Nazi Medicine: Focused On The Nuremberg Experiments

The documentary Nazi Medicine was an immensely intriguing film that focused on the Nuremberg trials, specifically the spotlight on the Nazi doctor's trial of 1946. The Nuremberg War Trials were the series of hearings in which Nazi leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The trials resulted in the hanging and suicide of many Nazi leaders. Considering that these were the monsters responsible for the deaths of millions in concentration camps and research laboratories, it was very shocking to see the experimentations that were done on such innocent people. Nazi Medicine examines the historical events that made the outrageous experimentations of the German physicians possible, reflecting back to the early days of the twentieth century and the extreme interest in eugenics. Eugenics is the science of improving the racial qualities of humanity through selective breeding of superior types. They believed that with the control of breeding through selection and genetic manipulation it would lead them to build a "super" race. The Germans were determined to wipe away all human beings considered "unfit," preserving only those who fit to their stereotype. The film starts out by …show more content…
Using inmates as subjects, from Jewish people to the mentally and physically handicapped, physicians performed operations and experiments, often without any type of anesthesia. These experiments included studies of how much gas would be needed to kill a certain number of prisoners as quickly as possible and high-altitude testing that damaged the lungs of the subjects. They also messed around with germ and viral injections and made millions of these people suffer. What the doctors anticipated to accomplish were answers that would assist the Germans in war. However, the outcomes of these experiments ended up being unsatisfying or completely