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Background to World War II, Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code

Background to World War II, Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code. Warning: Some of these images contain graphic depictions of violence. Gabriel Tordjman, Issues in Bioethics, Dawson College, Winter 2014. Timeline. World War I (1914-1918) German Revolution (1918-1919)

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Background to World War II, Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code

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  1. Background to World War II, Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code Warning: Some of these images contain graphic depictions of violence Gabriel Tordjman, Issues in Bioethics, Dawson College, Winter 2014

  2. Timeline • World War I (1914-1918) • German Revolution (1918-1919) • Weimar Republic ( Germany, 1919-1933) • Nazis come into power (1933) • World War II (1939-45) • Nuremberg Trials and Nuremberg Code (1945-1949)

  3. World War I World War I (1914-1918) Trench Warfare http://www.harris-academy.com/departments/history/Trenches/GillianR/Gillian%202.htm

  4. World War I (1914-1918) Battle of the Somme: Trench Warfare [1916] http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media.php?id=3655

  5. World War I (1914-1918) David Swanson, “Abandoning Torture But What About War?”, LA Progressive, 10 Feb,. 2009. http://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/abandoning-torture-but-what-about-war/

  6. Metal on Metal, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O0ch3ABb3L4/TD6yDveCN5I/AAAAAAAAB1M/dTq32PIb21s/s1600/attachment.jpg Otto Dix, Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas (1924)

  7. Weimar Germany (1918-1933) Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921) “Kathe Kollwitz” http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm

  8. Kathe Kollwitz, Deutschlands Kinder Hungern! (1924) Alexander B. Downes (dept. Pol. Sc. Duke) http://www.duke.edu/~downes/courses.htm

  9. Weimar Germany (1918-1933) Hyperinflation (1923) German children playing with worthless money In 1922 a loaf of bread cost 163 marks. By September 1923 a loaf of bread cost 1,500,000 marks.

  10. George Grosz, The Agitator (1928) ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-2.html

  11. Weimar Germany (1918-1933) Hitler during the “Beer Hall Putsch” (1923), the Nazis first (failed) attempt at seizing power.

  12. Weimar Germany (1918-1933) After years of political instability and economic problems, Germany, along with much of the world suffered through a devastating Great Depression beginning in 1929. http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Slouch_Purge15.html

  13. The Great Depression Famous photograph by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens and her children outside a migrant workers’ camp in California during the Great Depression.

  14. Nazis Come to Power 1932-33 It was under these conditions, when huge numbers of people lost their jobs, that Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933. Nazi electoral propaganda posters for the 1932 German election. "Workers: The Brain and the Fist! Vote for the frontsoldier Hitler!" (source: The Rise of the Dictators: 1919-1939 by Peter Banyard. Gallery Books, New York City. 1986, p. 18.) "Fight hunger and despair! Vote for Hitler!" (source: "An Exhibition of German Posters," May 8 through June 15, 1963, New School for Social Research, New York City.) http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/weimar.nsf/ID/A50A6DC98BE7438885256CDE00581D88?OpenDocument

  15. Nazi Measures and Modern Bioethics During the Nazi Period (1933-45), the Nazis enacted measures which still influence modern day bioethical discussion. These include: • Eugenics Measures • The “Euthanasia” (T4) Program • Unethical Experiments on Prisoners in Concentration Camps

  16. Nazi Eugenics • Eugenics is an ideology claiming that the human race can be “improved” biologically by preventing the birth of undesirable individuals and encouraging the birth of desirable individuals. • In Nazi Germany, the “undesirable” included all those who had physical or mental disabilities or who were from groups they considered racially inferior.

  17. Nazi Eugenics Nazi propaganda poster expressing the idea that those with physical and mental disabilities are a burden to the German nation.

  18. Nazi Eugenics • Segregation, Sterilization and eventually killing of “undesirables” were all tried in Nazi Germany. • Eugenics was also influential in Canada, USA and other countries before World War II. • Sterilization laws were passed in many American states and in Alberta leading to the sterilization of many in institutions, prisons, hospitals who were deemed “feebleminded”.

  19. Nazi Euthanasia (Aktion T4) Program Before and during the war, the Nazi regime ordered doctors and health care workers to report on and eventually to kill people deemed to be mentally and physically disabled residing in institutions and hospitals.

  20. Hartheim Euthanasia Center Thousands were killed here by lethal injection and then by poisoned gas.

  21. Nazi Euthanasia (Aktion T4) Program • The “expertise” gained in the Nazi euthanasia program was later applied to even bigger mass killing in “The Final Solution” in concentration and death camps throughout Nazi occupied Europe. • Today, this misuse of “euthanasia” still casts a shadow over many current discussions of legalization of euthanasia and “medically assisted death”.

  22. Nazi Experimentation on Human Subjects During the war years, German scientists, doctors and nurses also conducted and participated in unethical experiments on unwilling subjects in concentration and death camps, such as Dachau.

  23. Nazi Experimentation on Human Subjects Hypothermia (freezing experiments) conducted at Dachau concentration camp

  24. Post War The end of the war saw the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied powers and revealed the full extent of the horrors mentioned above.

  25. World War II (1939-45) In 1939 World War II broke out. Nuremberg, Germany, April 1945

  26. Allied (Soviet) troops enter Berlin, May 1945.

  27. Allied (American) troops landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, June 1944.

  28. Allied (Canadian) troops liberate Netherlands (Holland), April, 1945.

  29. Pictures of survivors after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp, April 1945. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Liberation_of_Bergen-belsen_Concentration_Camp,_April_1945_BU3766.jpg

  30. The Nuremberg Trials (1946-49) The Nuremberg (Nuernberg) Trials are a distinct series of trials, some of which prosecuted the political, military and civilian leaders of the Nazi regime while others focused on the judges and other key figures. Finally, the “Doctors’ Trial” or “medical case” are another set of trials which prosecuted some of the doctors, nurses and scientific men responsible for unethical experiments conducted in various concentration and death camps established by the Nazi regime between 1939-45.

  31. The Nuremberg Trials (1946-49) This was the most famous of the trials of the Major War Criminals and included some of the military and political leaders of the Third Reich, such as Herman Goering, the leader of Germany’s air force (Luftwaffe), Hitler’s top general and successor (seated left with dark glasses and headphones).

  32. USMessageBoard, Date accessed; January 14, 2014. http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/154050-quote-from-nuremberg-trials-still-highly-relevant-today.html

  33. Nuremberg Trial: “The Doctors’ Trial” Jadwiga Dzido, a victim of medical experiments, a prosecution witness at the Doctors Trial. Nuremberg, Germany, December 22, 1946 http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/Trial_testimony_Dzido.html

  34. Photos: Walter B. Beals, Presiding Judge. Doctors' Trial panel of judges: Walter B. Beals,  Johnston T. Crawford, Victor Swearingen (alternate judge). Gallagher Law Library. University of Washington Law School. Feb. 7, 2009. Date accessed Janary 13, 2014. http://lib.law.washington.edu/ref/nuremberg.html

  35. Hitler’s personal physician, Karl Brandt gets up to hear his sentence: death by hanging.

  36. Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials • The Doctors’ Trial lead to The Nuremberg Code: • A key document in modern day medical and research ethics. • Reaffirms ethical norms in experimentation on human subjects • Stresses importance of “informed consent” of the experimental subject in any scientific or medical experiment

  37. Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials • The Trial of the War Criminals • Cornerstone of international law today • Key to establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2003 (Headquarters: The Hague, Netherlands) • “Crimes against humanity” and “War Crimes” remain key offences. • These charges have been leveled against various military and political leaders in current conflicts and wars.

  38. Kathe Kollwitz, Nie wider Krieg! [Never again War] (1924)

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