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Evil Doctors and Scientists From World War II

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2021 33 min

Second Battle of Champagne - Second Battle of Ypres — French soldiers wearing gas masks in WWI trenches, waiting for an order to launch an attack. Flickr

8. The Evil French Doctor of World War II

Unlike others in this list who committed evil on behalf of their governments, French doctor Marcel Andre Henri Felix Petiot (1897 – 1946) turned to evil on his own hook for his own gratification. It is unclear just what exactly caused Petiot to turn into an evil homicidal psychopath, but the signs were there from early on – if somebody had bothered to look. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to look. Petiot was an out-and-out delinquent at an early age. When he was eleven years old, he propositioned a girl for s-e-x in school, and took his father’s firearm to class and discharged it.

In his teens, Petiot robbed a postbox, and was arrested and charged with theft and destruction of public property. The charges were dismissed when a psychiatric evaluation revealed mental instability, and a judge deemed him mentally unfit to stand trial. Despite such an unpromising background, Petiot actually managed to finish medical school and become a doctor. However, instead of ending his days as a respected retired MD, Petiot ended his days face down on the guillotine, after he was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering dozens of people.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.