Customer Reviews

Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical War Crimes to Informed Consent

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The above book by PJ Weindling was given a very favorable review in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
I bought the book several months ago and have read only 185 pages so far.
Very tedious reading. Author mentions lots of names and gives loads of info about the various MDs investigated for medical war crimes. However, he tells us very little about the actual experiments conducted by these physicians and other scientists. We are told that there were experiments in high altitude physiology, cold water tolerance, and infectious diseases.No details about the experiments are presented , at least in the first 185 pages. Some details about the actual experiments and results would be very interesting. Other than the fact that concentration camp inmates obviously did not give consent and most likely suffered greatly from these experiments, there are few other details.

The writing style often makes it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time. Often particular phrases and words are repeated unnecessarily.

A more interesting book about Nazi doctors is "The Nazi Doctors" by Psychiatrist Robert Lifton. He actually interviewed a number of German physicians who were assigned to the concentration camps and other killing centers such as the Psychiatric hospitals.