Medicine Without Humanity – Chemical Warfare Agents Tests on Concentration Camps in Germany in 1933–1945

Abstract

The publication presents documents related to the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial ("United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al."), Held in Nuremberg from December 9, 1946 to August 20, 1947. Documents are kept in the library of Harvard Law School (Harvard Law School , Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). From the testimony of witnesses and the accused, it follows that in Germany, after the withdrawal from the Treaty of Versailles and the transition of military chemical research under the control of military structures and the SS, and especially during the Second World War, research on chemical warfare agents (CWA) went beyond scientific and industrial laboratories. , university and academic structures, and moved to concentration camps, where doctors from the SS performed experiments on prisoners. The goals and objectives of these tests are shown - the physiological and toxicological properties of CWA were studied. Plans for offensive chemical warfare in Germany were not systematically developed, considering their chemical weapons as a means of retaliatory use. However, the possibility of such a war was taken seriously. In addition, doctors were looking for the most effective means and treatment regimens for lesions caused by the use of BWA by a potential enemy, as well as dangerous, especially dangerous and widespread diseases. The documents show how important this research was. They were watched at the highest level, the test programs were coordinated with the SS Reichsfuehrer G. Himmler, A. Hitler was personally interested in them. At the same time, the documents show the barbaric methods of carrying out these tests, for which the doctors and leaders of medicine in Germany in the 1930-1940s. were convicted by tribunals for war crimes and crimes against humanity (“atrocities and hostile acts, including (but not limited to): murder, extermination, enslavement, expulsion, imprisonment, torture, rape or other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population, persecution on political, racial or religious grounds, regardless of whether these crimes were committed in violation of the laws of the country or not ”), and by the scientific community - for gross violations of medical and scientific ethics. Although at one time it was Germany (Prussia) at the end of the nineteenth century. was the first European country where, long before the Nuremberg Code of 1947, at the levels of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, they began to raise and decide the need to obtain informed consent of the patient for medical intervention, and also unconditionally prohibit experimental research with any purpose in humans without them consent. With this publication we open a series of materials and articles on chemical weapons in Germany in 1933-1945. Not Germany to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons.