Former Luftwaffe pilot, now SS doctor, Sigmund
Rascher, chooses two prisoners from a lineup, Russian men barely out of their teens. These strong men have no idea that they are
about to become test subjects in Rascher’s profoundly unethical medical experiment bearing
the innocuous title, “Warming Up After Freezing to the Danger Point.” A few hours hour later, Rascher jots down
in his notebook, “Subject 115763-naked: Time of death: 64 minutes. Subject 115306-clothed. Time of death: 102 minutes.” This was not unusual. Those that underwent the Nazi’s freezing
experiments rarely escaped with their life intact. We know a little bit about the experiments
of doctor Rascher due to the fact that many of the letters the Nazis wrote while they
were experimenting on prisoners were later used in evidence during the Nuremberg Trials. Take for instance this letter, dated October
9, 1942. The correspondence is between Rascher and
Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS. After Adolf Hitler, Himmler was the most powerful
Nazi that ever shouted “Sieg Heil!” The letter started with, “I ask for leave
to submit to you the second interim report concerning the freezing experiments.” Interestingly, lower down, he also wrote that
Professor Holzloehner declined to perform the freezing experiments on humans out of
“shame”. Rascher then added, “I shall take over the
exploitation of them”, meaning the humans. It seems not all Nazi doctors were happy about
experimenting on humans. In the testimony of SS officer Rudolf Brandt,
he talked about Himmler, stating, “He further asked Rascher to submit the names of people
who were opposed to experiments on human beings and stated that such peoples were to be considered
as traitors.” Still, if there were such traitors, they were
in a very small minority. They did exist, though, with Himmler writing
to Rascher in one letter, “I regard those people as high and national traitors who,
still today, reject these experiments on humans, and would instead let sturdy German soldiers
die as a result of these cooling methods. I shall not hesitate to report these men.” Such was the mindset of the inner circle of
Nazis. Being outside all day during the winter in
some parts of the world could easily be lethal. Ending up in the bitterly cold waters could
be lethal much faster. The Germans wanted to know how to treat their
soldiers when they were suffering from hypothermia. These experiments happened at the Dachau camp
from August 1942 until May 1943. They consisted of freezing a person to the
point of death, although sometimes that part did end in death. This was useful information for the Nazis
since such experiments gave them an idea of what a person could survive. Another part of the experiment was called
“warming up”, in which the doctors used various methods to warm someone, so they didn’t
just survive but were brought back to good health. It was almost as if the Nazis were playing
God, trying to resurrect people from what looked like certain death. What’s also interesting is that there seemed
to be some competition going on between various doctors, with some medical personnel expressing
that experimenting on humans wasn’t necessary when animals could be used – in some cases,
“shaved cats.” Rascher told Himmler that humans were indeed
better, saying in one letter that he needed more “Russians”. You might wonder why Russians. The answer was the Germans had to fight on
the Eastern Front, where temperatures could get very low. The Germans weren’t used to this. The Nazis wondered if the Russians had a genetic
advantage when it came to surviving the cold, and if they did, they wanted to know why. Further down the letter, he wrote, “The
experiments of rewarming by body heat, which were ordered, will be carried out as soon
as the women necessary for this experiment arrive, in about two days. I shall report the results of this experiment
separately.” This didn’t mean that Rascher was now freezing
only women, but that he was addressing Himmler’s contention that the best way to warm up a
freezing man was to place him between the bodies of two other men. It was Himmler’s contention that animal
warmth, in this case, human warmth, was better than artificial warmth. He told Rascher “that a fisherwoman could
well take her half-frozen husband into her bed and revive him in that manner.” This was actual testimony from a former Nazi
during the Nuremberg trials. The man who said the words was again Rudolph
Brandt: “The report on the rewarming of an intensely
chilled human being by animal warmth stated that the experimental subjects were cooled
until they all lost consciousness. The test persons were then placed between
two naked women in a spacious bed. It was noted that several of the subjects
revived sufficiently to perform sexual intercourse.” These experiments were supposed to emulate
what it would be like when one of their pilots was shot down and ended up in the frigid North
Sea. To replicate this, sometimes prisoners were
dropped into a bath of ice-cold water. According to researchers, some of them were
anesthetized, and others weren’t. Although we said that Professor Holzloehner
may have felt some amount of shame regarding the human experiments, we found a report with
his name attached to it that beggars belief. The other names were Rascher and Dr. Finke. The letter concerned giving narcotics to a
person before they were forced into the iced bath. It started, “If the experimental subject
was placed in the water under narcosis, one observed a certain arousing effect. The subject began to groan and made some defensive
movements. In a few cases, a state of excitation developed. This was especially severe in the cooling
of head and neck.” The report said the person then suffered from
a kind of “rigor”, after which, the subject started twitching. The report concluded, “With still more marked
sinking of the body temperature, it suddenly ceased. These cases ended fatally, without any successful
results from resuscitation efforts.” Some subjects were naked, but others were
fully dressed, usually in German air force uniforms to create a facsimile of natural
conditions. Rascher’s letters illuminate the details. He wrote in one report, “The experimental
subjects were placed in the water, dressed in complete flying uniform, winter or summer
combination, and with an aviator's helmet. A life jacket made out of rubber kapok was
to prevent submerging. In one experimental series, the occiput (brain
stem) protruded above the water, while in another series of experiments the occiput
(brain stem) and back of the head were submerged in water.” We’ll come back to why he didn’t always
fully submerge the person. The doctors checked the person’s body temperature
throughout and also wrote down obvious “clinical manifestations”, which in simple terms just
means the outward signs of what happened to the freezing person. They also checked for biochemical and physiologic
changes, which again relate to the changes in the body. If the person died, an autopsy would reveal
more information. So, there was Doctor Rascher, thinking he
was doing his bit for the cause. During the Nuremberg Trials, his experiments
were called inhumane and criminal, and of course, they were. But what’s also strange about the man is
he lied when he wrote down the findings of his experiments, or at least, he lied from
time to time. This didn’t help the cause at all. It’s now said that Rascher was operating
under the orders of another person. That was Erich Hippke, the Chief Medical Officer
of the Luftwaffe. Together they came up with the ice-cold water
experiments, and they also left some prisoners outside in the cold during the winter months
at Dachau – usually naked. The reports we have now state that when left
outside, they were usually there for around 14 hours. As for the tub of ice, that could be up to
three hours, although most people died well before that. The prisoners were usually male, but of various
nationalities and ethnicities. We can’t always be sure who was part of
the experiments because the Nazis destroyed much of the evidence when the war was lost. But thanks to those letters, as well as a
228-page report from the investigator, Leo Alexander, we know some things. We know that the prisoners were forced to
do the experiment most of the time, but sometimes they volunteered on the promise that they
would be awarded for their participation. It’s reported that those rewards weren’t
given if the person survived. In total, there were between 360 to 400 experiments
which amounted to between 280 and 300 victims. The temperature of the bath that the people
were dropped in was sometimes between 2 and 12°C (35.6 F and 53.6F). During the winter, the North Sea’s temperature
is usually about 6 °C (43 °F). As for hypothermia, that occurs when the temperature
of the body drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if a person sits in a bath of water that
is around 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, very serious injury and death can happen pretty
fast, within possibly 30 to 90 minutes or around the one to three-hour mark depending
on various factors. It’s these factors that the Nazis wanted
to understand. In some of the reports, the Nazis wrote that
when a person was immersed in water that was 5C (41 F), they could generally tolerate it
for about one hour. If the water was 15C (59F), they would usually
last about four or five hours. One report said that no test subject survived
having their body temperature dropped to 25C (77F) and then being heated up to 28C (82.4F). Some prisoners who later testified to seeing
the experiments said they saw around 90 people die but noted that some did survive after
being warmed up. They also said two people became mentally
ill, but we don’t know when this mental illness occurred. The onset of severe reactions to the cold
was fast, as was stated in another report. It said, “The rapidity of which numbness
occurs is remarkable. It was determined that already 5 to 10 minutes
after falling in, an advancing rigor of the skeletal muscles sets in, which renders the
movement of the arms especially increasingly difficult.” That report also said that those considerations
had to be taken seriously, given that German soldiers in cold water would likely lose most
of their manual dexterity. The report noted, “It is certainly extremely
difficult even at the beginning of numbness to climb into a rubber raft, to blow up a
rubber raft for one person, or to make use of instruments or to signal or call.” One of the ways the Nazis warmed prisoners
up was by immersing them in hot water, but that too is very dangerous. It produces a kind of shock, what we now call
“re-warming shock” or the “after-drop effect”. You can look at any medical website these
days and it will tell you that if you’re dealing with a person suffering from hypothermia
then DO NOT put them in a hot bath. Instead, passively warm them using dry, unheated
blankets. Doctor Rascher disagreed with this, stating
that passive re-warming didn’t work. He wrote in one report, “Re-warning by animal
warmth-animal bodies or women's bodies-would be too slow.” He explained this by saying, “During attempts
to save severely chilled persons, it was shown that rapid re-warming was in all cases preferable
to slow re-warming, because after removal from the cold water, the body temperature
continued to drop rapidly.” According to research, the Nazis used at least
seven different procedures to warm a person. We know that in two experiments a warm bath
was used, although some witnesses later said they saw someone being immersed into boiling
hot water. We also know that massage was used in some
experiments, as were heated light sources, but again, there isn’t much data as to how
they worked. We should say here that in Rasher’s reports
there are lots of inconsistencies, which is one reason why things didn’t end too well
for that guy. Rascher’s report also stated heart failure
was the reason for freezing experiment deaths, but that’s also come into question. As has his conviction that if a person is
not immersed above the neck, he won’t become hypothermic. Academics now state that Rascher was not even
qualified to conduct such experiments, which is why it seems they were either botched or
the results were made up or exaggerated. One scientist later wrote, “The Reichsführer
expressed special interest in the hypothermia project and traveled to Dachau several times
to witness experiments. Thus, the study represents a private venture
by two unqualified ideologues, conducted in a prison setting quite alien to the standards
of an academic environment.” We now know that because Rascher was so close
to Himmler, no other scientists dare question what he did even though they knew full well
he was somewhat of a charlatan. At the Nuremberg Trials, it was said that
their “connections were so strong that practically every superior trembled in fear of the intriguing
Rascher who consequently held a position of enormous power.” When you hear this next bit of information,
you’ll agree that he certainly fitted the glove of what we call mad scientists. With so many dead bodies around him, Rascher
made use of some of the human skin. With it, he created “saddles, riding breeches,
ladies' handbags, and other personal items.” He sold what he’d made to some of his colleagues. But his end soon came when it was discovered
that some of his children weren’t his and he’d actually abducted them. He was also accused of killing his lab assistant
and of being a scientific fraud. For those reasons, he ended up in Dachau himself. Himmler felt this guy he’d protected and
supported for so long had not only lied to him but made a fool of him. On Himmler’s orders, on 26 April 1945, Rascher
was killed by firing squad in his cell. The last words that Rascher heard were, “You
pig, now you've got the punishment you deserve.” Well, that’s if he lived long enough to
hear them. In the 1980s, some scientists said the data
might be useful to help save lives. Baruch Cohen, a Holocaust researcher, had
something to say about that. He said, ‘‘Although use of the Nazi data
might benefit some lives, a larger bioethical problem arises. By conferring a scientific martyrdom on the
victims, it would tend to make them our retrospective guinea pigs, and we, their retrospective torturers’.” For some time, it was assumed that Rascher’s
experiments could be of some use, but academics were quick to state that there was great risk
thinking “these grotesque Nazi medical exercises yielded results worthy of consideration and
possibly of benefit to humanity.” It’s thought the number of victims was around
27,000 for all the various experiments, with about twice as many men as women. About 20 percent of the victims were Jewish,
with about two percent being Roma and Sinti. Other ethnicities were stated as “other”
or “unknown.” When we look at nationalities, there were
many. The countries with the most victims of experiments
were Germany, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and Austria, although over 6,000 cases were marked
as “unknown” nationality. Then there were some countries’ residents
picked out for lesser-known experiments, such as the handful of British commandos who were
captured in Norway. The Nazis tested new kinds of amphetamine
on them in “high performance” experiments. Now you need to watch “The WWII Nazi Breeding
Plan.” Or, have a look at...
