The Dark Legacy of Nazi Medical Experiments: What We Must Never Forget

Following the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party, medical atrocities, in the name of “humanity,” were conducted to eliminate people deemed unworthy of life by German physicians.

The impact of Nazi medical experiments and Holocaust medical experiments on modern ethics continues to raise questions that influence medicine and research today.

How is one who is trained to save lives willing to take one?

If there were still no rules and ethics guiding medical research ethics and human rights in research today, would these horrors recur?

It is crucial to instil the knowledge of these events in the hearts and minds of all, especially those who aim to become scientists and physicians.

From the 16th century, the idea that Jews were dangerous and should not be part of society became widespread.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution inspired later thinkers to apply it inappropriately to human societies, giving rise to Nazi eugenics — a concept formally developed by Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, who believed that humans could be improved by selectively breeding only “desirable” traits. ^[1][7]

After Germany’s defeat in WWI, Adolf Hitler’s hatred for Jews deepened. He vowed to annihilate them if he gained power.

Being the founder of the Nazi Party, he envisioned a Germany ruled by dictatorship, power, and racial purity to create the “Aryan race.”

During WWII, with the Nazis in power, the mission of creating a “supreme state” free of Jews, the mentally ill, and anyone deemed hereditarily “useless” proceeded through mass killings, concentration camp experiments, starvation, and Nazi human experimentation.

Medicine became a tool of violence, leading to what is known as the Holocaust.

Backed by antisemitism (strong hatred for Jews) and the racial hygiene ideology that many German physicians and scientists already embraced, Hitler’s plans were accepted.

Many scientists also saw this as an opportunity to advance research in biology, heredity, and anthropology. ^[1][8]

WWII camp experiments in Germany targeted three main areas: survival of military personnel, evaluation of medications and therapies, and promotion of racial pseudoscience and ideological goals.

These unethical medical research practices were conducted without consent and using inhumane methods. ^[2]

They included:

1. Hypothermia and High-Altitude Experiments

At Dachau concentration camp, victims were immersed in ice water (2–12°C) to study Nazi hypothermia experiments.

Some rewarming involved immersion in very hot or near-scalding water, sometimes described as “boiling” in testimonies.

Subjects were clothed or naked, conscious or anesthetized. Out of 280 to 300 victims in over 360 to 400 experiments, 80–90 died; only two survived the war, both with severe mental deficits. ^[3]

Sigmund Rascher, the lead investigator, also conducted Nazi high-altitude experiments using low-pressure cabins.

With the effects of high altitude and hypothermia, like mental disturbances, decreased oxygen, and irregular heartbeats, the victims would have experienced excruciating pain before death. ^[4]

2. Forced Sterilization Programs and Eugenics

With established racial beliefs, Nazi doctors accepted that impure races should be eliminated through sterilization, the surgical procedure that prevents childbearing.

Under the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Disease, between 1933 and 1939, approximately 360,000 “undesirable” people were sterilized.

This policy paved the way for lethal Nazi eugenics experiments and mass euthanasia (mercy killing). ^[4]

3. Twins’ Experimentation and Trauma-Based Studies

Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” selected prisoners for gas chambers and led twin experiments at Auschwitz to identify racial differences and preserve “German superiority.”

He drew large amounts of blood from twins, carefully recorded their body features, and then killed them for autopsies. His Twin studies were pseudoscientific and lacked scientific validity.

These Holocaust medical experiments left long-lasting trauma on survivors. ^[5]

Another survivor recalled:

“Mengele visited us like a good uncle… after injecting chemicals or performing surgery, he brought gifts… One day, my brother returned from experiments with his head bandaged. He died in my arms.”

Mengele also experimented on prisoners with anomalies such as club foot, gigantism, and dwarfism; all were later killed.

Other atrocities included: ^[4]

• Simulated war injuries and experimental treatments

• Surgery without anesthesia

• Deliberate infection with deadly diseases like malaria, typhus, syphilis, hepatitis, and tuberculosis

• Exposure to mustard gas, phosphorus burns, bone transplantation, and sulfanilamide tests

These Nazi medical experiments highlight the complexity of human nature, and how it is very possible to distance oneself entirely from another person's suffering.

These heinous medical crimes only ceased after WWII, when Germany lost again.

Following the war's aftermath, the atrocities became known to the world. This led to some of the doctors going on trial and being punished for their crimes, marking the start of Nazi medical war crimes trials. ^[6]

The popular Nuremberg trial of doctors led to the birth of the Nuremberg Code in 1947, a set of ethical principles emphasizing the need for voluntary consent, informed participation, and the right to withdraw from research at one's will.

This code became the basis for later modern bioethics guidelines for human study, such as the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report.

But changes in ethics happened slowly, and wrongdoings went on for decades in many parts of the world. ^[6]

Nazi human experimentation still affects study ethics, the law, and people's trust in science today.

Most people agree that these kinds of horrible crimes should never happen again, but there are different views on whether the results of these experiments, if scientifically valid, should be used. ^[9]

Some ethicists argue that such data is forever morally tainted and should be rejected entirely, while others contend that if the information could potentially save lives and there is no ethical way to reproduce it, it may be permissible to use with full acknowledgment of its origins.

This ongoing debate touches on the ethics of using Nazi research data and highlights the impact of Nazi medical experiments on medical ethics history and bioethics and informed consent. ^[9]

Nazi medical experiments were atrocities in medical history.

• They yielded the foundation for ethics and codes guiding medical practice and research, including bioethics and human rights principles.
  

• Laws and guidelines to keep medical practice in check have been put in place worldwide, but physicians, biomedical scientists, and scientists in training should always be made aware during medical education.
  

• This history should serve as a reminder that there could always be possibilities for such unethical medical research to occur.

1. Russell, Nestar. “The Nazi Regime—Ideology, Ascendancy, and Consensus.” In Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2: Milgram’s Obedience Experiments and the Holocaust, edited by Nestar Russell. Springer International Publishing, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1_2.
   

2. Holocaust Encyclopedia. “Nazi Medical Experiments.” Accessed August 11, 2025. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments.
   

3. Berger, Robert L. “Nazi Science — The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments.” New England Journal of Medicine 322, no. 20 (1990): 1435–40. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006.
   

4. De Leeuw, Daan. “‘In the Name of Humanity’: Nazi Doctors and Human Experiments in German Concentration Camps.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 34, no. 2 (2020): 225–52. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcaa025.
   

5. Holocaust Encyclopedia. “Josef Mengele.” Accessed August 11, 2025. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele.
   

6. Gaw, Allan. “Beyond Consent: The Potential for Atrocity.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99, no. 4 (2006): 175–77. https://doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.99.4.175.
   

7. Galton, Francis. Essays in Eugenics. London: The Eugenics Education Society, 1909.
   

8. Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.
   

9. Caplan, Arthur L. “How Did Medicine Go So Wrong?” The Lancet 364, no. 9438 (2004): 2167–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17594-0.

Reviewed by Dr. Sumbul, MD Anatomy

_MSM/SS