Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IVarious
Philosophy
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume I
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
“The second point of advice is to use utmost restraint, at least
until the political atmosphere here in this country shall have
improved, and scientific theories concerning heredity and race
can no longer be abused for political purposes. Because, if the
discussion about sterilization today is carried into the arena
of political contest, then pretty soon we will no longer hear
about the mentally sick but, instead, about Aryans and
non-Aryans, about the blonde Germanic race and about inferior
people with round skulls. That anything useful could come from
that is certainly improbable; but science in general and
genealogy and eugenics in particular would suffer an injury
which could not easily be repaired again.”
I said at the outset of this statement that the Third Reich died of its
own poison. This case is a striking demonstration not only of the
tremendous degradation of German medical ethics which Nazi doctrine
brought about, but of the undermining of the medical art and thwarting
of the techniques which the defendants sought to employ. The Nazis have,
to a certain extent, succeeded in convincing the peoples of the world
that the Nazi system, although ruthless, was absolutely efficient; that
although savage, it was completely scientific; that although entirely
devoid of humanity, it was highly systematic—that “it got things done.”
The evidence which this Tribunal will hear will explode this myth. The
Nazi methods of investigation were inefficient and unscientific, and
their techniques of research were unsystematic.
These experiments revealed nothing which civilized medicine can use. It
was, indeed, ascertained that phenol or gasoline injected intravenously
will kill a man inexpensively and within 60 seconds. This and a few
other “advances” are all in the field of thanatology. There is no doubt
that a number of these new methods may be useful to criminals everywhere
and there is no doubt that they may be useful to a criminal state.
Certain advance in destructive methodology we cannot deny, and indeed
from Himmler’s standpoint this may well have been the principal
objective.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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