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Both the Germans and Japanese carried out a wide range of war crimes on a vast scale during the Second World War. This book focuses on one particular aspect of those crimes, those with a medical element. The atrocities covered here fall into several broad catagories. These include genuine if horrific medical experiments, such as the famous experiments on hypothermia, designed to find ways to revive Luftwaffe airmen rescued from the sea. In other cases medical looking procedures appear to have been carried out largely as a form of torture, or perhaps worse because of boredom on the part of the perpetrators. The book also covers the Nazi euthanasia programme, basically mass murder of anyone the Nazis felt were ‘weakening’ the Volk. On the Japanese side this includes the use of their biological weapons against Chinese civilians.
This book isn’t an easy read. Everything covered here is dreadful, and the eyewitness accounts really bring them home. A wide range of accounts have been found, ranging from junior German doctors and medical staff to the Chinese survivors of biological attacks. The survivor’s accounts are especially harrowing, and show how these events cast a long shadow. These sections show the author’s extensive work on this topic, with many sections supported by interviews he had carried out in person.
A depressing aftermath of the Japanese atrocities is that it appears that several of their key researchers into biological and chemical weapons were protected by the Americans after the war, in exchange for their knowledge. It is well known that many German scientists and engineers ended up working for both sides in the Cold War, many of whom had been involved in war crimes (von Braun with slave labour for example), but the difference here is the nature of the research, with the biological and chemical researchers having commited work crimes as part of their research.
This is a well researched examination of one of the darker corners of the Second World War, showing how widespread these crimes were in both Germany and Japan during and before the Second World War.
Chapters
1 – Cash for Corpses
2 – A Divine Apocalypse
3 – Human Guinea Pigs
4 – The Nazi Medical Experiments
5 – Aktion T4 – the Nazi Euthanasia Programme
6 – Elsa’s Return
7 – The Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial
8 – Human Taxidermy
9 – Imperial Japanese Human Medical Experimentation
Author: Tim Heath
Edition: Hardcover
Pages:
Publisher: Pen & Sword
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