oddlyclad asked: What do you know about Goebbels?

Joseph Goebbels was an important figure in Nazi German. He was known for his devotion to Hitler and his vocal hatred of Jews. Much like Hitler, Goebbels was a failed artist (a writer) but a highly successful orator. He also commissioned several human experimentation projects involving concentration camp inmates.

As Reich Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels masterfully manipulated the German public. They held unwavering support for the Nazi regime until the defeat at Stalingrad, a morale problem which Goebbels never was able to fix. At war’s end he committed suicide with his wife, after poisoning their six young children.

Tuskegee Experiment - From 1932 until 1972, under the guise of providing free healthcare to those effected by poverty, the US government infected a large number of poor African American men in rural Tuskegee, Alabama. The government studied their symptoms until death. Even with the new Nuremberg Code of medical ethics implemented after the Holocaust, this experiment continued unfettered. Some of the men died as a result, and many had wives contract the disease and children born with congenital syphilis.

A similar experiment was conducted in Guatemala, where approximately 83 died of the disease. The subjects included soldiers, prostitutes, mental health patients, and prisoners. These experiments exemplify the fact that human experimentation does not need a fascist regime to occur.

(Source: The New York Times)

Unit 100 - This secret Japanese compound in Manchuria conducted research about diseases originating in animals. As the Chinese and Soviet armies were still heavily dependent on horses, this was an effective way to weaken military power. Furthermore, the unit hoped to spread diseases to enemy human populations via animal carriers.

To this end, experiments were conducted on human beings using anthrax and glanders (pictured above), and also narcotics such as heroin and barbiturates. Victims were forced to eat food laced with lethal amounts of drugs, leading to slow and painful deaths. The unit completely failed in its goal, though the Nazis spread glanders to Soviet horses effectively on several minor occasions.

U Boat - German U Boats were the most high-functioning undersea vehicles of their time. They terrorized the seas, sinking unprotected cargo vessels until proper defenses were developed by the Allies.

The German U Boat also inspired future American and British submarines.

(Source: youtube.com)

tacticus0010 asked: I know for a fact that the Japanese have not done enough to apologize for their crimes in the war. How come Germany has apologized numerous times and paid reparations to Israel and Holocaust victims AND also pays everyone who was enslaved in the camps pensions, YET the Japans have not apologized for numerous crimes, they honor war criminals with their shrines and refuse reparations money?!

That is a question that only the Japanese government can answer.

Also, the Germans weren’t always so quick to apologize - during the late 1940’s and all through the 1950’s, antisemitism was still rampant in the country and Germans thought of themselves as victims of Western and Eastern conspiracy. Thank you for your input.

Unit 731 - Though it’s infamy is growing as more knowledge becomes available, Unit 731 is still a rather obscure piece of history. Under the cover of working on a water purification project, this group of scientific military minds worked to develop chemical and biological weapons, as well as explosives and battlefield medicine, for Imperial Japan. It was based in the Pingfang Disctrict, near Harbin in China and was active from 1935 until the war’s end.

Using live test subjects drawn from the diverse Manchurian region, the staff of Unit 731 conducted ballistics tests, experiments with diseases and chemicals, evisceration of live people including forcibly impregnated women, rather obscure experiments involving liquid nitrogen, salt water, burns, frostbite and exposure, having test subjects buried alive, x-rays, centrifuges, and several cases when subjects had horse urine injected into their kidneys. All told, approximately 40,000 test subjects died from the compound’s experiments, and a further half million died from field testing in battle.

Much evidence was destroyed after Japan surrendered and before Japanese forces vacated held Chinese land. Also, the unit’s headquarters in Hiroshima was destroyed after that city’s atomic bombing. That said, no one will ever know the true extent of the unit’s heinous crimes.

Personnel from the unit faced little legal troubles after the war; many were offered positions working for the United States during the Cold War.

(Source: technologyartist.com)

‘Gay Cure’ Experiment - At Buchenwald concentration camp, Danish SS doctor Carl Vaernet experimented on homosexual subjects using hormones and artificial glands. His goal was to override homosexual feelings by injecting hormones into mens’ testicles and implanting glands in their bodies. Many of the subjects died due to complications and infections, and rumors circulated that as many had been castrated.

Between June and December of 1944, Vaernet tried various gland techniques on 17 Buchenwald inmates. Two contracted fatal illnesses as a result. In the grand scheme of things, almost all of the 15,000 gay and lesbian inmates of Nazi camps did not survive.

All of Carl Vaernet’s research proved to be a complete failure. Within the Third Reich, Vaernet became a laughingstock. At war’s end, he cowardly escaped justice by faking a heart attack while in custody and fleeing to South America, where he died in 1965.

Vaernet was the only Nazi doctor proven to have taken an interest exclusively in homosexuality, and it is possible that he helped inspire the South African apartheid government to take a similar interest. From the 1960’s until the late 1980’s, the South African military forced it’s white gay and lesbian members to undergo various ‘cures’ for their orientation, including mandatory sex change operations.

(Source: andrejkoymasky.com)

Shiro Ishii - Though thought to be mentally disturbed from an early age, Shiro Ishii was allowed to pursue studies in microbiology, eventually finding work in the Japanese military. It is reported that he made extensive research of chemical warfare during World War I.

Shiro Ishii began developing biological weapons in 1939. He field-tested his new weapons as head of Unit 731, Japan’s most infamous military unit of the war. Using POWs and civilians from China (predominately), Mongolia and the USSR, Shiro Ishii furthered his work via human experimentation. He and his staff used vivisection, rape and forced abortion, exposure, and simulated cardiac and circulatory problems in order to further research.

None of his test subjects survived. Shiro Ishii’s research proved invaluable to the United States, and gained him immunity from war crimes prosecution. His fate after the war remains a mystery. Some speculate that he relocated to the East Coast of the United States, while his family claim he lived in Japan until his death in the late 1960’s.

(Source: pbs.org)

I. V. F. Experiments - Nazi scientists experimented extensively with in vitro fertilization, using women and girls in concentration camps. The children produced by these experiments were, until the creation of the state of Israel, stateless and living in poverty.

Those children lucky enough to locate their birthmothers were met with angst and disgust by the parent. Many women subjected to in vitro fertilization experiments still want to put their past behind them, and that means not acknowledging their offspring.