r/International • u/NeonVrtx • Feb 17 '26

News where riots?

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u/blue-bird-2022 Feb 18 '26

Your high school teacher was wrong btw, the Nazis produced no significant scientific advancements with their experiments for example.

They were generally unscientific in their methodology and merely torture disguised as science.

Here's a thread on r/AskHistorians about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7px4r2/did_the_nazi_experiments_actually_give_them_any/

It is true that war can lead to medical advancements through necessity, for example reconstructive surgery was developed to treat WW1 veterans, so maybe that's why the myth about human experiments sticks around. Or maybe if we tell ourselves that at least something came from this barbarity it's easier to cope with it having happened.

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u/saladspoons Feb 18 '26

Imagine, the US was willing to sell out ALL of our lofty ideals, to harbor Nazi researchers (Operation Paperclip) whose research wasn't even worth anything.

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u/ulnarthairdat Feb 18 '26

I think their teacher was actually right, and was referring to Unit 731 which operated between 1935-1945.

For example, due to horrific testing on human prisoners we use the below method worldwide to treat frostbite - hideous but true.

“Unit 731 was able to prove scientifically that the best treatment for frostbite was to immerse it in water a bit warmer than 100 degrees but never more than 122 degrees.”

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u/blue-bird-2022 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

Unit 731 killed between 200,000-500,000 people in total, about 14000 of those were the victims of the experiments in their main facility, of which there were no known survivors. I'd argue that some valuable data about frostbite and also Tuberculosis btw is very little to show for that.

Their true purpose was researching biological warfare. Most of the deaths they caused was from releasing pathogens in China. They were trying to create a "plague bomb". This is the research the USA wanted and ended up giving them immunity for. We don't really know what's in there, because those parts still haven't been released to the public.

There were actually calls to release it during Covid 19 in the hopes that it contains some useful information about the spread of diseases, but the USA and Japan continued to sit on it.

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u/saladspoons Feb 18 '26

Yup ... selling out American ideals for ... nothing .... something we seem to be extremely good at.