No Excuses: Nazi-Era German Scientists Had Bloody Hands

A six-year, $5 million (US$) project in Germany to investigate the extent of scientific involvement with the Nazi regime completed its final report last month, reports Nature,¹ with “uncomfortable truths.”  It can no longer be claimed that (1) there were only a few rotten apples involved, (2) the work was pseudoscientific, low-quality work with meaningless results, (3) that Hitler’s regime held science in low esteem, such that scientists tried to wait out the dark period, or (4) those who collaborated with the Reich did so under duress.
    On the contrary, the report found that scientists in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (now named the Max Planck Institute, or MPS) often participated knowingly and willingly. 

The MPS has found that a large part of the most criminal research conducted was not ‘pseudoscience’ – in fact, it followed conventional scientific methods and was at the cutting edge of research at the time.  It has also demonstrated that the Nazis held basic research in high esteem, increasing funding for it during the war years without requiring scientists to join the Nazi Party.  And it found that, far from being subjected to force, many scientists voluntarily oriented their work to fit the regime’s policies – as a way of getting money and of exploiting the new resources that Nazi policies made available through, for example, the invasion of other countries.  Most researchers, it turns out, seem to have regarded the regime not as a threat, but as an opportunity for their research ambitions. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

One Nobel prize winning scientist, for instance, knew that his lab was using blood samples from Auschwitz; others voluntarily came up with many projects to improve weapons systems.  One reason for the cooperation seems to have been the attitude that Germany was in a new era for the long term.  In hindsight, we know of the rapid collapse of the Third Reich and subsequent worldwide condemnation for a science twisted to support egregious violations of human rights, crimes against humanity that to many represent the ultimate icon of evil.  But picture yourself back then in 1936 and consider how the world might have looked to a research scientist working in a successful, forward-looking, nationalistic, advancing country:

In the 1930s and early 1940s, it seemed to those living under fascist flags that fascism was immortal.  Until 1942, few Germans – or Italians, for that matter – imagined that the ruling regimes would be overthrown, or be replaced by a democratic system that would judge many of the actions they considered loyal, patriotic, or simply getting on with their job, as unacceptable support for a criminal regime.

Some of the findings were not known at the Nuremburg trials, because important Russian documents did not become available till the end of the cold war.  Nature commended the MPS for producing this “serious, dispassionate reanalysis” that will help us learn the lessons of this dark period.  The findings are available on the website of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.  See also the 06/12/2001 entry about MPS president Markl’s apology for the victims, that characterized Nazi-era science as built on a “materialistic, Social Darwinist, dehumanized form of biology.”  (For the Darwin-Hitler connection, see this book review and article pertaining to research by historian Richard Weikart).

¹Editorial, “Uncomfortable truths,” Nature 434, 681 (07 April 2005); doi:10.1038/434681a.

The editorial says that the “conventional wisdom” stemming from the Nuremberg trials, “which condemned the heinous crimes of high-ranking Nazis, but did not enquire into the behaviour of less notorious individuals, including rank-and-file scientists,” was politically correct for the time.  It allowed Germany to rebuild its infrastructure and justified the allies supporting West Germany to restrain the advance of communism.
    This report raises many new questions for historians.  If there were more than a few rotten apples, how could so many take part?  How much did they know?  How much was their involvement influenced by acceptance of Social Darwinism and eugenics?  What are the analogues to our modern era, so that similar ethical atrocities do not take place on our watch? (see 03/10/2005 and 02/08/2005 entries as food for thought).  Could the cry, “Never again!” be drowned in the rumble of a new evil empire?  New Scientist reported recently about a set of radical proposals from the UK parliament’s committee on science and technology.  It is advocating baby sex selection, human reproductive cloning, human-animal chimeras and other “controversial” activities – this by the same country that stood courageously against Hitler 60 years ago.  What if there is no Nuremberg trial this time?  What if, this time around, the voices crying for the rights of the weak and helpless are successfully quenched?  What if today’s scientists again imagine themselves living under an immortal regime for the long term?
    Some Nazi war criminals never felt guilty for what they did.  They said that the only reason they were condemned was because their country lost the war.  The judges at Nuremberg argued that there was a higher law that they should have obeyed.  Yet do we not still have a “materialistic, Social Darwinist, dehumanized form of biology” taught in universities around the world?  If no one in this international Darwinist reich believes in a higher law any more, God save us.^*