The Nuremberg Trials

How many people think that Saddam and Bin Laden are the big baddies of this world?

Ok...ur right they are...but in WW2...it was the doctors and scientists that were the bad guys...sometimes even worse than the Nazis!

As u may well know, The Nuremberg Trails were held by an International Court of Law to decide on what to do with dozens of sick and twisted scientists and doctors who followed the 'rule' of Aldof Hitler.

In 1946...the Nuremberg Trials began.

Want a history lesson...go here!



Nuremberg

*i'm doing a short course on Military History and this was my assignment*

this could become a very complex discussion.

who really was leading the charge so to speak, the scientific leaders or the political leaders?

was there benefit from the work of the people doing science even if crudely by our standards today and does it matter or justify their actions at all?

the politicos did they use the scientists or just give them freehand to do as this wish like a Dr. Jeckyl scenario.

if politicos are found to be responsible for what happened then how much are people of a nation state also responsible?

these were all questions raised in that time and I doubt that anyone has well answered them. We have punished people and sanctioned others and there still is reparations being paid to this day.

what astounds me most at this time is the conspiratorial stories coming out about what really happened before, during and after the war. That could be several threads on its own if not a whole other area of discussion for this website.

Originally posted by Gryffen
Ok...ur right they are...but in WW2...it was the doctors and scientists that were the bad guys...sometimes even worse than the Nazis!

I've been reading about the sick experiments conducted by Nazi scientists in the name of progress. For the first time in a long while, I've actually felt nauseous just reading about something.

As surviving Mengele subject Alex Dekel states:

I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious work -- not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power. Mengele ran a butcher shop -- major surgeries were performed without anesthesia. Once, I witnessed a stomach operation -- Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again, without anesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given. Nobody ever questioned him -- why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part.

After a while a large group of SS officers arrived on motorcycles, Mengele among them. They drove into the yard and got off their motorcycles. Upon arriving they circled the flames; it (sic) burned horizontally. We watched to see what would follow. After a while trucks arrived, dump trucks, with children inside. There were about ten of these trucks. After they had entered the yard an officer gave an order and the trucks backed up to the fire and they started throwing those children right into the fire, into the pit. The children started to scream; some of them managed to crawl out of the burning pit. An officer walked around it with sticks and pushed back those who managed to get out. Hoess (the Auschwitz commandant) and Mengele were present and were giving orders.

why was henry ford not at the trials? Seeing as how he and several other big players had a hand in helping form the Nazi war machine.

Hmmm...

In my honest opinion these guys are sick!!!

They used people as lab experiments ie. breaking theyre bones to see how much pain they could take, injecting them with mixes of chemicals, making thousands of woman die painfully by pouring hot molten lead into theyre wombs...

These guys deserved to be wiped out!

I dont judge the whole of Germany for these mens actions..i just dont condone the way that most of them got off alive!

There information is useful and still used to this day because there is often no other way to measure what they did without using their methods.

But morally it is wrong and not justifiable.

Will we in future breed humans for such purposes or as slaves? Genetic engineering would allow that and it could be justified on some levels. We have just as big a problems coming up as those we turned our backs on years ago.

The scientists of that regime were the most evil of the bunch. You see, while I do hold SS troops themselves responsible for what they did, one could always argue that some of their action was out of fear and they just carried out their orders. However, the scientists, particularly Mengele actually enjoyed their deranged duties. The "experiments" they conducted on jews, blacks, gypsies, gays, and particularly twins were nothing short of sadistic. There was ZERO scientific value to them. Studies on how long it takes a human being to burn? On how much punishment a body can take before the person dies from pain? On what happens to one twin if you rip the other one to shreds in front of him? Science? Nah... Deranged, pure evil.
If I was a judge for Mengele I'd have sentenced him to living with his nerves attached to nodes transmitting pain signals 24/7. Just... well you know... to see for science's sake, what would happen... how long he'd last... purely for scientific research...
My other problem is every time I walk through Grand Central i see PETA activists protesting animals being slaughtered in a cruel fashion for "research" yet remarkably no one gave half a # when "research" of the same ilk was being done on humans. Remarkable!

[Edited on 12-19-2003 by Djarums]