Background to World War II, Nuremberg Trials and

Nuremberg CodeWarning:

Some of these images contain graphic depictions of violence

Gabriel Tordjman, Issues in Bioethics, Dawson College, Winter 2014

Timeline

• World War I (1914-1918)• German Revolution (1918-1919)• Weimar Republic ( Germany, 1919-1933)• Nazis come into power (1933)• World War II (1939-45)• Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code (1945-

1949)

World War I

Trench Warfare Trench Warfare http://www.harris-academy.com/departments/history/Trenches/GillianR/Gillian%202.htmhttp://www.harris-academy.com/departments/history/Trenches/GillianR/Gillian%202.htm

World War I (1914-1918)

Battle of the Somme: Trench Warfare [1916]http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media.php?id=3655

David Swanson, “Abandoning Torture But What About War?”, LA Progressive, 10 Feb,. 2009.http://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/abandoning-torture-but-what-about-war/

World War I (1914-1918)

Metal on Metal, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O0ch3ABb3L4/TD6yDveCN5I/AAAAAAAAB1M/dTq32PIb21s/s1600/attachment.jpgOtto Dix, Stormtroopers Advancing

Under Gas (1924)

Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921)“Kathe Kollwitz” http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm

Weimar Germany

(1918-1933)

Kathe Kollwitz, Deutschlands Kinder Hungern! (1924)

Alexander B. Downes (dept. Pol. Sc. Duke) http://www.duke.edu/~downes/courses.htm

Hyperinflation (1923)German children playing with worthless

money

In 1922 a loaf of bread cost 163 marks. By September 1923 a loaf of bread cost 1,500,000 marks.

Weimar Germany (1918-1933)

George Grosz, The Agitator (1928)

ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-2.html

Weimar Germany (1918-1933)

Hitler during the “Beer Hall Putsch” (1923), the Nazis first (failed) attempt at seizing power.

Weimar Germany (1918-1933)After years of political instability and economic problems, Germany, along with much of the world suffered through a devastating Great Depression beginning in 1929.

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Slouch_Purge15.html

Famous photograph by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens and her children outside a migrant workers’ camp in California during the Great Depression.

The Great Depression

Nazis Come to Power 1932-33It was under these conditions, when huge numbers of people lost their jobs, that Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933. Nazi electoral propaganda posters for the 1932 German election.

"Workers: The Brain and the Fist! Vote for the frontsoldier Hitler!" (source: The Rise of the Dictators: 1919-1939 by Peter Banyard. Gallery Books, New York City. 1986, p. 18.)

"Fight hunger and despair! Vote for Hitler!" (source: "An Exhibition of German Posters," May 8 through June 15, 1963, New School for Social Research, New York City.)

http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/weimar.nsf/ID/A50A6DC98BE7438885256CDE00581D88?OpenDocument

Nazi Measures and Modern Bioethics

During the Nazi Period (1933-45), the Nazis enacted measures which still influence modern day bioethical discussion. These include:

– Eugenics Measures– The “Euthanasia” (T4) Program– Unethical Experiments on Prisoners in

Concentration Camps

Nazi Eugenics

• Eugenics is an ideology claiming that the human race can be “improved” biologically by preventing the birth of undesirable individuals and encouraging the birth of desirable individuals.

• In Nazi Germany, the “undesirable” included all those who had physical or mental disabilities or who were from groups they considered racially inferior.

Nazi Eugenics

Nazi propaganda poster expressing the idea that those with physical and mental disabilities are a burden to the German nation.

Nazi Eugenics

• Segregation, Sterilization and eventually killing of “undesirables” were all tried in Nazi Germany.

• Eugenics was also influential in Canada, USA and other countries before World War II.

• Sterilization laws were passed in many American states and in Alberta leading to the sterilization of many in institutions, prisons, hospitals who were deemed “feebleminded”.

Nazi Euthanasia (Aktion T4) Program

Before and during the war, the Nazi regime ordered doctors and health care workers to report on and eventually to kill people deemed to be mentally and physically disabled residing in institutions and hospitals.

Hartheim Euthanasia CenterThousands were killed here by lethal injection and then by poisoned gas.

Nazi Euthanasia (Aktion T4) Program

• The “expertise” gained in the Nazi euthanasia program was later applied to even bigger mass killing in “The Final Solution” in concentration and death camps throughout Nazi occupied Europe.

• Today, this misuse of “euthanasia” still casts a shadow over many current discussions of legalization of euthanasia and “medically assisted death”.

Nazi Experimentation on Human Subjects

During the war years, German scientists, doctors and nurses also conducted and participated in unethical experiments on unwilling subjects in concentration and death camps, such as Dachau.

Nazi Experimentation on Human Subjects

Hypothermia (freezing experiments) conducted at Dachau concentration camp

Post War

The end of the war saw the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied powers and revealed the full extent of the horrors mentioned above.

Nuremberg, Germany, April 1945

In 1939 World War II broke out.

World War II (1939-45)

Allied (Soviet) troops enter Berlin, May 1945.

Allied (American) troops landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, June 1944.

Allied (Canadian) troops liberate Netherlands (Holland), April, 1945.

Pictures of survivors after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp, April 1945. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Liberation_of_Bergen-belsen_Concentration_Camp,_April_1945_BU3766.jpg

The Nuremberg Trials (1946-49)

The Nuremberg (Nuernberg) Trials are a distinct series of trials, some of which prosecuted the political, military and civilian leaders of the Nazi regime while others focused on the judges and other key figures. Finally, the “Doctors’ Trial” or “medical case” are another set of trials which prosecuted some of the doctors, nurses and scientific men responsible for unethical experiments conducted in various concentration and death camps established by the Nazi regime between 1939-45.

The Nuremberg Trials (1946-49)

This was the most famous of the trials of the Major War Criminals and included some of the military and political leaders of the Third Reich, such as Herman Goering, the leader of Germany’s air force (Luftwaffe), Hitler’s top general and successor (seated left with dark glasses and headphones).

USMessageBoard, Date accessed; January 14, 2014. http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/154050-quote-from-nuremberg-trials-still-highly-relevant-today.html

Nuremberg Trial: “The Doctors’ Trial”

Jadwiga Dzido, a victim of medical experiments, a prosecution witness at the Doctors Trial. Nuremberg, Germany, December 22, 1946http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/Trial_testimony_Dzido.html

Photos: Walter B. Beals, Presiding Judge. Doctors' Trial panel of judges: Walter B. Beals,  Johnston T. Crawford, Victor Swearingen (alternate judge).Gallagher Law Library. University of Washington Law School. Feb. 7, 2009. Date accessed Janary 13, 2014. http://lib.law.washington.edu/ref/nuremberg.html

Hitler’s personal physician, Karl Brandt gets up to hear his sentence: death by hanging.

Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials

• The Doctors’ Trial lead to The Nuremberg Code:– A key document in modern day medical and

research ethics.– Reaffirms ethical norms in experimentation on

human subjects– Stresses importance of “informed consent” of the

experimental subject in any scientific or medical experiment

• The Trial of the War Criminals – Cornerstone of international law today– Key to establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2003 (Headquarters: The Hague, Netherlands) – “Crimes against humanity” and “War Crimes” remain key offences.– These charges have been leveled against various military and political leaders in current conflicts and wars.

Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials

Kathe Kollwitz, Nie wider Krieg! [Never again War] (1924)