Product Details

• Directors: John Michalczyk
• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: First Run Features
• VHS Release Date: November 16, 1999
• Run Time: 54 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304733941
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,679 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Horrifying, September 8, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine/The Cross and the Star (DVD)

"Nazi Medicine/The Cross and the Star" looks like one of those documentaries that the History Channel plays on a perpetual loop. You know the type: World War II era grainy black and white footage coupled with modern day scholars providing historical context and a few meager details to assist the narrative flow. I tend to avoid historical documentaries because they often target viewers accustomed to MTV/modern media editing techniques. The emphasis on the bombastic and dramatic dominates every frame of these documentaries, and all of the shows must rely on historical events after the invention of photography because viewers can't seem to maintain interest in anything that doesn't move across their television screens. Sure, you'll see a few documentaries about Roman history or the Middle Ages from time to time, but even then the producers have to punch up the program with reenactments or voiceovers to keep people tuned in. As far as I can tell, about the only benefit of these shows is getting people interested enough in the subject matter to read books for further information.

Having complained about history programs, I do have to say that "Nazi Medicine" is an immensely intriguing introduction into a topic little discussed in the broader context of the Nuremberg trials. Created by Professor John Michalcyzk of Boston College's Department of Film Studies, "Nazi Medicine" focuses a spotlight on the Nazi doctor's trial of 1946. Most of us know about the first Nuremberg trial where Herman Goering, Julius Streicher, and others faced an international tribunal for war crimes, but the doctor's trial apparently fell through the cracks. Considering that these were the monsters responsible for the deaths of millions in research laboratories and concentration camps, it is surprising more hasn't been made of their activities. "Nazi Medicine" explores the historical antecedents that made the grotesque experimentations of the German physicians possible, looking back to the early days of the twentieth century and the intense interest in eugenics. According to the documentary, the United States led the charge in investigating the potential of realizing the dreams of Social Darwinism through hard science. The American variant of eugenics was inherently racist, but the results on this side of the pond rarely went beyond pen and paper.

Europeans were not so lucky. German doctors picked up on the foundations laid by American scientists and put into practice experimentations on the human body so sickening as to defy description. Physicians set up pressure chambers to test the effects of extreme pressure on the human body, or messed around with germ and viral injections. What the doctors hoped to achieve were answers that would help the German war effort. Instead, the results of these experiments were inconclusive or downright nonexistent. What intrigued me most about "Nazi Medicine" was not the laundry list of atrocities (most of which we have heard about countless times before) but how the doctors moved from practitioners and guardians of the public health to conscienceless monsters who made distinctions between "superior" and "inferior" human beings. One of the modern scholars interviewed for the film does an excellent job of explaining how this irrational belief system took on a perverse logic. The doctors could experiment on certain human beings--Jews, but others as well including criminals and the mentally infirm--because they believed these people were either not human or inferior humans. After all, do we not use animals to better the human race? Is this logic sociopathic? Probably, but once the physicians made the distinction the door was wide open for all sorts of horrific projects. The trial ultimately led to a statement about medical ethics still recognized today.

"The Cross and the Star," regrettably, is on shakier factual and interpretative ground than "Nazi Medicine." This second documentary attempts to establish concrete links between the Catholic Church and the holocaust. The program looks back through two thousand years of history, citing the Gospels and other tracts that promoted anti-Semitic views. There can be no doubt that the Church did subscribe to anti-Semitism during various stages of its history, as did Protestant Christianity. The Crusades, for example, occasionally targeted Jews even as they tried to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim influence. Martin Luther wrote a short book about the threat he thought the Jews posed to every good Christian. The reasons the Church often attacked Jews were many, from the old "they killed Christ" standby to the perception that Jews acted as lenders of money at usurious interest rates in the Middle Ages. These examples are contained in historical records. But to accuse the modern Church of anti-Semitism is a risky proposition at best. Did the Pope overtly or covertly support the Nazi regime's campaign to eradicate the Jews? Or was the Pope essentially powerless to stop the rampages of a brutal regime led by an unstable madman? The answers to these questions are far from certain despite what this documentary claims. One wonders if the filmmaker has an ulterior motive for defaming the Church.

The DVD of "Nazi Medicine/The Cross and the Star" contains several extras. You get a couple of trailers for "Fighter" and "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," a photographic gallery called "Inside the Reich," a director's biography and filmography, and some information on the concentration camps. Michalcyzk's "Nazi Medicine" documentary is as informative as it is shocking. And yes, the first program on this disc has inspired me to read more about the subject. Unfortunately, the shoddy claims made about the Catholic Church diminish, if only slightly, the overall impact of the DVD.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nazi Medicine is a chilling documentary & makes for compelling viewing, January 25, 2010

By 

Z Hayes (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine/The Cross and the Star (DVD)

This DVD consists of a documentary double-feature, "Nazi Medicine" and "The Cross and the Star". Of the two, I preferred "Nazi Medicine" and felt it was well-made and provided lots of insights into the psychology of the Third Reich. In this documentary, directed by John Michalczyk, viewers get to understand how a country which was renowned and respected for its medical breakthroughs became polluted with the twisted thinking of the National Socialist Party and eventually led to monstrous acts being committed by physicians against fellow humans, all in the name of serving the German people and the Third Reich. It was interesting to note that almost 50% of Germany's doctors were also members of the Nazi Party during the Second World War, which partly explains how easily the doctrines of Hitler and the Nazis came to be enforced upon the hapless - the mentally and physically disabled (euthanasia, or the T4 program), the Jews, and others considered subhuman by the Nazis.

The documentary is well-narrated and reveals some startling information such as how the Nazi doctors' obsession with eugenics was not confined to Germany alone, but had also been promoted in the United States, and other parts of the world. Throughout, the narration is complemented by visual footage of film during the period, archival photographs of victims of Nazi experimentation, and interspersed with interviews with survivors (a twin who had been subjected to Mengele's inhuman experiments), and also archival film footage of the Nuremberg Trials where after the war, a handful (I say handful because many others evaded capture) of Nazi doctors were put on trial and received different degrees of punishment (death, extended prison terms, and some were acquitted). It was chilling to see these 'monsters' who had taken an oath to safeguard the sanctity of human life, yet had chosen to align themselves with the racial cleaning policies of the Third Reich. Most did not indicate repentance for their actions, believing they truly were helping Germany become stronger with the propagation of a pure Aryan race, and by helping destroy the 'subhumans' (Jews, Gypsies, and other undesirables).

The compelling documentation makes this a credible documentary with well-established facts backing it up, and the well-woven narrative only enhances this production.

"The Cross and the Star" focuses mainly on the role (or rather lack of much action) of the Catholic Church in Rome in preventing the tragedy of the Holocaust. The documentary appears rambling and though the case is a compelling one, is not presented convincingly, and seems disjointed and disorganized. Viewers do get to see Martin Luther being revealed as being anti-Semitic, and there's a lot of historical background on the anti-Semitic teachings of the Church. I would recommend this DVD if only because of the well-made "Nazi Medicine". As for extras, there's a short feature called "A Window into the Camps", a photo gallery about the Third Reich, etc.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The horrors of Nazi eugenics and experimentation, May 8, 2004

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine" is a 60-minute documentary by Professor John J. Michalczyk, Director of Film Studies at Boston College, made in 1997, which was the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Physicians Trial, which was held from December 1946 to August 1947. Michalczyk went to the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps to interview both survivors of the Nazi experimentations and leader scholars who studied the practices of Nazi medicine such as Dr. Michael Grodin, Dr. Charles Roland, and Professor Michael Kater. There is also an interview done at Auschwitz in 1995 with Hans Munch, a former S.S. doctor in this video, which is narrated by Donald Winning.

The film begins by examining how not only Germany but also the United States were interested at the start of the 20th century in eugenics as an example of a scientific Social Darwinism. In the U.S. eugenic studies were being funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockerfeller and over half the states had sterilization laws on the books at one point. However, it was the Nazis in the 1930s who then put the theoretical work done by American scientist into practice in the Third Reich, beginning with the Nuremberg Laws excluded Jews from various professions, including the practice of medicine. It was doctors in Nazi Germany who pushed for the state-sponsored program of "racial hygiene," which meant the forced euthanasia of almost a half-million citizens with mental and physical defects. In the death camps these physicians engaged in many experiments with questionable scientific merit and clearly no moral accountability. This included studies of how much gas would be needed to kill a certain number of prisoners as quickly as possible and high-altitude testing that ruined the lungs of the "subjects."

"Nazi Medicine" chronicles the path of these scientists, who began providing justification for the Nuremberg sterilization laws, the practice of euthanasia, and eventually to genocide. What is both fascinating and horrifying about this documentary is that what the Nazis did was not simply follow orders from Hitler and his bureaucrats. These physicians were integrally involved in all of these decisions, from developing the Nazi race laws to the unethical experiments conducted in the death camps. Michalczyk also makes the point that after the Nuremberg Trial of those Nazi doctors, 10 international tenets of acceptable experimentation were established, including, most importantly, the informed consent of the subject.

This is a graphic documentary, and even those who have seen footage of the Holocaust are going to find this video upsetting. But, as the quote from Allan A. Ryan, Director, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations points out on the front cover: "The horror of Nazi eugenics and experimentation" make this documentary "a work of truth and timeliness."