In Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, Vivien Spitz writes:
Reich Leader SS Heinrich Himmler wrote to Dr. Sigmund Rascher on October 24, 1942, about doctors or assistants who openly refused on moral grounds to participate in human experimentation without the victims’ consent. He said, “I regard these people as guilty of treason and high treason, who, still today, reject these experiments on humans and would instead let sturdy German soldiers die as a result of these cooling methods.”
Jews are usually the first group to be thought of when one thinks of experiments on inmates of concentration camps, but that wasn’t the case here. Many of the human experiments were performed at Dachau, the concentration camp with the largest population of clergy; before the end of the war, 300 priests from Poland alone died as a result of these experiments.
Thus, when Himmler wrote the above, we shouldn’t imagine that he had “subhuman” Jews in mind; instead, he was thinking of people who were religious prisoners, political prisoners, union activists, or just regular criminals in some cases. They may have still be considered “human” unlike the Jews, but they were definitely “outsiders” as far as the German leaders were concerned and, in various ways, enemies of the German state, German society, and the German race.
Their being outsiders and enemies of some sort is thus the basis for Himmler’s insistence that it’s not only justified to perform experiments on them without their consent, but also that it’s treasonous for anyone to even object. The highest good is the safety of the German state and the German people; anything which enhances that safety is a good thing and if the good of the German people can be achieved while brutalizing outsiders, well that’s just all the better.
One might think that such attitudes are far removed from more enlightened societies of today, but they aren’t. Something very sinister and very similar can be found even in America when people excuse the brutalization of foreigners just on the off chance that denying them civil liberties, herding them into prison camps, and treating them inhumanely will somehow reduce the threat of terrorism.
Today the “enemies” aren’t priests, trade unionists, socialists, or Gypsies — they are suspected terrorists, Muslims, and anyone who is anti-American. The government doesn’t send doctors to perform experiments on them, it sends doctors to help soldiers or “contractors” torture them in order to obtain information. The goal isn’t to save “sturdy” soldiers who might be exposed to the cold, it’s to save Americans from an unknown attack that may or may not be coming, but we just can’t take the chance you know.
There will of course be objections to my attempt to draw a parallel between the attitudes of some Americans and the attitudes of high Nazi officials like Heinrich Himmler, but to me the parallel is obvious and unmistakable: both seek to justify the brutalization of others and the treatment of “outsiders” as meriting less humane standards in the expectation that maybe, possibly, “insiders” could be saved. If the comparison makes one uncomfortable, that should be taken as a reason to change Americans’ attitudes so that they don’t look so much like those of certain Nazis.
Consider this from Orac who was listening to “Chris” rant on a radio show about how it was OK to do “whatever it takes” to get information out of suspected terrorists:
Chris’s basic attitude was that it was OK to do “whatever it takes” to get information out of this suspect, whatever the Egyptians wanted to do. It’s well-known that Egypt has an authoritarian regime that is not averse to engaging in torture when it considers it in its interest to do so... Then, in order to see how far Chris thought we should be willing to go, the liberal half of the duo started asking him specifically what “whatever it takes meant” by using specific examples of torture techniques that Egypt has been accused of doing (paraphrased from memory):
After Chris had ranted a bit about how we have to do what it takes to get the information, the liberal half of the duo asked if it would be acceptable to “rough up” a suspect Andy Sipowicz-style to get information about the bombing.
“If that’s what it takes,” Chris said.
What about physical torture?
“If that’s what it takes,” Chris said.
What about torturing the suspect’s wife in front of him to get information?
“If that’s what it takes.”
What about killing the suspect’s wife in front of him?
“If that’s what it takes.”
What about torturing his children in front of him to get him to talk?
“If that’s what it takes.”
Chris’s blithe advocacy of torture seemed to bother even the conservative half of the duo, who appeared to have decided at this point to try to give Chris an out by saying that Chris really didn’t mean that torturing children in front of suspects was justifiable. Chris would have none of it. He reiterated that he had no problem with any of the above tactics to get information out of terrorists.
Thank heaven a commercial break came up.
As I noted above, the preference of those close to you over those who are distant does not itself raise any serious ethical problems; it can, however, be taken too far and I think that this is just such a situation. It’s one thing to save a relative over a stranger when forced by circumstance to choose; it’s quite another to actively brutalize a stranger in the hope that it might save a relative.
Read More Book Notes from the Book Reviews on this site.
People like Chris prove that the comparison to the Nazis is all too apt. He is evidence that too many people have learned absolutely nothing from history. Not only is what he advocates thoroughly amoral and contrary to American principles, but he note that the Nazis, despite their win-at-all-costs philosophy, lost.