The Search for Perfection: Understanding the Motives of Nazi Experimentation

Abstract

Scientific experimentation conducted by the Nazi regime during the middle of the 20th century has the stigma of being scientifically unsound, morally corrupt, and ethically inhumane. The use of unwilling prisoners-in experiments that often led to severe deformity or death-is understandably the driving force behind today's condemnation of the investigations carried out by the Nazi party. A detail that is often disregarded, however, is that Nazi research was not a departure from mainstream science. On the contrary, it was aligned with the international push for increasing knowledge of the human body in order to create a healthier, more vital population; American endorsement of German institutions in both the pre-and post-Nazi scientific communities exemplify this correlation. In context, it is apparent that the Nazis were not acting in opposition to prevailing scientific theories. Indeed, it was the international ambition to gain medical knowledge at any cost that produced an environment conducive to promoting the extreme human experimentation conducted by the Nazi scientists and physicians.