Summary
Title: Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans
Author: Vivien Spitz
Publisher: Sentient Publications
ISBN: 1591810329
Pro:
• Interesting history which shouldn’t be forgotten
• Collects information on many different doctors and experiments
Con:
• Text rather matter-of-fact
Description:
• History of human experiments in Nazi Germany
• Transcripts from the trails of doctors
• Explanation of what they did and why
Book Review
The misdeeds and crimes of Nazi doctors are not merely the subject of rumor and speculation: we have substantial evidence in the form of court documents and testimonies from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials held in Germany between 1946 and 1948. Vivien Spitz was a court reporter for the trials of the Nazi doctors and now, after so many years, she has put together a book documenting all of their atrocities. Many books on the Nazis’ crimes include some mention of what doctors did, but Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans is unusual in that it focuses specifically on the medical community.
Sadly, it was not just a few aberrant physicians who participated in human experiments. Medicine was the profession with the highest percentage of membership in the Nazi party and those few doctors who tried to uphold medical ethics were either ostracized or, even worse, shared the fate of the experiment subjects. These experiments were as varied as they were horrific: people were subjected to high altitudes, freezing cold, malaria, mustard gas, hepatitis, typhus, poison, and more in order to determine how to best treat German casualties from the war.
Prisoners were given nothing but sea water to consume, treated with x-rays to see what was needed to sterilize them, and subjected to muscle or nerve transplants just to see what would happen. None of the experiments were truly consensual, the people experimented upon suffered horribly, and many were murdered as casually as if their lives had no meaning. How could doctors and other medical professionals do this?
In his Foreword, Fredrick R. Abrams writes:
- “Some German doctors sought the glory of professional distinction among peers through contributing to the welfare of humanity — humanity only as an abstract idea. They were committed to a dispassionate intellectual science that enabled them to seize a socially sanctioned opportunity for human experimentation.”
- “Other German doctors claimed they merely continued a practice with which they were familiar — that of healing. For their ideology, the illness was of the body of the state. The disease was an invasion by those of inferior blood that would weaken the “purity” (read “health”) of the state. To them it was not unlike the amputation of a gangrenous limb or excising a malignant growth. The doctors obliterated all impulses of compassion and ruthlessly pursued those impulses that were necessary to promote the well-being of the state, with which they identified utterly.”
Spitz’s book is not simply a recounting of one horrific story after another, though. It’s also a memoir of sorts of a very young woman who had the unusual opportunity to travel to war-ravaged Germany and participate in some of the most important criminal trials of the 20th century. We learn about her flights, her experiences with Germans, her experiences with the military, an so forth. This helps balance the book, I think, by adding some humanity to an otherwise inhumane story.
Vivien Spitz spent many, many years as a court reporter, and it shows. Although the book is a fantastic and insightful resource on what doctors did in Nazi Germany, the text itself is not gripping and inspired. It’s not dry and boring either, but it does tend to read like an impersonal news record — and the jumps between various time periods feel awkward sometimes. None of this, however, is a reason not to buy the book. This isn’t supposed to be a novel, it’s a testimony — hers and the doctors’ — of madness and depravity.
