Germany under Hitler committed tremendous crimes in the name of "science" as it fabricated a "master race" and made war on its enemies. The Yalta conference called for Allied trials of German leaders and underlings carrying out Nazi policy for "crimes against humanity," the first such legal action in history. The best known was the series of trials at Nuremberg, modeled on the U.S. jurisprudence system. They became the basis for U.N. resolutions on human rights and the 1950 Geneva Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms. A portion of the "Physicians' Trial," U.S.A. v Karl Brandt, et al., scrutinized the methodology of aviation medicine researchers who had used Dachau inmates for studies of altitude, cold, and seawater desalinization. The crimes committed were undeniably horrid and the betterment of civil rights brought about by Nuremberg was inarguably for the good. What needs further historical scrutiny, though, is the question of who among the researchers was selected for trial, who walked, and why.
Aviation medicine in Germany was very heavily dependent on and sustained by aviation technology. To evaluate the survivability of high-altitude and high-speed bailouts and ejections from their new jet- and rocket-propelled aircraft, Luftwaffe-funded researchers tested subjects inside wind tunnels, vertical accelerators, cold chambers, centrifuges, catapults, and low pressure chambers. Most work was done at specialized institutes under contract to or a part of the Luftwaffe, and in collaboration with aircraft manufacturers. Test subjects were the researchers themselves, co-workers, and volunteer Luftwaffe pilots or cadets.
A few specialists found themselves on a very slippery slope in 1942 when they agreed to help an SS physician and Himmler acquaintance earn his doctorate and university credentials in aviation medicine. They were to supervise his research at Dachau, but the alleged scholar wantonly killed in a series of high altitude and cold water tests. The legitimate scientists had to scramble to get their equipment out of the camp to prevent additional deaths. Others were involved in a 1944 test of a patently bogus seawater desalinization method. In both cases the chief instigators were not tried but tangential personnel were arrested, incarcerated, and tried, seemingly at random. A physician who discovered a legitimate means to make sea water potable, for example, was tried in regard to tests of the spurious method. He was found not guilty. The Luftwaffe's chief of aviation medicine through May 1944 was detained to testify in another case, then mysteriously released but his successor was condemned to death. The director of a remote lab with no connection to these studies was detained for questioning while the supervisor of a man sentenced to twenty years was not even interviewed. By association, allegations of war crimes dogged many individuals even after death.
This paper will recount the Nuremberg cases and their outcomes briefly, then offer some theories as to why transatlantic justice was carried out the way it was. Was aviation medicine too small in comparison to euthanasia and genocide to devote much time to, leading to sloppy prosecutorial work? Did the Allies wish to hurry justice so Germany's civil aviation business could quickly become profitable? Were the Americans only paying lip service to justice as they acquired German jet and rocket technology and personnel for themselves? Did Allies want to make sure that no German would ever be trusted to run an aviation medicine research program again, anywhere? Or did they want to avoid revealing that they, too, customarily used as test subjects people who today would not be considered capable of giving free and informed consent -- prisoners, mental patients, even children?