Every war triggers pure evil. However, the atrocities committed by Hitler's followers remain particularly controversial. Because it is still difficult to realize that doctors - defenders of human life - were able to turn into bloodthirsty beasts. Josef Mengele's students were responsible for chemical sterilization, deliberate poisoning, arson ... in short - a mental and physical nightmare that we learn from the dark pages of history.
People - creatures less worth than animals
For the most part, the Germans, dazed by the propaganda ideology of the Third Reich, considered themselves a race of superhumans. The idea of a superman - a concept introduced into philosophy by Frederick Nietzsche - has, however, been distorted. Hitler's followers spoke of biological superiority, race purity, almost the stronger. In National Socialist Germany, Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs and Russians were treated as non-Aryan, and thus inferior in nature. Weaker. Even less valuable than animals.
Because it must be remembered that on November 24, 1933, a special law on the protection of animals was introduced in the Third Reich - the so-called Tierschutzgesetz. It was the first legal act sponsored by Adolf Hitler himself, a vegetarian, a great dog lover, just like Himmler or Goebbels, who also refrained from eating meat. The criminals, however, knew well the cost of civilization's progress. In their opinion, the development of medicine required sacrifices. Hundred, thousands, millions of prisoners stripped of their lives, stripped of their dignity.
Breaking boundaries - driving madness
German doctors had no qualms about experimenting with human life. The prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp found out about it especially painfully. There was a whole series of diabolical research carried out in the death factory on which the power of the Führer state was to benefit.
Georg August Weltz was the person in charge of conducting the cruel research.
And so some of the prisoners were assigned to experiments organized by the Luftwaffe. Representatives of the air force of Nazi Germany organized special pressure cabins in which up to a dozen prisoners were locked where the air was then compressed or diluted. While the pressure was dropping rapidly, the prisoners went mad, tearing their hair out of their heads and losing their minds. The simulation was to investigate how the human body behaves at enormous heights - roughly 20 kilometers above the ground. For example, when shooting down a plane. Georg August Weltz, radiologist, head of the institute of aviation medicine, was the person responsible for carrying out the examinations.
After the experiment, an autopsy was performed and the organs were closed in vessels. Those who survived were most often accompanied by intracranial haemorrhage, which eventually led to death anyway.
Malaria and Killer Mosquitoes
The deaths were also the result of pseudoscientific malaria research. Claus Schilling, another German killer doctor, decided to test 69 types of malaria. The strongest variety, Madagascar, was injected into prisoners either intramuscularly or intravenously. Half of the 1,000 "respondents" died. The rest suffered a permanent loss of the body's endurance.
One of the goals of the experiments was to develop a vaccine against malaria. It turns out, however, that the Germans also wanted to test a new type of biological weapon. A special variety of malaria-infected mosquitoes was bred to be terrifying harbingers of the end. There were even special trials to test the endurance of infected mosquitoes on long air routes, as we learn from the reports of Eduard May, a biologist working in Dachau. He was supposed to be the chief architect of the weapon.
Sterilization - a racial shame
The followers of Nazism cared for the purity of the race, which was to be the guarantor of the strength of the Third Reich. Therefore, it should not be surprising that among medical experts there were figures such as Professor Carl Clauberg, who conducted experiments on several hundred Jewish women in block 10 of KL Auschwitz. Surgical sterilization turned out to be too expensive, therefore other methods were chosen.
Carl Clauberg
Corrosive substances were injected into the uterus, including formalin, a highly toxic and bactericidal drug that devastated the female body. These activities were under the patronage of a certain Karl Gebhardt, personal physician of Heinrich Himmler, and the last - horror of horrors - president of the German Red Cross.
Living fire, deadly ice
In the extermination camps, experiments were also carried out on hypothermia, i.e. the deliberate cooling of the body and the development of ways to restore fitness after a cold. In turn, in the concentration camp in Buchenwald, terrifying experiments were carried out to check the tolerance of preparations treating phosphorus burns. Prisoners became living torches, which were later treated with a preparation called "R17" used on fresh wounds, as well as "echinacin" and "echinacin extra" ointments. Experiments related to the treatment of typhoid fever were conducted on a massive scale. The strongest unfortunates were infected with a bacterial disease in order to report the progressive changes in the body with German accuracy. The activity was conducted in the presence of prof. Eugen Gildemeister.
Death to death and genetic hell
German torturers tested mental and physical resistance. For example, research on the effects of malnutrition and hunger, conducted by prof. dr SS-Obersturmführer Johann Paul Kremer in KL Auschwitz. The pseudo-medical experience focused, first, on the appropriate selection of the most emaciated prisoners, killing them with phenol injection and performing an autopsy to analyze the anatomical changes taking place.
The story of the production of broth cooked from human muscles also sounds very eerie. Bacteria could have had a specific effect on the functioning of the liver, kidneys, stomach - the entire digestive system. It was, in a way, a form of cannibalism that could, in theory, benefit science. Demonic genetic research was also carried out in the death factories by the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, who deals with the issue of twins, dwarfism, and hereditary pathology and anomalies. There were special places for the experiments - in the Dachau camp it was the so-called mortuary, where the autopsy was performed. The victims, deprived of their dignity during life and after death, became the material from which gloves, slippers and women's handbags were sometimes made. The price of frightening progress.
Inmates in Nuremberg
Every war brings out pure evil. However, the atrocities committed by Hitler's followers remain particularly controversial. People of science who were to patronize life turned out to be degenerates breaking the Hippocratic Oath. Anyway, it is worth mentioning that it was precisely after the crimes committed by German doctors during World War II that the World Medical Organization, during its convention in Geneva in 1948, developed the modern version of the oath - the Geneva declaration, modified in the following years.
Claus Karl Schilling during his trial in 1945
Josef Mengele's students were responsible for chemical sterilization, deliberate poisoning, arson ... in a word - a mental and physical nightmare that we learn from the dark pages of history. The cited experiments are only a small excerpt from the horror story that unfolds during WWII.