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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

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

auschwitz prisoners — Auschwitz prisoners. Arolsen Archives.

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.

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.