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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hubertus Strughold | 2/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubertus_Strughold | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:12:16.885692+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== Human experimentation ==== In February 1942, Schutzstaffel (SS) physician Hauptsturmführer Sigmund Rascher collaborated with Luftwaffe aviation scientists Hermann Becker-Freyseng, Siegfried Ruff and Hans-Wolfgang Romberg to plan and carry out a number of aeromedical experiments in which inmates from the Dachau concentration camp served as human test subjects. The study took place in the spring and summer of 1942 and initially focused on high-altitude experiments. Camp inmates, mostly Polish and Soviet POWs, were locked inside of a portable pressure chamber built by the Luftwaffe in which the interior air pressure could be altered to simulate the effects of freefalling from a high-altitude without oxygen. Of the 200 test subjects employed in the experiment 80 were killed by the tests outright, with the remainder subsequently being executed by the SS. From August 1942–May 1943, Rascher and the Luftwaffe physicians also conducted so-called "freezing experiments" using 300 live test subjects. The purpose of these tests was to determine the best way to warm German pilots who had been downed at sea and were suffering from hypothermia. Prisoners were made to remain outdoors naked in freezing temperatures or submerged in tanks of freezing water for hours to simulate the effects of hypothermia before being immersed in hot, sometimes boiling, water to facilitate the warming process, often with fatal results. In October 1942 Rascher delivered a presentation to a medical conference in Nuremberg in which he detailed the findings of his freezing experiments at Dachau to the attendees, Hubertus Strughold and Luftwaffe Surgeon-General Erich Hippke among them. In early-1944 Strughold was named Aviation Medical Consultant to the newly-appointed Chief of the Luftwaffe Medical Service, Generaloberst Oskar Schröder. In July 1944, Schröder initiated a new series of human experiments at Dachau. This study, overseen by Dr. Hans Eppinger and Luftwaffe aviation scientists Wilhelm Beiglboeck and Konrad Schäfer, centered on testing new methods of seawater desalination. In the course of the experiment, 90 Romani inmates from Dachau were deprived of food and forced to consume large amounts of salt water or to have it injected directly into their veins. Half the subjects were then administered a medication called Berkatit and all were then made to undergo an invasive liver biopsy without anesthetic, with numerous subjects dying as a result. The extent to which the Dachau experiments may have occurred with either the knowledge or approval of Strughold in his role as Director of the Institute for Aviation Medicine, remains a source of controversy. Following the German defeat in May 1945, Strughold was placed under house arrest by the British Army in Göttingen. Strughold would subsequently claim to Allied authorities that, despite his influential position within the Luftwaffe Medical Service and his attendance at the October 1942 medical conference in Nuremberg, he had no knowledge of the atrocities that were being committed at Dachau by men who were ostensibly his subordinates. Strughold was never subsequently charged with any wrongdoing by the Allies. However, a 1946 memorandum produced by the staff of the Nuremberg Trials listed Strughold as one of thirteen "persons, firms or individuals implicated" in the war crimes committed at Dachau. In addition, several Luftwaffe officials associated with Strughold's Institute for Aviation Medicine, including his former research assistant Dr. Hermann Becker-Freyseng and his ex-commanding officer Oskar Schröder, were convicted of crimes against humanity in connection with the Dachau experiments at the 1946–1947 Nuremberg Doctor's Trial. During these proceedings, Strughold contributed several affidavits for the defense on behalf of his accused colleagues.