British Responses to Nazi Medical War Crimes

Abstract

The British response to Nazi medical war crimes has not been as extensively studied as that of the Americans; this is largely due to the fact that Britain did not decide to utilise the results of Nazi research to the same extent as its ally (Hunt L (Bull Atom Sci 2:16–24, 1985)). However, Britain did undertake a similar policy of scientific exploitation in post-war Germany. The first priority of the British government was to ensure that intellectual reparations from Nazi science could be secured (Farquharson J (J Cont Hist 32:23–42, 1997)). Yet as it became increasingly apparent that Nazi science had used human subjects for inhumane experimentation, the government was faced with the dilemma of whether to exploit or condemn German science. These apparently contradictory aims could not be easily resolved. Britain was facing bankruptcy, therefore securing intellectual reparations from German science, so pre-eminent before the war, was a priority (Proctor RN in Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis, 5th edn. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1995)). However, this economic drive to secure the best Nazi scientists for exploitation soon became political as tensions mounted at the outset of the Cold War. As survivors of human experimentation began to mobilise at the end of the war, with help from the British war crimes investigators, it was clear that not to prosecute would undermine British moral superiority as victors. However, not to exploit German science was economically and politically unacceptable. Therefore, a dual policy of prosecution and exploitation was worked out (Weindling PJ in Nazi Medicine and the Nuremburg Trails, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2004)).