The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945

by Richard J. Evans

Nobody forced medical scientists to do this work; on the contrary, they took part in it willingly or even asked to do so. That this was so should not be surprising: for some years, doctors had been among the most committed supporters of the Nazi cause.206 From their point of view, the inmates of concentration camps were all either racially inferior subhumans or vicious criminals or traitors to the German cause or more than one of these at the same time. Whatever they were, they seemed to Nazi doctors – two-thirds of the medical profession in the Third Reich – to have no right to life or well-being, and were thus obvious subjects for medical experimentation that could, indeed in many cases quite clearly would, cause pain, suffering, illness and death.