never getting around to it.) At the same time, the Nazi regime, while producing advances in scientific medicine, also was enamored of "alternative" medicine such as naturopathy, which in which they glorified German folk medicine as being more "natural." (Another topic for a post that I've been meaning to do for a long time.) Still, it is a mistake to conclude that science suffered under the Nazis. In many ways it thrived, at least the areas of interest to the regime, including medicine and any physical science related to weapons.
So was Nazi science good science? Yes, some of it was. Was it bad science? Also yes, quite a bit of it was. Was it pseudo science? Yes again, a lot of it was. It may not be bad science to take two groups of people, carefully match them and inject them with a deadly microbe, and then to test whether a new drug or treatment can save people compared to a no treatment control, but it's profoundly immoral science. Indeed, science under the Nazis was a paradox. A regime that could figure out the link between smoking and lung cancer long before anyone else also viewed its enemies as subhuman and perpetrated the most horrific atrocities on them in the name of science.