WEBVTT - Part Three: Josef Mengele & The Nazi Doctors 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:09.280 What oh boy, Yeah, you know what that might have been, 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:11.280 that might have been over the line, That might have 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.440 been over the line, Robert, Yeah, my god, I feel 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.159 like there's some government agency we need to report me 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:19.000 to for saying that. 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:24.160 Now I didn't know. Yeah, man, Robert, go to hell. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:27.040 I'm leaving that was that was a step too far. 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.360 Huh, well you use that language ever? 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.839 Well years, what's wrong with you? We'll let it that 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.320 all out and uh, you at home can imagine what what? 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.640 What horrible thing I said? What cancellable thing I said? 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:44.600 That will get leaked seven years from now. 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.520 Please replace it with you know, embarrassing. 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.360 Yeah, well, this is. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.280 Garters, Matt Leeve got a fresh haircut. It's gonna be 0:00:58.440 --> 0:00:59.360 a good day. 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:05.720 It's gonna be a good day talking about Joseph Mangola. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.720 As usual, Robert forgot once. 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:16.120 Again, we're talking about something that's going to make everyone sad, 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.040 and I like to think that is, you know, a 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.200 guest of this podcast. I'm here to, you know, try 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:26.639 to lighten the mood. So, along with Jargia, I brought 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:31.520 this Excuse me, I don't want to talk about me. 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:41.959 I just want to talk about happy things, just happy things, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.440 all right. That's so I'm gonna bust that out every time. 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:52.720 A little Dicky, Yeah, that's it's like Little Dicky did 0:01:52.800 --> 0:02:03.800 like a Tommy style concept album, but about Josephs together. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.160 Oh dear god, I'm sorry. 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:15.880 Wow, oh boy, percentage your listeners who uh do not 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:21.519 like grievously offended? Yes, yes, and that was for them. 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:23.919 Yeah. I got a new I got a new kind 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.480 of offense recently where somebody was like, it's messed up 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:28.640 that your show is called Behind the Bastards and you 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.799 call the bad people bastards because that that's hurtful to 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.080 people who were born out of woodlock. And oh yes, 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:36.639 people don't use that word that more any like that. 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.000 That's just not a thing that we do well. When 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:41.600 I hear someone say bastards, I don't think, ah, yes, 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.360 this is this is someone referring to a person born 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.160 outside the bounds of holy matrimony. 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.720 Right, this is you know. I feel like language evolves. 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:51.360 Is the thing, Robert. 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.360 I raise your people being offended over the word bastards 0:02:55.400 --> 0:03:01.160 to the cocoachanell apologists in my DMS, like, oh yeah. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:04.480 Boy, if you did that, I saw it. I saw it. 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.440 I hope by now the liver King episodes will be dropping, 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.160 So I hope you've got liver king apologists in there too, 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:13.720 being like, look, man, a lot of people take fifteen 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:15.880 thousand dollars in steroids every single month. 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:17.800 Yeah no, what's wrong with that? 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.480 Singering from you? Definitely gentlemen, m M. 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:32.000 Dudes speaking of a dude. Joseph Mangela definitely was a 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.480 dude and his wife Irene had been married just over 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:38.600 a month when Germany invaded Poland after carrying out a 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.200 false flag attack to justify said aggression. World War two, 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.720 you know, starts, and Joseph is over the moon about it. 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.800 He believes the war is the quote last desperate fight 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.240 of the German nation, by which he meant that without 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.520 a cleansing genocidal war to clear out large swaths of farmland, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.720 Germans would be doomed to interbreeding and genetic collapse. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:03:59.160 God damn it. 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.280 Yeah at he buys into it. You know, he's all 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.640 full throated now because he's got some health issues. It's 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.240 not until nineteen forty one and the start of Operation 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:14.200 Barbarossa that Mengla actually sees combat in Ukraine. His posting 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.760 is the infamous ss Viking Division, which is spelled Wiking, 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:19.800 and I'm gonna call it Wiking because that makes them 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.120 sound silly and they are terrible war criminals. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.839 So the Vikings was where we where we scaled, where 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.040 we scale, we Wikings, we scare we Wiking. So the 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.360 Viking Division is made up of Germanic peoples, mostly from 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.719 outside of Germany. There is like a German battalion or 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.640 whatever in there, but a lot of them are from Belgium, Norway, 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.080 a lot of them are Norwegian dent people from Denmark, 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.479 from France, from Holland. They're basically like Arians from all 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.400 the places the Germans have conquered. And the actions of 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.719 the Wiking Division are you would call them controversial to 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:55.080 this day. The unit fought exclusively in the East during 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.360 the worst atrocities of the Second World War, and they 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.440 participated in several of those atrocities. But because the membership 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.200 is largely foreign, there has been a lot of effort 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.480 dedicated to minimizing the culpability of the volunteers. A good 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:11.560 example would be this ABC Australia article about a Finnish 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.360 government report that concluded the fourteen or so finish volunteers 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.559 in the unit likely committed war crimes. The report notes 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.200 accurately that the Finns agreed to supply soldiers for the 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.080 Elite Division after their brutal war with the USSR, which 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.560 is true enough, but check out how they word this Reluctantly. 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.440 Finns complied and covertly recruited the first group of four 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.760 hundred SS volunteers to be sent for training. The vast 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.279 majority of them had no ideological sympathies with the Nazi regime. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.400 The report said Finns were above all interested in fighting 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.400 against the Soviet Union due to their brutal experiences in 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:45.839 the Winter War. In this way, the starting point for 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.680 Finn's involvement was different compared to most other countries joining 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:50.560 SS foreign Volunteer units. 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:55.880 Yeah, no, didn't. They didn't have a choice. You know, 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.320 just wound up in that SS unit on accident. You're 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:02.680 stumbling home from the bar, you had a couple of rounds, 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.039 and then you wind up in the SS. It happens 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:05.680 to all of us. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.640 You find a friend where you've got a mutual hatred 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.520 of this other dude, and he happens also hate every 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:14.960 Jew who's ever lived, and you're like, well, you know, 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:16.040 you turn the. 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.200 Good with the bad. Yeah, and it's one of those 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.720 like there's a movie coming out right now that's about 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:27.640 like some Finnish guy murdering Nazis, And there's a concern 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:29.960 some people have is like, are they just going to 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:31.960 kind of whitewash the fact that an awful lot of 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.320 Fins were completely on board with the Nazis? Yeah, it 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:37.960 will now, and obviously you can note that like, yeah, 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.840 the Finns had just suffered this devastating invasion from the USSR, 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.559 that they had no fault in, and that that would 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.159 make things complicated. They're in a difficult geopolitical situation. But 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.320 you don't need to whitewash these SS guys, especially when 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.119 you read passages like this from David Marwell's book. Early 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.400 in the morning of July second, Sst. And dart and 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.640 Fua Wackerl, the beloved commander of the division's West Lynn Regiment, 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:02.839 was shot and killed by a sniper near the village 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.159 of Sloweitka. In the days that followed Wackerl's death, members 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:09.039 of the Wyking Division carried out acts of extreme violence, 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.880 claiming an estimated several thousand Jews as victims. Strue present's 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.200 evidence from the records of various German Army units in 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.240 the area, quoting, for example, the diary of a Lieutenant Kaysburg, 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.280 with the two hundred and ninety fifth Engineer's Battalion firing 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.520 everywhere it crackles, the SS bumps off anyone they get 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.360 their hands on. It is horrific. The chief of staff 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.000 of the fourth Army Corps absorbed that individual members of 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.440 the Wiking Division were seen hunting for Jews the war 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:35.320 diary of a unit in the area, and noted that 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:38.760 the SS was indiscriminately shooting Russian soldiers and civilians in 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.560 large numbers. A member of the supply unit of the division, 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.400 Hans Gunther Otto, in a sworn affidavit after the war, 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.800 claimed that his unit had been informed that Wackel had 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.280 been killed by a Jew and that their participation in 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.120 the revenge actions marked the beginning of the unit's participation 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.360 in the extermination of the Jews. Otto described an order 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:57.800 that was read to his unit after Wackerl's death. The 0:07:57.920 --> 0:07:59.880 order said that we were no longer held accountable for 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:01.800 the killing of any Jews we could get hold of, 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.160 and that we could indeed shoot any Jew we saw. 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.280 So this is who Mangola serves with when he does 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:12.120 his combat tours, great good influences. Yeah, yeah, it seems 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:17.040 like that's going to moderate his natural shittiness a lot. Now, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.560 we unfortunately know very little about the specific details of 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.600 what Mangola did with the Viking Division. He's there for 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.280 close to two years, but he is present with them 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.840 through one of the most bloody periods in the history 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.240 of human warfare. Given his professional expertise at identifying Jewish 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.440 ancestry and the fact that his division is hunting Jews, 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.320 there's a pretty good chance he was consulted on who 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:42.760 to kill right on doomy massacre this village or not right, 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.640 you know, that's pretty good chance he was enrollved in. 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.520 But they would just like wheel Mangla out to look 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.640 at every villager and just be like point out which 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.839 ones you think as the most Jewy? Yeah, like, oh, 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.280 that's my favorite thing to do. That's what they do. 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:03.959 So the first massacre by the Viking Division was carried 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.840 out a town at a prison in a town called Zulusiv, 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.240 where the retreating Soviet army had massacred about six hundred 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.959 and fifty prisoners on their way out. When the SS 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.000 discovered the bodies, they and their Ukrainian allies slaughtered more 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.960 than a thousand Jews in the area. One survivor later 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.839 recalled the SS people stood around the pit, and from 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.559 time to time they ordered someone, especially men with beards 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:26.880 and sidelocks, to come out and kneel in front of them. 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.439 With sadistic pleasure. They hit their victim until he lay 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.600 unconscious on the ground, and they kicked them back into 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.520 the pit. Sometimes family members tried to help the poor people, 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:36.760 but then they often made their fate even worse. Some 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:38.600 were taken out of the grave and beaten to death 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:46.960 with unimaginable brutality. Yeah, Joey mengs everybody, this is his 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.480 baptism of fire. This is kind of known as seen 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.520 by historians who study him as like this is what 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:56.080 go This is what takes us from the Joseph Mangela, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.560 who's like doing science that's kind of racist but is 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.920 relativetively mid for its day, to the Joseph Mangla who 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:04.680 is capable of doing the things he's going to do 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.960 at Auschwitz. Right, Yeah, there's a process of brutalization. You 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.000 can't get a more brutalizing environment than being part of 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:12.440 this SS division. 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:17.800 Of the Nazi or the Jew hunting Italian in the 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.200 entire Nazi Army, one of the worst units in terms 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.719 of war crimes. Yeah, I mean, I don't like him. No, 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:25.079 I don't. 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:28.040 They don't sound nice to me. I'm not a fan. No. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.400 In a single week, the SS Wiking Division was responsible 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.679 for between four and seven thousand murders of Jewish Ukrainians. 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.800 They're often just kind of killing every person they can 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:39.640 in a city or a town that they wind up 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.800 billeted in. It's possible that Mangola participated directly and at 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.559 least some of the killing. We simply don't know. Our 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.880 records of his performance only detail his combat actions, and 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:53.720 he performed well against partisans, winning an Iron Cross second 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.640 class and then first class for pulling comrades out of 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.920 a burning tank. Mangola provided field medicine through a number 0:10:59.920 --> 0:11:02.280 of heavy combat actions. In the first five months in 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.359 the field, his division lost twenty percent of its manpower, 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.319 which is heavy. That's an intense rate of casualties. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:08.720 Good. 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.120 I hope, I'm sad. Yeah, I hope, I hope they 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:16.280 all suffered real tenseling. Yeah, now, Mengolo was praised by 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.000 his superior officers, even as the tight of war turned 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.960 gradually against the Nazi forces. At the end of November 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.000 nineteen forty two, he was nearly killed an aerial attack. 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.360 A comrade described in his unit log vigorous air activity. Again, 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.400 doctor Mengola buried. Bomb explodes next to foxhole and buried him. 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:38.280 They got him out alas So. Another thing that a 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.719 thing that is cool in this time period is the 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.680 Russians counterattack at Stalingrad and the Romanian army kind of collapses, 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.240 and then they surround the German sixth Army, and you know, 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.320 massacret Joseph Mengola is in and around that action, and 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.080 he actually gets evacuated by air during one of the 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.560 last moments in which that would have been possible. No 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.360 one's really sure why he gets evacuated. He doesn't seem 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:04.040 to have been injured, which would have been a normal 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.360 reason to like pull an officer out from the front. 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.240 There's a pretty good chance it's just because he's a doctor. 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.199 He's seen as having high value as a rachel hygienist. 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.760 The war in the East is failing, but the Nazi 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.000 regime's race war they felt was still winnable and they 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:22.880 needed Mangola on another battle front, a place called Auschwitz. 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:30.680 So we're only episode three. Yeah, it's mostly gonna be 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.439 Auschwitz today, this is gonna be this this week is 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:44.800 all Auschwitz. Oops, all Auschwitz. Oops. Switch it is not. 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:46.400 So he gets. 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:54.480 I just fucking I just throwing SSRs in my mouth. 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.120 This is the only way to talk about Joey mengs 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.920 is with with a lot of reverb. So he gets evacuated. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.440 He's in Berlin for a little while before he gets 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:07.920 his next assignment, and he gets in touch with his 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.760 old boss, Otmar von Verschuer, and Ottmar is now running 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:16.760 the Kaiservillehelm Institute for Anthropology, so he makes Mengola a 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.160 guest scholar there, you know, as he's recovering from being 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.120 at the warfront, and Mengola continues to aid Verschure in 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.400 his work on an ad hoc basis. Von Verschuer had 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.200 taken over for the previous Nazi in charge, Eugene Fisher, 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:32.400 as part of an agreement between the two men that 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.720 race science had now advanced to an exciting new era, 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.319 one in which the study of heredity could now look 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:43.200 at traits like criminality or heroism, or work shyness or industriousness, 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.720 and determined with scientific precision to what extent those traits 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.120 were caused by heredity or by environment. The missing piece 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:52.840 of the puzzle was that heredity science as they saw it, 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:56.000 still could not explain how a genetic disposition became a 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.840 physical trait. In his book on Mangola, Marwoll quotes historian 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:04.199 Walter Schmuel. The idea generally accepted up to that time 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.480 that every attribute was simply transmitted as dominant or recessive 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.040 monofactorial genetic information did not hold up to the results 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:16.319 of mutation research, population genetics, or developmental physiology. Thus, Mendelian 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:18.480 genetics was giving way, in the words of the day, 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:23.880 to higher mendalism, which presumed much more complicated mechanisms of heredity. Now, 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.240 part of why the Nazis are confused is that a 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.760 lot of the things they saw as traits simply are 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.640 not behaviors or traits that have a genetic component, or 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:33.800 just aren't traits at all. You have to consider the 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.880 Nazis considered criminality a trait, and their definition of a 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.120 criminal was kind of broad. 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:43.640 Right, Yeah, it was weirdly sounded a lot like they 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.560 were just trying to describe Jews in any aspect and 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:50.600 just trying to use science to justify it. 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.080 Yeah, so you can see how they would be confused 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.440 that all of their calculations aren't adding up here. 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.000 And also what's a crime, because yeah, they would also 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.400 like anything gay was a crime, and sure, you know 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:05.600 exactly anything gender queer was a crime. So criminality quite 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:06.360 broad as well. 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.400 Broad term for the Nazis. Now, yes, there were, and 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.760 they were asking because these guys are scientists, and some 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.600 of what they're asking, we're legitimate at the time, scientific 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.120 questions about heredity. They were not just trying to do 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:21.960 stuff that was nonsense race science. They were trying to 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.160 answer real questions that scientists all over the world were 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.600 kind of grappling with. The pseudoscience here though, is pretty 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.200 complex and not worth kind of delving into in much 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:35.840 more detail, so we will continue to focus more on 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:40.600 the personalities. Vershure and Fisher, both highly regarded race scientists, 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.400 were obsessed with unraveling the mystery of heredity. So they 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:46.480 made an agreement and Vershure gets made the head of 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.120 the institute because he's really good at getting funding and 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.360 support from the Nazi state. I'm going to quote again 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.440 now from Marwell's book, although he himself here is largely 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.520 quoting the work of a historian named Sheila faith Weiss. 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.920 In pursuit of this this new paradigm argues wise a 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.640 combination of experimental research on animals and humans was necessary. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.320 She writes that Dalam Institute scientists could provide the necessary 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.280 human clinical supplement to the ongoing experimental work in the 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.400 developmental genetics of normal and pathological traits in animals. Mengel's 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:18.720 four month association with the institute and the winter and 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.720 spring of nineteen forty three laid the foundation for a 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.720 crucial link between the scientists at the institute and a 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.520 colleague who could be instrumental in supplying all manner of 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.800 human specimens and data to advance their work. So they 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.480 hit this point where they're like, in order to do 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.160 more heredity research, the only way to properly do this 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.200 is to study a bunch of humans. And that kind 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.280 of study is going to involve dissection, it's going to 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.640 involve autopsies, it's going to involve finding people who have 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.480 rare different kind of genetic disabilities and studying their bodies 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.240 after they die. If you were to do that legitimately, 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.640 you know, using only bodies that people had willingly donated 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.080 after their deaths, well you're not going to actually be 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:00.680 able to do that science. It's at the rate at 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.840 which these Nazis want to do it. They're going to 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:07.440 need a supply of human material, and that is where 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.080 Joseph Mangel is going to be useful to them. 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.880 So God, it's so fucking suppressing brow. 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:22.639 Yes, this is I mean, these are the Mangola episodes. Yeah, yeah, Lita, 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:23.720 people going down. 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.600 I'm sorry, you can cut that one about this one instead, 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:31.680 except it's jarring Mesa Buston. That's always nice. It's nice 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.879 to remember the finer parts of life. As we have 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:39.520 we delve into this darkness. So Joey mangs gets assigned 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.160 to work at Auschwitz in the May of nineteen forty three, 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:45.600 and we don't exactly know why, because they get rid 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.680 of a lot of their documentation around Auschwitz shortly after 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.800 this period. It is likely, and Mangola's son would later 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.439 say that von Verschuer basically pulled strings to get him 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:59.800 appointed at Auschwitz. It is worth noting doctors were never 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.359 work at death camps. Not one of the SS doctors 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.400 who worked at any of the death camps was there 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:07.840 on pain that they would be punished. You didn't even 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.119 suffer career consequences for refusing to work at a death camp. 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:16.399 It was this work. Normal empathy was like, oh, I no, 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.240 I'd rather not. Yeah, I get it. Bro, it's talk 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.840 about that. It's fucked up. It's fucked up. Bro, I 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:23.960 tolt me neither. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.040 It is often errantly stated that Mengelo was the chief 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.200 medical officer at Auschwitz, but this is inaccurate. His direct 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.800 supervisor was the chief medical director at the camp, and 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.720 Mengela is more accurately viewed as basically the number two 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.280 man in terms of like the medical system at Auschwitz. 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.600 Gerald Posner credits this errant reputation to the fact that 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:45.919 Joseph was a workaholic as well as one of the 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.720 few SS men there who had seen combat in the East. 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.600 Mengela frequently referred to his combat experience, and he quickly 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.000 developed a special aura in the camp because of his 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.359 frontline fighting, which contrasted sharply with the desk careers of 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:01.520 the other doctors, Mengl coupled his combat status with a 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:04.920 workaholic devotion to his duties. While other Auschwitz doctors did 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:07.320 no more than was required of them, Mangelo was always 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:12.720 undertaking new projects and extra responsibility, and one example of 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.360 an extra responsibility he took on was eradicating a typhoid 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.800 epidemic that occurred at one of the barracks soon after 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.040 his arrival. Now, for reference, Auschwitz was made up of 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:24.920 several labor camps, each with a different set of barracks, 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.240 generally divided between men and women, but also between inmates 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.560 from different regions. As a general rule, families were split 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.359 up on arrival by sex and availability to work. But 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.560 sometimes too many people came in at once Auschwitz. I 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.040 think the most people it ever killed in a day 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.080 was nine thousand, and there were days where more than 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.679 that arrived. And thus, yeah, I mean it was a 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:51.720 factory for producing death. And so sometimes when they had 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:54.720 too many people arrive, communities would be kept intact until 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:58.080 they could be exterminated. And when you stick large numbers 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.160 of people in tiny, poorly made bear with no insulation 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.320 in the middle of a European winter, and you feed them, 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.160 maybe seven hundred calories a day, and you deprive them 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:11.160 of clean water, illness is going to spread. And sure enough, 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:15.400 typhoid epidemics were rampant at the time. With the technology available, 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.720 it was basically impossible to stop typhus from spreading once 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:21.400 it had become endemic and something like a crowded barracks. 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.040 This had been an intractable problem for the camp administration 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.080 prior to Mangola's arrival, and the SS saw this as 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.600 a serious issue, not because they cared about the comfort 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.439 and safety of prisoners, but because typhoid just spreads. You know, 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.880 the SS can get typhoid from the prisoners at the barracks, right, 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:39.040 so you have high. 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.320 Foyd can't even tell who's Jewish or not. Yeah, it's 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:43.400 really messed up. 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:45.919 It's like they're all's the same species. 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.280 I don't understand it. Well, you're gonna have to do 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.080 more science, unfortunately. 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.600 Yeah. So something has to be done, and Joseph Mangela 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:56.800 is going to be the guy to do it. And 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:58.720 I'm going to quote now from a memoir by a 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:05.200 Jewish doctor cad in Germany named Miklos n named Miklos Nisli. 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.240 Miklos is interned at Auschwitz with his family and forced 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.840 to work as a medical officer there by doctor Mengela 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.040 and here are his recollections of how Joseph fought the 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:19.600 typhoid outbreak. The quarantine camp, C Camp, Dcamp and the 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.560 F section were terribly overcrowded, despite the quotas which were 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.560 filled daily for shipment to more distant camps and the 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.840 Czech camp. Both the children and the aged had been 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.960 greatly weakened by their two year ordeal. The children's bodies 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.400 were mere skin and bones, and the elderly prisoners were 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.240 so weak they could scarcely walk. Both had to relinquish 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:38.600 their places to new arrivals who were still strong enough 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.360 to work. During the preceding weeks, their situation had steadily worsened. 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.560 When the first Hungarian convoys began arriving, their rations had 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.000 been sharply reduced. Then a few weeks later, when the 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.199 stream of new deporte tees had swelled the flood proportions, 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:53.959 the camp authorities had found themselves faced with a serious 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.880 shortage of food. As usual, their remedy had both been 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.760 both drastic and efficient. They had practically suppressed the ch 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:03.440 The check camp's rations. Altogether, hunger had reduced the prisoners 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.760 to raving, moaning maniacs within a few days. There already 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:11.359 weakened organisms had disintegrated entirely. Diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus had 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:14.120