Human experiments during Hitler's Nazism

The Third Reich took place between 1933 and 1945 in Germany, with the coming to power of the German National Socialist Workers Party. Its unquestionable leader, one of the historical figures with the most tragic memory: Adolf hitler.

Experiments with human beings in Nazism

During that historical period, events that would mark history took place, such as the Second World War, as well as the persecution and extermination of communists, Jews, homosexuals and gypsies.

One of the most unknown but equally macabre facets of the historical period of Nazi Germany is undoubtedly the experiments carried out by the regime's doctors with human persons as victims. Comparing the most immoral psychological experiments in history With Dr. Mengele's research, one realizes that the Stanford Prison experiment it was practically child's play.

Today's society values ​​doctors as those people who specialize in healing people, save them pain, and strive for their well-being and health. However, during the Nazi years, doctors performed other functions. Many doctors and researchers were involved in

experiments conducted in concentration camps. A total of 15 of the 23 doctors accused of having perpetrated these horrific experiments were found guilty during the trials of post-Third Reich Germany.

Hypothermia and frostbite

The study of freezing in humans was carried out with the objective of simulate the conditions suffered by the military in the Eastern Front. Much of the army died because of the very low temperatures, or because of pathologies associated with them, such as the flu or pneumonia. The human experiment provided the scientific basis for better predicting the reaction of bodies to the cold and being able to use some variables to make the soldiers more resistant to these conditions.

The investigations were commanded by the doctor Sigmund rascher in the fields of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Dachau. In 1942, Rascher presented the results at a conference. On the one hand, it showed the time required for a human body to freeze until death, and on the other, resuscitation methods were studied for these cases.

The guinea pigs in these inhumane experiments were young Russians and Jews. Each of the victims was placed in barrels of frozen water or left completely naked in the open, suffering from freezing temperatures. Their body temperature was measured by a probe placed in the rectum. Most young people died when their body temperature dropped below 26 degrees Celsius.

In addition, at the time when they lost consciousness and were on the verge of death, the researchers carried out different experiments to try to revive them. These resuscitation attempts they caused great suffering to the subjects, who were kept on the brink of collapse for long and interminable minutes. They were placed under ultraviolet lamps that burned the skin, or boiling water was poured into the skin. inside the body, a practice that caused blisters to appear, or they were placed in tubs of water that was heated progressively.

Chemical burns

The Buchenwald field it was also the scene of gruesome investigations. Prisoners, mainly gypsies, were burned with phosphorus, to study the consequences of some chemical compounds in the human body.

High pressure testing at high altitudes

Probably one of the most brutal experiments was carried out by Sigmund Rascher, the same doctor who was the architect of the hypothermia investigations explained above. Himmler, leader of the H.H, encouraged Rascher to investigate human behavior in extreme conditions of atmospheric pressure. He wanted to inquire about the maximum height at which paratroopers and pilots of military aircraft could jump into the void without suffering damage.

Of the more than two hundred subjects who participated in the Rascher tests, seventy died.

When he was brought before the courts by the Allies after the war, one of the most ghoulish investigations came to light. A report attested to Rascher's annotations, where it was related the case of a 37-year-old Jew who was forced to jump from a height of 12,000 meters. After the third jump from that height, he suffered agony and died within a few minutes.

Genetic experiments

The triumph of the Aryan race was one of the main objectives of the Nazis. The Aryan race, however, is a pseudoscientific concept used by Nazi propaganda to establish the bases of a society in which this false ethnic origin marked the sieve between the human and the inhuman. Since Nazism, the Aryans, popularly described as blond, with blue eyes and an athletic complexion, had to establish themselves as the pure race that would rule the planet. People who did not meet these traits, little else that needed to be eliminated. Laws regulating marriage were aimed at investigating racial provenance and determining its purity.

In the concentration camps, multiple investigations were carried out in the field of genetics in order to perfect the breed and understand the nature of genetic defects. The most famous experiments were those carried out by the Dr. Josef Mengele, which had gypsies and twin brothers as victims.

The one nicknamed the "Angel of Death" chose the subjects to be investigated as soon as they got off the train when they arrived at the AusImagenchwitz camp, based on certain physical defects or rarities that may interest you.

Mengele received the intellectual support of the Institute Kaiser Wilhelm of Anthropology, Eugenics and Genetics in Dahlem, and sent the reports of his research to Dr. Von Verschuer, who from the University of Frankfurt tutored him from his deep knowledge in the field of twin genetics.

With the twin brothers that he used for his studies, Josef Mengele studied them for a few weeks, and when he had subjected them to the relevant tests, he administered a lethal injection of chloroform straight to the heart.

Other spooky evidence

Other investigations and evidence of unusual violence were carried out in the gloomy premises of the concentration camps: torture during interrogation, administration of injections containing viruses to humans, forced sterilization and study for the advancement in surgical techniques.

Without going any further, the Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer was the architect in the administering tuberculosis-infected injections to inmates of the Neungamme concentration camp. Some of these inmates were also exposed to phosgene gas in order to conduct research to find a antidote to poisoning, since phosgene gas had been used as a biological weapon during World War II World.

The prisoners who were victims of investigations were also mutilated and later tried to transplant the limbs in another prisoner, also mutilated. The aim was to find out if the transplantation of arms or legs was possible, but the methodology used was terribly cruel, and the few prisoners who did not die were mutilated. The experiment did not achieve any conclusive results.

Another macabre idea came from the doctor Hans eppinger, who was trying to discover a way to make the sea water drinkable. He kept several gypsies deprived of food and water, and forced them to drink only sea water. As a result, a large part of the gypsies developed severe pathologies.

In the concentration camps, poisoning by injections or by eating food was common. He also experimented with in vitro insemination in women, extending the idea that sperm from different animals had been injected to create a monster.

Ethical reflections

These experiments carried out during Nazism posed henceforth decisive reflections on what human experimentation should be and its ethical limits. The barbarism wielded by doctors like Mengele or Heissmeyer are an unfortunate reminder of the unreason that led tens of thousands of victims to be tortured in the name of a science devoid of any ethics.