Crimes Against Humanity: Nazi Medicine

Prior to World War II the term ‘Crimes against Humanity” was a phrase not often used. When Germany surrendered in 1945 to the allied powers the world was flashed a view from life inside the Third Reich, which was not the utopia it was made out to be. Genocides against gypsies, the mentally unstable, and mostly the Jews were discovered throughout the German state in many concentration camps. The most chilling discovering was those who were responsible, not only Nazi leaders but Medical Doctors. German Doctors were involved in every step that led to mass extermination and many even experimented on inmates in the most inhumane ways possible. The Medical Doctors would eventually be held responsible for their involvement at the Nuremberg trails where their crimes were revealed to the world. With the end of WWII the people responsible had to be tried for their many atrocities. It is to this day the most destructive conflict in History. As time progressed information regarding hidden Nazi policies were being uncovered, the biggest example of this is the Holocaust. Within in these internment camps Medical experiments were done in which the Hippocratic Code was completely ignored. The Nazi belief of a superior race degraded the lives of the people within these camps to being equivalent to less-than-human. This led to a lack of qualm in relation to ethics and the experiments performed. The people involved with these medical experiments would be tried in the Nuremberg Medical trials. The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials that the leaders of the Nazi State were put in front of a panel of judges to answer to crimes that were committed. The trial was unlike the previous trails because the Medical Doctors presence at the Concentration camps across Germany was often noted. The evidence of their crimes was effortlessly available due to the nature of them: experimentation. Medical research is not performed without extensive

Bibliography: George Annas & Michael Grodin, The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation (Oxford University Press, 1992) Naomi Baumslag, Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus (London: Praeger, 2005) Robert J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Book 1986) John Michalcyzk, In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine. Directed by John Michalczyk, (1997; Baseline), DVD Nathan Stolfus, Nazi Germany Lecture Radicalization: Program & Euthanasia. Spring 2013