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Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 10, 2020
Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes by Alexander Mitscherlich, the head of the German Medical Commission to Military Tribunal, is unlike other Holocaust books on this topic in that it used transcripts and documents from the Nuremberg Medical Trials held after the conclusion of the war. It also includes correspondence and orders sent between various doctors that were put on trial and high-ranking Nazi party officials all the way up to and including Hitler authorizing medical experiments on inmates of the concentration camps; many of these ended in death of the participants. The author uses the information uncovered to bring about a discussion of medical ethics versus political loyalties. It was also noted that the results of all the experiments performed on unwilling prisoners, in the end, did not even contribute anything useful and just resulted in pain, injury, and death. The book is broken into sections for statements by some of the doctors and experiments grouped into High Altitude Rescue, Sustained Low Temperature, making sea water potable, Typhus and Infectious Jaundice, Bone Grafting and Mustard Gas, Jewish Skull Collections, Euthanasia and sterilization. Of 23 defendants on trial, 7 were sentenced to death and hanged, many were given prison terms, and some were found not guilty. The tone of the book is rather clinical, yet shocking, and loaded with actual transcripted materials that treat the subjects in a business as usual sort of way.
April 16, 2021
Informative
Not really a book. Its just a collection of docs, testimonies, and statements which in themselves are very powerful.
Its a depressing insight into an unimaginable world. Just shows you that people can convince themselves that the most unspeakable horrors are perfectly justified.
However, the question is, how is it that they weren’t emotionally moved in the midst of performing evil acts even if intellectually they were justified in their minds? At the end of the day when there is burning flesh, murder, skulls, screaming, and pain all around how is it that you don’t begin to wonder about the sinister facet of your actions?
Not really a book. Its just a collection of docs, testimonies, and statements which in themselves are very powerful.
Its a depressing insight into an unimaginable world. Just shows you that people can convince themselves that the most unspeakable horrors are perfectly justified.
However, the question is, how is it that they weren’t emotionally moved in the midst of performing evil acts even if intellectually they were justified in their minds? At the end of the day when there is burning flesh, murder, skulls, screaming, and pain all around how is it that you don’t begin to wonder about the sinister facet of your actions?
January 26, 2025
The experiments conducted by the Nazi doctors were truly horrifying to read about. Just when you think you’ve read the worst of the worst about it, I continue to read things that are unbelievably even more cruel and terrible.. cellulitis experiments and euthanasia programs were especially terrifying, and I can’t stop thinking about the poor souls who were involuntarily drafted as test subjects.
Cellulitis experiments:
November 11 1942: patient received an injection of 1 cc pus in which numerous streptococci chains had been observed under the microscope.
November 19 1942: Tapping the inside of the left thigh yielded fourteen cc of creamy pus, of which three cc was at once injected intravenously into the patient's right arm.
The euthanasia program:
“At the time Hitler ordered me to look into… the case of a child that had been born blind, that appeared to be an imbecile, and that in addition lacked a leg and part of one arm . . . The physicians were of the opinion that it was not really justifiable to keep such a child alive. It was pointed out as quite natural that under certain circumstances physicians in lying-in hospitals administer euthanasia on their own initiative…”
“...When the patients had arrived at Grafeneck… It was up to these two physicians to say the final word on whether a patient was to be gassed or not… In most cases the patients were killed within twenty-four hours of arriving at Grafeneck… Idiot children between the ages of six and thirteen were also included in the program.”
Cellulitis experiments:
November 11 1942: patient received an injection of 1 cc pus in which numerous streptococci chains had been observed under the microscope.
November 19 1942: Tapping the inside of the left thigh yielded fourteen cc of creamy pus, of which three cc was at once injected intravenously into the patient's right arm.
The euthanasia program:
“At the time Hitler ordered me to look into… the case of a child that had been born blind, that appeared to be an imbecile, and that in addition lacked a leg and part of one arm . . . The physicians were of the opinion that it was not really justifiable to keep such a child alive. It was pointed out as quite natural that under certain circumstances physicians in lying-in hospitals administer euthanasia on their own initiative…”
“...When the patients had arrived at Grafeneck… It was up to these two physicians to say the final word on whether a patient was to be gassed or not… In most cases the patients were killed within twenty-four hours of arriving at Grafeneck… Idiot children between the ages of six and thirteen were also included in the program.”
March 12, 2024
A SOLEMN REPORT ON THE PURPORTED ‘MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS’ OF THE NAZIS
The back cover of the English translation of this 1947 book says of the author, “Dr. Alexander Mitscherlich first won Nazi enmity for keeping ‘illegal literature’ in his Berlin bookshop in 1932. He fled to Switzerland where he studied medicine. When he returned secretly in 1937 to aid other anti-Nazis, he was seized and jailed for eight months in a Gestapo prison in Nuremberg. He was released with the understanding that he would report regularly to the Gestapo. He practiced as a neurologist in Heidelberg for seven years… when he was appointed head of that department at the University of Heidelberg. There he now teaches internal medicine and psychotherapy.”
An introductory statement by Dr. Andrew C. Ivy says, “From the time I learned that the ethics of medicine were indeed violated by the Nazi physicians… I have on every opportunity sounded the warning that there appears to be no bottom to the pit of spiritual and moral iniquity into which the ideology of fascism insidiously leads… I believe it is important for the medical profession to be aware that this Nazi infamy was not merely the infamy of a few crazed, psychologically twisted practitioners. It appears that fewer than two hundred German physicians participated directly in the medical war crimes… several hundred more were aware of what was going on.” (Pg. x)
A U.S. Army Brigadier General says of the judgment of the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, “Many of the concentration camp inmates who were the victims of these atrocities were citizens of countries other than the German Reich. They were… both prisoners of war and civilians, who had been imprisoned and forced to submit to these tortures and barbarities without such much as a semblance of trial… subjects were used who did not consent to the experiments… In no case was the experimental subject at liberty of his own free choice to withdraw from any experiment. In many cases experiments were performed by unqualified persons; were conducted at random for no adequate scientific reason, and under revolting physical conditions… very little, if any, precautions were taken to protect or safeguard the human subjects from the possibilities of injury, disability, and death… in most of them they suffered permanent injury, mutilation, or death, either as a direct result of the experiments or because of lack of adequate follow-up care.” (Pg. xxv)
Psychiatrist Leo Alexander notes, “It is surprising how early the practice of exterminating the physically or socially unfit was openly accepted… Nothing was said … as to whether these patients or their next of kin for them volunteered for these experiments… The experiments … were motivated by sinister, practical, ulterior political and personal purposes, arising out of the requirements and problems in the administration of totalitarian rule. A good example are Professor Gebhardt’s sulfonamide experiments. Why did he conduct such experiments?... [He] performed these experiments in order to clear himself of the suspicion that he had contributed to the death of SS General Reinhard Heydrich… This method of making suspects of disloyalty clear themselves by participation in a crime which definitely and irrevocably tied them to the organization was consciously and methodically used in the SS.” (Pg. xxxi-xxxii)
Albert Deutsch summarizes, “The Nazi doctors who tortured concentration camp prisoners to death in their experimental laboratories made a signal contribution to the evolution of medical ethics in the civilized world. They produced not a single new cure, nor did a single important medical discovery result from the experiments performed on their human guinea pigs, but, thanks to their labors, the 2000-year old Hippocratic Oath has been changed for the first time.” (Pg. xxxvii)
Dr. Mitscherlich explains, “Among the human experiments charged … the following form a closely related group: 1. High altitude rescue experiments; 2. Experiments with sustained low temperature; 3. Experiments in making sea water potable. They were all conducted on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, and their sole purpose was to close gaps in the knowledge of warfare.” (Pg. 4)
A woman named Jadwiga Dzido reported, “In the year 1942 there was hunger and terror in the camp. The Germans were at the zenith of their power… Every day we were told that we were nothing but numbers, that we must forget we were human beings or still had anybody who thought of us, that we would never see our country again, that we were slaves, and that all we had to do was work. We were not permitted to smile, weep, or pray. We were not permitted to defend ourselves when we were beaten. And there was no hope of seeing my home again.’ (Pg. 59-60)
A ’Dr. Sonntag’ testified, “There was never any mention of payment for the prisoners. Natzweiler seems to want make as much money as possible on the affair. After all, we were not conducting these tests for the sake of some scientific notion, but to be of practical service to the troops, and beyond them, in case of need, to the whole German people.” (Pg, 77)
A Nazi commandant explained that if an inmate had failed to die from the gas, “I would have tried once again to suffocate them with gas, by throwing another dose of gas into the chamber. I had no feelings in carrying out these things, because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you. That, by the way, was the way I was trained.” (Pg. 86)
A 1941 letter to Heinrich Himmler explained, “The thought alone that the 3,000,000 Bolshevists presently in German hands could be sterilized, making them available as workers while excluding them from procreation, opens vast perspectives.” (Pg. 132)
A 1942 letter from Himmler’s personal adjutant reveals, “The Reich Leader SS emphasized to all the gentlemen concerned that these matters were top secret and could be discussed only internally, all persons consulted in the experiments or discussions being pledged to secrecy.” (Pg 145)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the ‘medical experiments’ of the Nazis.
The back cover of the English translation of this 1947 book says of the author, “Dr. Alexander Mitscherlich first won Nazi enmity for keeping ‘illegal literature’ in his Berlin bookshop in 1932. He fled to Switzerland where he studied medicine. When he returned secretly in 1937 to aid other anti-Nazis, he was seized and jailed for eight months in a Gestapo prison in Nuremberg. He was released with the understanding that he would report regularly to the Gestapo. He practiced as a neurologist in Heidelberg for seven years… when he was appointed head of that department at the University of Heidelberg. There he now teaches internal medicine and psychotherapy.”
An introductory statement by Dr. Andrew C. Ivy says, “From the time I learned that the ethics of medicine were indeed violated by the Nazi physicians… I have on every opportunity sounded the warning that there appears to be no bottom to the pit of spiritual and moral iniquity into which the ideology of fascism insidiously leads… I believe it is important for the medical profession to be aware that this Nazi infamy was not merely the infamy of a few crazed, psychologically twisted practitioners. It appears that fewer than two hundred German physicians participated directly in the medical war crimes… several hundred more were aware of what was going on.” (Pg. x)
A U.S. Army Brigadier General says of the judgment of the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, “Many of the concentration camp inmates who were the victims of these atrocities were citizens of countries other than the German Reich. They were… both prisoners of war and civilians, who had been imprisoned and forced to submit to these tortures and barbarities without such much as a semblance of trial… subjects were used who did not consent to the experiments… In no case was the experimental subject at liberty of his own free choice to withdraw from any experiment. In many cases experiments were performed by unqualified persons; were conducted at random for no adequate scientific reason, and under revolting physical conditions… very little, if any, precautions were taken to protect or safeguard the human subjects from the possibilities of injury, disability, and death… in most of them they suffered permanent injury, mutilation, or death, either as a direct result of the experiments or because of lack of adequate follow-up care.” (Pg. xxv)
Psychiatrist Leo Alexander notes, “It is surprising how early the practice of exterminating the physically or socially unfit was openly accepted… Nothing was said … as to whether these patients or their next of kin for them volunteered for these experiments… The experiments … were motivated by sinister, practical, ulterior political and personal purposes, arising out of the requirements and problems in the administration of totalitarian rule. A good example are Professor Gebhardt’s sulfonamide experiments. Why did he conduct such experiments?... [He] performed these experiments in order to clear himself of the suspicion that he had contributed to the death of SS General Reinhard Heydrich… This method of making suspects of disloyalty clear themselves by participation in a crime which definitely and irrevocably tied them to the organization was consciously and methodically used in the SS.” (Pg. xxxi-xxxii)
Albert Deutsch summarizes, “The Nazi doctors who tortured concentration camp prisoners to death in their experimental laboratories made a signal contribution to the evolution of medical ethics in the civilized world. They produced not a single new cure, nor did a single important medical discovery result from the experiments performed on their human guinea pigs, but, thanks to their labors, the 2000-year old Hippocratic Oath has been changed for the first time.” (Pg. xxxvii)
Dr. Mitscherlich explains, “Among the human experiments charged … the following form a closely related group: 1. High altitude rescue experiments; 2. Experiments with sustained low temperature; 3. Experiments in making sea water potable. They were all conducted on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, and their sole purpose was to close gaps in the knowledge of warfare.” (Pg. 4)
A woman named Jadwiga Dzido reported, “In the year 1942 there was hunger and terror in the camp. The Germans were at the zenith of their power… Every day we were told that we were nothing but numbers, that we must forget we were human beings or still had anybody who thought of us, that we would never see our country again, that we were slaves, and that all we had to do was work. We were not permitted to smile, weep, or pray. We were not permitted to defend ourselves when we were beaten. And there was no hope of seeing my home again.’ (Pg. 59-60)
A ’Dr. Sonntag’ testified, “There was never any mention of payment for the prisoners. Natzweiler seems to want make as much money as possible on the affair. After all, we were not conducting these tests for the sake of some scientific notion, but to be of practical service to the troops, and beyond them, in case of need, to the whole German people.” (Pg, 77)
A Nazi commandant explained that if an inmate had failed to die from the gas, “I would have tried once again to suffocate them with gas, by throwing another dose of gas into the chamber. I had no feelings in carrying out these things, because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you. That, by the way, was the way I was trained.” (Pg. 86)
A 1941 letter to Heinrich Himmler explained, “The thought alone that the 3,000,000 Bolshevists presently in German hands could be sterilized, making them available as workers while excluding them from procreation, opens vast perspectives.” (Pg. 132)
A 1942 letter from Himmler’s personal adjutant reveals, “The Reich Leader SS emphasized to all the gentlemen concerned that these matters were top secret and could be discussed only internally, all persons consulted in the experiments or discussions being pledged to secrecy.” (Pg 145)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the ‘medical experiments’ of the Nazis.
August 8, 2016
Less a book than a compilation of documents from the Nuremberg Medical Trials, collected and edited for publication by the German Medical Association shortly after the trials. Worth reading for the foreword and afterword alone, which discuss medical ethics and authoritarianism.
April 17, 2017
I read the English translation 'Doctors of Death'. Mostly made up of letters between Doctors, administrators and SS leaders particularly Himmler. Compelling all the way through and it presents each set of experiments (i.e. 'super cooling experiments', 'sulphonamide experiments' et c.) as individual chapters usually centered around the activities and trial of one or a handful of Nazi doctors. There are sections (of varying length) that explore the legal and philosophical aspects of the cases. It general takes an even handed tone toward the doctors and you can see that this was not a witch trial but a genuine consideration of what is permissible in medical experimentation.
I found the translation to be easy to read. Some of the translated testimony came off as some what formal or dramatic but this didn't detract from the book. It was also very readable in general, and the legal and philosophical digressions were well framed and rarely boring.
I found the translation to be easy to read. Some of the translated testimony came off as some what formal or dramatic but this didn't detract from the book. It was also very readable in general, and the legal and philosophical digressions were well framed and rarely boring.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews