Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Joseph Mengele: The Angel of Death

Starting point is 00:00:00 A doctor's white coat is supposed to symbolize the healing, trust, and compassion of a medical professional. During the Holocaust, however, it became something very different in the hands of one of history's most infamous criminals. His crimes were so heinous that they still shape modern medical ethics, human experimentation rules, and the pursuit of Nazi war criminals. Learn more about Dr. Joseph Mengela and his hideous crimes on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Starting point is 00:01:04 Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair. Every style, every home. Joseph Mengelah was born in Gunzburg, Germany on March 11, 1911. He was the eldest of three children born to his father, Carl Mengela, an industrialist, and his mother, Volberga. Mengala grew up privileged as his father's profitable Carl Mengala and son's farming equipment company provided the family with comfort and security. In 1915, Carl shifted his company to aid the war effort, producing military equipment and weapons for the Germans in the First World War.

Starting point is 00:01:59 After Germany's defeat, he returned to selling agricultural implements. As a child, Joseph Mengelah was considered to be highly intelligent and creative, enjoying both academic activities and the arts. Mengelah became interested in medicine at an early age. His fascination with the field was inspired by his own health problems. When he was 15, Joseph was diagnosed with a disease known as osteomyelitis. The illness is an infection of the bones, causing inflammation and other complications. He ended up studying medicine at the University of Munich, and around this time,

Starting point is 00:02:34 Mengelah became involved in politics. His extreme political beliefs were likely influenced by his state. father, who later became a member of the Nazi party. While at university, Mangala joined the Steel Helmet, an organization that blamed Jews for Germany's loss in the First World War, further shaping his ideology. Mangala attended several universities while pursuing his doctorate in medicine, which gave him connections with fellow academics throughout the country. His racial beliefs influenced his early research in school, culminating in him receiving a doctorate for his study of the jawbones of people of different races.

Starting point is 00:03:13 He officially joined the Nazi Party in 1937 while working on his medical dissertation. This research was also genetics-based, focusing on cleft palates. Mangala's early research shows how deeply he believed in Nazi racial science from the very beginning. Mangala joined the SS in 1938, which served as Hitler's special security force the same year he was awarded his MD. While completing his studies, Mangala met Irena Schoenbein, the daughter of a professor. The company had their only child, Rolf, in 1944. When World War II began in 1939, it interrupted his medical studies. Mangala was called to service early in the war where he served in a medical unit. In 1941, Mangala's unit was sent into Ukraine as part of Operation Barbarossa,

Starting point is 00:04:03 the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. During this time, Mangala was awarded. the Iron Cross first-classed after he rescued two German soldiers from under a tank. In 1942, after being wounded in service and deemed unfit for combat, Mangola was transferred to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, where he evaluated candidates for the Germanization campaign. The campaign aimed to spread German culture, language, and people to non-German areas, focusing on Eastern and Central Europe. But it also was seeking to assimilate or exterminate,

Starting point is 00:04:37 populations based on racial criteria. By 1942, SS doctors had begun transferring to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, tasked with determining which prisoners would be sent into forced labor and which would be sent immediately to the gas chamber. Roughly three quarters of the arrivals at the camp were killed immediately. Egged on by a colleague, Mengelah applied for a transfer in 1943, leading to his assignment at Auschwitz as camp physician and manager of the gypsy camp. In his role, he sent any prisoner who didn't recover in two weeks to their death. If he believed a prisoner was too ill, weak, or injured to work, he ordered their execution in the gas chamber. And this reputation earned him the nickname the Angel of Death, as his arrival in the infirmary

Starting point is 00:05:27 or barracks meant that somebody was going to die. He also participated in the prisoner arrivals. It was reported that Mingala was almost always on the ramp upon arrival, making it appear that he was personally performing most of the death selection duties. Mingola was one of 50 physicians located at Auschwitz. He was neither the highest ranking nor the one overseeing the other doctors there, but he became by far the most infamous. His reputation came from the medical experiments he conducted on the prisoners.

Starting point is 00:06:00 His research focused primarily on genetics, aiming to develop desired traits in his test subjects. The SS authorized biomedical researchers to perform experiments on prisoners without regard for ethics or safety, often justifying these acts as promoting racial purity, defending Germany, or expanding the Aryan population. Auschwitz, being the largest of the death camps, was the biggest supplier of subjects for his experiments, because of its size it was also where many of the experiments took place. Mengele was not the only doctor performing these experiments. He was simply the most notorious. Many researchers considered Auschwitz an opportunity to work with test subjects and to advance their studies.

Starting point is 00:06:46 Mingola worked with genetic researchers Karin Magnusin and Otmar von Verschur, both from Berlin's Kaiser-Vilhelm Institute to conduct his research. One of their areas of study was heterochromachromach. a condition involving differently colored eyes. The group aimed to determine differences in iris structures across races, hoping that this would cure heterochromia. Mingola extracted heterochromatic eyes from the Romani that he killed and sent them to Magnuson and von Verscher for experiments.

Starting point is 00:07:18 At Auschwitz, he also conducted his own experiments, such as injecting adrenaline directly into children's eyes to try to change their eye color. Mingola's experiments on twins have become especially infamous. Twins, mostly children, were often selected and taken to designated barracks for Mengela's experiments. Mingala was curious about both identical and fraternal twins. Using twins, he wanted to study how genetic diseases originate and evolve, as well as

Starting point is 00:07:48 determine which traits are innate and which are the products of environment. He operated on the children hoping to discover racial, differences and prove Aryan superiority by finding genetic weaknesses in Jewish and Romani groups. He believed his research would show races differed in disease susceptibility and tissue health. Mingola subjected twins to weekly examinations, forcing them to endure invasive procedures simply to record physical measurements. As part of his cruel experiments, he brutally amputated twins' limbs, deliberately infected children with illnesses like typhus, and performed needless blood transfusion, causing immense suffering.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Many of his twin experiments were unspeakably cruel. In perhaps the most heinous example, he sowed two twins together in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children endured days of agony before succumbing to death. The procedures often proved fatal. If one twin died, Mengela typically killed the other to compare their internal features through dissection. Beyond experiments on twins in eye color,

Starting point is 00:08:54 Mangala also targeted people with physical abnormalities. abnormalities, including individuals with dwarfism. For people with disabilities, Mengela drew blood, extracted teeth, completed measurements, and administered drugs and x-rays. He conducted this study for two weeks, and afterwards he would send the person to the gas chamber and then send their skeletons to Berlin for further experimentation. Mengela also experimented on pregnant women, despite lacking any gynecological training, infecting them with typhoid to study training. transmission to newborns. Other mothers had their chests physically bound so they were unable to breastfeed their

Starting point is 00:09:33 children. The goal of the experiment was for Mangala to see how long the babies could survive without being fed. Additionally, Mangala conducted forced sterilization through a variety of means on Romani and Jewish prisoners. The goal of this experiment was to help propel Aryan genetic superiority by finding a way to prevent other races from having children. It should be noted that some of the experiments listed may have been falsely attributed to him. Many historians have claimed that some of the experiments could have been myths, whereas others were potentially done by other doctors. Nonetheless, it's believed that Joseph Mengela experimented on as many as three to four thousand people,

Starting point is 00:10:15 a large number of whom were children. So even if some of the cases might be false, there is undeniable evidence that he committed many, many of these crimes. As Soviet forces moved closer to Auschwitz, Mengelah saw the writing on the wall and fled the concentration camp. He brought as many of his experimental records with him as he could, disguised himself as a member of the retreating army rather than the SS, and started moving westward. He was eventually captured by American troops in Germany and was held for two months in prison before being released. Unfortunately, the Americans didn't realize that the Joseph Mengela they were

Starting point is 00:10:55 holding was the one wanted for war crimes. He was released in 1945. During the Nuremberg trials, Mangala's name was mentioned numerous times. Allied forces had falsely believed that he had passed away based on his family's testimony, but in reality, he was right under their nose. Mengelis stayed in Germany until 1949. During this period, he worked as a farm hand and reconnected with his family. He only left when he became concerned that staying, in Germany would lead to his arrest and death. Eventually, he fled to South America. Once there, Mengelah was working as a salesman for his family's company, selling farm supplies.

Starting point is 00:11:37 Reportedly, he made multiple visits to Paraguay as a representative for the firm. There's some evidence that Mengela continued to practice medicine during his time in South America. According to the Argentine government, there are records indicating that Mangala practiced without a license, performing various procedures. Mengela actually registered for a foreign residence permit in Argentina under his own name by requesting a copy of his birth certificate from West Germany. This allowed him to return to Europe for a time and reunite with his son.

Starting point is 00:12:09 During this period, he stayed with his family and even enjoyed a ski trip to Switzerland. Following his visit, he returned to Argentina and applied for an identity card. The card was given with the Argentinian variant of his name, Jose Mavis. Mengela. Nazi hunters eventually discovered that he was alive and tracked him down in Argentina. West Germany filed for an extradition for his arrest and offered a reward. Argentina initially refused to give him up, giving Mengela enough time to flee to Paraguay. By the time the extradition was approved, he was gone. Mengela grew more concerned about his safety in South America following the kidnapping of Adolf

Starting point is 00:12:50 Eichmann in Argentina. This meant that, despite Paraguay, technically protecting him from extradition, he was not actually safe, as Nazi hunters could enter illegally any time. His life in hiding was not glamorous. In Brazil, he lived under aliases, increasingly paranoid and dependent upon others. He suffered health problems, including a stroke. On February 7, 1979, while swimming near Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mangala suffered another stroke and drowned. He was buried under the false name, Wolfgang Gerhard. His death was not confirmed to the world until 1985 when investigators located and exhumed his remains. Forensic analysis strongly identified his body as Mangalas, and DNA testing in 1992 confirmed it.

Starting point is 00:13:39 This ended decades of speculation that he might still be alive. Joseph Mengelah's legacy was not that of a madman operating outside the system, and that's one of the most disturbing parts about his whole story. He was trained, credentialed, and given free reign to conduct some of the most hideous experiments in history. Today, Joseph Mengela is remembered as one of the clearest examples why medical ethics matter. The absolute prohibition on human experimentation without consent was strengthened after the Nazi war crimes became known. The life of Joseph Mangola shows how education and professional status can't prevent evil when ambition and ideonation. Replace morality. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:14:32 The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. This is where everything happens that's outside of the show. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Joseph Mengele: The Angel of Death

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