They
All Did It - Those Who Could, at Least
By John Wear
Published: 2018-12-31
The onset and
escalation of World War II provided the rationale for most of Germany’s illegal
human medical experimentation. Animal experimentation was known to be a poor
substitute for experiments on humans. Since only analogous inferences could be
drawn from animal experiments, the use of human experimentation during the war
was deemed necessary to help in the German war effort. Applications for medical
experimentation on humans were usually approved on the grounds that animal
tests had taken the research only so far. Better results could be obtained by
using humans in the medical experiments.[1]
Inmates at the Dachau Concentration Camp were subjected to medical
experimentation involving malaria, high altitudes, freezing and other
experiments. Such has been documented in the so-called Doctors’ Trial at
Nuremberg, which opened on December 9, 1946, and ended on July 19, 1947. Also,
Dr. Charles P. Larson, an American forensic pathologist, was at Dachau and
conducted autopsies, interviews, and a review of the remaining medical records
to determine the extent of the medical experimentation at the camp.
Malaria Experiments
The malaria experimentation at Dachau was performed by Dr. Klaus Karl
Schilling, who was an internationally famous parasitologist. Dr. Schilling was
ordered by Heinrich Himmler in 1936 to conduct medical research at Dachau for
the purpose of immunizing individuals specifically against malaria. Dr.
Schilling admitted to Dr. Larson that between 1936 and 1945 he inoculated some
2,000 prisoners with malaria. The medical supervisor at Dachau would select the
people to be inoculated and then send this list of people to Berlin to be
approved by a higher authority. Those who were chosen were then turned over to
Dr. Schilling to conduct the medical experimentation.[2]
Dr. Schilling at Trial
At the Doctors’ Trial it was determined that Dr. Schilling’s experiments
were directly responsible for the deaths of 10 prisoners.[3]
Dr. Charles Larson stated in his report concerning Dr. Schilling:
It was very difficult to know where to draw the line as to whether or not
Dr. Schilling was a war criminal. Certainly he fell into that category inasmuch
as he had subjected people involuntarily to experimental malaria inoculations,
which, even though they did not produce many deaths, could very well have produced
serious illness in many of the patients. He defended himself by saying he did
all this work by order from higher authority; in fact, Himmler himself.
In my report, I wrote: “In view of all he has told me, this man, in my
opinion, should be considered a war criminal, but that he should be permitted
to write up the results of his experiments and turn them over to Allied medical
personnel for what they are worth. Dr. Schilling is an eminent scientist of
world-wide renown who has conducted a most important group of experiments;
their value cannot properly be ascertained until he has put them into writing
for medical authorities to study. The criminal acts have already been
committed, and since they have been committed, if it were possible to derive some
new knowledge concerning immunity to malaria from these acts, it would yet be
another crime not to permit this man to finish documenting the results of his
years of research.”
But my attempt to save Dr. Schilling’s life failed. Our High Command felt it
had to make a public example of him – most of the other high-ranking Nazis
connected with Dachau had already been executed – and made his wife watch the
hanging. I did everything I could to stop it. I implored our military government not to pass sentence on him until
he’d had a fair hearing, because I was just beginning to win his confidence,
and get through to him. Looking back, I am sure that the execution of Dr.
Schilling deprived the world of some very valuable scientific information – no
matter how distasteful his research and experimentation may have been.[4]
Dr. Larson concluded in regard to Dr. Schilling: “…Dr. Schilling, who was
72 [actually 74], should have lived. He never tried to run. He stayed in Dachau
and made a full statement of his work to me; he cooperated in every way, and
was the only one who told the truth…”[5]
The defense in the Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg submitted evidence of
doctors in the United States performing medical experiments on prison inmates
and conscientious objectors during the war. The evidence showed that
large-scale malaria experiments were performed on 800 American prisoners, many
of them black, from federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and state penitentiaries
in Illinois and New Jersey. U.S. doctors conducted human experiments with malaria
tropica, one of the most dangerous of the malaria strains, to aid the U.S.
war effort in Southeast Asia.[6]
Although Dr. Schilling’s malaria experiments were no more dangerous or
illegal than the malaria experiments performed by U.S. doctors, Dr. Schilling
had to atone for his malaria experiments by being hanged to death while his
wife watched. The U.S. doctors who performed malaria experiments on humans were
never charged with a crime.
High-Altitude and Hypothermia Experiments
Germany also conducted high-altitude experiments at Dachau. Dr. Sigmund
Rascher performed these experiments beginning February 22, 1942 and ending
around the beginning of July 1942.[7] The experiments
were performed in order to know what happened to air crews after failure of, or
ejection from, their pressurized cabins at very high altitudes. In this
instance, airmen would be subjected within a few seconds to a drop in pressure
and lack of oxygen. The experiments were performed to investigate various possible
life-saving methods. To this end a low-pressure chamber was set up at Dachau to
observe the reactions of a human being thrown out at extreme altitudes, and to
investigate ways of rescuing him.[8] The victims were
locked in the chamber, and the pressure in the chamber was then lowered to a
level corresponding to very high altitudes. The pressure could be very quickly
altered, allowing Dr. Rascher to simulate the conditions which would be
experienced by a pilot freefalling from altitude without oxygen.
Dr. Rascher received authority to conduct these high-altitude experiments
when he wrote to Heinrich Himmler and was told that prisoners would be placed
at his disposal. Dr. Rascher stated in his letter that he knew the experiments
could have fatal results. According to Walter Neff, the prisoner who gave
testimony at the Doctors’ Trial, approximately 180 to 200 prisoners were used
in the high-altitude experiments. Approximately 10 of these prisoners were
volunteers, and about 40 of the prisoners were men not condemned to death.
According to Neff’s testimony, approximately 70 to 80 prisoners died during
these experiments.[9] A film showing the complete
sequence of an experiment, including the autopsy, was discovered in Dr.
Rascher’s house at Dachau after the war.[10]
Dr. Rascher also conducted freezing experiments at Dachau after the
high-altitude experiments were concluded. These freezing experiments were
conducted from August 1942 to approximately May 1943.[11]
The purpose of these experiments was to determine the best way of warming
German pilots who had been forced down in the North Sea and suffered
hypothermia.
Dr. Rascher's subjects were forced to remain outdoors naked in
freezing weather for up to 14 hours, or the victims were kept in a tank of ice
water for three hours. Their pulse and internal temperature were measured
through a series of electrodes. Warming of the victims was then attempted by
different methods, most usually and successfully by immersion in very hot
water. It is estimated that these experiments caused the deaths of 80 to 90
prisoners.[12]
Dr. Charles Larson strongly condemned these freezing experiments. Dr.
Larson wrote:
A Dr. Raschau [sic] was in charge of this work and…we found the records of
his experiments. They were most inept compared to Dr. Schilling’s, much less
scientific. What they would do would be to tie up a prisoner and immerse him in
cold water until his body temperature reduced to 28 degrees centigrade (82.4
degrees Fahrenheit), when the poor soul would, of course, die. These
experiments were started in August, 1942, but Raschau’s [sic] technique
improved. By February, 1943 he was able to report that 30 persons were chilled
to 27 and 29 degrees centigrade, their hands and feet frozen white, and their
bodies “rewarmed” by a hot bath….
They also dressed the subjects in different types of insulated clothing
before putting them in freezing water, to see how long it took them to die.[13]
Dr. Rascher and his hypothermia experiments at Dachau were not well
regarded by German medical doctors. In a paper titled “Nazi Science – The
Dachau Hypothermia Experiments,” Dr. Robert L. Berger wrote:
Rascher was not well regarded in professional circles…and his superiors
repeatedly expressed reservations about his performance. In one encounter,
Professor Karl Gebhardt, a general in the SS and Himmler’s personal physician,
told Rascher in connection with his experiments on hypothermia through exposure
to cold air that “the report was unscientific; if a student of the second term
dared submit a treatise of the kind [Gebhardt] would throw him out.” Despite
Himmler’s strong support, Rascher was rejected for faculty positions at several
universities. A book by German scientists on the accomplishments of German
aviation medicine during the war devoted an entire chapter to hypothermia but
failed to mention Rascher’s name or his work.[14]
Blood-Clotting Experiments
Dr. Rascher also experimented with the effects of Polygal, a substance
made from beet and apple pectin, which aided blood
clotting. He predicted that the preventive use of Polygal tablets would reduce
bleeding from surgery and from gunshot wounds sustained during combat.
Subjects were given a Polygal tablet and were either shot through the neck or
chest, or their limbs were amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rascher published
an article on his use of Polygal without detailing the nature of the human
trials. Dr. Rascher also set up a company staffed by prisoners to manufacture
the substance.[15] Dr. Rascher’s nephew, a Hamburg
doctor, testified under oath that he knew of four prisoners who died from Dr.
Rascher’s testing Polygal at Dachau.[16]
Obviously, Dr. Rascher’s medical experiments constitute major war crimes.
Dr. Rascher was arrested and executed in Dachau by German authorities shortly
before the end of the war.[17]
Infectious Diseases, Biopsies and Salt-Water Tests
Phlegmons were also induced in inmates at Dachau by intravenous and
intramuscular injection of pus during 1942 and 1943. Various natural,
allopathic and biochemical remedies were then tried to cure the resulting
infections. The phlegmon experiments were apparently an attempt by National
Socialist Germany to find an antibiotic similar to penicillin for infection.[18]
All of the doctors who took part in these phlegmon experiments were dead or
had disappeared at the time of the Doctors’ Trial. The only information about
the number of prisoners used and the number of victims was provided by an
inmate nurse, Heinrich Stöhr, who was a political prisoner at Dachau. Stöhr
stated that seven out of a group of 10 German subjects died in one experiment,
and that in another experiment 12 out of a group of 40 clergy died.[19]
Official documents and personal testimonies indicate that physicians at
Dachau performed many liver biopsies when they were not needed. Dr. Rudolf
Brachtl performed liver biopsies on healthy people and on people who had
diseases of the stomach and gall bladder. While biopsy of the liver is an
accepted and frequently used diagnostic procedure, it should only be performed
when definite indications exist and other methods fail. Some physicians at
Dachau performed liver biopsies simply to gain experience with its techniques.
These Dachau biopsies violated professional standards since they were often
conducted in the absence of genuine medical indication.[20]
The Luftwaffe had also been concerned since 1941 with the problem of
shot-down airmen who had been reduced to drinking salt water. Sea water
experiments were performed at Dachau to develop a method of making sea water
drinkable through desalinization. Between July and September 1944, 44 inmates
at Dachau were used to test the desirability of using two different processes
to make sea water drinkable. The subjects were divided into several groups and
given different diets using the two different processes.[21]
During the experiments one of the groups received no food whatsoever for five
to nine days. Many of the subjects became ill from these experiments, suffering
from diarrhea, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and sometimes madness or
death.[22]
Most Deaths from Natural Causes
Dr. Charles Larson’s forensic work at Dachau indicated that only a small
percentage of the deaths at Dachau were due to medical experimentation on
humans. His autopsies showed that most of the victims died from natural causes;
that is, of disease brought on by malnutrition and filth caused by wartime
conditions. In his depositions to Army lawyers, Dr. Larson made it clear that
one could not indict the whole German people for the National Socialist medical
crimes. Dr. Larson sincerely believed that although Dachau was only a short
ride from Munich, most of the people in Munich had no idea what was going on
inside Dachau.[23]
Dr. Larson’s conclusions are reinforced by the book Dachau, 1933-1945:
The Official History by Paul Berben. This book states that the total number
of people who passed through Dachau during its existence is well in excess of
200,000.[24] The author concludes that while no one
will ever know the exact number of deaths at Dachau, the number of deaths is
probably several thousand more than the quoted number of 31,951.[25] This book documents that approximately 66% of all
deaths at Dachau occurred during the final seven months of the war.
The increase in deaths at Dachau was caused primarily by a devastating
typhus epidemic which, in spite of the efforts made by the medical staff,
continued to spread throughout Dachau during the final seven months of the war.
The number of deaths at Dachau also includes 2,226 people who died in May 1945
after the Allies had liberated the camp, as well as the deaths of 223 prisoners
in March 1944 from Allied aerial attacks on work parties.[26]
Thus, while illegal medical experiments were conducted on prisoners at Dachau,
Berben’s book clearly shows that the overwhelming majority of deaths of
prisoners at Dachau were from natural causes.
Allied Medical Experimentation
Dr. Karl Brandt and the other defendants were infuriated during the
Doctors’ Trial at the moral high ground taken by the U.S. prosecution. Evidence
showed that the Allies had been engaged in illegal medical experimentation,
including poison experiments on condemned prisoners in other countries, and
cholera and plague experiments on children.[27]
Dr. Bettina Blome, the wife of the defendant Dr. Kurt Blome, meticulously
researched experiments that were conducted by the U.S. Office of Scientific
Research and Development (OSRD) during the war. In addition to malaria
experiments on Terre Haute Federal Prison inmates, she also uncovered Dr.
Walter Reed’s 19th-century yellow fever research for the U.S. Army,
in which volunteer human test subjects had died. Blome’s research was entered
into evidence at the Doctors’ Trial.[28]
Defense attorney Dr. Robert Servatius expanded on the theme of U.S. Army
human experimentation. American journalist Annie Jacobsen writes:
Servatius had located a Life magazine article,
published in June of 1945, that described how OSRD conducted experiments on 800
U.S. prisoners during the war. Servatius read the entire article, word for
word, in the courtroom. None of the American judges was familiar with the
article, nor were most members of the prosecution, and its presentation in
court clearly caught the Americans off guard. Because the article specifically
discussed U.S. Army wartime experiments on prisoners, it was incredibly
damaging for the prosecution. “Prison life is ideal for controlled laboratory
work with humans,” Servatius read, quoting American doctors who had been
interviewed by Life reporters. The idea that extraordinary times call
for extraordinary measures, and that both nations had used human test subjects
during war, was unsettling. It pushed the core Nazi concept of the Untermenschen
to the side. The Nuremberg prosecutors were left looking like hypocrites.[29]
The U.S. prosecution flew in Dr. Andrew Ivy to explain the differences in
medical ethics between German and U.S. medical experiments. Interestingly, Dr.
Ivy himself had been involved in malaria experiments on inmates at the Illinois
State Penitentiary. When Dr. Ivy mentioned that the United States had specific
research standards for medical experimentation on humans, it turned out that
these principles were first published on December 28, 1946. Dr. Ivy had to
admit that the U.S. principles on medical ethics in human experimentation had
been made in anticipation of Dr. Ivy’s testimony at the Doctors’ Trial.[30]
ENDNOTES
1] Kater, Michael H., Doctors under Hitler,
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 226.
[2] McCallum, John Dennis, Crime Doctor,
Mercer Island, Wash.: The Writing Works, Inc., 1978, pp. 64-65.
[3] Berben, Paul, Dachau, 1933-1945, The
Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, p. 125.
[4] McCallum, John Dennis, Crime Doctor,
Mercer Island, Wash.: The Writing Works, Inc., 1978, pp. 66-67.
[5] Ibid., p. 68.
[6] Schmidt, Ulf, Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor,
New York: Continuum Books, 2007, p. 376.
[7] Spitz, Vivien, Doctors from Hell: The
Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, Boulder, Colo.: Sentient
Publications, 2005, p. 74.
[8] Berben, Paul, Dachau, 1933-1945, The
Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, p. 126.
[9] Ibid., pp. 127-128.
[10] Ibid., p. 130.
[11] Spitz, Vivien, Doctors
from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, Boulder,
Colo.: Sentient Publications, 2005, p. 85.
[12] Berben, Paul, Dachau, 1933-1945,
The Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, p. 133.
[13] McCallum, John Dennis, Crime
Doctor, Mercer Island, Wash.: The Writing Works, Inc., 1978, pp. 67-68.
[14] Michalczyk, John J., Medicine,
Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues, Kansas City,
Mo.: Sheed & Ward, 1994, p. 96.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Berben, Paul, Dachau,
1933-1945, The Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, pp.
133-134.
[17] Ibid., p. 134. See
also Michalczyk, John J., Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich:
Historical and Contemporary Issues, Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed &
Ward, 1994, p. 97.
[18] Pasternak, Alfred, Inhuman
Research: Medical Experiments in German Concentration Camps, Budapest,
Hungary: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006, p. 149.
[19] Ibid., pp. 134-135.
[20] Ibid., p. 227.
[21] Berben, Paul, Dachau,
1933-1945, The Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, pp.
136-137.
[22] Spitz, Vivien, Doctors
from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, Boulder, Colo.:
Sentient Publications, 2005, p. 173.
[23] McCallum, John Dennis, Crime
Doctor, Mercer Island, Wash.: The Writing Works, Inc., 1978, p. 69.
[24] Berben, Paul, Dachau,
1933-1945, The Official History, London: The Norfolk Press, 1975, p. 19.
[25] Ibid., p. 202.
[26] Ibid., pp. 95, 281.
[27] Schmidt, Ulf, Karl Brandt:
The Nazi Doctor, New York: Continuum Books, 2007, p. 376.
[28] Jacobsen, Annie, Operation
Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to
America, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014, pp. 273-274.
[29] Ibid., p. 274.
[30] Schmidt, Ulf, Karl Brandt:
The Nazi Doctor, New York: Continuum Books, 2007, pp. 376-377.
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