A Brief History
On this date, December 9, 1946, the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” began with the “Doctors’ Trial,” prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
Digging Deeper
As if shooting and blowing people up is not bad enough, the Nazis of Germany’s World War II regime took the horror of war a step further! Digging deeper, we find on this date in 1946 the start of 23 trials at Nuremberg of 20 doctors and 3 Nazi officials for war crimes concerning the cruel use of “medical research.”
The bizarre excuse for what passed for research included experiments with various poisons to be used in extermination camps or as weapons, starvation, how long it takes people to die from hypothermia in various conditions, the progression of disease intentionally given to people, organ and limb transplant surgery, reactions to torture, and methods of sterilization of people the Nazis considered subhuman. Aside from Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and mentally or physically handicapped people, more or less anyone who was opposed to the Nazi state was considered fair game as a human guinea pig! These subjects were usually left dead and discarded, or at the least were maimed for life.
Perhaps the most famous of these evil doctors actually escaped trial with the others by slipping off to South America at the end of the war. Joseph Mengele (played by Gregory Peck in the film Boys From Brazil) was an SS doctor at the Auschwitz death camp and evaded capture until his death in 1979 in Brazil. He is considered the most evil doctor in history.
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Of the 23 men tried, 7 were acquitted, 7 were sentenced to death by hanging, and the remainder received prison sentences for as little as 10 years or as much as life. The condemned men were hanged in June of 1948. Thus closed one of the truly sad chapters in the history of man’s cruelty to other men.
Question for students (and subscribers): When, if ever, is human experimentation acceptable? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information on this infamous trial, see…
Annas, George J. and Michael A. Grodin. The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Schmidt, U. Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial (St Antony’s Series). Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
The featured image in this article, a photograph showing when a sentence of death by hanging is pronounced by a US War Crimes Tribunal upon Adolf Hitler’s personal doctor, 43-year-old Karl Brandt, is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. Brandt, who was also Reich Commissar for Health and Sanitation, was indicted by the U.S. prosecution with 22 other Nazi doctors and SS officers on war crimes charges in the first case of alleged criminals tried after the judgment in the International Military Tribunal. The Tribunal found him guilty on all four counts charging him with conspiracy in aggressive wars, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in the criminal SS organization. Among those criminal acts was his participating in and consenting to using concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs in horrible medical experiments, supposedly for the benefit of the armed forces.
Brandt, who was executioner of thousands of political, racial, and religious persecutees, was hanged on June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison after the U.S. Military Commander Gen. Lucius D. Clay and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the Nuremberg Tribunal. In a long-winded speech that was finally muffled when the black hood was thrown over his head, Brandt shouted arrogantly, “It is no shame to stand on this scaffold; I have served my country as have others before me.”
Hitler was also once imprisoned here in 1923, following his unsuccessful Munich putsch. He wrote Mein Kampf during his confinement. [Original Descriptive Caption]. Date: 20 August 1947 Provenance: From Public Relations Photo Section, Office Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Germany, APO 696-A, US Army. Photo No. OMT-I-D-144. Citation: Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University Law School, New York, N.Y. : TTP-CLS: 15-1-1-76.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="821 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=821">36 Comments
The trials have ended but the war has not. It will never end until human beings are extinct. In fact, the war is growing hotter and bigger as I write.
Hard to believe that so few were found guilty
I don’t understand how someone can lose their empathy for other human beings. I don’t want to know their mindset.
It is shocking to me that people can be so cruel! — DAVID WARDLE
These doctors had to be insane mentally in order to do those things
People can be so cruel and heartless
When you view those in your charge as subhuman, it’s not a stretch to explain away anything you do to them.
Mengele did some horrific things. In Schindler’s List I remember the scene at Auschwitz in which the doctors chose whether or not the Jews were healthy enough or not to be workers.
It’s sickening to hear about what these doctors did
I have heard about the doctor trials before, but I did not know the “most evil doctor in history” managed to escape from the country and the trial! I also did not know the depth to which the doctors were testing; they were “researching,” but in reality it was the doctors trying to find ways to kill people in more intense and violent ways. How did some doctors get away with only 10 years in jail, yet some were hanged?!?!
This is a tough topic to talk about due to total devastation but it seems as the doctor trial is still brought up in history classes to provide a bit of closure that even those that didn’t live through it need
Doctor’s seem to crack when pressured with traumatic events around them. Sad to see.
you have to experience on something to test if it works. How else are they suppose to know it works.
The experiments these ‘doctors’ did is appalling! I know from previous classes and my own research that if twins were brought into concentration camps they were automatically used for medical research. It’s sad that these doctors let their power go to their heads and felt the need to play God.
I think they should of got a lot worse punishment for the ones that only got 10 years or less. I think they should of done to them as what they did to the people they worked on. It is sick what some people can do.
The things that these doctors did are messed up to say the least. It’s a shame that some of them managed to get away with it.
This is another example of how power and ego can lead to horrible consequences. It is hard to imagine this really happened.
JUst another example of bad people that got away with stuff
this is disturbing. human centipede like disturbing. they should have been condemned to death in the worst way possible.
People wonder to much about things and some just take to such a extreme level that it disturbs me. Treating people like science experiments just because they can is really messed up.
I knew about how the Nazi’s treated people so poorly and how they basically got away with it. It’s disgusting. Did anything even come front his “research”???
These men were sick murders not doctors or scientists
This was a disturbing part of the Nazi regime. Thankfully these “doctors” were tried at Nuremburg like other war criminals.
Gesh man if i could curse i would thats so cold hearted just treating people like animals!!!!
It sickens me that Joseph Mengele got away.
These people are just horrible that doctor may have gotten away on this earth but after he dies and has to answer for what he did there is no escape.
I feel that the “experiments” that were carried out on people were one of the worst parts of the war. I couldn’t imagine being tortured like these people were… The people behind these acts deserved the worst punishment available.
With government power, you can make anything possible and a secret. People are sickened by animals being used for research, they were using innocent human beings!
Those officials got what they deserved for what they did
I cant believe some of these “doctors” they’re horrible!’
i understand that they wanted to do more scientific experiments but not like this!
Didn’t realize how terrible Doctors could actually be??
This is the true definition of inhumanity. If only Joseph Mengele was captured and hanged for his crimes.
I wish Mengele and the rest of these sick people were treated exactly the way they had treated their “patients”.
It’s disgusting what German had those doctors do to those humans.
I just can’t believe doctors were actually doing these type of operations on these patients!