Nazi high altitude experiments

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Considered part of the Holocaust, Nazi high altitude experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp, from March to August 1942, for the benefit of the German Air Force, to investigate the limits of human endurance and existence at extremely high altitudes. The experimental subjects gave no informed consent and often were killed or injured by the experiments.

"The experiments were carried out in a low-pressure chamber in which atmospheric conditions and pressures prevailing at high altitude (up to 68,000 feet) could be duplicated. The experimental subjects were placed in the low-pressure chamber and thereafter the simulated altitude therein was raised. Many victims died as a result of these experiments and others suffered grave injury, torture, and ill-treatment."[1] [2]

Indicted for these were Karl Brandt, Siegfried Handloser, Oskar Schroeder, Karl Gebhardt, Rudolf Brandt, Joachim Mrugowsky, Helmut Poppendick, Wolfram Sievers, Siegfried Ruff, Hans Wolfgang Romberg, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, and Georg August Weltz.

References

  1. , The Medical Case of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. October 1946–April 1949.
  2. Robert Jay Lifton (1986), The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books