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    You are at:Home»Society»Crime»December 9, 1946: Nuremberg Nazi “Doctors” Trials
    Crime

    December 9, 1946: Nuremberg Nazi “Doctors” Trials

    Major DanBy Major DanDecember 9, 2013Updated:August 18, 202336 Comments5 Mins Read
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    Doctors' Trial

    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.”

    Karl Brandt (8 January 1904 – 2 June 1948) as a defendant at the Doctors’ Trial. Photograph by USHMM.

    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.

    Josef Mengele (16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979) pictured outside Auschwitz in 1944. Photograph by Karl-Friedrich Höcker.

    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.

    A cold water immersion experiment at Dachau concentration camp presided over by Ernst Holzlöhner (left) and Sigmund Rascher (right).  The subject is wearing an experimental Luftwaffe garment.  Taken from: Hanauske-Abel, Hartmut M. “Not a Slippery Slope or Sudden Subversion: German Medicine and National Socialism in 1933.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 313(7070): 1453-1463. 7 December 1996.  The photograph was published in “Human laboratory animals”. Life magazine, 22(8), 24 February 1947, pp. 81–84.

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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.

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    Major Dan

    Major Dan is a retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served during the Cold War and has traveled to many countries around the world. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Following his military service, he worked as a police officer eventually earning the rank of captain prior to his retirement.

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    <span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="821 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=821">36 Comments

    1. Cranky Steven on December 10, 2013 8:54 pm

      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.

      Reply
    2. Heather H on April 11, 2015 11:39 am

      Hard to believe that so few were found guilty

      Reply
    3. Natalie Sholtis on April 13, 2015 1:32 am

      I don’t understand how someone can lose their empathy for other human beings. I don’t want to know their mindset.

      Reply
    4. DAVID WARDLE on April 13, 2015 8:41 am

      It is shocking to me that people can be so cruel! — DAVID WARDLE

      Reply
    5. Mike Rinicella on April 15, 2015 8:46 pm

      These doctors had to be insane mentally in order to do those things

      Reply
    6. Samantha Easterling on April 17, 2015 12:49 pm

      People can be so cruel and heartless

      Reply
    7. Jake Woolf on April 22, 2015 8:20 pm

      When you view those in your charge as subhuman, it’s not a stretch to explain away anything you do to them.

      Reply
    8. Alex Guthrie on April 24, 2015 10:58 am

      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.

      Reply
    9. w.y. on May 3, 2015 3:31 pm

      It’s sickening to hear about what these doctors did

      Reply
    10. Kathryn Meyer on August 10, 2015 10:54 pm

      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?!?!

      Reply
    11. Matthew Grabowski on August 13, 2015 12:11 pm

      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

      Reply
    12. SK on December 10, 2015 6:22 pm

      Doctor’s seem to crack when pressured with traumatic events around them. Sad to see.

      Reply
    13. ryan c on March 14, 2016 11:07 am

      you have to experience on something to test if it works. How else are they suppose to know it works.

      Reply
    14. Sw on April 10, 2016 10:43 pm

      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.

      Reply
    15. kk on April 21, 2016 10:49 am

      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.

      Reply
    16. Kamarin R on May 6, 2016 1:27 pm

      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.

      Reply
    17. Andy frick on May 8, 2016 4:39 pm

      This is another example of how power and ego can lead to horrible consequences. It is hard to imagine this really happened.

      Reply
    18. Dakota A rinier on May 10, 2016 6:41 am

      JUst another example of bad people that got away with stuff

      Reply
    19. Matt Smail on May 11, 2016 8:38 am

      this is disturbing. human centipede like disturbing. they should have been condemned to death in the worst way possible.

      Reply
    20. Isaac Talley on May 11, 2016 1:39 pm

      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.

      Reply
    21. BV on May 12, 2016 12:02 am

      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”???

      Reply
    22. Loren deck on May 12, 2016 3:15 pm

      These men were sick murders not doctors or scientists

      Reply
    23. Nikos Nacopoulos on August 17, 2016 11:26 pm

      This was a disturbing part of the Nazi regime. Thankfully these “doctors” were tried at Nuremburg like other war criminals.

      Reply
    24. Montel Lollis on November 29, 2016 11:13 am

      Gesh man if i could curse i would thats so cold hearted just treating people like animals!!!!

      Reply
    25. Maxwell McCullough on November 30, 2016 12:15 pm

      It sickens me that Joseph Mengele got away.

      Reply
    26. Nicholas Hillyer on November 30, 2016 6:00 pm

      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.

      Reply
    27. Courtney G on December 5, 2016 10:48 am

      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.

      Reply
    28. Suzie M. Shaffer on December 7, 2016 10:13 pm

      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!

      Reply
    29. Drew N on December 8, 2016 2:27 pm

      Those officials got what they deserved for what they did

      Reply
    30. Jessica May on December 11, 2016 10:15 pm

      I cant believe some of these “doctors” they’re horrible!’

      Reply
    31. Drew N on December 16, 2016 9:08 am

      i understand that they wanted to do more scientific experiments but not like this!

      Reply
    32. Mackenzie H on February 17, 2017 10:07 pm

      Didn’t realize how terrible Doctors could actually be??

      Reply
    33. Michael Tovissi on April 12, 2017 11:38 am

      This is the true definition of inhumanity. If only Joseph Mengele was captured and hanged for his crimes.

      Reply
    34. Payton Brown on April 23, 2017 6:38 pm

      I wish Mengele and the rest of these sick people were treated exactly the way they had treated their “patients”.

      Reply
    35. Amanda Miller on April 27, 2017 4:24 pm

      It’s disgusting what German had those doctors do to those humans.

      Reply
    36. MIA on April 28, 2017 11:20 am

      I just can’t believe doctors were actually doing these type of operations on these patients!

      Reply

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