Science and the Third Reich by Adrian Weale - Feb 2001

Channel 4 Books, Feb 2001. First Edition. Hardcover. Science and the Swastika" accompanies the Channel 4 TV series of the same name. But Adrian Weale's book is no mere add-on, it stands alone as a fascinating exploration of the terrible human cost of German technological and scientific achievements from the 1920s onwards. With Hitler's rise to power many of the stars of German science were driven out because they were Jewish. Of those that left, 11 went on to win Nobel prizes in science. As Weale so eloquently shows, with deterioration of the ethical climate, German science spiralled down into activities that would bring so many of its practitioners into the dock at Nuremberg after the war. "Science and the Swastika" is a searing indictment of the German doctors and scientists who aided and abetted the Nazi regime. A historian by training, journalist and writer Adrian Weale is well placed to explore this distressing subject. He shows how the seeds of this completely amoral behaviour lie deeply embedded in ideas about eugenics and race which were and still are widely prevalent--not just in Germany but in human society in general. Germany was by no means alone in sterilising people: from 1934 onwards, Sweden did the same to 63,000 people and only stopped in 1975. Many of the German scientists involved in unethical experiments, such as Dr Hubertus Strughold, were subsequently employed by the Allies, especially America, because of their expertise. Weale gives harrowing accounts (including photographic evidence of their research) ranging from low pressure and freezing to wound simulation on unwilling human victims, who were mostly (but not all) Jewish and who mostly died. As the behaviour of some contemporary scientists and doctors not so far from home has shown, there are lessons for us all in "Science and the Swastika". "Douglas Palmer