Evil Doctors and Scientists From World War II

29. This Evil Medical Professional Experimented on Prisoners, Including Hundreds of Catholic Priests

German Doctor Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffmann was a scientist and chemist who worked for the Luftwaffe’s Technical Research Institute from the 1930s until the end of World War II. During the war, Hoffmann was based in Frankfurt and Berlin but conducted many of his experiments in Dachau concentration camp, whose inmates were used as unwilling human subjects for his medical atrocities. As part of his research, Hoffmann was wont to conduct poisonous chemical experiments on human guinea pigs, selected from concentration camp inmates.

Dr. Hoffmann was a large and gregarious man who spoke English fairly well. He claimed after the war that he had been opposed to the Nazis, but there is slim evidence to support that. However, his gregariousness, ability to ingratiate himself with the victorious Allies, and willingness to turn on his former colleagues to save himself, served him well. Hoffmann was saved from accountability after the war when he was selected for Operation Paperclip, a secret program that imported Nazi scientists, engineers, and other professionals, and relocated to the US.

28. After Experimenting on Prisoners During World War II, This Nazi Doctor Ended Up Developing LSD For America

After the war, Dr. Friedrich Hoffmann turned to snitch and gave evidence against other scientists and doctors during the Dachau trials. Although he testified about his involvement in the murder of 324 Czechoslovak Catholic priests, who were deliberately infected with malaria to examine its effects, he escaped punishment. Dr. Hoffmann ended up in Britain as part of Operation Matchbox, the British counterpart to the American Operation Paperclip. The British put him to work developing synthetic poison gasses for them in Porton Down.

However, Hoffmann neither liked living in postwar Britain, nor got along with British researchers. So the British passed him on to the Americans, and in 1947, he was brought to the US as part of Operation Paperclip. In America, Hoffmann went to work for the US Army in Fort Detrick and the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, the center of America’s biological and chemical weapons research. His work included the development of nerve agents such as sarin, and psychoactive agents such as LSD.

27. From Experimenting on Concentration Camp Prisoners to Experimenting on Unwitting American Test Subjects

In the US, Dr. Hoffmann remained true to his evil Nazi experiments form: his test subjects in America, mostly enlisted military personnel and federal prison inmates, were not told that they were being given toxins. In the 1950s, Hoffmann worked on developing various chemical agents for the government, such as Agent Blue, Agent White, and Agent Orange. The last was a herbicide used to defoliate vegetation, and its widespread use during the Vietnam War ended up harming soldiers and civilians alike, from both sides of the conflict.

Starting in 1952, Hoffmann also began working side gigs for the CIA. His projects for US intelligence included oxygen deprivation experiments similar to Nazi ones conducted during the war on concentration camp inmates. He later joined the staff of a CIA front organization named Chemrophyl Associates, and worked on developing the chemicals used in the CIA’s various attempts to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Hoffman finally died in 1967, having gotten away scot-free and never been held to account for his medical atrocities.

26. This Evil Doctor Fed Prisoners Used Clothes

Doctor Walter Schieber (1896 – 1960) was a chemist who worked in textile manufacturing in Germany between the world wars. When World War II began, he joined the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production. He held various positions, including Chief of Armaments Deliveries, and Head of the Central Office for Generators. He was also an SS member, and became an SS Brigadefuhrer­ – equivalent to an American brigadier general. He rose within the Ministry of Armaments’ hierarchy to become a deputy of its chief, Albert Speer, and head of the Armaments Supply Office. In 1943, Hitler awarded Schieber the War Merit Cross.

Schieber conducted some bizarre and needlessly cruel experiments on prisoners. In one evil experiment in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1943, he wanted to examine the impact of food shortage on slave laborers. So Schieber picked 150 slave workers, and instead of their usual watery broth, he gave them an artificial paste which he had personally designed, made up of used clothing. Not surprisingly, the experiment reached the obvious conclusion, that people can’t survive if you feed them used clothes. 116 of the 150 subjects died before the experiment ended.

25. This Doctor Worked on Deadly Human Experiments That Killed Thousands

Dr. Schieber was also the Armaments Ministry’s official liaison with IG Farben – the German chemical conglomerate that produced the poisonous toxins used in the Holocaust’s gas chambers. While working closely with IG Farben’s chief chemist, Otto Ambrose, Schieber oversaw the chemical giant’s production of deadly gasses such as tabun and sarin. During the course of his work with IG Farben, Schieber was linked to thousands of deaths from numerous chemical experiments on live subjects, upon whom the deadly chemicals were tested.

After the war, Schieber became friends with a US Army brigadier general in the Chemical Corps named Charles Loucks. At the time, Loucks was stationed in Heidelburg, where he worked on nerve agents such as sarin gas and tabun. Because Schieber had intimate knowledge of the gasses used by the Nazis during the war, the two hit it off. However, Loucks’ friendship with Schieber and other Nazi officials was fishy. So fishy that the American general was recalled to the Pentagon, where he was reprimanded for getting too chummy with evil Nazis.

24. American Officials Saved This Evil Doctor From Paying For His Crimes

Dr. Schieber’s American friend, Brigadier General Charles Loucks, was a repellent figure in his own right. He was drawn to Scheiber not despite his Nazi connections, but precisely because of those connections. Especially because Schieber had been close to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Luckily for Schieber, while the US Army might have been repelled by him, US intelligence was not. Loucks was given covert funds to hire Schieber to work for the US Army’s Chemical Corps for scientific research purposes. He did that for 10 years, and was instrumental in helping develop America’s sarin gas capability.

What was fortunate for Schieber was unfortunate for justice. Because he was useful to the US, he was shielded from accountability for his wartime misdeeds, and was never prosecuted for his war crimes. As a 1947 official memo stated: “Dr. Scheiber’s talents are of so important a nature to the US that they go far to override any consideration of his political background“. In addition to his work for the Army’s Chemical Corps, Scheiber became a CIA asset for the remainder of his life.

23. The Evil Doctor In Charge of the Nazis’ Biological Warfare

German doctor Kurt Blome (1894 – 1969) was a high-ranking scientist during the Nazi era. He became a Deputy Reich Health Leader, and a Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. His expertise was virology, and his titles masked his actual nefarious work during World War II. Blome was in charge of all biological warfare sponsored by the SS and the Wehrmacht. Despite conducting deadly experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp and elsewhere, American officials intervened in his prosecution for wartime atrocities to get him off the hook. They then hired him for secret work on behalf of the US.

Blome’s title of Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research was deceptive: he was not interested in curing cancer, but in causing it via viruses, and in the military use of carcinogenic substances. He also headed an institute that sought to develop biological warfare agents. His institute advocated attacking the US with human and animal epidemic pathogens, as well as plant pests. Blome’s biological warfare organization conducted lethal experiments on 1700 inmates at Mauthausen concentration camp. His organization also collaborated with Japan’s infamous Unit 731, which, as seen below, was carrying out even worse biological warfare experiments on the other side of the world.

22. This Doctor Experimented on Human Subjects in Nazi Concentration Camps

Dr. Kurt Blome also experimented on concentration camp prisoners at Dachau and Buchenwald, infesting them with typhus-carrying lice in order to study how to best cause an epidemic. In 1943, he also proposed spreading malaria amongst targeted populations artificially, by dropping infected mosquitoes from airplanes. He also researched spreading animal diseases amongst British, American, and Soviet livestock from the air. In addition, he tested nerve gasses such as sarin and tabun on Auschwitz inmates. After the war, he was captured by US Army intelligence, and during interrogations, admitted to numerous medical atrocities.

There was ample evidence of crimes against Blome. Between that and his admissions, there was more than enough to send him to the gallows. However, American officials intervened in a war crimes trial to get him acquitted. Soon thereafter, he was interviewed by representatives from Camp Detrick, Maryland, the center of America’s biological warfare program. He was then hired by the US Army Chemical Corps to work on top-secret chemical and biological warfare projects that remain classified to this day.

21. Japan’s Most Evil Doctor of World War II

Doctor Shiro Ishii (1892 – 1959) was one of the Second World War’s more evil but lesser-known monsters. His turn to evil was unfortunate, because he had begun his career with great promise. As a young man, Ishii had been a brilliant medical student and doctor. He was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army as a surgeon in 1921, and became one of Japan’s greatest bacterial research specialists. Among other things, he invented a revolutionary filtration system that could remove all bacteria from stagnant water.

Dr. Ishii turned to the dark side in 1933, and shifted his focus from preventing bacterial infections to weaponizing bacteria for use in warfare. That year, Japan had seized Manchuria from China. Ishii moved there with a team of researchers, and set up a biological experimentation operation, Unit 731. For guinea pigs, Ishii and his researchers experimented upon live humans, mostly captured Chinese soldiers and civilians deemed hostile to the Japanese occupation. They also experimented on Soviet soldiers captured in border skirmishes, and on Allied prisoners of war after Japan joined World War II.

20. Dr. Ishii Murdered Thousands in a Variety of Gruesome Ways

During Dr. Ishii’s evil experiments, thousands were killed with a host of deadly pathogens, ranging from the bubonic plague to botulism, to which prisoners were exposed in a variety of ways. Victims were injected with bacteria, had it added to their food and drink, or it was smeared on their clothes. To test the effectiveness of aerial dispersal of diseases, bombs full of gangrene or other deadly bacteria were exploded over prisoners. Ishii and Unit 731 subjected prisoners to other atrocities as well. Victims were starved, exposed to extremes of temperatures, bombarded with X-rays, killed in giant centrifuges, boiled alive, or even dissected alive.

Thanks to the thousands of test subjects killed in the camps of Unit 731, plus the hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians outside who were exposed to the plague, Ishii brought biological warfare to new heights – or lows. By 1945, even as Japan was reeling on her last legs, she still had a horrific last card to play: weaponized deadly pathogens. Ishii and Unit 731 had encased the bubonic plague, botulism, anthrax, smallpox, cholera, and other diseases into bombs that were routinely dropped on Chinese soldiers and civilians.

19. This Evil Doctor Planned to Infect America With the Plague

If Dr. Ishii had had his way, US civilians would have experienced first hand what his victims in China had endured. On March 26^th, 1945, he finalized plans for Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, to attack America with biological weapons. The operation called for five I-400 long-range submarines, each carrying three Aichi M6A1 Seiran floatplanes, to cross the Pacific Ocean. Upon reaching the US West Cost, the submarines were to launch the float planes, loaded with plague-infected fleas, to attack San Diego.

As one of the pilots put it in 1998: “I was told directly by Shiro Ishii of the kamikaze mission “Cherry Blossoms at Night”, which was named by Ishii himself. I was a leader of a squad of seventeen. I understood that the mission was to spread contaminated fleas in the enemy’s base and contaminate them with plague.” The operation was scheduled for September 22^nd, 1945, but the atomic bombing of Japan in August ended the war. Japan formally surrendered on September 2^nd, less than three weeks before the scheduled launch date of Cherry Blossoms at Night.

18. Despite Murdering Hundreds of Thousands, Dr. Ishii Was Never Held Accountable For His Evil Deeds

Dr. Shiro Ishii’s evil experiments killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese from bubonic plague, anthrax, cholera, and other diseases. According to the most reliable recent estimate, from the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Biological Warfare, the number of his victims might have been as high as 580,000. Yet, Ishii never faced a war crimes tribunal, nor was he ever prosecuted for his horrific deeds. In August 1945, just before the Soviets conquered Manchuria, he evacuated Unit 731 back to Japan, destroyed most traces of his camps, and had all remaining prisoners, plus 600 workers, murdered.

The Soviets nonetheless captured some documents, which they used in their own biological warfare program. After the war, American microbiologists deemed Ishii’s work “absolutely invaluable .. [it] could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans“. So he cut a deal to avoid prosecution, in exchange for sharing the results of his experiments with the US military. Although Unit 731’s victims included American POWs, General Douglas MacArthur, who ran the occupation of the Japan, officially denied the existence of any Japanese experiments upon Americans. Ishii lived as a free man, until his death in 1959 from throat cancer.

17. This Evil Researcher Went From a Prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship to Conducting Horrific Human Experiments for the Nazis

Prominent German medical researcher Hubertus Strughold (1898 – 1986) served as the Luftwaffe’s chief aeromedical researcher from 1935 until the end of World War II. After earning a medical degree in the 1920s, Strughold got into the emerging field of aviation medicine. He won a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and traveled to the United States in 1928, where he conducted aviation medicine research at the University of Chicago and Case Western University. Upon his return to Germany, he became a professor at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin.

In 1935, Strughold was hired by the Nazis as director of the Research Institution For Aviation Medicine, a think tank sponsored by Herman Goering’s Ministry of Aviation. Strughold’s institution conducted pioneering research on the physical effects of supersonic flight, and high altitudes. When World War II began in 1939, the Institution was absorbed into the Luftwaffe, and Strughold was commissioned as an officer, eventually becoming a colonel. During the war, he conducted horrific human experiments on prisoners that got many of his test subjects killed. Those activities were swept under the rug, however, and he was brought to the US under the aegis of Operation Paperclip.

16. Hubertus Strughold Conducted Sadistic Experiments on Concentration Camp Prisoners

During World War II, Hubertus Strughold participated in medical studies that used inmates from Dachau concentration camp as guinea pigs. Test subjects were subjected to surgeries without anesthetics, immersed in frozen water to examine the effects of hypothermia, and placed in air pressure chambers. After the war, investigators at the Nuremberg War Trials listed Strughold as one of thirteen “persons, firms, or individuals implicated” in the Dachau medical atrocities. However, the US government figured he possessed valuable information and experience, so he never faced charges for his evil deeds.

Instead, Strughold was brought to America, where he held high-ranking medical positions in the US Air Force as head of its School of Aviation Medicine in Texas. He then worked for NASA as head of its Department of Space Medicine. Strughold conducted pioneering work in the physical and psychological effects of manned space flight, and his efforts helped get American astronauts to successfully walk on the Moon. Because of his contributions to the field, Strughold became known as “the Father of Space Medicine”.

15. The Controversy Surrounding a Prestigious Award Named After an Evil Doctor

Since 1963, the Space Medicine Association has given out an annual Hubertus Strughold Award to top physicians or scientists for outstanding work in space medicine. That led to controversy when Strughold’s evil wartime activities became more widely known. His reputation took a serious hit when US Army intelligence reports from 1945 listing him as wanted for war crimes were declassified. A 1958 Justice Department investigation had exonerated him, while a second inquiry launched by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was abandoned in 1974. A third investigation was opened in 1983, but was abandoned when Strughold died in 1986.

During his lifetime, Strughold denied having ever participated in or even known of the Dachau concentration camp’s human experiments. For years, most doctors and scientists in Strughold’s field took him at his word, and he remained a revered figure. However, things grew increasingly awkward as more and more evidence kept emerging after Strughold’s death of his wartime medical atrocities. Not least of them were experiments conducted by his Institute on young children from a psychiatric asylum. That made the award bearing his name an increasingly controversial honor.

14. The Visionary Who Took Humanity to Space and Killed Thousands of Slave Workers

It is hard to tell whether, on balance, Wernher von Braun (1912 – 1977) was good or evil. On the one hand, he was a visionary genius and a brilliant engineering manager who is rightly credited as the father of America’s space program. We went to the Moon, in large part, thanks to him. If the day ever comes when humans set foot on Mars and colonize the Red Planet, it will also be thanks to von Braun in large part. Humanity owes him a huge debt for his contributions to the space sciences.

On the other hand, the man was a war criminal. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands of slave workers who perished while toiling on his rockets in atrocious conditions, of which he was fully aware. During World War II, von Braun was an SS Sturmbanfuhrer – equivalent to an American Major – who developed and oversaw the manufacture of the V-2 rockets, the world’s first ballistic missiles. His rockets, carrying a one-ton explosive warhead, rained down terror and killed thousands, most of them civilians, in London, Antwerp, and other cities.

13. After World War II, This Space Pioneer Went to Great Length to Whitewash His Nazi Past

Wernher von Braun pretended to have been an oblivious scientist, too engrossed in his blueprints, calculations, and other pointy head work, to fully comprehend the horrors of the evil regime he served. In reality, he had been quite comfortable with the Third Reich, the Nazis, and the SS, until late in the war. Far from being oblivious to Hitler’s horrors, von Braun was personally involved in Nazi atrocities, and was a direct, hands-on participant in war crimes. Among other things, he personally supervised the manufacturing of rockets, using tens of thousands of slave workers.

An estimated 20,000 slaves toiling for von Braun’s rockets died of starvation, maltreatment, or were murdered by their guards while building his rockets. He was often at the slave labor facilities and had firsthand knowledge of the horrific workplace conditions. After the war, he was one of the first Germans secretly moved to the US in Operation Paperclip. The US Army put him to work to develop its intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rocket that launched America’s first space satellite. When NASA was created, von Braun joined it as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

12. Did Wernher von Braun’s Good Outweigh His Evil?

Wernher von Braun was put in charge of the Saturn V rockets that sent the Apollo Program’s spacecraft to the Moon. In recognition of his services, he was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975. Von Braun thus presents a conundrum and a moral dilemma. He is a pioneer who undoubtedly contributed much to the advancement of mankind in the space sciences. If our species ever become a multi-planetary one – something many scientists see as the only safeguard against our extinction in the next millennium – it will be thanks in large part to von Braun.

It is no exaggeration to say that von Braun was history’s most important and influential rocket engineer and space advocate. So there is no question that the man did a lot of good in his life. However, does that absolve him of his personal responsibility for having gone along with the Nazis? Does it wash away the stain of having been a loyal Nazi and member of the SS? Does it cleanse him of the evil of having been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of slave workers who perished while building his precious rockets? Was Wernher von Braun a Nazi villain, space hero, or both?

11. An Evil Doctor Who Got Away With Atrocities

German Doctor Walter Schreiber (1893 – 1970) was a prominent epidemiologist and highly regarded biology professor in the peaceful interlude between World War I and the even bloodier Second World War. He had been a medical student when WWI erupted in 1914, at which point he voluntarily enlisted in the German army. He was wounded early in the conflict, and after recovering from his injuries he resumed his studies, then served as a military doctor until WWI ended. After the war, he became a professor of biology and hygiene.

In the interwar years, Dr. Schreiber became one of the world’s foremost experts on epidemics. During the Nazi era, he introduced the use of lethal phenol injections “as a quick and convenient means of executing troublemakers“. During World War II, he rose to the rank of major general in the Wehrmacht Medical Service. He was also a member of the Reich Research Council, in which capacity he conducted cruel and sadistic medical experiments upon prisoners. Unfortunately, except for a brief period of imprisonment, Schreiber was never held accountable for his evil medical practices.

10. This Doctor Froze Live Human Subjects, and Deliberately Infected Others With Gangrene

During World War II, Dr. Walter Schreiber conducted a series of cruel experiments on prisoners in the infamous Auschwitz concentration and death camp. His evil practices included freezing his victims in order to examine the effects of extreme cold. He conducted other sadistic medical experiments on female prisoners in Ravensbruck concentration camp. They included cutting open the victims’ legs and deliberately infecting them with gangrene, then giving them bone transplants. The subjects of his experiments usually died – but only after suffering prolonged agonies.

At war’s end, Dr. Schreiber was captured by the Red Army and was taken to the Soviet Union. There, he was held in the infamous Lubyanka prison in poor conditions. His conditions improved when his captors discovered his true identity and put him to work providing medical care to high-ranking German prisoners. He was produced as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials to testify against Hitler’s second in command, Herman Goering, who had been in charge of Germany’s biological weapons development.

9. A Sadistic Monster Who Escaped Accountability

After testifying against Herman Goering in the Nuremberg Trials, Dr. Walter Schreiber was shielded from accountability for his medical atrocities because the victors found him useful. He ended up getting hired by the CIA and the US military, who saw to it that he escaped punishment. In 1948, he evaded his Soviet handlers and made it to the West, where he was hired by the US military and the CIA to work as chief medical doctor in Camp King, a clandestine POW interrogation site in Germany.

Dr. Schreiber was sent to the US in 1951 as part of Operation Paperclip, and was put to work at the Air Force School of Medicine in Texas. However, the publication of newspaper articles soon thereafter about his medical atrocities on behalf of the Nazis led to a public outcry. So his intelligence handlers relocated him and his family to Argentina in 1952. There, Dr. Schreiber worked as an epidemiologist in a research laboratory, until his death from a heart attack in 1970.

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 sex 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.

7. From Delinquent Child to Mentally Troubled Soldier

Growing up, Marcel Petiot was a problem child. Various incidents of violent behavior and numerous brushes with the law got him expelled from multiple schools. As a result, the young delinquent was forced to complete his education in a special academy for troubled youth who could not be handled by regular schools. When WWI broke out, Petiot joined the French Army. However, between the horrors of trench warfare, in which he was wounded and gassed, and his already troubled psyche, Petiot suffered a nervous breakdown.

He was sent to a series of rest homes, where he got arrested multiple times for stealing morphine, wallets, blankets, photos, and letters. He ended up in military jail for a while, before he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. There, Petiot was diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses. The signs of evil were there: some examiners thought that Petiot was a menace and wanted him institutionalized, but they were overruled. In hindsight, their recommendations should have been heeded. Eventually, Petiot was discharged from the military with a disability pension.

6. Despite a Track Record of Violent Psychosis That Hinted at the Evil to Come, Marcel Petiot Managed to Become a Doctor

It is remarkable that Marcel Petiot managed to become a doctor in the first place, considering that he was certifiably crazy. Indeed, there were multiple psychiatric diagnoses that declared him to be a violent psychopath. However, beneath the nuttiness, the man was actually pretty intelligent. Especially when it came to book smarts. After WWI ended, he joined an accelerated educational program intended to benefit veterans who had spent a significant chunk of their youth in the trenches instead of in university lecture halls.

Petiot ended up completing medical school in eight months, did an internship and residency in a psychiatric hospital of all places, and in 1921, received his medical degree and license. He moved to and opened up a practice in the small town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, in Burgundy. From the start, Petiot was a sketchy MD. He gained a reputation for supplying illegal drugs – he was himself an addict – and performing illegal abortions. When he was not keeping office hours, Dr. Petiot kept himself occupied with things like petty thefts.

5. This Evil Doctor Got Elected to Office the Same Year He Murdered His First Victim

As with many evil pyschopaths, Dr. Marcel Petiot could be quite charming when he wanted to be. It is unclear just when he got started on his career as a serial killer. Many believe that his first victim was probably Louise Delaveau, the daughter of one of his patients, with whom he had an affair. She vanished in 1926, and witnesses recalled seeing the town’s doctor loading a big trunk into his car at the time of her disappearance. The authorities investigated but eventually concluded that Petiot’s former lover had simply run away.

Although there was a whole lot of shadiness surrounding him, Dr. Petiot was a popular figure in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, and he capitalized on that. The same year as his ex-mistress’ disappearance, Petiot turned to local politics, ran for mayor, and won the election. While in office, he embezzled town funds, engaged in sketchy financial dealings, and continued on with his petty thefts. Eventually, an investigation was opened that ended with his conviction for fraud and suspension from office in 1930. He was forced to resign soon thereafter.

4. Marcel Petiot Worked Out His Stress by Murdering People

Shortly after Dr. Marcel Petiot was forced to resign as mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, he got rid of some of the stress and worked out some of his frustrations by murdering one of his patients. Not long thereafter, another patient – who had accused the former mayor of crimes – died in suspicious circumstances. Despite the evidence – including a conviction – of corruption, plus mounting indicia of criminality, Dr. Petitot retained his popularity. Indeed, upon his suspension from office as mayor, the entire town council resigned in protest.

In the autumn of 1931, Dr. Petiot was elected as a councilor of the Yonne Department. However, scandal and the whiff of scandal followed him wherever he went. Within just a few months of winning the election, Dr. and Councilman Petiot was convicted of stealing electricity from his town. Once again, he was forced to resign from public office. So he decided to start a new life in Paris, moving to and opening a medical practice in the French capital.

3. During World War II, This Doctor Had a Good Dr. Jekyll Side, That Was Eclipsed by His Evil Mr. Hyde Persona

Paris agreed with Dr. Petiot. He used fake credentials to attract patients, and before long, he had established a thriving practice in the 9^th Arrondissement. It helped that his office gained a reputation as a pill mill, handing out controlled drug prescriptions to all and sundry. Nor did it hurt that the doctor was more than willing to perform illegal abortions for the right price. However, despite his thriving and highly lucrative practice – made even more lucrative by his tax evasion – Petiot persisted with the thefts, petty and grand, of anything that was not nailed down.

In 1936, he was institutionalized for kleptomania, but was released the following year. After France was defeated and conquered by the Nazis in 1940, French citizens were drafted to toil in Germany as forced laborers. Dr. Petiot helped labor draft evaders by furnishing them with fake medical disability documents. He also treated returning workers who had been sent back from Germany, broken down and in poor health. That was his good side – the Dr. Jekyll part. Unfortunately, it was eclipsed by the doctor’s evil Mr. Hyde side.

2. Dr. Petiot Exploited the French Resistance to Indulge in Serial Killing

Dr. Petiot claimed to have been a member of the French Resistance. According to him, he developed secret weapons that killed Nazis without leaving a trace, planted booby traps, met Allied commanders, and worked with an anti-fascist cell. It was all bunk. What was not bunk was his evil scheme to profit from the Holocaust by murdering dozens of Jews in order to steal from them. Using the alias “Dr. Eugene”, Petiot claimed to have an escape route to get those wanted by the Nazis or the collaborationist Vichy French government to safety outside of France.

Charging 25,000 francs per person, “Dr. Eugene” promised to get fugitives to Argentina or other South American countries, via an escape route that went through Portugal. There was no escape route. Accomplices led victims desperate to escape the Germans – particularly Jews, but also Resistance members and ordinary criminals – to Petiot’s house. There, he told them that Argentina required that immigrants be vaccinated against diseases. Petiot then injected them, not with a vaccine, but with cyanide. In addition to the payment already received, the ghoulish ring seized whatever other valuables the victims had. They then destroyed their corpses in Petiot’s basement, buried them on his property, or disposed of them elsewhere.

1. This Evil Doctor Met His End Beneath the Guillotine’s Blade

Things began to unravel for the evil Dr. Marcel Petiot in March of 1944, when his neighbors complained of foul stenches coming from his house, and of copious smoke coming out of his chimney. Upon entering the house, authorities discovered a roaring coal stove fire in the basement, and human remains. More human remains were found in a canvass bag, and in a quicklime pit in the backyard. Police also found clothing, goods, and suitcases belonging to numerous victims. Petiot was not at home, however, and he went on the lam.

Adopting an alias, he joined the Resistance – for real this time – during the liberation of Paris later that year. He rose to captain in charge of counterintelligence and prisoner interrogations. However, his real identity was eventually uncovered, and he was arrested. Marcel Petiot was eventually charged with 27 murders for profit, although he might have killed over 60 people. Prosecutors estimated that he made over 200 million francs from his scheme. Tried in 1946, he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and guillotined.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Air & Space Magazine, January 1^st, 2008 – What Did Wernher Von Braun Know, & When Did He Know It?

Alliance for Human Research Protection – Operation Paperclip Nazi Rogues

Encyclopedia Britannica – Marcel Petiot, French Serial Killer

Freeman, Marsha – How We Got to the Moon: The Story of the German Space Pioneers (1993)

Holocaust Encyclopedia – Nazi Medical Experiments

International Churchill Society – Their Finest Hour

Jacobsen, Annie – Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (2014)

Listverse – 10 Historic Serial Killers You Don’t Know

Medical Bag – Pure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard For Human Suffering

Murderpedia – Marcel Petiot

Neufeld, Michael J. – Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (2007)

Operation Paperclip – Kurt Blome

PBS American Experience – Shiro Ishii

Space Medicine Association – The Controversy of Hubertus Strughold During World War II

Wall Street Journal, December 1^st, 2012 – A Scientist’s Nazi Era Past Haunts Prestigious Space Price

War History Online – Japan’s Dr. Mengele: Medical Experiments on POWs at Unit 731

Wikipedia – Shiro Ishii

Wikipedia – Walter Schreiber

Wikipedia – Wernher Von Braun

World War II Database – Friedrich Hoffman