The SS Medical Corps was a formation within the
SS of professional
doctors who provided
medical services for the SS, including experiments on and the development of different methods of murdering prisoners. Members of the SS Medical Corps also served on the front with the Waffen-SS as support personnel practicing field expedient medicine on wounded members of the SS.
Formation
The first units of the SS Medical Corps began to appear in the 1930s. Small divisions of SS personnel designated to medical duties were known initially as the ''Sanitätsstaffel''. These formations were originally small units under the command of local SS leaders. After 1931, the SS formed a headquarters office known as ''Amt'' V, which was the central office for SS medical units. At this same time, a special SS unit was formed known as the ''Röntgensturmbann SS-HA'', or the ''Hauptamt'' X-Ray Battalion. This formation comprised 350 full-time SS personnel who toured Germany offering
X-ray
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
diagnostics to any SS member. While the ''Röntgensturmbann'' was an independent office, the local ''Sanitätsstaffel'' were under dual command of both the SS Medical Office (Amt V), and the leaders of the various ''SS-Sturmbann'' and ''Standarten''. Within each ''SS-Sturmbann'' (battalion), there existed one company of SS personnel whose duty was to serve as medical support personnel to the rest of the SS battalion. Eventually these supporting units became the SS Medical Corps.
When the Nazis came to national power in 1933, the SS was reorganized and an office of the SS Surgeon General was established. Commanded by an ''SS-
Obergruppenführer'', the SS Surgeon General was a member of the personal staff of the ''
Reichsführer-SS'', with the SS Medical Corps, as a whole, losing the status of a headquarters office. This was an important development in changing the nature of service for members of the SS Medical Corps. By 1935, the SS Medical Corps was considered an "auxiliary duty", and all members of the medical corps were also attached to regular SS formations. To denote medical corps status, the SS authorized a serpent crest to be worn on the collar patches of SS unit insignia. Because SS Medical Corps members could now serve in any branch of the SS, this expansion allowed medical professionals to join every SS office and participate in a variety of duties.
Exploitation and murder
![Chelmno Gas Van](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Destroyed_Magirus-Deutz_furniture_transport_van_Kolno_Poland_1945.jpg)
Between 1935 and 1938, the SS Medical Corps began to serve a more sinister purpose, with SS doctors assigned to
concentration camps where they engaged in a variety of indescribably cruel human medical experiments. SS doctors were called upon in 1936 to assist with Germany's
euthanasia
Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
Different countries have different eut ...
program against the mentally disabled and physically handicapped in a program known confidentially as
Operation T4. For example, they helped develop the first methods of gassing patients using
carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
from the exhaust fumes of lorries (vans). Stemming from a secret memorandum signed into effect by Hitler authorizing the killing of "useless eaters" and people considered an economic burden on German society on 9 October 1939, Operation T4 eventually evolved into the Law for Euthanasia for the Incurably Ill. According to historian Götz Aly, the first commandants of the death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka came out of Operation T4 and "were on its payroll."
In 1938, the SS formed its own Medical Academy in Berlin to train medical personnel and physicians who would serve with the
SS-VT, the forerunner of the
Waffen-SS. Doctors serving with the Waffen-SS were highly trained both in medical skills and combat tactics with many such doctors receiving high combat awards. During the war's progression, the Waffen-SS had a continuously developing structure for physicians which was highly complex, so sometime in August 1943, Himmler united all the medical branches of the SS and placed them under the command of ''Reicharzt-SS''
Ernst-Robert Grawitz
Ernst-Robert Grawitz (8 June 1899 – 24 April 1945) was a German physician and an SS functionary (''Reichsarzt'', "arzt" meaning "physician") during the Nazi era.
Biography
Grawitz was born in Charlottenburg, in the western part of Berlin, ...
, much like the Surgeon-General of the army.
Oftentimes personnel in the medical units of the SS performed duties not typically associated with traditional medicine as their primary responsibility once the war began was nothing less than the institutionalized medical genocide of anyone considered an enemy of the Nazi regime. People deemed inferior or undesirable became human guinea pigs and were exploited for scientific research by SS doctors as they conducted inhumane medical experiments at the camps. Human medical experiments, the most notorious of which occurred at
Dachau concentration camp
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
and
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
reached their zenith during the war. Such experiments ranged from
vivisection
Vivisection () is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. The word is, more broadly, used as a pejorative catch-all term for experiment ...
s,
sterilization experiments, infectious disease research, freezing experiments, as well as many other excruciating medical procedures often performed without
anesthetic. During this period of time one of the most infamous SS doctors,
Josef Mengele, served as Head Medical Officer of Auschwitz and was responsible for the daily gas chamber selections as well as brutal experiments (including those on human
twin
Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...
s).
![May 1944 - Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/May_1944_-_Jews_from_Carpathian_Ruthenia_arrive_at_Auschwitz-Birkenau.jpg)
Another function that SS doctors served was to maximize the economic utility of slave labor at the concentration camps, aiding the SS industry and the Nazi cause through the exploitation of people and resources. Along those lines in December 1942,
SS-''
Gruppenführer
__NOTOC__
''Gruppenführer'' (, ) was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. Since then, the term ''Gruppenführer'' is also used for leaders of groups/teams of the police, fire de ...
''
Richard Glücks
Richard Glücks (; 22 April 1889 – 10 May 1945) was a high-ranking German Nazi official in the SS. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he was Concentration Camps Inspector (CCI), which became ''Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen' ...
(Inspector of Concentration Camps) sent a directive to the camp doctors telling them that, "The best doctor in a concentration camp is that doctor who holds the work capacity among inmates at its highest possible level. He does this through surveillance and through replacing
he sick or injuredat individual work stations... Toward this end it is necessary that the camp doctors take a personal interest and appear on location at work sites."
Nuremberg trials
In 1945, after the surrender of Germany, the SS was declared an illegal criminal organization at the
Nuremberg trial
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
. SS doctors, in particular, were marked as war criminals due to the wide range of human medical experimentation which had been conducted during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
as well as the role SS doctors had played in the gas chamber selections of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. Later charges were brought against SS intellectuals and SS physicians by the German state. Many SS doctors, however, were never brought to justice with such figures as Josef Mengele escaping to
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
while still other SS doctors returned to civilian practice in Germany under assumed names and in some cases, even their original identities. In the former
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
for instance,
Hermann Voss became a respected anatomist, while Eugen Wannenmacher obtained a post as a professor at the
University of Münster and Mengele's former sponsor and mentor,
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (16 July 1896 – 8 August 1969) was a German human biologist and geneticist, who was the Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Münster until he retired in 1965. A member of the Dutch noble Verschuer fa ...
, continued operating his medical practice.
See also
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Glossary of Nazi Germany
*
List of SS personnel
*
Theodor Eicke
Theodor Eicke (17 October 1892 – 26 February 1943) was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the seco ...
References
Notes
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Nazi SS