Between 1933 and 1945, in Germany, the German National Socialist Workers Party under Adolf Hitler was in power. During that period, in the context of the Second World War, a brutal repression was carried out against Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies.
The history of Nazism is widely known, but today we want to stop at a more particular aspect: experiments with humans.
During Nazism many doctors and scientists were involved in experiments carried out in the concentration camps. The truth is that, in the trials, only 15 of the 23 who participated in these terrible experiments with humans were considered guilty.
Freezing and hypothermia
The deaths and illnesses caused by the harsh winter that the military had to face on the Eastern Front led Nazi doctors and scientists to investigate in depth the health effects of extreme cold, freezing and hypothermia.
These experiments were conducted by Dr. Sigmund Rascher in the fields of Birkenau, Auschwitz and Dachau, and in 1942 he presented the results in a conference. In the first place you could see how long it took a body to freeze to death. In second place, strategies were investigated to revive it.
The victims - young Jews, mainly Russians - were put in ice-cold tubs or naked in the open in temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, with a rectal probe that measured their body temperature. Most research subjects died when they reached 25 degrees Celsius.
On the other hand, the experiments to resuscitate were also cruel and painful in those who were about to die. The resuscitation strategies were several: they were placed under ultraviolet lamps that burned the skin, they were irrigated with boiling water that generated blisters, they were put in tubs with hot water whose temperature was increasing, or they made a woman "hot" »The man having sex with him.
Genetic experiments
The Aryan race was the target of the Nazis: blond hair, blue eyes, supermen of a single race all over the world; those who did not fulfill these characteristics should be exterminated.
Dozens of medical investigations were conducted to analyze the "purity" of human races. The protagonist of many of these experiments was Dr. Rascher.
In the concentration camps, a large number of genetic experiments were carried out to improve the breed and understand its defects. Among the best known were Josef Mengele's experiments with gypsies and twins. Mengele, called "angel of death", selected his subjects as soon as they got off the train in the Auschwitz camp.
In the case of the twins, Mengele studied them for several days and after all the necessary tests he killed them with an injection of chloroform in the heart.
Other spooky studies conducted by the Nazis
In the concentration camps another type of evidence was also carried out with extreme violence: interrogations with torture, injections with virus of diseases, sterilization and experimentation of new surgeries.
For example, Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer injected tuberculosis-causing bacteria to prisoners in the Neungamme camp. They were also exposed to phosgene gas to find an antidote, since it had been used as a biological weapon in the war.
In many cases a prisoner was mutilated to transplant his limbs in another. The idea was to know if limbs could be transplanted, but it was done so cruelly that many people died, others were crippled and the experiment did not come to any good conclusion.
Another crazy idea was that of Hans Eppinger, who was looking for a way to make seawater drinkable. The Gypsies were deprived of food and fresh water and forced to drink only seawater, which is why many developed serious diseases.
Injection poisoning or food poisoning was common in concentration camps; as well as the artificial insemination of women, which they mocked by saying that they had injected animal sperm into them to create a monster.
These are just some of the worst Nazi experiments with humans, did you know about them?
We all know the tragic fate of the victims, subjects of these experiments, but what happened to their victimizers?
