Florian Schmaltz

Neurosciences and research on chemical weapons of mass destruction in Nazi Germany.

As a side-product of industrial research, new chemical nerve agents (Tabun, Sarin, Soman) superior to those available to the Allied Forces were discovered in Nazi Germany. These agents were never used by Germany, even though they were produced at a large scale. This article explores the toxicological and physiological research into the mechanisms of action of these novel nerve agents, and the emergence of military research objectives in neurophysiological and neurotoxicological research. Recently declassified Allied military intelligence files document secret nerve agent research, leading to intensified research on anticholinesterase agents in the peripheral and the central nervous system. The article discusses the involvement of IG Farben scientists, educational, medical and military institutions, and of Nobel Prize laureate Richard Kuhn, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research. 1Research for this article was made possible by the Max Planck-Society’s Presidental Commission Research Program. “History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society During the National Socialist Era.” For the author’s Ph.D. project on chemical warfare research at six institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society see: Schmaltz (2005).

Pathways to Human Experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States

The history of human experimentation in the twelve years between Hitlers rise to power and the end of the Second World War is notorious in the annals of the twentieth century. The horrific experiments conducted at Dachau, Auschwitz, Ravensbrueck, Birkenau, and other National Socialist concentration camps reflected an extreme indifference to human life and human suffering. Unfortunately, they do not reflect the extent and complexity of the human experiments undertaken in the years between 1933 and 1945. Following the prosecution of twenty-three high-ranking National Socialist physicians and medical administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg Medical Trial (United States v. Karl Brandt et al.), scholars have rightly focused attention on the nightmarish researches conducted by a small group of investigators on concentration camp inmates. Less well known are alternative pathways that brought investigators to undertake human experimentation in other laboratories, settings, and nations.

One hundred years of chemical warfare : research, deployment, consequences

In the course of the First World War, scientists who would in peacetime generate new knowledge assumed the role of experts, i.e., professionals who made extant knowledge accessible to non-scientist clients. The deepest conviction of Fritz Haber, the 1918 Chemistry Nobel laureate, was that problems faced by mankind could be solved bymeans of science and technology. Herein, Haber is interpreted as a personification of an early German expert culture. Acting as both mediator and organizer, Haber coaxed politicians, generals, industrial leaders, and scientists to join forces in developing new processes for the mass-production of war-relevant chemicals and in establishing large-scale industries for their manufacture. Among the chemicals produced were poison gases—the first weapons of mass extermination. Haber’s leadership resulted in a conglomerate of enterprises similar to what we now call “big science”. In close contact with “big industry”, traditional science was transformed into a new type of applied research. With borderlines between the military and civilian use blurred, Fritz Haber’s activities also represent an early example of what we now call “dual use”. He initiated modern pest control by toxic substances, whereby he made use of a military product for civilian purposes, but went also the other way around: During theWeimar era, he used pest control as a disguise for illegal military research. Having emerged under the stress of war, scientific expertise would remain ambivalent—a permanent legacy of the First World War. The first major poison gas attack, at Ypres, on April 22, 1915 is irrevocably linked with Fritz Haber, the 1918 Nobel laureate in chemistry. The developments that connect the place, time, and person, are paradigmatic. They had their origins in the late nineteenth century and came to full fruition in the Great War. They shaped new trends that would leave a deep imprint on the twentieth century. Rather than M. Szöllösi-Janze (&) Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany e-mail: Margit.Szoelloesi-Janze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

Chemical Weapons Research on Soldiers and Concentration Camp Inmates in Nazi Germany

In 1944 and 1945 scientists and physicians in the Allied military intelligence gathered evidence on the criminal human experiments with chemical weapons conducted on inmates of the Nazi concentration camps in Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and Neuengamme during World War II. Some of the experiments were judged during the Nuremberg Medical Trial (Case I) and French military tribunals at Metz and Lyon after liberation. Based on this evidence and on further archival sources, this paper will examine the preconditions and settings of these experiments, the perpetrators involved, and what is known about their purpose and outcome. Furthermore, the paper will raise the question if and how the experiments in the concentration camps were linked to other experiments conducted in Nazi Germany for the Wehrmacht at military research establishments such as the Gas Protection Laboratory (Heeresgasschutzlaboratorium) in Spandau, the Militararztliche Akademie, the Heeresversuchsstelle Raubkammer, or by universities. The paper will focus on experiments with chemical agents in German concentration camps and analyze how rivalry and division of labor between the military and the SS in human experimentation with chemical agents went hand in hand.