The Nuremberg doctors' trial in historical context

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 73, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 106-123

  Marrus, Michael R ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOMEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; CRIME; GERMANY; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; INFORMED CONSENT; LEGAL ASPECT; MEDICAL ETHICS; NUREMBERG TRIALS; PHYSICIAN; POLITICAL SYSTEM;

BIOMEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; NUREMBERG TRIALS;

ETHICS, MEDICAL; GERMANY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOLOCAUST; HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION; HUMANS; INFORMED CONSENT; PHYSICIANS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS;

EID: 0033094539     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.1999.0037     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Robert H. Jackson, The Nürnberg Case as Presented by Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, Together with Other Documents (New York: Cooper Square, 1971), pp. 30-31.
2. Report of Robert H. Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1949), p. 48.
3. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, 42 vols. (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947-1949), 3: 92.
4. Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: "Euthanasia" in Germany c. 1900-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 273.
5. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946-April 1949, 15 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), 1: 28 (hereinafter cited as TWC).
6. Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuernberg War Crimes Trials under Control Council Law No. 10 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), p. 101.
7. TWC, 1: 27.
8. Ibid., p. 183.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Taylor, Final Report (n. 6), p. 64.
12. "Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein, acting pursuant to a common design, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly did conspire and agree together and with each other and with diverse other persons, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity" (TWC, 1: 10).
13. Taylor, Final Report (n. 6), p. 14.
14. Christian Pross, "Nazi Physicians: Criminals, Charlatans, or Pioneers? The Commentaries of the Allied Experts at the Nuremberg Medical Trial," in Medical Science without Compassion: Past and Present, ed. Charles Roland, Henry Friedlander, and Benno Muller-Hill (Hamburg: Hamburger Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1992); Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), p. 245.
15. Christian Pross, "Nazi Physicians: Criminals, Charlatans, or Pioneers? The Commentaries of the Allied Experts at the Nuremberg Medical Trial," in Medical Science without Compassion: Past and Present, ed. Charles Roland, Henry Friedlander, and Benno Muller-Hill (Hamburg: Hamburger Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1992); Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), p. 245.
16. Taylor, Final Report (n. 6), p. 241. In only one of the twelve cases were there more acquittals: the I.G. Farben case, in which the prosecution failed to prove that some of the defendants knew that the Zyklon B gas supplied to the SS was used for murder.
17. Ibid., pp. 75-77; Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), chap. 3; Bower, Pledge Betrayed (n. 14), pp. 220, 332.
18. Ibid., pp. 75-77; Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), chap. 3; Bower, Pledge Betrayed (n. 14), pp. 220, 332.
19. Ibid., pp. 75-77; Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), chap. 3; Bower, Pledge Betrayed (n. 14), pp. 220, 332.
20. Leo Alexander, "Medical Science under Dictatorship," New England J. Med., 1949, 241: 39-47, quotauon on p. 39.
21. TWC, 1: 29.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 69.
24. Ibid.
25. TWC, 2: 122; Taylor, Final Report (n. 6), pp. 70-71.
26. TWC, 2: 122; Taylor, Final Report (n. 6), pp. 70-71.
27. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 38; Geoffrey Cocks, "The Old as New: The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and Medicine in Modern Germany," in Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 173-91.
28. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 38; Geoffrey Cocks, "The Old as New: The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and Medicine in Modern Germany," in Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 173-91.
29. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance (n. 4), p. 238.
30. Alexander, "Medical Science under Dictatorship" (n. 17), p. 44.
31. Proctor, Racial Hygiene (n. 23), p. 62.
32. Ibid., p. 64.
33. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 69.
34. Michael H. Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 4-5.
35. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 128; Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945, trans. George R. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
36. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 128; Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945, trans. George R. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
37. Burleigh and Wippermann, Racial State (n. 28), p. 56. In this vein, see William Seidelman, "Medical Selection: Auschwitz Antecedents and Effluent," Holoc. Genoc. Stud., 1989, 4: 435-48; Mario Biagioli, "Science, Modernity, and the 'Final Solution,'" in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution", ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 185-205.
38. Burleigh and Wippermann, Racial State (n. 28), p. 56. In this vein, see William Seidelman, "Medical Selection: Auschwitz Antecedents and Effluent," Holoc. Genoc. Stud., 1989, 4: 435-48; Mario Biagioli, "Science, Modernity, and the 'Final Solution,'" in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution", ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 185-205.
39. Burleigh and Wippermann, Racial State (n. 28), p. 56. In this vein, see William Seidelman, "Medical Selection: Auschwitz Antecedents and Effluent," Holoc. Genoc. Stud., 1989, 4: 435-48; Mario Biagioli, "Science, Modernity, and the 'Final Solution,'" in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution", ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 185-205.
40. TWC, 1: 16-17.
41. Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), p. 301.
42. Bradley F. Smith, The Road to Nuremberg (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
43. Report of Robert H. Jackson (n. 2), p. 333.
44. William Allen Zweck, "Nuremberg: Proceedings Subsequent to Goering et al." North Carolina Law Rev., 1948, 26: 374-75; Matthew Lippman, The Other Nuremberg: American Prosecutions of Nazi War Criminals in Occupied Germany," Indiana Internat. Comp. Law Rev., 1992, 3: 90-91.
45. William Allen Zweck, "Nuremberg: Proceedings Subsequent to Goering et al." North Carolina Law Rev., 1948, 26: 374-75; Matthew Lippman, The Other Nuremberg: American Prosecutions of Nazi War Criminals in Occupied Germany," Indiana Internat. Comp. Law Rev., 1992, 3: 90-91.
46. Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), pp. 237-38.
47. Proctor, Racial Hygiene (n. 23), pp. 108-9.
48. TWC, 1: 44-49, quotation on p. 48.
49. Ernst Klee, "Euthanasie" im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens" (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1983); Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütungzur Vernichtung "lebensunwerten Lebens," 1890-1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1987).
50. Ernst Klee, "Euthanasie" im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens" (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1983); Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütungzur Vernichtung "lebensunwerten Lebens," 1890-1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1987).
51. TWC, 1: 66, 809, quotation on p. 66.
52. TWC, 2: 179-80, 196-98, quotation on p. 198.
53. Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene (n. 40), p. 370.
54. Andrew Ivy, "Statement," in Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949), ix-xiii, quotation on p. x.
55. TWC, 1: 74.
56. TWC, 2: 181.
57. TWC, 1: 17.
58. Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
59. John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 9.
60. Arthur Ruppin, The Jews in the Modern World (London: Macmillan and Co., 1934), p. 261.
61. Max Reichler, "Eugenics," in The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, new ed., 10 vols. (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1969), 4: 191.
62. TWC, 2: 83-84.
63. David J. Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1991), p. 30.
64. TWC, 2: 111-18. Ivy's testimony, argues Dr. Evelyne Shuster, "reflects what has remained to this day the double standard of human experimentation, i.e. therapeutic goals and rules are used to justify otherwise unjustifiable experiments. . . . Uy condemned Nazi medical experiments because they violated Hippocratic moral ideals, while at the same time he abandoned Hippocratic ethics to justify his own experiments" ("Medical Ethics at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander, Andrew C. Ivy, and Werner Leibbrandt," unpublished paper, 1996). I am grateful to Dr. Shuster for the opportunity to quote from this paper. See also Evelyne Shuster, "The Nuremberg Code: Hippocratic Ethics and Human Rights," Lancet, 1998, 351: 974-77.
65. TWC, 2: 111-18. Ivy's testimony, argues Dr. Evelyne Shuster, "reflects what has remained to this day the double standard of human experimentation, i.e. therapeutic goals and rules are used to justify otherwise unjustifiable experiments. . . . Uy condemned Nazi medical experiments because they violated Hippocratic moral ideals, while at the same time he abandoned Hippocratic ethics to justify his own experiments" ("Medical Ethics at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander, Andrew C. Ivy, and Werner Leibbrandt," unpublished paper, 1996). I am grateful to Dr. Shuster for the opportunity to quote from this paper. See also Evelyne Shuster, "The Nuremberg Code: Hippocratic Ethics and Human Rights," Lancet, 1998, 351: 974-77.
66. TWC, 2: 111-18. Ivy's testimony, argues Dr. Evelyne Shuster, "reflects what has remained to this day the double standard of human experimentation, i.e. therapeutic goals and rules are used to justify otherwise unjustifiable experiments. . . . Uy condemned Nazi medical experiments because they violated Hippocratic moral ideals, while at the same time he abandoned Hippocratic ethics to justify his own experiments" ("Medical Ethics at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander, Andrew C. Ivy, and Werner Leibbrandt," unpublished paper, 1996). I am grateful to Dr. Shuster for the opportunity to quote from this paper. See also Evelyne Shuster, "The Nuremberg Code: Hippocratic Ethics and Human Rights," Lancet, 1998, 351: 974-77.
67. Jon M. Harkness, "Nuremberg and the Issue of Wartime Experiments on U.S. Prisoners: The Green Committee," JAMA, 27 November 1996, 276: 1672-75, quotation on p. 1674.
68. Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside (n. 53), pp. 47-48.
69. Jay Katz, The Nuremberg Code and the Nuremberg Trial: A Reappraisal," JAMA, 27 November 1996, 276: 1662-66.
70. Michael Grodin, "Historical Origins of the Nuremberg Code," in The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation, ed. George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 121-44, especially p. 134.
71. See Michael A. Grodin, George J. Annas, and Leonard H. Glantz, "Medicine and Human Rights: A Proposal for International Action," in Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1994), pp. 199-209.