Nazi and Japanese Human Experimentation Programmes

Among the most appalling cruelties perpetrated throughout the course of the Second WorldWar was undoubtedly that of human medical and military experimentation conducted uponboth living and deceased human beings. The various Nazi human experimentationprogrammes were initially carried out not so much in the pursuit of any particular scientificdiscipline, but largely as a result of the Third Reich's obsession with race and eugenics.However, this criminal sub-discipline of the Nazi fascination, with its warped racialideologies, was excused as little other than collateral damage by many of the Nazi physiciansand their assistants. Germany's Axis ally, the Japanese Empire, notorious for its cruelty and sadism ran its ownindependent programmes of human experimentation such as Unit 731 where human beingswere not only subject to the most appalling abuses but were injected with cocktails of poisonsand/or diseases and in some instances were dissected while fully conscious without anyanaesthesia being administered beforehand. It can be said that both Third Reich Germany andImperial Japan had a more or less inexhaustible supply of human Guinea pigs throughout theSecond World War for its ghastly enterprise in human medical experimentation. Theseunfortunate souls consisted largely of concentration camp inmates or in the case of theJapanese the indigenous peoples of the lands they conquered along with British, American,Indian and Australian Allied prisoners of war. Yet what was the true purpose of these so-called experiments and what requisites if anywere, they to serve? And does any evidence suggest that mutual cooperation existed betweenNazi Germany and the Japanese Empire towards the collation of data through the execution of these ghastly endeavours? Another facet examined within this work is why those Japanese physicians involved inhuman experimentation and medical torture were excused indictments for war crimes when theevidence against them was clearly so overwhelming? And is there any truth to suggest thatthe Allied powers benefited from the material obtained through questioning at the end of theSecond World War? The complicity of both the German and Japanese pharmaceuticalcompanies also has to be brought into question as many cooperated willingly with themilitary making handsome profits in the process. This work is written in an attempt at analysing all of these factors within the context of asingle volume, utilising the testimonies of perpetrator and victim through many new first-hand and archival sources. This volume also serves as a horrifying and sobering reminder of the capability of man'sinhumanity through two of the worst military regimes of twentieth-century history.