TD Conner - Nazi Medical Experiments

NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

By TD CONNER

2017

Also by TD Conner:

The Rifles of Elm Street: History Takes a Detour

Homemade Thunder: War on the South Coast, 1861-1865

Ironwork of Savannah

Demolition Man: Hitler, from Braunau to the Bunker

Node Space (stories)

Young William Bonney (a screenplay)

For: Ike Burnett, Gene Reece, Pete Trigg, and John B. Rourke III, the BC boys of yesterday. I have forgotten nothing. Thanks, especially to you, Gene. RIP, guys.

CONTENTS

In a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

--Albert Camus

If we believe in absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

--Voltaire

In the eyes of Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of Germany, all men were not created equal.

As history shows, he despised and wanted to kill and/or enslave all those he and his henchmen called untermenschen (subhumans.)

He felt that as his Thousand-year Reich grew, prospered and subjugated its racial enemies, any subhumans--meaning specifically Jews and Gypsies--in areas conquered and colonized by Germany might later pose a threat to the well-being of the Nazi master race if allowed to reproduce.

Hitler scorned black people as well, but only small populations of blacks came under Nazi control during WWII, mostly in north Africa, where the Germans wanted the cooperation or at least the non-interference of the already anti-Semitic Arabs and the relatively few blacks living there as they battled the allies across the deserts.

Mass executions were not staged against black people during Hitlers reign. Modern historians speculate that had the Nazis won WWII, a different scenario may have emerged.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, anyone within the Nazi reach who had a hereditary disease, a physical or mental disability, a visible deformity of any kind, incurable alcoholics, anyone felt to be a social misfit or a vagrant--Arbeitsscheue (work-shy in Nazi jargon,) or who had a lengthy criminal record, along with Jews, as noted, Jehovahs Witnesses, deadbeat fathers, political opponents of any kind, homosexuals, non-German and anti-Nazi intellectuals, and most clergymen, were automatically part of the designated undesirable group.

In Nazi eyes, such people were inferior and had no inherent right to live, but existed only to work for or otherwise serve the Nazi state until they were too sick or weak, or their bodies too broken to labor further, in which case it was acceptable, desirable even, to kill them.

After WWII began, in accordance with Hitlers direct orders, people of any Slavic race or nation were added to the list of untermenschen. After Hitlers attack on Russia began, all Soviet Commissars were scheduled for a quick death if and when they were identified as Communist political officers.

Captured Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) were also added to the undesirable group and were routinely worked, starved, shot, gassed, and beaten to death, many of them gunned down while in the act of surrendering.

Germany had signed the Geneva Convention with the western powers prior to WWII and treated captured western military men more or less honorably in exchange for similar treatment of their captured fighters. There was no mutual POW pact between Germany and Russia.

Thus the Soviets responded in kind, cruelly treating Nazi fighters they captured, usually killing anyone they found wearing an SS uniform-- rightly seeing such men as political soldiers-- immediately upon capture.

Hitler said that once the enemies opposing him in WWII were defeated, he then planned to settle the score with his comrades-in-arms, the Japanese, a people he also considered inferior, making no mention of this to his Asian allies while the war was ongoing, however.

He also secretly despised the land and people of his other ally, Italy, and when Italian King Victor Emanuel had dictator Benito Mussolini arrested, then guided Italy over to the allied side in 1943, the Germans began imprisoning and often shooting Italian soldiers unfortunate enough to be near Nazi strong points or battle lines, reasoning that soon enough, troops no longer loyal to fascism might turn on them.

In reality by mid-1943 most Italian troops were hungry, going without pay, and very short on ammunition and fuel. Many had never accepted Mussolinis fascist dogma and control in the first place. Now they simply wanted to go home. Many did so, however some Nazi-held areas in Italy would soon come under attack by Italian partisans.

Hitlers master race comprised solely what the Nazis called Aryans, generally thought of as tall, blue-eyed, blonde men and women with pure ancestry going back many generations, people who could prove (or at least convince snooping Nazi background investigators) that they had no subhuman forbears and no hereditary diseases in their bloodline or blots on their family trees from undesirables.

The Nazi leaders seemed unconcerned that they themselves, with the possible exception of Reinhard Heydrich, the Blond Beast, as he was sometimes called, did not appear to fit the cherished Aryan physical mold--and it came about that Heinrich Himmler, Heydrichs superior, pressed by other Nazis jealous of and opposed to Heydrichs growing power and his incessant prying into their lives, called even Heydrichs ancestry into question, alleging he had a Jewish grandmother.

Himmler hired Heydrich, a disgraced naval officer, after Heydrich lied to him, saying he was in the naval intelligence service--he was actually in the signal corps.

Himmler had him establish the Nazi Partys intelligence wing, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, later to become a state intelligence service after Hitler rose to power.

After joining the SS and setting up his snoop agency, Heydrich then immediately began spying on other prominent Nazis, as noted, upon whom he kept detailed files, including Himmler himself, who had a mistress, Hedwig Bunny Potthast, and illegitimate children with her.

Soon the charges about Heydrichs ancestry arose.

Hitler heard Himmler and the group of anti-Heydrich complainers out, then angrily sent them away.

He called Heydrich in and told him Himmler and the others, including Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the long-established state intelligence service, and some of the Nazi gauleiters (the Partys district chiefs) were scheming against him.

Hitler liked it when his underlings squabbled. He admired Heydrichs extreme cruelty, ruthlessness, and desire to kill non-Nazis. He told Heydrich that someday he might make a good Fuhrer himself. Heydrich went away smiling.

He kept his post as head of the Sicherheitsdienst and later headed the death camp murder system he had helped design and brought into being, and he remained German proconsul of the fiefdom assigned to him after Hitler carved up Czechoslovakia, Heydrichs vassal state re-named by the conquerors the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.

In fact, many of the Nazi higher-ups, including Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Robert Ley were dark-haired, short and squatty, and not all of them had blue eyes, though Hitler himself did.

Hermann Goering was a pudgy blowhard, a morphine addict, art thief, and medically-certified lunatic, who enjoyed wearing womens clothing and thick-caked makeup, including toenail polish.

Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer, also had debilitating mental problems (though in fact he was taller than many of the other Nazi grandees and he did have blue eyes.) Robert Ley, the Reichs labor chieftain, was a chronic alcoholic and given to excessive masturbation, as his allied captors discovered after WWII and recorded.

Heinrich Himmler was a hate-filled but innocuous-looking physical weakling with very poor eyesight, a mild, hesitant voice, a nervous, distant, manner about him, and a testy digestive system.