salt water experiment ww2

The Dark Truth Behind The Horrible Nazi Seawater Torture Experiment

It's perhaps one of Mother Nature's cruelest tricks that while lost on the very-watery-indeed ocean, fresh, life-saving water is impossible to come across. The United States Geological Survey  explains why this is in simple terms: Drinking seawater can be deadly for humans. We are reliant on freshwater to deal with the extra salt in our systems and flush it out, and the sheer salt content of seawater is too much for our bodies to process. According to  Science Daily , the average salinity of seawater is about 35 parts per thousand, or 3.5%, which would quickly overwhelm this process.

Now, humankind has devised all kinds of horrific ways to torment each other over the centuries, from rat torture to the infamous rack. The Nazi Party's self-proclaimed scientists , however, devised uniquely horrifying experiments to inflict on their captives, and the utterly ghastly seawater torture experiment is just one example.

The infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele and his horrific experiments are well known. Per History , he had a disturbing fascination with twins, who he sliced, tortured, and mutilated in the name of discovering more about how much a body could endure. The lesser-known seawater experiments comprise another facet of his shocking repertoire.

Pseudoscience at its most inhumane

As History of Yesterday reports, the Nazi Party had an interest in trying to find ways to make seawater drinkable. But this scientific goal was nothing more than a smokescreen — an excuse for their inhumane treatment of their captives.

In 1944, a group of around 90 Romani captives at the Dachau concentration camp was selected for this sickening study. Led by Dr. Hans Eppinger, those chosen were given neither food nor drink and provided only saltwater. Horribly dehydrated, they were driven to desperation. One was said to have been seen with their tongue to a floor that had been recently washed, in the hope of taking in some precious water.

According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, this went on from July to September of that year (via the Jewish Virtual Library ). Tragically, the subjects suffered terrible organ damage, and many surely died. The  National Ocean Service summarizes exactly why: Drinking saltwater causes the body to become desperately thirsty and to urinate to excess in an attempt to rebalance itself. The effects of being forced to do so regularly, with no other sustenance, are too ghastly to dwell on.

In December of 1946, the Doctors Trial — part of the wider Nuremberg Trials — tried 23 physicians who were involved in the seawater experiments and other similar atrocities. As reported by the  United States Holocaust Memorial , 16 were found guilty, and seven were executed two years later.

History Uncovered Episode 51: The Horrors Of Japan’s Unit 731 During World War 2

From chemical weapons tests to frostbite experiments to amputations without anesthesia, the atrocities of Unit 731 rank among the most vicious in modern history.

After the horrors of World War I came to an end, the Geneva Convention promptly banned the use of all chemical and biological weapons in warfare. The Geneva Protocol, as it came to be known, was signed in 1925 and officially outlawed the use of “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials, or devices” and “bacteriological methods of warfare.”

There were those, however, who saw this ban not as a necessary preventative measure for the good of humankind, but instead as proof that chemical and biological weapons indeed worked – or else why would they need to be banned in the first place? So in the 1930s, the Japanese government began a top-secret program to develop their own biological weapons with the creation of a covert army division known as Unit 731.

Led by Surgeon General Shirō Ishii , Unit 731 began its experiments in earnest after Japan invaded China in 1937 and started using the country’s civilian population as their guinea pigs. Officially called the Kwantung Army’s Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, Unit 731 conducted experiments on some 3,000 prisoners, who were mostly Chinese or Korean civilians.

Xinhua via Getty Images The frostbitten hands of a Chinese person who was taken outside in winter by Unit 731 personnel for an experiment on how best to treat frostbite. Date unspecified.

Unit 731 would mutilate the bodies of victims, which they simply called “logs,” while they were conscious and without a drop of anesthesia or pain-numbing agents, just as a way of studying how their organs functioned. Meanwhile, some prisoners were infected with diseases like cholera or the plague, and researchers would then remove their organs for experimentation to study the effects of the disease before decomposition could set in.

Others had their limbs amputated and surgically reattached to different parts of their bodies, while others had body parts crushed, frozen, or cut off from circulation to observe the progress of gangrene in action.

Elsewhere, scientists working for Unit 731 experimented with frostbite, submerging captives’ limbs in tubs of water and ice until they froze solid and a layer of ice formed over their skin.

One researcher, Yoshimura Hisato, took it a step further by trying various methods of then reanimating the frozen limb, including dousing them with scalding hot water, holding them over an open fire, or simply leaving the prisoner in agony for a night to observe how quickly their own blood could thaw the appendage out.

Today, the “experiments” conducted by Unit 731 stand as some of the most horrifying in human history, but few know the full story.

Dig deeper into the disturbing history of Unit 731 .

Learn more about the music used in our podcast. History Uncovered is part of the Airwave Media network . Learn more about your ad choices by visiting megaphone.fm/adchoices .

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A Scientific Method to the Madness of Unit 731’s Human Experimentation and Biological Warfare Program

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Kishor Johnson, A Scientific Method to the Madness of Unit 731’s Human Experimentation and Biological Warfare Program, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences , Volume 77, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 24–47, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrab044

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The Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731’s Biological Warfare (BW) research program committed atrocious crimes against humanity in their pursuit of biological weapons development during the Second World War. Due to an American cover-up, the details behind Unit 731’s human experimentation were slow to be revealed. The recent literature discloses the gruesome details of the experiments but characterizes the human trials as crude in nature. Further, there is a lack of clarity as to how human trial results were extrapolated for use in real world missions.

Through an examination of testimony from the Soviet Union’s Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, this paper argues that Unit 731’s inoculation and airborne warfare experiments on prisoners of war were scientifically rigorous. The scientific method is used as the basis against which the scientific rigor of the experiments is tested. The paper reveals that the successes and failures of the human trials were extrapolated to BW missions during the Sino-Japanese war. American researchers’ expectations of BW data were fulfilled, thus paving the way for an immunity deal. Ethical standards in medicine before WWII were not well established, but wartime medical practices and experimentation reveal the context in which the pursuit of scientific knowledge has no boundaries.

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Unit 731 , short for Manshu Detachment 731 , was a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in unethical and deadly human experimentation , including testing of biological and chemical weapons on human populations, during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II . Based in Japanese-occupied China , it was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the armed forces of Imperial Japan, including anthrax, cholera , and bubonic plague attacks on both military and civilian populations; vivisection of men, women, children, and infants (often without anesthesia); testing of grenades and flamethrowers on people; and subjecting victims to water deprivation, low pressure, low temperature (causing frostbite), chemical agents, amputation and limb reattachment, being buried alive, and other atrocities. Because Shirō Ishii was director of Unit 731, the division has also been referred to as the Ishii Unit.

• 2.1 Zhongma Fortress
• 2.2 Unit 731
• 2.3 Other units
• 3.1 Chemical agents and chemical weapons
• 3.2 Biological agents and biological weapons
• 3.3 Frostbite testing
• 3.4 Vivisection
• 3.5 Venereal diseases
• 3.6 Weapon testing
• 3.7 Other experiments
• 4 Victims, including numbers of victims
• 5 Known unit members
• 6 Divisions
• 7 Facilities
• 8.1 Destruction of evidence and arrest
• 8.2 American grant of immunity
• 8.3 Separate Soviet trials
• 8.4 Aftermath
• 10 References

The heinous acts of torture committed by Unit 731 mirrored the inhumane experimentation conducted on prisoners by Nazi Germany. However, the aftermath of the two atrocities were very different. Many of the perpetrators of the Nazi human experimentation were tried by the United States in the Doctors' Trial , and the response to the unveiling of the Nazi crimes included the pivotal development of the Nuremberg Code and subsequently other sets of ethical standards for research with human subjects. In the case of Unit 731, most of the key participants in Unit 731, including Shirō Ishii, escaped prosecution via an agreement with the United States to provide their research findings. In addition, most of the Unit 731 crimes escaped public attention for years. Some of those responsible for Unit 731 were captured by the Soviet Union and subject to trials by that nation.

Unit 731 was active in Japanese-occupied territory in Asia, notably Manchuria . The Empire of Japan first invaded Manchuria in 1931, and in 1932 established the puppet state of Manchukuo. The formation of Unit 731 began in 1932 with the establishment of a research group in Manchukuo for chemical and biological experimentation.

Japan occupied other areas in Asia during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War and established branch offices of Unit 731 in some of these areas as well. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) was primarily waged between the Republic of China (1912–1949) and the Empire of Japan. The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Beijing escalated into a full-scale invasion. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia: after the Japanese invasion of Malaya and attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Second Sino-Japanese War merged with other conflicts that are generally categorized under those conflicts of World War II. However, some scholars consider the European theatre of World War II and the Pacific War to be entirely separate, albeit concurrent, wars. Other scholars consider the start of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Japanese scored major victories, capturing Beijing, Shanghai, and the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937. After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing (Chungking) in the Chinese interior.

The formation of Unit 731 traces to 1932, when Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit," for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. In 1936, Emperor Hirohito authorized the expansion of this unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department (Barenblatt 2005). In 1940, it became known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (Tanaka 1996), or Unit 731 ( 731部隊 , Nana-san-ichi Butai ) , short for Manshu Detachment 731. It is also known as the Kamo Detachment (USSR 1950) and the Ishii Detachment or Ishii Unit (CIA 1947). Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, but also had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia. (Note that the Japanese word butai is variously translated with military terms such as "unit," "detachment," "regiment," or "company.")

Unit 731 was commanded until the end of World War II by General Ishii. The facility itself was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress, and Ishii and his team used it to expand their capabilities. The program received generous support from the Japanese government until the end of the war in 1945. Unit 731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department operated biological weapon production, testing, deployment and storage facilities. They routinely conducted tests on human beings (who were internally referred to as "logs"). Additionally, the biological weapons were tested in the field on cities and towns in China. Estimates of those who were killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people.

The researchers in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the United States in exchange for the data which they gathered during their human experimentation (Gold 1996). Other researchers that the Soviet forces managed to arrest first were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. The Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons could be co-opted into their biological warfare program, much as they had done with Nazi researchers in Operation Paperclip (Harris 2002). Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda (Brody et al. 2014).

In 1932, Surgeon General Shirō Ishii ( 石井四郎 , Ishii Shirō ) , chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and protégé of Ministry of War of Japan Sadao Araki was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit," for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii had proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, on the grounds that Western powers were developing their own programs.

One of Ishii's main supporters inside the army was Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who later became Japan's Health Minister (Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare) from 1941 to 1945. Koizumi had joined a secret poison gas research committee in 1915, during World War I , when he and other Imperial Japanese Army officers were impressed by the successful German use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, in which the Allies suffered 5,000 deaths and 15,000 wounded as a result of the chemical attack (Williams and Wallace 1989).

Zhongma Fortress

Unit Tōgō was implemented in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village 100 km (62 mi) south of Harbin on the South Manchuria Railway. Prisoners were generally well fed on the usual diet of rice or wheat , meat , fish, and occasionally even alcohol, with the intent of having prisoners in their normal state of health at the beginning of experiments. Over several days, prisoners were eventually drained of blood and deprived of nutrients and water. Their deteriorating health was recorded. Some were also vivisected. Others were deliberately infected with plague bacteria and other microbes.

In the autumn of 1934, a prison break, which jeopardized the facility's secrecy along with a later explosion (believed to be sabotage) in 1935 led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He then received authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately 24 km (15 mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility (Harris 2002).

In 1936, Emperor Hirohito authorized by decree the expansion of this unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department (Barenblat 2005). It was divided at that time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit," with a base in Hsinking (Changchun; it was renamed Hsinking during the Japanese occupation, serving as the capital of Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo). From August 1940, the units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)" (Tanaka 1996) or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short.

Other units

In addition to the establishment of Unit 731, the decree also called for the establishment of an additional biological warfare development unit called the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 100) and a chemical warfare development unit called the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 516). After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, sister chemical and biological warfare units were founded in major Chinese cities and were referred to as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units. Detachments included Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and later Unit 9420 in Singapore. All of these units comprised Ishii's network and at its height in 1939 was composed of more than 10,000 personnel (Keiichi 2005). Medical doctors and professors from Japan were attracted to join Unit 731 by the rare opportunity to conduct human experimentation and strong financial support from the Army (NHK 2017).

Human experiments

Human experimentation was conducted using men, women, and children — including infants, the elderly, and pregnant women — both inside the facility and among surrounding populations. The subjects included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, the homeless and mentally handicapped, and also people rounded up by the Kempeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities." Ordinary citizens were also subjects to the tortures and death conducted by the researchers. The members of Unit 731 included approximately 300 researchers, including doctors and bacteriologists (Harris 2002). Many of the researchers had been desensitized to performing cruel experiments from experience in animal research (Cook and Cook 2000).

Test subjects were sometimes euphemistically referred to as "logs" ( 丸太 , maruta ) , used in such contexts as "How many logs fell?" This term may have originated by Unit 731 staff based on the fact that the official cover story for the facility was that it was a lumber mill. However, in an account by a man who worked as a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army in Unit 731, the project was internally called "Holzklotz," which is a German word for log (Cook and Cook 2000). Researchers in Unit 731 published some of their results in peer-reviewed journals, writing as though the research had been conducted on non-human primates called "Manchurian monkeys," or "long-tailed monkeys" (Harris 2002).

Experiments conducted on subjects included those involving chemical agents and chemical weapons, biological agents and biological weapons, frostbite, vivisection, venereal diseases, and weapons testing, among others.

Chemical agents and chemical weapons

Unit 731 tested many different chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. Some of the agents tested were mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, white phosphorus, adamsite, and phosgene gas (Gold and Totani 2019).

A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university) (Gold and Totani 2019):

In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square and two meters high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was adamsite (sneezing gas), and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. I understand that other types of gases were also tested there.

Unit 731 also tested chemical weapons on prisoners in field conditions. A report authored by an unknown researcher in the Kamo Unit (Unit 731) describes a large human experiment of yperite gas (mustard gas) on September 7—10, 1940. Twenty subjects were divided into three groups and placed in combat emplacements, trenches, gazebos, and observatories. One group was clothed with Chinese underwear, no hat, and no mask, and was subjected to as much as 1,800 field gun rounds of yperite gas over 25 minutes. Another group was clothed in summer military uniform and shoes; three had masks, and another three had no mask. They also were exposed to as much as 1,800 rounds of yperite gas. A third group was clothed in summer military uniform, three with masks, and two without masks, and were exposed to as much as 4,800 rounds. Then their general symptoms and damage to skin, eye, respiratory organs, and digestive organs were observed at 4 hours, 24 hours, and 2, 3, and 5 days after the shots. Injecting the blister fluid from one subject into another subject and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. Five subjects were forced to drink a solution of yperite and lewisite gas in water, with or without decontamination. The report describes conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run (Emanuel et al. 2011).

Biological agents and biological weapons

Unit 731 and its affiliated units were involved in testing of numerous biological agents on humans, including anthrax, typhoid , plague (infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis ), dysentery , tuberculosis , syphilis , tetanus, salmonella , tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu venom), gas gangrene, meningitis, and yellow fever, including the deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both military and civilian) throughout World War II.

At least 12 large-scale field trials of biological weapons were performed, and at least 11 Chinese cities were attacked with biological agents. Plague-infected fleas , bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, including coastal Ningbo and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1940 and 1941 (CIA 1947). This military aerial spraying killed tens of thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics. An expedition to Nanking involved spreading typhoid and paratyphoid germs into the wells, marshes, and houses of the city, as well as infusing them into snacks to be distributed among the locals. Epidemics broke out shortly after, with the conclusion that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the pathogens (Harris 2003; Barenblatt 2004). An attack on Changda in 1941 reportedly led to approximately 10,000 biological casualties and 1,700 deaths among ill-prepared Japanese troops, with most cases due to cholera (Christopher et al. 1997). In addition, poisoned food and candies were given to unsuspecting victims.

During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against the United States in Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier (Baumslag 2005; Kristol 1995).

Due to pressure from numerous accounts of the bio-warfare attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel in November 1941 to document evidence and treat the afflicted. A report on the Japanese use of plague-infested fleas on Changde was made widely available the following year, but was not addressed by the Allied Powers until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks (Guillemin 2017).

Frostbite testing

Army Engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking captives outside, dipping various appendages into water of varying temperatures, and allowing the limb to freeze (Tsuchiya 2007). Once frozen, Yoshimura would strike their affected limbs with a short stick, "emitting a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck" (Kristof 1995). The affected area was subjected to various treatments. For example, the best temperature for treating frostbite was found to be immersion in water slightly above 100 degrees but less than 122 degrees; this was found to be better than the traditional method of rubbing the affected limb (Kristof 1995).

Members of the Unit referred to Yoshimura as a “scientific devil” and a “cold blooded animal” (LaFleur et al. 2007). Naoji Uezono, a member of Unit 731, described in a 1980s interview a grisly scene where Yoshimura had “two naked men put in an area 40-50 degrees below zero and researchers filmed the whole process until [the subjects] died. The subjects suffered such agony they were digging their nails into each other’s flesh” (Emanuel et al. 2011). Yoshimura’s lack of remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology in 1950 in which he admitted to using 20 children and a 3-day-old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero-degree-celsius ice and salt water (Yoshimura and Iida 1950). [Kristof (1995) reported about a three-day-old baby had a needle stuck into the middle finger to measure temperature; the needle prevented the hand from clenching into a fist and by keeping the finger straight it made the experiment easier.] Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Japanese newpaper Mainichi Shinbun (Kei-ichi and Asano 1982).

Yoshimura developed a “resistance index of frostbite” based on the mean temperature 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion, and the time until the temperature first rises after immersion. In a number of separate experiments it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim’s body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim had been treated before the immersion (“after keeping awake for a night,” “after hunger for 24 hours,” “after hunger for 48 hours,” “immediately after heavy meal,” “immediately after hot meal,” “immediately after muscular exercise,” “immediately after cold bath,” “immediately after hot bath”), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions with regard to dietary nutrient intake (“high protein of animal nature,” “high protein of vegetable nature,” “low protein intake,” and “standard diet”) and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day, no salt) (Eckart 2006). This original data are seen in the above figure.

Vivisection

Thousands of men, women, children and infants interned at prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection (surgery on a living organism), often without anesthesia and usually ending with the death of the victim (Kristof 1995). Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines. Parts of organs, such as the brain, lungs, and liver, were removed from some prisoners (Parry 2007). Imperial Japanese Army surgeon Ken Yuasa suggests that the practice of vivisection on human subjects was widespread even outside Unit 731 (Kristof 1995), estimating that at least 1,000 Japanese personnel were involved in the practice in mainland China (Hongo 2007).

A former member of the Special Team (who insisted on anonymity) recalled in 1995 his first vivisection conducted at the Unit, involving a 30-year-old man tied to a bed naked, who was dissected without anesthetic (Kristol 1995):

He didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped.

Other sources suggest that it was the usual practice in the Unit for surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the mouth of prisoners before commencing vivisection, in order to stifle any screaming (Yang 2016).

Venereal diseases

To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea , then studied. In some cases, this was done via injection, disguised as vaccinations (Medical Bag 2014).

Unit members also orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and non-infected prisoners to transmit the disease, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows (Gold and Tutani 2019):

Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot.

After victims were infected, they were vivisected at different stages of infection, so that internal and external organs could be observed as the disease progressed.

Some children infected with syphilis grew up inside the walls of Unit 731. A Youth Corps member deployed to train at Unit 731 recalled viewing a batch of subjects that would undergo syphilis testing: "one was a Chinese woman holding an infant, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven" (Gold and Tutani 2019). The children of these women were tested in ways similar to their parents, with specific emphasis on determining how longer infection periods affected the effectiveness of treatments.

Weapon testing

Unit 731 was involved in testing weapons on human subjects, including grenades, flamethrowers, explosives, and other weapons.

Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in various positions. Flamethrowers were tested on people (Hickey et al. 2017). Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, and explosive bombs as well as bayonets and knives.

To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped, unprotected, to wooden planks that were staked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. It was surgery for most, autopsies for the rest. —Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria (Monchinski 2008; Neuman 2008)

Other experiments

In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays ; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water; and burned or buried alive (Kristof 1995; Silvester 2006).

Massive amounts of blood were drained from some prisoners in order to study the effects of blood loss according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu. In one case, at least half a liter of blood was drawn at two to three-day intervals (Gold and Totani 2019). Unit 731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. Unit member Naeo Ikeda wrote (Eckart 2006):

In my experience, when A type blood 100 cc was transfused to an O type subject, whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later the temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Sixty minutes later the pulse was 106 per minute and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. Two hours later the temperature was 37.7 degrees, and three hours later the subject recovered. When AB type blood 120 cc was transfused to an O type subject, an hour later the subject described malaise and psychroesthesia in both legs. When AB type blood 100 cc was transfused to a B type subject, there seemed to be no side effect.

Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant for use in experiments, with the stated reason the possibility of vertical transmission (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis. Fetal survival and damage to mother's reproductive organs were objects of interest. Though "a large number of babies were born in captivity," there have been no accounts of any survivors of Unit 731, children included. It is suspected that the children of female prisoners were killed after birth or aborted (Gold and Totani 2019).

While male prisoners were often used in single studies, so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in sex experiments and as the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this reality (Gold and Totani 2019):

One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work.

Victims, including numbers of victims

The victims of Unit 731 included prisoners (criminals, anti-Japanese partisans, political dissidents, communist sympathizers, and those arrested for alleged suspicious activities), the homeless and mentally handicapped, and ordinary citizens. The victims included men, women, children, and infants. While the majority were Chinese, the victims also comprised Russians, Mongolians, Koreans, and other populations. There are reports that the victims also consisted of a small number of European, American, Indian, Australian and New Zealander prisoners of war (Wells 2009; Gold and Totani 2019; Harris 2002).

There have been widely varying estimates of the number of people killed due to activities of Unit 731. Sheldon Harris, an American historian, states that over 200,000 were killed in the germ warfare experiments (Harris 2002; Kristoff 1995). He also states that plague-infected animals released near the war's end killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin area from 1946 through 1948 (Kristoff 1995). During a 2002 international symposium on crimes of bacteriological warfare held in Changde, China (site of a plague flea bombing), there was an estimate given of around 580,000 deaths caused by the germ warfare and human experiments (Barenblatt 2004). On the other hand, Keiichi Tsuneishi, a leading Japanese scholar of Unit 731, is skeptical of such high numbers (Kristoff 1995). At least 3,000 men, women, and children were subjected to experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not include victims from other medical experimentation sites, such as Unit 100 (Tsuchiya 2006). Note that in addition to Chinese casualties, 1,700 Japanese troops in Zhejiang during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to unleash the biological agent (Rapoport 2014).

Known unit members

In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan disclosed a nearly complete list of 3,607 members of Unit 731 to Katsuo Nishiyama, a professor at Shiga University of Medical Science. Nishiyama reportedly intends to publish the list online to encourage further study into the unit (McCurry 2018).

Some of the previously disclosed members include:

• Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii
• Lieutenant Colonel Ryoichi Naito, founder of the pharmaceutical company Green Cross
• Professor, Major General Masaji Kitano, commander, 1942–1945 (Christopher et al. 1997; Fuller 1992).
• Kazuhisa Kanazawa, chief of the 1st Division of Branch 673 of Unit 731
• Ryoichiro Hotta, member of the Hailar Branch of Unit 731 (Fuller 1992).

There were also twelve members who were formally tried and sentenced in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, held in December 1949 in the Soviet Union.

Unit 731 was divided into eight divisions:

• Division 1: research on bubonic plague , cholera , anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis using live human subjects; for this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people
• Division 2: research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites
• Division 3: production of shells containing biological agents; stationed in Harbin
• Division 4: bacteria mass-production and storage
• Division 5: training of personnel
• Divisions 6–8: equipment, medical and administrative units

Unit 731 had other units underneath it in the chain of command. Most or all units had branch offices, which were also often referred to as "Units." The term Unit 731 can refer to the Harbin complex itself or it can refer to the organization with its branches.

The Unit 731 complex covered 6 square kilometers (2.3 sq mi) and consisted of more than 150 buildings. The design of the facilities made them hard to destroy by bombing. The complex contained various factories. It had around 4,500 containers to be used to raise fleas , six cauldrons to produce various chemicals, and around 1,800 containers to produce biological agents. Approximately 30 kilograms (66 lb) of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in a few days.

Unit 731 had branches in Linkou (Branch 162), Mudanjiang, Hailin (Branch 643), Sunwu (Branch 673), Toan and Hailar (Branch 543) (USSR 1950).

A medical school and research facility belonging to Unit 731 operated in the Shinjuku District of Tokyo during World War II. In 2006, Toyo Ishii — a nurse who worked at the school during the war — revealed that she had helped bury bodies and pieces of bodies on the school's grounds shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945. In response, in February 2011 the Ministry of Health began to excavate the site (AP 2011). While Tokyo courts acknowledged in 2002 that Unit 731 had been involved in biological warfare research, the Japanese government had made no official acknowledgment of the atrocities committed against test subjects, and rejected the Chinese government's requests for DNA samples to identify human remains (including skulls and bones) found near an army medical school (The Economist 2011).

Surrender and immunity

Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but his attempts were rejected.

Destruction of evidence and arrest

With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. Potential witnesses were killed — the 300 remaining prisoners were either gassed or fed poison and then were cremated; the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were shot. Ishii swore every member of the group to silence and they were told to disappear (Altheide).

Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their activities, but many were sturdy enough to remain somewhat intact.

Ishii and various leaders of Unit 731 was arrested by United States authorities during the Occupation of Japan at the end of World War II. They were supposed to be thoroughly interrogated by Soviet authorities (BBC 1984). Instead, Ishii and his team managed to negotiate and receive immunity from prosecution in 1946 from Japanese war-crimes prosecution before the Tokyo tribunal in exchange for their full disclosure (Brody et al. 2014; Kaye 2017).

The Soviet Union did arrest and prosecute twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and affiliated units in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials.

American grant of immunity

Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September 1945. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's Military Center for Biological Weapons. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity. At the time of his arrival in Japan he had no knowledge of what Unit 731 was. Until Sanders finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so the next morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare. Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, who was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupations. MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants: He secretly granted immunity from prosecution to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, Ishii, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation (Gold 2004).

Although the Soviet authorities wished the prosecutions to take place, the United States objected after the reports of the investigating US microbiologists. Among these was Edwin Hill, the Chief of Fort Detrick, whose report stated that the information was "absolutely invaluable;" it "could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans" and "the information was obtained fairly cheaply" (BBC 1984). On May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington, D.C. , that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence" (Gold 2004). The reason for the Americans granting immunity was that they believed that the research data was valuable and did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons (McNaught 2002).

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The Japanese defense counsel argued that the claim was vague and uncorroborated, and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit 731's activities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental.

Separate Soviet trials

Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731, and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing and Unit 100 in Changchun, in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. Included among those prosecuted for war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otozō Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.

The trial of those captured Japanese perpetrators was held in December 1949 in Khabarovsk, Russia, located in southeast Russia, near the border with China. A lengthy partial transcript of the trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by a Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition (USSR 1950). The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, who had been one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials . The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from two to 25 years in a Siberian gulag (labor camp). The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda (Tsuchiya 2011). The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient by Soviet standards, and all but one of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with the remaining prisoner committing suicide inside his cell). In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the US also asserted that the trials were only to serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the US had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. The accusations of both the US and the USSR were true, and it is believed that the Japanese had also given information to the Soviets regarding their biological experimentation for judicial leniency (Vanderbrook 2013). This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit 731 in Manchuria (Alibek and Handelman 2000).

There was consensus among US researchers in the postwar period that the human experimentation data gained was of little value to the development of American biological weapons and medicine.

Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit 731, but do not go into detail about allegations (Selden and Nozaki 2009; Masalski 2001). Saburō Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools, on the basis that the testimony was insufficient. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was indeed sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation of freedom of speech (Asahi Shimbun 1997).

In August 2002, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time that Japan had engaged in biological warfare. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases including plague and typhoid in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. However, he rejected the victims' claims for compensation on the grounds that they had already been settled by international peace treaties (Watts 2002).

In October 2003, a member of the House of Representatives of Japan filed an inquiry. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit 731, but the government recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records that were located in the future. In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731, in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science (Japan Times 2018; McCurry 2018).

After WWII, the U.S. Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who were banned from entering the United States. While they have added over 60,000 names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the DOJ and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of OSI, stated that this was due to two factors. (1) While most documents captured by the US in Europe were microfilmed before being returned to their respective governments, the Department of Defense decided to not microfilm its vast collection of documents before returning them to the Japanese government. (2) The Japanese government has also failed to grant the OSI meaningful access to these and related records after the war, while European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative (US Dept. of Justice 1998).

• Belmont Report
• Common Rule
• Declaration of Helsinki
• Doctors' Trial
• Human subject research
• Informed consent
• Nazi human experimentation
• Nuremberg Code

References ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

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Worst Nazi Experiments

Introduction

10 monstrous human experiments conducted by nazi.

The Nazis are, undoubtedly, the most nefarious political party in history. As the ruling party in Germany from 1933 to 1945, the Nazis were involved in some of the most inhuman acts conducted by an organized group. Racism was the norm as Hitler believed that the Nordic race was superior to all other races. Jews were particularly targeted by the deranged Nazi government and subjected to all manner of torture.

The Nazi  were also involved  in many chilling human experiments that led to the conviction of several doctors long after the Nazi were toppled from power. Below are 10 of the worst Nazi experiments conducted on human beings.

Experiments on Twins

From 1943 to 1944, Josef Mengele conducted experiments on twins in a bid to discover their genetic similarities and differences. The experiments were conducted on 1,500 sets of twins who were imprisoned in Auschwitz. Only 200 of the 1500 survived. The experiments included the injection of dyes into the eyes of the twins to determine whether it would change their color and sewing twins together in a bid to make conjoined twins.

Mustard Gas Experiments

In a bid to find out what the most effective cure for wounds caused by mustard gas, prisoners held in Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and several other camps were exposed to mustard gas at various times from 1939 to 1945. The gas inflicted chemical burns on the test subjects. Tests were then done on the inflicted wounds to find out what the best treatment was.

This was one of the most heinous Nazi experiments. The freezing experiments were done in order to prepare their army men for the cold temperatures on the Eastern front. Many Nazi soldiers had died due to the freezing temperatures when facing Russian forces.

During the experiments, test subjects were dipped into a vat of freezing cold water. Most of the victims died or at least lost consciousness when temperatures of their body reached 25°C (25° F) or less. The torture did not end there. Those who did not die from freezing were resuscitated using gruesome methods. These included being thrown into hot baths, burning sun lamps and having women copulate with unconscious male victims. The worst of them all was internal  irrigation , whereby victims  had boiling  water forced into the bladder and the stomach.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis became very interested in incendiary weapons. These are bombs that contain phosphorous and are capable of causing extreme destruction. Phosphorous causes serious injury and horrific burns, and bombs containing this element can cause deep 3 rd degree  burns as it usually sticks to the skin. Nazis tested the effects of incendiary weapons on prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp, causing untold suffering.

Infectious Diseases

The Nazi conducted malaria experiments on 1000 victims during World War II. In these experiments, healthy subjects were either injected with malaria or exposed to malaria to get infected, causing mosquitoes. Father Leo Miechalowski, one of the few survivors, gave an account of his experience. He wrote that he felt as if his heart was being torn out. He became insane and totally lost his ability to speak. Doctors would continually inject the victims with malaria to ensure the disease stayed in their blood. Half of the test subjects succumbed to the disease.

Sea water was one of the areas of interest for the Nazi. They wanted to find out whether their soldiers could survive  on  sea water. In one of the most horrific Nazi experiments, they used 44 subjects. They were divided into four groups and each was given one type of water - sea water, sea water without salt, no water at all, and sea water processed by the "Burka" method. All the victims were punctured in the liver or spinal cord to aid in data collection. During this time, they were not allowed any food. Most of those who were taking salt water died after experiencing violent convulsions, diarrhea, hallucinations and madness.

Experiments with Poison

At some point between 1943 and 1944, the Nazi decided to experiment with poisons. The experiments were conducted in Buchenwald where poisons were added to the food of the test subjects. Many of the victims died or were killed immediately after consuming the poison to allow for autopsies.

High Altitude Experiments

In 1942, Sigmund Rascher conducted high altitude experiments on 200 subjects. The experiments were supposed to help German pilots who needed to eject at high altitudes. Prisoners were put in a high pressure chamber to simulate the conditions at 66,000 ft. Rumor has it that those who survived the chamber had their brains operated on. Everybody who participated in the experiment either died or was killed, making the experiment one of the most brutal and monstrous Nazi experiments ever. 

Artificial Insemination

This experiment was ordered by none other than the infamous Heinrich Himmler. He wanted a Nazi doctor (Dr. Carl Clauberg) to perform artificial insemination on some prisoners though a variety of experimental methods. Dr. Carl performed artificial insemination on 300 women. During the experiment he taunted them by telling them that he had inseminated them with the sperm of an animal. 

Transplantation Experiments

The last one on our list of human experiments conducted by Nazi is transplantation experiments. Between September 1942 and December 1943, transplantation experiments were conducted at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This was done in a bid to study muscle, bone, nerve regeneration and bone transplant from one person to another. Without using anesthesia, parts of muscles, nerves and bones were removed from the victims. Most of the victims suffered extreme anguish and permanent disability.

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Did Nazi Human Experimentation Benefit Allied War Efforts?

During World War II, Germany conducted a horrific human experimentation program in concentration camps across Europe. However, many of the findings influenced science in the Postwar period.

In the aftermath of the First World War, a new style of warfare was emerging. Total war resulted in the mass mobilization of all areas of society combined with the urgency for new weaponry. While many advancements came from ethical means, a vast number came from the efforts of human experimentation. The most notorious of these were the ones carried out by the Nazi doctors in concentration camps. Many of these experiments suggested a means to rid the camps of those the Nazi regime deemed as degenerates to society. Testing new weaponry, military survival experiments, medical experiments involving nerve and bone transfusions, and many more were all conducted on prisoners of war in horrific conditions. However, despite the nature of these experiments, it was clear that many were pivotal in advancing the war effort, both from the Nazi’s perspective as well as in the postwar era.

Human Experimentation and Gas

One experiment with human participants that benefited the war effort was the testing of gas. The use of gas as an offensive weapon was previously seen in World War I . As previously proven, it proved an effective way to incapacitate and even kill the enemy. As World War II progressed, an array of new chemicals was introduced, created by chemical experts established prewar. While many gas cures were improved upon in World War I , the most elusive was mustard gas. This chemical not only caused respiratory problems but also blistered the skin and led to infections.

In order to expedite the discovery of treatment, doctors in Nazi concentration camps began human experimentation on prisoners. The experiments that took place were conducted across many concentration camps and appeared to directly correlate with gas attacks from the allied forces. The first instance began in 1939, in response to a sulfur mustard mine explosion.

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On October 13, 1939, sulfur mustard was applied to the upper arms of 23 inmates . The burns and wounds inflicted were then examined, and various treatments were tested. While no treatment was established, this did not stop Nazi scientists and doctors from continuing their research. Vitamins were found to be effective, along with burn ointment, for the recovery of mustard gas burns. After mass animal testing, the human subjects were selected from the Natzweiler concentration camp.

In a summary of these experiments, August Hirt, SS-Sturmbannführer and director of the Anatomical Institute at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg, “ concluded that a mix of vitamins (A, B-complex, C) given orally, or Vitamin B-1 injected with glucose would give the best results .” Therefore, it can clearly be indicated that these experiments benefitted the war effort, as this information was passed on to medical personnel on the front lines in order to successfully treat as many soldiers in the front lines, as opposed to sending them home and effectively diminishing manpower.

War Experiments at Dachau In World War II: High Altitude Experiments

Dachau was the first concentration camp established in 1933 before the outbreak of World War II. It soon became home to many instances of human experimentation carried out by Nazi doctors in World War II. Three sets of experiments were conducted at Dachau with the aim of “ helping German soldiers in the war survive extremes ,” which encompassed aviation, seawater, and hypothermia experiments. These examples are clear indicators of how World War II presented an environment that necessitated a swift and rapid response to the everchanging war.

High altitude experiments were conducted in the concentration camp Dachau in the year 1942. These experiments came to pass “ for the benefit of the German Air Force, to investigate the limits of human endurance and existence at extremely high altitudes .” German pilots who were previously forced to eject from high altitudes frequently succumbed to hypoxia – low oxygen in the blood. With air warfare becoming a major component for both the allied and enemy countries, more and more deaths were seen to be amassing in the skies. In order to conserve manpower, these experiments were deemed a “ military necessity .” Therefore, as of March 1942, the high altitude experiments of Dachau began.

Prisoners of Dachau were put into a low-pressure chamber that could replicate an altitude of up to 60,000 feet. Of the two hundred human participants unwillingly enrolled in this experiment, eighty died. The remaining survivors were executed in order to examine the changes high altitude caused to the brain. Through horrific human experimentation, it was found that illness and death as a result of high altitude were caused by the formation of tiny air bubbles in the blood vessels of a certain part of the brain . While the use of human experimentation cannot be justified, speaking in strictly scientific spheres, these experiments proved useful. The US Air Force carried on further experiments in the postwar era, aided by many Nazi scientists involved in the original experiments. Today it is strongly argued that “ if we did not have this research, no matter how cruelly it was collected, thousands of more people would be dead today from high altitude exposure and hypothermia .”

War Experiments at Dachau: Seawater Experiments

The next set of human experimentation deemed beneficial to the war effort were seawater experiments. An estimated 90 Roma prisoners were forced to drink seawater without any food or freshwater, with no seeming end to the experiment. The purpose of human experimentation in this instance was to aid German pilots who were forced to eject from their planes into the ocean.

Control groups were formed, with one being given nothing but seawater, the other given seawater with an added saline solution, and the other given distilled seawater. The participants were starved during this process, and it has been noted that the participants became so dehydrated “ that they reportedly licked floors after they had been mopped just to get a drop of fresh water. ”

All bodily fluids were taken and measured to explore how much seawater an individual could digest. The symptoms noted in this period were gastric distress, delirium, spasms, and in many cases, death. The conclusions drawn from these experiments were that unsurprisingly “ when we drink salt water, we will become extremely dehydrated and slowly die .” What could be concluded from these experiments was the length of days one could survive at sea without water.

War Experiments at Dachau: Hypothermia Experiments

In the same vein as the seawater experiments, more human experimentations were carried out to aid pilots stranded in the ocean. Most notably, the hypothermia experiments, the third experiment of the “military necessity” trio. These experiments were conducted at the height of World War II, between the years 1942 and 1943. As the fighting progressed across the North Sea, many pilots were shot down into subzero ocean waters. These experiments consisted of prisoners being immersed in containers of freezing water. Variables were introduced, such as the addition of clothing or anesthetic, to testing not only the responses of the body to these temperatures but also treatments.

Around 3,000 individuals were subjected to this horrific human experimentation. All were either immersed in water or left outside naked in winter while “ rectal temperature, heart rate, level of consciousness and shivering were meticulously monitored and charted .” To those prisoners who did not succumb, rewarming techniques were practiced. All results were noted down in the hopes of obtaining a method for saving pilots. For example, “ Rascher reported… rapid warming was better than slow warming. Rewarming by animal warmth, or by the use of women’s bodies, was found to be too slow .”

The above graph shows the survival rate of each technique that was tried to prevent death by hypothermia. The graph “ reveals that body-temperature recovery was fastest with immersion in warm water, but that rewarming and presumably survival were achieved with the other methods, too .” It was also found that if the victim were naked, they would perish in the process between 80 minutes and six hours. However, if the individual was clothed, then they could last up to seven hours.

Human Experimentation With Bone, Muscle, and Nerve Transplants

During the years 1942 – 1943, bone, muscle, and nerve transplants were conducted on prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Prisoners’ limbs were removed in order to test if they could be transferred to another individual. However, the methods used to enact these experiments were barbaric. After the limb was inserted into a different individual, many people died, either by lack of treatment after the removal or the body rejected the foreign limb. However, if it were not for the conditions of the concentration camp and the brutal treatment of the doctors, then “ it is possible the Nazis could be credited with the first successful limb transplant .”

As World War II progressed, Nazi scientists were presented with a problem. One of the new, varied types of injuries that had dominated the war was “ fractures; severe soft-tissue and bone defects; peripheral nerve lacerations… .” This pushed doctors and scientists stationed at concentration camps to begin human experiments on nerve regeneration and bone marrow.

One experiment involved the fracturing of the bone either with brute force or a surgical instrument such as a clamp. The wounds were then bound in plaster and observed. In testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, “Dr. Zofia Maczka states that in one or both legs, the 16-17 bones would be broken into several pieces by a hammer” (Doctors from Hell,” Google Books). The second experiment would involve “ an incision to obtain a bone chip, which would then be removed in a second operation, along with a piece of the bone it was in .” Out of a vast number of experiments undergone, it is estimated that “ 3.5% died during the operation .”

While these human experiments would later become crimes against humanity, the time of the experiments, a long-term approach was to deliver “ the treatment of soldiers who sustained amputations, pseudoarthrosis, and tissue defects, setting the stage for treatments they expected would continue after the war’s end .” The results were also presented at the Third Medical Conference of the Consulting Physicians of the German Armed Forces in May of 1943, demonstrating the significance the Nazi doctors placed on these human experiments as a benefit to the war effort, no matter the cost.

In conclusion, as it can be clearly seen from the examples given, the Nazi human experimentation project did in many ways aid the war effort. The establishment of concentration camps before World War II is a clear indicator that the fears of new warfare were ever-present. If viewed in purely scientific spheres, the experiments would have given way to many scientific advancements. However, the horrific conditions that these experiments were conducted in and the brutality of those in charge were a clear hindrance to their progression. On the other hand, the usefulness of these experiments in aiding warfare can evidently be seen through the efforts of Operation Paperclip. In an attempt to gain leverage over new enemies, “ the US government hatched a plan to bring 88 Nazi scientists captured during the fall of Nazi Germany back to America ” to continue the research they conducted in World War II , in line with the newly formed Nuremberg Code.

6 Artists Who Depicted Traumatic & Brutal Experiences of World War I

By Lucy Soaft BA History w/ Medical Ethics and Military History concentration Lucy is pursuing an MSc in Military and Medical history with the aspiration of becoming a museum curator. She holds a BA in History with a focus on medical ethics and Military history from the University of Kent (UKC). Topics of interest also include Tudor History, Human Experimentation, and Gothic Architecture. Lucy volunteers at various museums including the Huntarian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in England.

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Top 10 Horrific Nazi Human Experiments

We can all agree that the things the Nazis did during World War II were horrible . The Holocaust was probably the crime for which they’re most infamous. But wretched and inhumane things happened in the concentration camps that most people don’t know about. Inmates were used as subjects in numerous experiments that were excruciatingly painful and usually resulted in death.

These are just 10 examples of the atrocious experiments they conducted. Consider this a trigger warning—things get somewhat gruesome from this paragraph on.

SEE ALSO: 10 Terrifying Nazi Doctors You’ve Never Heard Of .

10 Blood Coagulation Experiments

Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted blood coagulation experiments on inmates at Dachau concentration camp. He had created a tablet, Polygal, which was made from beet and apple pectin. He believed that these tablets could help stop the bleeding from wounds in combat or surgery.

Each of his subjects was given a tablet and then shot in the neck or chest to test the efficacy of Polygal. Later on, those inmates would have their limbs amputated without any use of anesthesia. Dr. Rascher went on to establish a manufacturing company for the tablets with inmates as workers. [1]

9 Sulfonamide Experiments

Experiments on prisoners at Ravensbruck concentration camp tested the efficacy of sulfonamides (aka sulfa drugs). Subjects were deliberately wounded on the outer side of their calves. Physicians then rubbed a mixture of bacteria into the open wounds before sewing them shut. Glass splinters were also introduced into the wounds to mimic the situation in battles. [2]

However, this method proved to be too mild in comparison to conditions on the front lines. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were tied up on both sides to stop circulation. The subjects were then given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances these experiments made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields, those inmates suffered horrible pain which resulted in permanent injury or even death.

8 Freezing And Hypothermia Experiments

The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold they faced on the Eastern Front , and thousands of soldiers died because of it. As a result, Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted experiments at Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Dachau to determine two things: the time it takes to lower body temperature and cause death and the method to revive those who have been frozen.

Naked inmates were either put in an icy vat of water or locked outside in subzero temperatures. Most victims died. Those who merely lost consciousness underwent painful resuscitation procedures.

For resuscitation, subjects were placed under scorching sunlamps that burned their skin, forced to copulate with women for body heat, irrigated internally with boiling water, or placed in warm baths (which proved to be the most effective method). [3]

7 Incendiary Bomb Experiments

Over the course of three months in 1943 and 1944, experiments were conducted on inmates at Buchenwald concentration camp to test the effectiveness of pharmaceutical remedies on phosphorus burns inflicted by incendiary bombs. [4] Subjects were purposely burned with phosphorus matter from those bombs , which was severely painful. The inmates were seriously injured by these experiments.

6 Seawater Experiments

To find ways to make seawater drinkable, experiments were conducted on inmates at Dachau. The subjects were placed into four different groups: no water, seawater, seawater processed by the Berka method, and seawater without salt. [5]

The subjects were not given any food or drink other than what was assigned to their group. Those who received some type of seawater ended up suffering from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations , madness, and eventual death. Additionally, subjects were given either liver or spinal taps to gather data. The processes were torturous and, in most cases, fatal.

SEE ALSO: 10 Terrifying Nazi Doctors You’ve Never Heard Of

5 Experiments With Poison

Experiments were conducted at Buchenwald concentration camp to determine the effects of poisons on human beings. In 1943, poisons were secretly administered to the inmates. [6]

Some died directly due to the poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of the autopsies . A year later, inmates were shot with poison-laced bullets for faster data collection. These subjects suffered tremendously.

4 Sterilization Experiments

As a part of the extermination of non-Aryans, Nazis doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on inmates at different concentration camps to find the method that took the least time and money.

In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was introduced into the female reproductive organs to block the fallopian tubes. Some women died from the procedure. Others were killed so that autopsies could be performed.

In another set of experiments, inmates were exposed to intense X-rays that caused severe burns on their stomachs, groins, and buttocks. They were also left with untreatable sores. Some subjects died. [7]

3 Bone, Muscle, And Nerve Regeneration And Bone Transplantation Experiments

For about a year, the processes to regenerate bones, muscles , and nerves were studied through experiments on inmates at Ravensbruck concentration camp. Nerve operations included removing segments of nerves from the lower parts of the limbs.

Experiments on bones include breaking and resetting bones in several places on the lower limbs. The fractures were not given enough time to properly heal because physicians wanted to study the healing process as well as test out various healing methods. [8]

The doctors also removed multiple sections of the subjects’ tibiae to study the regeneration of osseous tissues. Transplantations of bones included grafting segments of the left tibia onto the right and vice versa.

These experiments inflicted incredible pain on the inmates and caused permanent injuries for them.

2 Spotted Fever Experiments

From late 1941 to early 1945, physicians at Buchenwald and Natzweiler concentration camps conducted experiments on inmates for the benefit of the German armed forces. They were testing the effectiveness of spotted fever and other vaccines .

Approximately 75 percent of the subjects were given trial vaccines for spotted fever or nourished with other chemical substances. They were then injected with the virus. As a result, more than 90 percent of them died. [9]

The virus was introduced to the remaining 25 percent without any prior protection as a control group. Most of them didn’t make it. The physicians also conducted experiments associated with yellow fever, smallpox , typhus, and other diseases. Hundreds of inmates died, and many more suffered unbearable pain as a result.

1 Twin And Genetic Experiments

The goal of the Holocaust was to get rid of anyone who was not of Aryan descent. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, and others who did not meet the requirements were to be exterminated so that only the “superior” Aryan race would remain. Genetic experiments were conducted to provide the Nazi Party with scientific proof of the superiority of the Aryans.

Dr. Josef Mengele (aka “The Angel of Death”) was deeply fascinated by twins. He would have them separated from the other prisoners when they arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Every day, the twins had to have their blood drawn. The true purpose of this routine is unknown.

Experiments on twins were extensive. They had to be carefully examined and have every inch of their bodies measured. Comparisons would then be made to determine hereditary traits. Occasionally, physicians performed mass transfusions of blood from one twin to another.

Since people of Aryan descent predominantly have blue eyes, experiments with chemical drops or iris injections would be conducted in an attempt to fabricate them. The procedures were incredibly painful, causing infections and even blindness.

Injections were administered and spinal taps were performed without any anesthesia. One twin would purposely be infected with a disease, while the other was not. If one died, the other was killed and examined for comparison. [10]

Amputations and organ removals were also done without anesthesia. Most twins that set foot in the camp ended up dead, and their autopsies became the final experiments.

+ High Altitude Experiments

Inmates at Dachau concentration camp were used as subjects from March to August of 1942 to test the limits of human endurance at high altitudes . The findings were to aid the German Air Force.

Subjects were placed in a low-pressure chamber which simulated atmospheric conditions at altitudes up to 21,000 meters (68,000 ft.). Most subjects died, and those who survived suffered exposure-related injuries. [11]

++ Malaria Experiments

For over three years, a series of experiments was conducted on more than 1,000 inmates at Dachau concentration camp in search of a treatment for malaria. Healthy inmates were infected by mosquitoes or extracts from those mosquitoes .

Subjects who contacted malaria were then treated with various drugs to test their efficacy. Many inmates died. Those who lived suffered painfully, and most were permanently disabled. [12]

Read about other atrocious human experiments during World War II with these 10 Atrocious Experiments Conducted By Unit 731.

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Nazi Experimentation: What Exactly Happened?

Nazi experimentation is fairly well known even to a layman of history. However, the specific details and the central figures. might be lesser known.

The following is a guest post from Zackery Ward. 

The Nazis performed several terrible experiments on human subjects in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Most of these experiments were designed under the assumption that the subjects would be killed during the process, and some of them were incapable of producing meaningful scientific information from the start. These pseudo-scientific experiments were often nothing more than torture disguised as the pursuit of knowledge. Nazi Germany enacted strong legal restrictions on animal abuse and medical experimentation. The humans living in the concentration camps were awarded no such protection, legal or otherwise. Several of the scientists leading these efforts were extremely well-regarded in the academic community, but many were barely qualified to work in any scientific capacity. The neuroscience division is an excellent example of the lack of qualifications of the people assigned to produce meaningful scientific data. There were sixty-eight physicians employed by the Third Reich for neuroscience research. Of these, thirty-eight specialized in neuroscience, and thirty specialized in unrelated fields. Twenty-four were professors, two had PhDs and the other forty-two had only recently received their certification to work in the medical field in general. This article will focus on the more notorious scientists and the heinous acts they committed during the Nazi regime.

Nazi Experimentation- Dr. Ernst Rudin

Rudin was internationally recognized for his research into psychiatric genetics, most notably on the inheritance of schizophrenia, and was a professor of the notorious Josef Mengele. His research was used to justify the enforced eugenic sterilization program, which sterilized approximately 50,000 people a year beginning in 1934. He helped design the program and decide who should be sterilized. Rudin’s work was able to remain relevant in the scientific community after the way, and his research on schizophrenia was cited in medical journals well into the 1980s.

Nazi Experimentation- Dr. Verschuer

Verschuer was also a widely recognized geneticist, but he focused closely on twins. He was the founding director of the Institute of Heredobiologic Research in Frankfurt. His main academic focus outside of twins was the genetics of tuberculosis and eye color. He was so well respected during his time that he presented a paper at the Royal Society of London in 1939 about his research on twins. He was Josef Mengele’s professional mentor. The experiments carried out by Mengele in Auschwitz were funded by a grant from the German Research Council awarded to Verschuer, and any material taken from the victims, including human eyes, heads, and blood samples, were sent to the Kaiser Willhelm Institute in Berlin, headed by Verschuer himself.

Nazi Experimentation- Josef Mengele

Mengele received his Ph.D. in physical anthropology in 1935 when he was twenty-four years old, received a medical degree in 1938, and assisted Verschuer in his research on twins. His ultimate goal was to use the information from his experiments as a way to attain a university position. He was the one who determined what prisoners would be sent for execution or forced labor in Auschwitz, and he headed up the human experiments performed at the camp. Mengele had two main focuses for his experiments. The first was continuing the research he had been performing on twins with Verschuer. He believed that through experimenting on twins he would find a way of spreading the Aryan gene faster. Any twins that arrived at Auschwitz were to be sent to his research area immediately, and they were given special treatment from the other prisoners. They were allowed to wear their own clothes and fed a better diet than the average Holocaust victim. This did not mean that their lives would be easier, however. Twins unfortunate enough to end up under Mengele had extreme amounts of blood taken regularly, to the point where they would pass out, wake up, and immediately have more taken. If an experiment resulted in the death of one twin, the other was killed so Mengele could dissect them both at the same time. Eva Mozes (a survivor of Mengele’s twin experiments) said she witnessed two gypsy twins who had been sewn together to create artificial Siamese twins. “The twins screamed day and night until gangrene set in, and after three days, they died.” Mengele’s other focus was on people with dwarfism. He believed he could remove certain features from the gene pool that the Nazis had deemed undesirable. Their blood was drawn in the same brutal method as the twin research subjects. X-rays were regularly performed with no protective equipment. Healthy teeth were extracted, eyelashes were plucked, and a type of water torture was performed where their ears were kept full of water. Some of the victims were even forced to procreate with gypsy women to try and find the percentage of children that would have dwarfism.

Gerhard Rose

Rose was tasked with testing a dead virus vaccine for Rickettsia Typhi. This was one of the few experiments that, while done through entirely unacceptable means, could have provided some type of useful information for the scientific community. Pre-vaccinated and non-vaccinated controls were injected with live typhus rickettsia, and the two groups’ death rates were compared. The Matelska strain was discovered to be non-virulent after several rounds of testing. This could have resulted in the development of a live vaccine, but instead, Gerhard became upset that the control group did not die during the experiment and discarded this specific strain. There was a high potential for providing a vaccine for an incredibly deadly disease, and this potential was abandoned because they would rather have killed off their experiment’s subjects than produce results.

Dr. Gebhardt

Gebhardt was ordered to perform the gangrene experiments as a way of clearing his name. He was unable to treat SS General Reinhard “The Hangman” Heydrich for gangrene and was instructed by Himmler to determine if people died from gas gangrene, whether they were treated with sulfonamides or not. The experiment consisted of cutting the subject’s limbs and purposefully infecting them with necrosis by adding wood, dirt, and glass to the wounds. Gebhardt having a vested interest in his subjects dying from the disease meant that he likely went out of his way to ensure they did not survive this ordeal.

Sigmund Rascher

Rascher was held in extremely low regard by his fellow scientists and was turned down for several university positions, but he managed to find favor with both Himmler and Hitler. His experiments were assigned to improve the survival rate of German soldiers during the war. Himmler wanted Rascher to develop a way to prevent soldiers from bleeding out on the battlefield. Rascher attempted to create a coagulant that could be taken before any possible injuries, and to test this, he measured the number of blood drops from freshly cut amputation stumps of living and conscious prisoners at the Dachau crematorium, as well as from bullet wounds to the spleen of Russian POWs. One of these experiments involved simulating pressure drops in pilot cabins that had been shot down. These tests were meant to end in the death of the prisoners, and their brains were then pathologically examined. Another of his experiments is one of the most notorious ones performed during the Holocaust, and arguably the most heavily studied. The hypothermia experiments consisted of placing subjects in a bath ranging from two to twelve degrees Celsius. It included seven different warming methods to determine the best way to prevent death from hypothermia for pilots that are stranded in cold ocean temps. Not only were these experiments heavily flawed, but there is evidence to suggest that some of the findings were doctored to fit the narrative Rascher wanted to present to Himmler. The only surviving record of the results of these experiments is contained in a fifty-six-page report from Holzloehner, Fink, and Rascher to Himmler. The raw data was destroyed with much of the results of the experimentation during the evacuation of the camps by fleeing SS members. Specific temperature, time spent in bath, and specific body temperature of the subjects are not contained in the report. No information was given about each heat source or time between cooling and heating. Blood pressure was never measured. Rascher’s own words contradict the report several times concerning the amount of time required for a subject to die and at what temperature. The report also says that brain swelling and hemorrhaging are major causes of death in hypothermia victims, however, testing on animals has shown that the brain shrinks when dealing with hypothermia. Rascher also stated that it takes between fifty-three and one hundred minutes to kill a person through submersion in cold water, but his own records and statements made by his associates showed that it took between eighty minutes to five or six hours to kill an undressed person and between six or seven to kill someone in an aviator’s uniform. Rascher and his wife were both executed after he was caught lying about succeeding in extending the natural child-birthing age. He claimed that his wife had given birth to three children quickly at the age of forty-eight, but during her fourth pregnancy she was arrested for the attempted kidnapping of an infant, afterwards, there was an investigation that revealed that the other three children were also either kidnapped or bought.

Nazi Experimentation: The Victims

The pool of subjects for human experimentation was made up of prisoners held in concentration camps. There was a sixty-forty split in favor of men and Jewish people made up thirty percent of all test subjects. The majority of the subjects were underfed, which would seriously impact any findings that could have possibly been gleaned from the torture these people were submitted to. Experiments focusing on hypothermia, gangrene, or blood clotting would not have produced the same results compared to someone at a healthy weight. Subjects used for neuroscience experiments were mostly of German and Austrian descent, and they were usually much younger than people that were experimented on in other fields. Mengele focused on twins and little people. Twins were immediately brought to Mengele upon arrival at the camp, housed separately, fed better food, and allowed to wear their clothes. A specific family of little people was designated non-expendable by Mengele and allowed to wear non-prison clothes.

This post is part of our larger historical resource on the Holocaust.  Click here for our comprehensive article on the Holocaust.

Nazi Experimentation References

Alexander, Leo. “Medical Science under Dictatorship.” Culture & Civilization 241, no. 2 (July 14, 1949): 108-29. doi:10.4324/9780203794142-6.

Barbier, Mark Kathryn. “Josef Mengele – “Angel of Death”.” In Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2017.

Berger, Robert L. “Nazi Science — The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments.” New England Journal of Medicine 322, no. 20 (1990): 1435-440. doi:10.1056/nejm199005173222006.

Loewenau, Aleksandra, and Paul J. Weindling. “Nazi Medical Research in Neuroscience: Medical Procedures, Victims, and Perpetrators.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 33, no. 2 (2016): 418-46. doi:10.3138/cbmh.33.2.152-27012015.

Moe, Kristine. “Should the Nazi Research Data Be Cited?” The Hastings Center Report 14, no. 6 (1984): 5. doi:10.2307/3561733.

Seidelman, William E. “Mengele Medicus: Medicine’s Nazi Heritage.” The Milbank Quarterly 66, no. 2 (1988): 221. doi:10.2307/3350031.

Additional Resources About Nazi Germany

Nazi germany: politics, society, and key events, josef mengele: what were the human experiments, concentration camp: what and where were they, nazi germany – schutzstaffel ss, cite this article.

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Science and Suffering: Victims and Perpetrators of Nazi Human Experimentation

Exhibition Type: Online Exhibition

Introduction

Under the Nazis, medical research supported a new vision for a ‘racially pure’ Europe. Science and Nazi ideology worked together to shape this new world. Nazi policy eroded the legal basis for the protection of individual rights, including control over one’s own body, to promote the body politic  Volkskörper .

Scientists seized the opportunity to advance medical research. They performed cruel and often fatal experiments on thousands of Jews and other ‘undesirables’.

Medical research relied on experimentation. Animals were soon replaced by human beings.

This exhibition examines coerced experimentation in Nazi-dominated Europe. Portraits of victims and perpetrators show how widespread and destructive the experiments were. The exhibition explores the legacy of medical research under Nazism and its  impact on bioethics and research today .  

The exhibition launched on 17 May 2017, and is based on the extensive research of  Professor Paul Weindling , Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University. We are grateful to the Wellcome Trust and Wiener Library donors for their support of this exhibition and related programming.

With special thanks to University of Bristol & University of Southampton PhD Candidate Chad MacDonald for adapting this online exhibition.

From Eugenics to Experiments

Guidelines for New Therapy and Human Experimentation, 28 February 1931 [excerpt]

• Experimentation shall be prohibited in all cases where consent has not been given;
• Experimentation involving human subjects shall be avoided if it can be replaced by animal studies…
• Experimentation involving children or young persons under 18 years of age shall be prohibited in if it any way endangers the child…
• Experimentation involving dying subjects is compatible with the principles of medical ethics and shall therefore be prohibited…

The international eugenics movement became popular in the early twentieth century. It intended to promote physical and mental health. Eugenics advanced the idea that some people were ‘genetically superior’. Volunteer blogger Kirsty Dear recently published a post on the international eugenics movement on the Wiener Library blog, entitled Hitler’s Debt to America: The International Eugenics Movement.

Eugenics policies sought to prevent ‘inferior’ individuals from having children, often by forced sterilisation (removal or destruction of reproductive organs). ‘Superior’ individuals and groups were encouraged to have more children to create a more law-abiding, ‘fitter’ population. Eugenics became linked to theories about race. The Nazis absorbed eugenic ideas into their racist platform.

Experimental medicine was on the rise in Germany and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s. Often, researchers experimented on the poor, the mentally and terminally ill, and other vulnerable groups. Nazi Germany invested extensive skilled personnel, equipment and facilities into such experiments.

The German Minister of the Interior’s guidelines on human experimentation were not enforceable by law. Once psychiatric patients and racial ‘inferiors’ lost their status as ‘human subjects’, life and limb were at risk.

Image credit (below centre): American Eugenics Society Records, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, USA. Image credit (below right): Vogel, Alfred. Erblehre, Abstammungs, und Rassenkunde in bildlicher Darstellung. Stuttgart, 1938.

Nazifying Medical Research

Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty or clothe the naked – those are not our objectives. Our objectives are entirely different…We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, 1938

The medical field proved vital to the Nazis as they consolidated power and reorganised the German state and society from 1933. The medical profession was ‘co-ordinated’ and Jewish practitioners were purged. Nazi priorities shaped medical ethics, and medicine offered a means of control.

Racial hygiene fixated on ‘cleansing’ the German hereditary stream. In July 1933, the Nazis passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases . This law imposed sterilisation on people deemed to have hereditary illnesses or disabilities. Physicians sterilised those with schizophrenia, Huntington’s chorea and epilepsy, as well as so-called ‘mental defectives,’ chronic alcoholics and the blind and deaf.

The law marked a break with democratic structures of public health provision. The Nazis also targeted for sterilisation groups of ‘mixed race’, Roma and Sinti (‘Gypsies’), and those showing ‘antisocial behaviour’.

The Nazis pushed for a radicalised research agenda. Ambitious researchers saw new opportunities for coerced experiments. German medical education was oriented toward research and experimentation. German doctors demanded powers to screen, segregate and operate on victims in the name of science.

Image credit (below left): Volk und Rasse, VII, 1936. Image credit (below right): Rechenbuch für Volksschulen:Gaue Westfalen-Nord und -Süd: Ausgabe B für wenig gegliederte Schulen: Heft 5: siebentes und achtes Schuljahr . Edited by Adolf Schiffner. Leipzig: F. Hirt & Sohn Crüwell, 1941.

‘Life Unworthy of Life’ and Brain Research

The Nazis justified the murder of ‘undesirables’ they viewed as a drain on national resources. They targeted infants and children with birth defects as the first victims of their plans for ‘mercy killing’. From 1939 to 1945, medical staff murdered about 10,000 children in special wards created at hospitals and clinics.

After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Hitler ordered the ‘euthanasia’ (or ‘T4’) programme for the ‘incurably ill’. Medical staff selected adult victims, whom they transferred to designated killing centres. There they were gassed.

The launch of the so-called euthanasia programme brought new opportunities for research on patients before they were killed. After medical staff killed the victims, physicians investigated their brains and neural tissue. They wanted to prove links between brain abnormalities and clinical forms of illness.

One was really on one’s own, and totally alone with one’s fears. For any child, this is horrible. And the term “unworthy [of] life” is still ringing in my ears. There is still a sign above my life that says: strictly speaking, you have no right to live. Leopoldine Maier, survivor of the Spiegelgrund clinic.

War, Genocide and ‘Research Opportunity’

As war and the genocide against the Jews and others unfolded, medical research intensified. Medical and racial experts preyed on the blood and bodies of people who came under Nazi rule.

German scientists set out to conquer new frontiers. Professional ambition drove forward ruthless agendas to advance careers. In most cases, medical researchers or industrial interests initiated experiments.

Medical professionals planned experiments, and administrators and funding agencies authorised them. The Reich Research Council and the German Research Fund approved and financed medical research and experiments.

War and occupation provided opportunities to study infectious diseases, immunity and race. Industry, the military and public health agencies supported the experiments in an effort to prevent infections and promote productive labour.

This inhuman Nazi [Claus Schilling] shut me inside a glass cage for two hours daily, and I had to bear thousands of anopheles mosquitoes on my body. When I could bear the pain no longer I [tried] to drive the blood poisoned mosquitoes off…but the doctor…had in a mirror seen my efforts. For that I was put under strict arrest for seven days. Before I was taken away to serve the seven days I received 25 strokes with a bloodstained bull-pizzle covered with leather. Heinz Reimer, survivor of Schilling’s malaria experiments in Dachau.

Industry and Science

Shoe Testing

The longest-running coerced experiments were carried out from June 1940 to February 1945 on a shoe-testing track in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The victims were political prisoners, British prisoners of war, and one Irish prisoner of war.

Inmates had to run up to 40 kilometres per day on the track. They often carried heavy rucksacks. Physicians tested performance-enhancing drugs and stimulants, such as cocaine, on the victims.

The research aimed to benefit civilian and military needs. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research, the German Leather Institute and the Department of Rubber Research tested artificial shoe soles. Shoe factories, such as Salamander, Freudenberg and Fagus, commissioned the tests. Temmler-Werke, a pharmaceutical company, tested the amphetamine Pervitin on the inmates.

Wartime Expansion: Rascher’s Experiments

Sigmund Rascher, an ambitious rising star in medical research, joined the SS in 1939. In 1941, as captain of the Luftwaffe Medical Service, Rascher sought permission to conduct high altitude and low pressure experiments on human beings.

More than 540 Dachau inmates, including Soviet prisoners-of-war and Polish prisoners, were used in the experiments. Luftwaffe medical services, civilian aviation medical researchers, university academics and the SS Ahnenerbe, the Institute for the Study of the ‘Aryan’ Race , cooperated in the research.

Rascher conducted another set of deadly experiments on low temperature and freezing, during which he studied the process of death. The freezing experiments tried to recreate conditions for German airmen whose planes had come down at sea.

Rascher killed at least eighty inmates during the experiments. While the Luftwaffe became drawn into experimental research at Dachau, the extent to which it used Rascher’s results remains controversial.

Two warders pushed me to a bathroom. Three doctors and about ten students were already gathered there. After a heart examination I was injected with some red stuff and put into a bath-tub with a thermometer. They switched on a ventilator. I was covered in water all but head and hands. Two of the physicians took my wrists, controlling my pulse and making notes. I was able to describe the agony I felt being completely helpless in the hands of the so unscrupulous tormentors to whom the life of a concentration camp inmate meant less than nothing. The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness was that a slight ice-covering began to appear on the surface of the water. Iwan Ageew, survivor of freezing experiment in Dachau.

The Ravensbrück ‘Rabbits’

Experiments and resistance.

The ‘Rabbits’ were 74 female inmates of Ravensbrück concentration camp . The women, all Polish political prisoners, endured severe wound experiments between 1942 and 1943. The women were called ‘Rabbits’, the German language equivalent of a test ‘guinea pig’.

Ordered by Heinrich Himmler, the experiments formed part of SS surgeon Dr Karl Gebhardt’s research on treating infected war wounds. Gebhardt and other researchers wanted to test the effectiveness of sulphonamide drugs on war wounds versus traditional surgery.

There were two sets of experiments on treatment war wounds, particularly gangrene, in Ravensbrück and Dachau. Homeopathic treatment was used in Dachau and sulphonamide drugs were tested in Ravensbrück. The physicians used surgery to inflict injuries, rather than as a treatment.

The women protested against their treatment and encouraged other inmates to do the same. They smuggled letters – written in urine – outside the camp. The letters reached the Polish underground and the Polish government-in-exile in London , which published information about the experiments.

We, the undersigned, Polish political prisoners, ask Herr Commander whether he knew that since the year 1942 in the camp hospital experimental operations have taken place…We ask whether we were operated on as a result of sentences passed on us because, as far as we know, international law forbids the performance of operations even on political prisoners. Protest by the ‘Rabbits’ to Ravensbrück commandant Suhren, March 1943

Auschwitz Block 10

‘reproductive’ research.

On the brink of their annihilation, Jews were targeted for experimentation. The arrival of Jews at Birkenau for selections for slave labour or gassing meant that large groups of men, women and children were subjected to experiments.

Professor of Gynaecology Dr Carl Clauberg approached SS chief Heinrich Himmler for research opportunities in Auschwitz. He wanted to devise a surgery-free method to sterilise en masse women deemed ‘unworthy’ of children.

Using more than 500 Jewish women as subjects, Clauberg injected toxic chemicals to seal the Fallopian tubes. He used X-ray machines, developed by Siemens, to sterilise with high X–ray doses. In the process of testing, researchers burned many of the women with radiation. The experiments caused severe pain and sometimes death.

Doctors also carried out racial research in Block 10. They selected some of the women for death so their skeletons could be used for anthropological and ‘racial’ study.

In the final days of the war, Clauberg also conducted experiments on women in Ravensbrück concentration camp. He transferred there as Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and other camps.

Dr Clauberg performed sterilisation experiments on my person without my consent…Clauberg performed his first experiment on me. The sterilisation was done by injection and it was a very large size syringe that was injected subcutaneously into my vagina and a white substance was then injected into me. Most likely this substance was injected into my uterus. The syringe was about 30 cm long. The procedure occurred rather rapidly… Such injections were done to me three times with breaks of 3 to 4 months. After such an injection I had a terrible burning session in my abdomen. Rosalinde de Leon, Witness Testimony for Clauberg’s Trial, 1956.

Mengele and Twin Research

Scientists were eager to examine hereditary pathology, research the German Research Fund supported. SS physician Josef Mengele saw an opportunity to advance his research when he became the doctor in charge of the so-called Gypsy camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in spring 1943.

At first Mengele focused on therapies for ‘Noma’, a gangrene infection of the mouth. ‘Gypsy’ twins were sought. Mengele collaborated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in the research and killing of eight members of the Sinto family Mechau, because they had different coloured eyes. He selected research subjects for death so that their bodies and organs could be further experimented on.

Mengele improvised a research facility at Auschwitz. He obtained blocks to house twins and dwarves arriving from Hungary in Auschwitz from May 1944. He established a pathological laboratory next to the crematoria in June 1944, and recruited prisoner doctors, anthologists and artists to work with him.

When over 430,000 Hungarian Jews arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau in spring and summer 1944, his research intensified. He made selections from the streams of people deported to the camp as material of scientific interest.

Most of the Hungarian twin experiment victims were children aged between one-and-a-half and thirteen years. Between 650 and 732 Jewish twins were experimented on.

Mengele and his assistants X-rayed, photographed and drew pictures of them. They conducted hearing and eye tests. They extracted blood and brain fluid. The tests were painful and humiliating. Mengele selected certain twins for murder and some did not survive.

One day at midnight SS officers woke us and led us to the dissecting room, where Dr Mengele was already waiting for us…There were 14 Gypsy twins under SS guard, sobbing bitterly. Without saying a word, Dr. Mengele prepared a…syringe. From a box he took out Evipan, from another he placed chloroform in…vials on a table. Then the first twin was brought in, a young girl of around fourteen. Dr. Mengele ordered me to undress her and place her on the autopsy table. Then he administered an intravenous injection of Evipan in the right arm. After the child lost consciousness, he touched for the left heart ventricle and injected 10 cm3 of chloroform. The child was dead after a single convulsion and Dr. Mengele had her taken to the morgue. The murder of all fourteen twins happened in the same way that night. Dr. Mengele asked us if we could perform…autopsies. Deposition of prisoner Dr Miklós Nyiszli, July 1945.

Image credit (below left): USHMM, courtesy of Irene Guttmann Slotkin Hizme. Image credit (below centre): USHMM archive, courtesy of Yehudit Csengeri Barnea. Image credit (below right): USHMM archive, courtesy of Belarusian State.

Legacies of Nazi Medical Research

German scientists viewed coerced experiments as a benefit to the war effort, to science, and ‘racial purity’. More than 15,000 people, but possibly up to about 27,000, were experimented on during the Nazi period. This includes between 3,166 and 3,991 Jews. Research on identifying victims and their fates is still ongoing. The legacy of the experiments persists.

An American military tribunal held proceedings against 23 German physicians and administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Medical Trial opened on 9 December 1946. It was part of the subsequent Nuremberg trials.

The verdict was announced on 29 August 1947: 16 doctors were found guilty, with 7 sentenced to death. The Medical Case was the only Nuremberg Trial to end with a set of judicial guidelines: the  Nuremberg Code . The Code outlined conditions for ‘permissible medical experiments’ involving voluntary consent of research subjects.

Some medical staff of the ‘euthanasia’ centres were also tried after the war. Out of 265 known perpetrators, 9 died or were killed during the Second World War. 72 were tried after the war (25 were executed, 4 served life imprisonment, 31 were convicted to varying prison terms and 12 were acquitted). 125 evaded justice, 20 committed suicide, while the post-war fate of 39 is not known.

Surviving Victims and Compensation

Coerced experiments caused permanent disabilities, infertility, incapacity and death. Those who survived were forever marked by their experiences. While some survivors recovered, many lives never returned to normality.

In July 1951, the German government offered compensation to victims of medical experiments under National Socialism.  Most victims received 3,000 marks or less as a single payment . Rather than compensate pain and suffering, the Federal Finance Ministry calculated loss of earning capacity. This meant that X-ray sterilisation victims, including many women who did not work outside the home, received only minimal compensation, or none at all.

Officials refused to compensate twins experimented on by Mengele until after Mengele’s death, arguing that a ‘twin experiment’ was not a medical experiment. Eventually, meagre sums were disbursed. Matters improved when Poland and Hungary requested adjudication by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Sums between 30,000 and 50,000 marks were awarded to victims in Eastern Europe.

The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office did not support claimants or negotiate for additional compensation for experiment victims who resided in the UK. Many victims were thus never monetarily compensated, even minimally, for their suffering.

Research uses and human remains

The scientific usefulness of research results gained from Nazi human experimentation remains meagre. Yet the extended use of victims’ remains has not been fully clarified.

For instance, Dr Heinrich Gross, who conducted research on and selected children for ‘euthanasia’ in the  Spiegelgrund clinic  in Vienna, carried on with his research after the war. He became a celebrated forensic psychiatrist until he was stripped of the Austrian Medal for Science in 2003.  

Slides of brain tissue prepared by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society’s Julius Hallervorden were uncovered at the  Max Planck Society  (the successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society) in the 1980s. In 2015, concern arose over brain tissues, some from ‘euthanasia’ victims, stored in the Max Planck Society archives. In 2016, the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry recognised that it has brain specimens from ‘euthanasia’ victims in its collections. The victims will be commemorated by name and their body parts given dignified burial.

The medical and scientific elite rarely confronted the destruction caused by their field during the Nazi period.

In 2012, the  German Medical Assembly  apologised for the role of German medical practitioners in coerced sterilisation, ‘euthanasia’ and experiments under Nazism. In 2017, the Max Planck Society opened its archival collections for research on its history of unethical, coerced research.

Today bioethics, research, and some medical practices remain controversial and contested. Debates surround abortion, stem cell research, assisted suicide, end of life care, the role of pharmaceutical companies, and genetically engineered births.

How can the past frame our understanding of these debates – and the consequences of our choices – today?

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Leo alexander’s unflinching pursuit.

In the waning days of World War II, a psychiatrist raced across Germany to uncover the harrowing abuses of Nazi doctors.

As his plane circled the recently liberated Dachau concentration camp, Leo Alexander could see the former inmates cheering and waving below. American planes often brought corned beef, potato salad, and other goods to feed the still-ailing inmates, as well as nurses and doctors to tend to them.

But Dr. Alexander had not come to heal anyone. Quite the opposite. He was there to tear the scab off a Nazi cover-up and expose some of the worst atrocities of World War II—horrific medical experiments on concentration-camp prisoners.

By May 1945 the Allies had heard plenty of rumors about such research—deliberately infecting prisoners with diseases, for instance, or submerging them in freezing water. But no one had confirmed anything or determined who might be responsible. That task fell to Alexander—a chubby, balding, bespectacled U.S. Army psychiatrist who’d been expelled from Nazi Germany a dozen years earlier.

The army gave Alexander just six weeks to do his job, from mid-May through the end of June, and he was working almost entirely alone. In many ways it was a no-win assignment. If he failed, crimes unprecedented in their scope might remain hidden forever and their perpetrators go unpunished. If he succeeded, he and the rest of the world would have to face the cruelties one human being can visit upon another—cruelties committed by a nation that saw itself as the most advanced civilization on Earth. Either way, as his plane passed Dachau and descended toward Munich, a short distance away, he knew the evidence he needed was somewhere on the ground below.

After a few fruitless days at Dachau, Alexander opened his investigation by interviewing Nazi scientists near Munich who had been involved in hypothermia research. The Germans had lost thousands of pilots and sailors in the cold seas of the North Atlantic during the war. So to study hypothermia and to test new methods of reviving hypothermia victims, military researchers had reportedly submerged inmates at Dachau in ice water and chilled them nearly to death.

But when Alexander tried to pin the scientists down, they proved evasive. They talked about submerging guinea pigs in ice water and prattled on about all they had learned from the work. They also bragged about their miraculous success in resurrecting troops rescued at sea. But how had they made the leap from reviving rodents to reviving people? Every time Alexander asked about experiments on humans, the Germans swore they didn’t know of any.

One scientist, however, did concede to running experiments on large animals. This revelation piqued Alexander’s interest: he had recently seen a strange watercolor painting in a nearby medical institute that showed equipment for submerging pigs in ice water. (Given their size and lack of fur, pigs are good models for humans in such work.) But if you could submerge pigs, you could also submerge human beings. Alexander insisted on seeing this equipment himself.

Impossible , said the scientist.

Alexander asked why.

It’s at another institute, quite far away.

How far? Alexander pressed.

That’s not too far by jeep, Alexander said. We’re going.

When they arrived, two German scientists showed Alexander more equipment for submerging guinea pigs—and immediately regaled him with additional details about this research. Irritated, Alexander finally cut them off. Where was the pig equipment? After more hemming and hawing the Germans led him outside and showed him two cracked wooden tubs behind a stable. This was all that remained, they said. To Alexander the contrast was telling. The small-animal equipment had been meticulously preserved while the large-animal equipment had been destroyed.

This and other clues reinforced his suspicion that the scientists were hiding something. But with no hard evidence he had to be cagey. To avoid spooking the Germans, who might destroy more evidence, he pretended to be satisfied with their answers and backed off.

Then having exhausted his leads around Munich, he began making his way hundreds of miles north to conduct more interviews in the town of Göttingen. It was nearly mid-June. He had just a few weeks left and had picked up nothing so far but a bad feeling.

Given Alexander’s bittersweet memories of Germany, his journey north through the bombed-out Reich must have been a melancholy one.

Alexander was born in Vienna in 1905 to a well-to-do Jewish family and enjoyed an idyllic childhood. Peacocks strutted around the lawn of the family mansion, where Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler were regular guests. Alexander followed his father into medicine and won prestigious posts in Berlin and Frankfurt, where he was taken under the wing of Karl Kleist, a brain pathologist and one of Germany’s leading doctors.

Then it all came crashing down. First, in 1932, his father was murdered in the street by a former mental patient, a random and senseless act; his mother died of an illness six months later. Next, in early 1933 the Nazi party seized power in Germany and quickly purged most Jews from civil-service posts, including many doctors.

Alexander was on sabbatical studying mental illness in China when the purge took place, so at first he didn’t realize—or didn’t want to realize—how bleak things were. In letters from that time he mentions how much he was looking forward to returning. Finally, his mentor was blunt: resuming his life in Germany, Kleist wrote, was “totally impossible. . . . Have no false hopes.”

Dispirited and suddenly stateless, Alexander sailed to the United States to start over. He settled near Boston and began working in a psychiatric ward. He soon became a U.S. citizen and started a family, and by the late 1930s he was teaching neurology at Harvard Medical School.

When the United States entered World War II, Alexander joined the army and traveled to England to treat soldiers for shell shock. After the Germans surrendered he expected to return to Massachusetts—until he was plucked out of the ranks by Allied officials. Given his background and familiarity with Germany, he was considered the perfect person to expose Nazi medical atrocities.

After weeks of searching, Alexander’s inquiry had stalled. And if not for a few chance remarks—and his persistence in pursuing them—the rest of his investigation might have faltered, too.

The first lucky break occurred on the road to Göttingen, when Alexander stopped at a military base for dinner. Inside the officers’ mess he happened to sit next to an army chaplain who had recently heard an Allied radio broadcast about medical experiments at Dachau and was curious to get Alexander’s opinion on them. As Alexander recalled, the chaplain “had been particularly horrified by experiments in which prisoners were placed in tubs of ice water while their sufferings and death throes . . . were recorded.”

Alexander was no doubt stunned. The way the chaplain described the experiments, they sounded eerily similar to the German experiments on “large animals.” But Alexander needed something firmer—like the identity of the doctor in charge of the Dachau research.

Did the broadcast mention any names? Alexander asked.

Yes , the chaplain said. One .

I don’t remember , the chaplain admitted.

Another dead end, but it was something. And when Alexander arrived in Göttingen, he had some leverage on the scientists there. I know about the Dachau broadcast. Who was experimenting on people there? When pressed, the scientists were quick to point the finger elsewhere, and in their deflections one name kept popping up: Sigmund Rascher.

Rascher was an air force doctor and a nasty piece of work—cruel, vain, unremorseful. In one interview Alexander heard about Rascher taunting another researcher at a conference, perhaps while drunk: “You have just published a book entitled Human Physiology ,” Rascher said, “but all you ever did was work on guinea pigs and mice. I am the only one in this whole crowd who . . . knows human physiology, because I experiment on humans.”

Everyone in Göttingen agreed that Rascher was the man Alexander was after, an isolated sicko who had conducted experiments no one else would even consider. But if Alexander thought this story seemed too tidy—a single rogue scientist who was conveniently missing—he didn’t show it. Rascher was a lead, the first real lead Alexander had. And a tiny clue about him soon broke things wide open.

One interviewee let slip that Rascher had also performed experiments for the SS, the Nazi security agency. Now this probably seemed like small beer—bureaucratic minutiae. But the very next day Alexander learned that the Allies had just unearthed in a cave in Austria the secret archives of Heinrich Himmler, longtime head of the SS. Determined to hunt down every lead, Alexander made another long journey in mid-June to the Army Document Center near Heidelberg, which had assumed control of the archives.

It was a bonanza. Himmler was a packrat, obsessively preserving every scrap of paper that passed through his hands, and he’d annotated many of these documents with his signature green pencil. It took some digging, but around June 18 Alexander finally broke the seal on a packet blandly named “Case No. 707.” These papers would lead him down a path he would later compare to a dark German fairy tale, a land where “it sometimes seems as if the Nazis had taken special pains in making practically every nightmare come true.”

The archives confirmed that Rascher was every bit as nasty as his colleagues claimed. He had long wanted to experiment on human beings, but air force officials wouldn’t let him. So Rascher turned to the SS. His wife, Nini, was a former SS secretary and had close ties to Himmler—so much so that it was rumored Himmler had fathered the Raschers’ first child. Rascher nevertheless exploited his connection to Himmler to win permission for his research. And amid Himmler’s papers Alexander finally found proof that Rascher had performed hypothermia experiments on dozens if not hundreds of male concentration-camp inmates.

But the archives also confirmed Alexander’s suspicions that Rascher had not acted alone. The doctor had assistants and colleagues, collaborators and coauthors, all of whom helped run his experiments. Even Rascher’s wife took part, snapping autopsy photos of the victims’ hearts and lungs to document physiological changes.

(In retrospect the interviews in which the Germans blamed Rascher alone for the research sound suspiciously choreographed. The Germans could hardly deny that atrocities had taken place, but they apparently decided to heap the responsibility onto a single scapegoat to spare their colleagues—and themselves.)

Armed at last with hard evidence—and running out of time—Alexander hurried to confront some of the scientists who had lied to him. In Munich he also tracked down former Dachau inmates, who gave him more clues about what to look for in Himmler’s archives. Based on this information Alexander raced back to the document center to dig further. He put in hundreds of miles shuttling back and forth those last few weeks, piecing together what had happened inside the camp.

It was a ghastly picture. The hypothermia work began in Dachau in August 1942 at the now-notorious Cell Block 5. Day after day Rascher and his crew would immerse the “human material” in six-by-six-foot basins of ice water chilled as low as 36°F. A few (relatively) lucky prisoners were clad in protective underclothing treated with a special chemical—a “wood-cellulose fiber impregnated with peroxide”—that reacted with seawater to produce an insulating foam. It was reportedly quite good at preserving warmth. Most prisoners, however, wore plain, untreated military uniforms that offered little protection. Humiliatingly, a few prisoners were immersed naked.

The ice water relentlessly wicked away the men’s body heat. As it did so, Rascher catalogued their decline in nauseating detail, using results from rectal thermometers, spinal taps, and blood and urine samples. He tried taking their pulse and blood pressure, too, but the men were usually too stiff and shivering too violently to get a reading.

As their body temperature sank degree by agonizing degree, Rascher charted how their blood thickened, their spinal pressure increased, and their hearts slowed down. Some people foamed at the mouth, and their faces turned a “cyanotic” blue.

As a psychiatrist Alexander took special note of how the inmates had been broken mentally. Most hopped into the vats without any protest, even when naked; one witness marveled at their “marionette-like behavior.” After submersion, however, their sense of indifference vanished. Rascher complained about how they would “bellow” like animals; some begged to be shot.

When the victims’ core temperatures dropped to around 88°F—10 degrees below normal—their pupils would dilate, and they would lose consciousness. Death occurred at around 77°F. Alexander deemed one chart in the archives, which plotted the time to death in a subset of patients, “the briefest and most laconic confession of 7 murders in existence.”

Not everyone died in the ice baths, though. Sometimes Rascher would pluck a victim out and attempt to revive him. Different rewarming methods included hot-water baths, heated blankets, schnapps, vigorous massages, light-bulb cradles (tanning beds, essentially), and drugs that induced seizures. A few bewildered fellows were even dropped into bed with a pair of prostitutes. Despite these efforts many men were too far gone to save. Their core temperatures continued to sink even outside the water until they eventually succumbed. No one knows how many victims died from this group of experiments, but estimates range as high as 90 people.

Nor were these the only atrocities. Alexander discovered that Rascher and his colleagues had exposed prisoners to fatally low air pressures to simulate cockpit conditions at high altitude. Rascher also ran tests on potential blood coagulators, and whenever he needed a fresh vial, he’d simply shoot someone in the abdomen. Other doctors forced Dachau prisoners to chug salt water for days, or exposed them to nerve gas, or gashed their legs open and ground wood fragments and glass and bacteria into the wounds to simulate battlefield injuries. Still other doctors managed widespread sterilization programs to prevent the “unfit” from breeding. Far from acting alone, Alexander found, Rascher was immersed in a web of vile medical research.

At the end of June, Alexander was summoned back to London to deliver his findings. By July 10 he had banged out a 228-page report on Rascher and the hypothermia research. He eventually churned out 1,500 pages of reports to help American lawyers prosecute war crimes at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial in 1946 and 1947. The case seemed straightforward: German doctors had done unspeakably heinous things and deserved punishment. Stunningly, however, most of Alexander’s efforts came to naught.

Some high-level German doctors were convicted. But despite Alexander’s reports two of the doctors he exposed were acquitted at Nuremberg, and others never faced trial at all. The defense pointed out that no international laws or codes of conduct governed scientific research during the war. What’s more, the experiments were fully legal under German law. (Unlike monkeys, dogs, and horses, Jews and prisoners under the Third Reich enjoyed zero legal protection when it came to medical research.) The scientists argued that the prisoners were scheduled to die anyway, by gassing or another means. So according to their warped logic, the scientists had a free pass to experiment on such people since the outcome—death—was the same either way.

Worse still, some Nazi doctors who supervised experiments on inmates were invited to the United States and handed plum research contracts through a secret military recruitment program called Operation Paperclip. The reason was simple if cynical: American officials valued the doctors’ expertise for assistance in the looming Cold War with the Soviets and were therefore willing to ignore their grisly past.

One of the few doctors who did face justice was Sigmund Rascher, albeit in a twisted way. As Alexander learned in his research, Rascher and his wife were executed by Heinrich Himmler for three reasons.

First, they were caught trying to scam Himmler. After Nini Rascher suffered a miscarriage in the early 1940s, she feared she would be branded “biologically inferior” by Nazi officials. More crassly, she also had hoped Himmler would celebrate the new child with gifts, as he had after the birth of their second child. So she took a baby from a Dachau prisoner and passed it off as her own. Himmler eventually found out and was furious.

Second, Rascher pulled a scam of his own involving antibiotics. While the Allies had access to penicillin during the war, the Germans did not and were offering prizes to anyone who could develop a substitute. Rascher claimed to have found one he called polygal, and he tested it at Dachau with supposedly miraculous results. In reality he had rigged the tests. He started with a control group of prisoners, injecting a festering pus deep inside their legs and letting them languish. But in the group he treated with polygal, he injected the pus much closer to the surface and in much smaller amounts. Little wonder they fared better. (Polygal wasn’t even viable medicine anyway. Sources differ, but Rascher’s phony drug was either saline with fluorescent dye in it or processed beet and apple pectin.) Colleagues suspicious of Rascher’s results soon exposed him as a fraud to SS authorities.

Third, and perhaps most damning, Himmler knew Rascher was running barbaric medical experiments, and given Rascher’s boastful nature Himmler feared the consequences if Germany lost the war and word got out. So in May 1944, after Rascher’s experiments wrapped up, Himmler stripped him of his SS rank and fittingly enough imprisoned him and Nini in Dachau. They were shot in April 1945, two weeks before American troops liberated the camp.

If not for Alexander, Himmler’s efforts to conceal these atrocities might have worked. Imagine a world where murderous Nazi doctors got away with everything—their atrocities unexposed, their reputations unscathed. It seems outrageous, yet it could have happened if not for Alexander’s dogged efforts. And despite the fact that several Nazi researchers escaped punishment at Nuremberg, Alexander ensured they wouldn’t escape the judgment of history.

Equally important, Alexander helped curb future abuse. Again, several German defendants at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial argued that what they’d done wasn’t illegal, in part because no international regulations governed medical experiments. Disturbed by this gap, Alexander submitted a memo to Allied prosecutors outlining several principles behind ethically sound research, including patient consent. That memo formed the basis of the 1947 Nuremberg Code that now governs work on human subjects around the globe.

After the trial Alexander returned to Boston to resume his medical practice, but he never could escape the macabre. After hearing about 40 Polish concentration-camp inmates who’d been crippled by Josef Mengele’s medical experiments, he arranged for them to travel to the United States for corrective surgery. And in the early 1960s he consulted with local police to help solve the infamous Boston Strangler serial-killer case. He died of cancer in 1985.

Postwar colleagues knew Alexander best for his work on the root causes of neurodegenerative ailments, such as Parkinson’s disease and especially multiple sclerosis. Still, there’s no question that his most enduring contribution to medicine remains the Nuremberg Code, a guide for all research on human subjects and a milestone in the history of medical ethics. Few people today know of the man behind the code—much less the story of how his disappointment and frustration inspired it. Although Alexander couldn’t ensure justice in his own time, he at least helped secure the rights of those who came after.

Sam Kean is a best-selling science author. His latest book is  The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science .

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Salt Water Density Experiment

Introduction: Salt Water Density Experiment

Step 1: Materials

Step 2: Procedure

Step 3: Additional Ideas and Resources

Extension/Modification Ideas:

• Use a triple beam balance of electronic scale to teach or practice that skill
• Use hot and cold water instead.
• Compare salt and fresh water and connect with the environment.
• Have older students teach this to younger students.
• Use other liquids to make density columns. (Water, oil, alcohol, etc.)
• Make a much larger one as part of a science night.
• Let students try making different density salt solutions and try to figure out which ones work the best and how that relates to density.

Other Density Demos:

• Egg in salt water or tap water
• Ice in water or rubbing alcohol

Attachment: I attached a Word document that is a template for a guided lab report that you feel free to modify and use. Other Ideas and Resources: These are just some ideas and alternate extensions. Some additional references will many different versions of this same idea: DENSITY: SALTWATER COLUMN LAB TEACHER PREPARATION Explains a different way to prepare solutions and some "discussion" questions as a worksheet for students Liquid Rainbow Written from the standpoint of ocean science for elementary school. Contains a lot of "teacher lingo" (e.g. key concepts, big idea, objectives, etc.) GEMS: Discovering Density book This book costs $18, but I think is where I first saw the idea for this lab. The handouts are free online in Spanish. So that might make this a cool activity to do with students learning Spanish too! Steve Spangler 7-Layer Density Column This link provides a video showing a different density experiment with different types of liquids to see how their relative densities are different. They do use the word "heavier" instead of density. He uses a slightly different way of layering. NOAA Lesson Plan: Hot, Cold, Fresh and Salty Another Earth Science/Oceans connection. This lesson plan gives ideas about having students compare hot and cold water and fresh and salty water. These are extensions that would be great to add to a simpler lesson like the one I posted.

Step 4: Real World Connection

In research labs, human blood is carefully pipetted to form a layer on top of a substance called Ficoll-Paque (made by GE). When this tube is centrifuged, the red blood cells (the most dense) go to the bottom, the Ficoll is (the next most dense), then the white blood cells, and finally the plasma (the least dense). Labs use this technique to isolate different parts of the blood. For instance, if you want to isolate the white blood cells, you can remove the plasma layer (yellow) and then gently extract the thin cloudy white layer that contains the white blood cells. Wikipedia's Ficoll-Paque Article This page describes the basics of Ficoll Ficoll-Paque PLUS Manufacturer's Description A short paragraph from the manufactures that uses the word density multiple times Ficoll-Paque Instructional Video This video shows the layering of blood on top of the Ficoll very slowly and gently and the final layers that form

Step 5: Graphic Organizer Word Document

Someone let me know the Word document does not open currently. I tried uploading another version but it also says forbidden. Message me and I can try to send it to you.