Kurt Blome
Encyclopedia
Kurt Blome was a high-ranking Nazi
scientist before and during World War II
. He was the Deputy Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. In his autobiography, Arzt im Kampf (Physician in Struggle), Blome equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death.
Counter Intelligence Corps
(CIC, an army intelligence service) in Munich
, and he had no papers except his driving licence. After some weeks of custody, in which the CIC checked on his identity, Blome was taken to Kransberg Castle
(a medieval castle north of Frankfurt
) by an escort.
A few days after his arrival at the castle a secret message was transmitted to Operation Alsos
, an Anglo-American team of experts, whose order was to investigate the state of German
and Italian
weapons technology towards end of war:
Blome admitted that he had been ordered in 1943 to experiment with plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners. He was tried at the Doctors' Trial
in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia
and conducting experiments on humans
. Although acquitted
, his earlier admissions were well known, and it was generally accepted that he had indeed participated in the experiments (there is evidence that Blome experimented with Sarin
gas on Auschwitz prisoners).
As Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Third Reich, Blome had a longstanding interest in the "military use of carcinogenic substances" and cancer-causing viruses. According to Ute Deichmann's book Biologists under Hitler, in 1942 he became director of a unit affiliated with the Central Cancer Institute at the University of Posen, which is now in Poland. Although he claimed that the work at this institute involved only "defensive" measures against biological weapons, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and Erich Schumann, head of the Wehrmacht's Science Section, strongly supported the offensive use of chemical and biological weapons against Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.
Blome worked on methods of storage and dispersal of biological agents like plague, cholera, anthrax and typhoid, and also infected prisoners with plague in order to test the efficacy of vaccines. Eduard May, director of the SS Institute for Practical Research in Military Science, collaborated with him in experiments on "the artificial mass transmission of the Malaria parasite to humans", with infected mosquitoes dropped from planes. Blome also worked on aerosol despersants and methods of spraying nerve agents like Tabun and Sarin from aircraft, and tested the effects of these gases on prisoners at Auschwitz.
Blome fled from Posen
in March 1945 just ahead of the Red Army, and was unable to have the facilities destroyed. He informed Walter Schreiber
, head of the Wehrmacht's Military Medical Inspectorate, that he was "very concerned that the installations for human experiments that were in the institute and recognizable as such, would be very easily identified by the Russians."
Blome's entire career deserves a great deal more study than it has thus far received, including his subsequent work to the United States on biological and chemical weapons and his acquittal of war crimes charges at the Nurmeberg 'Doctor's Trial' in 1946-47.
Throughout the war, the German and Japanese biological warfare programs exchanged information, samples and equipment by submarine, and indeed the last of these submarines actually departed from Japan as late as May 1945. The Japanese destroyed many of the records about these contacts and the biological warfare program prior to their own surrender in August, however. In the 1930s, Hitler had ordered a group of officers led by Dr. Otto Muntsch to study Japan's use of chemical and biological weapons against China, and these programs of scientific cooperation and exchange were formalized in a series of agreements in 1938-39. Dr. Gerhard Rose, one of the leading German experts on tropical diseases and later a defendant at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, turned over samples of the yellow fever virus to Unit 731 that they had been unable to obtain from the United States. In February 1941, Dr. Hojo Enryo from Unit 731 arrived in Germany as scientific attache to the Japanese Embassy, and often visited the Robert Koch Institute and other facilities to gather information of German biological warfare efforts. He also gave a lecture on this subject to the Berlin Academy of Medicine in October 1941. Blome's own institute in Posen was very similar in design to Unit 731's facility in Pingfan, Manchuria.
, to work on chemical warfare
. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg
. Denied a visa by the U.S. Consul in Frankfurt, he was employed at European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel, West Germany.
authorities, convicted of war crime
s, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
One of Blome's colleagues and subordinates in biological warfare, Eugen von Haagen, was tried by the French after the war and imprisoned from 1947-55. Von Haagen was an officer in the Luftwaffe Medical Service and a professor at the University of Stassburg, which has been "a major biological warfare research base." His main interests since the 1930s, when he had worked at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, were virology and typhus research. He experimented with hepatitis and typhus vaccines of prisoners at the Natzweiler concentration camp, infecting them with the diseases before testing his vaccines. Dr. Kurt Gutzeit was in charge of hepatitis research for the German Army, experimented with hepatitis ("Jaundice Virus") on concentration camp prisoners, as did von Haagen and his colleagues Dr. Arnold Dohmen and Dr. Hans Voegt. These experiments were carried out on mental patients, Jews, Russian POWs and Gypsies in Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and other locations. Dohmen and Gutzeit also did experiments on humans with nephritis virus, which was found in mice and rabbits. One question that is still unknown is whether Dohmen, Voegt and Gutzeit were ever employed by Operation Paperclip or similar programs after the war, as were Erich Traub
, von Haagen and Blome.
The U.S. authorities arrested von Haagen in 1945 and he was interviewed by the ALSOS Mission, led by Boris Pash. After obtaining the desired information on his biological warfare activities, they released him, but then he was arrested again by the British in 1946 and appeared as a witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials and against his former colleagues at the Buchenwald Trial.
Released once again, he went to work for the Soviets at the Institute for Medicine and Biology in Berlin. Von Haagen was arrested for the third time by the French and tried before a military court in Metz, which waited until 1952 to sentence him to life imprisonment. This sentence was overturned in 1954 when he was sentenced to twenty years at hard labor. Released yet again in 1955, von Haagen went to work at the Federal Institute of Viral Pathology in West Germany. In all of his repeated arrests and trials, American intervention protected von Haagen.
As with Blome and other Germans involved in biological warfare activities and Operation Paperclip, his postwar career requires more research.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
scientist before and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He was the Deputy Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. In his autobiography, Arzt im Kampf (Physician in Struggle), Blome equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death.
First arrest and trial
Blome had been arrested on May 17, 1945 by an agent of the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Counter Intelligence Corps
Counter Intelligence Corps
The Counter Intelligence Corps was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and, in 1967, by the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency...
(CIC, an army intelligence service) in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, and he had no papers except his driving licence. After some weeks of custody, in which the CIC checked on his identity, Blome was taken to Kransberg Castle
Kransberg Castle
Kransberg Castle is situated on a steep rock near Kransberg , a village with about 800 inhabitants in the Taunus mountains in the German province of Hesse. The medieval building, which acquired its current appearance in the late 19th century, served military and intelligence purposes in World War...
(a medieval castle north of Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
) by an escort.
A few days after his arrival at the castle a secret message was transmitted to Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos was an effort at the end of World War II by the Allies , branched off from the Manhattan Project, to investigate the German nuclear energy project, seize German nuclear resources, materials and personnel to further American research and to prevent their capture by the Soviets, and...
, an Anglo-American team of experts, whose order was to investigate the state of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
weapons technology towards end of war:
- "In 1943 Blome was studying bacteriological warfare, although officially he was involved in cancerCancerCancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
research, which was however only a camouflage. Blome additionally served as deputy health minister of the Reich. Would like you to send investigators?"
Blome admitted that he had been ordered in 1943 to experiment with plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners. He was tried at the Doctors' Trial
Doctors' Trial
The Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S...
in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
and conducting experiments on humans
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
. Although acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
, his earlier admissions were well known, and it was generally accepted that he had indeed participated in the experiments (there is evidence that Blome experimented with Sarin
Sarin
Sarin, or GB, is an organophosphorus compound with the formula [2CHO]CH3PF. It is a colorless, odorless liquid, which is used as a chemical weapon. It has been classified as a weapon of mass destruction in UN Resolution 687...
gas on Auschwitz prisoners).
As Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Third Reich, Blome had a longstanding interest in the "military use of carcinogenic substances" and cancer-causing viruses. According to Ute Deichmann's book Biologists under Hitler, in 1942 he became director of a unit affiliated with the Central Cancer Institute at the University of Posen, which is now in Poland. Although he claimed that the work at this institute involved only "defensive" measures against biological weapons, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and Erich Schumann, head of the Wehrmacht's Science Section, strongly supported the offensive use of chemical and biological weapons against Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.
Blome worked on methods of storage and dispersal of biological agents like plague, cholera, anthrax and typhoid, and also infected prisoners with plague in order to test the efficacy of vaccines. Eduard May, director of the SS Institute for Practical Research in Military Science, collaborated with him in experiments on "the artificial mass transmission of the Malaria parasite to humans", with infected mosquitoes dropped from planes. Blome also worked on aerosol despersants and methods of spraying nerve agents like Tabun and Sarin from aircraft, and tested the effects of these gases on prisoners at Auschwitz.
Blome fled from Posen
Posen
Posen may refer to:Places in Europe:* Poznań, Poland * Grand Duchy of Posen, autonomous province of Prussia, 1815–1848* Province of Posen, Prussian province, 1848–1918...
in March 1945 just ahead of the Red Army, and was unable to have the facilities destroyed. He informed Walter Schreiber
Walter Schreiber
Dr Walter Paul Emil Schreiber was a German military officer and brigadier-general of the Medical Service of the Wehrmacht....
, head of the Wehrmacht's Military Medical Inspectorate, that he was "very concerned that the installations for human experiments that were in the institute and recognizable as such, would be very easily identified by the Russians."
Blome's entire career deserves a great deal more study than it has thus far received, including his subsequent work to the United States on biological and chemical weapons and his acquittal of war crimes charges at the Nurmeberg 'Doctor's Trial' in 1946-47.
Throughout the war, the German and Japanese biological warfare programs exchanged information, samples and equipment by submarine, and indeed the last of these submarines actually departed from Japan as late as May 1945. The Japanese destroyed many of the records about these contacts and the biological warfare program prior to their own surrender in August, however. In the 1930s, Hitler had ordered a group of officers led by Dr. Otto Muntsch to study Japan's use of chemical and biological weapons against China, and these programs of scientific cooperation and exchange were formalized in a series of agreements in 1938-39. Dr. Gerhard Rose, one of the leading German experts on tropical diseases and later a defendant at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, turned over samples of the yellow fever virus to Unit 731 that they had been unable to obtain from the United States. In February 1941, Dr. Hojo Enryo from Unit 731 arrived in Germany as scientific attache to the Japanese Embassy, and often visited the Robert Koch Institute and other facilities to gather information of German biological warfare efforts. He also gave a lecture on this subject to the Berlin Academy of Medicine in October 1941. Blome's own institute in Posen was very similar in design to Unit 731's facility in Pingfan, Manchuria.
Testimony to Americans
It is believed that American intervention saved Blome from the gallows. In return Blome agreed to provide information to the Americans about his experiments in the Dachau concentration camp and advice in the development of their own germ warfare program In November 1947, two months after his Nuremberg acquittal, Blome was interviewed by four representatives from Camp Detrick, Maryland, including Dr. H.W. Batchelor, in which he explained German biological warfare experiments in detail and identified other experts in the field. In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps under Project 63, one of the successors to Operation PaperclipOperation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
, to work on chemical warfare
Chemical warfare
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
. Denied a visa by the U.S. Consul in Frankfurt, he was employed at European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel, West Germany.
Final arrest and imprisonment
Eventually, Blome was arrested by FrenchFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
authorities, convicted of war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
One of Blome's colleagues and subordinates in biological warfare, Eugen von Haagen, was tried by the French after the war and imprisoned from 1947-55. Von Haagen was an officer in the Luftwaffe Medical Service and a professor at the University of Stassburg, which has been "a major biological warfare research base." His main interests since the 1930s, when he had worked at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, were virology and typhus research. He experimented with hepatitis and typhus vaccines of prisoners at the Natzweiler concentration camp, infecting them with the diseases before testing his vaccines. Dr. Kurt Gutzeit was in charge of hepatitis research for the German Army, experimented with hepatitis ("Jaundice Virus") on concentration camp prisoners, as did von Haagen and his colleagues Dr. Arnold Dohmen and Dr. Hans Voegt. These experiments were carried out on mental patients, Jews, Russian POWs and Gypsies in Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and other locations. Dohmen and Gutzeit also did experiments on humans with nephritis virus, which was found in mice and rabbits. One question that is still unknown is whether Dohmen, Voegt and Gutzeit were ever employed by Operation Paperclip or similar programs after the war, as were Erich Traub
Erich Traub
Erich Traub was a German veterinarian and scientist/virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps , a Nazi motorist corps, from 1938–1942...
, von Haagen and Blome.
The U.S. authorities arrested von Haagen in 1945 and he was interviewed by the ALSOS Mission, led by Boris Pash. After obtaining the desired information on his biological warfare activities, they released him, but then he was arrested again by the British in 1946 and appeared as a witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials and against his former colleagues at the Buchenwald Trial.
Released once again, he went to work for the Soviets at the Institute for Medicine and Biology in Berlin. Von Haagen was arrested for the third time by the French and tried before a military court in Metz, which waited until 1952 to sentence him to life imprisonment. This sentence was overturned in 1954 when he was sentenced to twenty years at hard labor. Released yet again in 1955, von Haagen went to work at the Federal Institute of Viral Pathology in West Germany. In all of his repeated arrests and trials, American intervention protected von Haagen.
As with Blome and other Germans involved in biological warfare activities and Operation Paperclip, his postwar career requires more research.
Works
- "Krebsforschung und Krebsbekämpfung". Ziel und Weg. Die Gesundheitsführung Nr. 11 (1940) S. 406-412
- Arzt im Kampf: Erlebnisse und Gedanken. - Leipzig: Barth, 1942
See also
|
Fort Detrick Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program .... Anthrax Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals... Typhus Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters... Malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases... Hepatitis Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"... Nephritis Nephritis is inflammation of the nephrons in the kidneys. The word "nephritis" was imported from Latin, which took it from Greek: νεφρίτιδα. The word comes from the Greek νεφρός - nephro- meaning "of the kidney" and -itis meaning "inflammation".... Gerhard Rose Gerhard Rose was a German expert on tropical medicine who was tried for war crimes at the end of World War II.... Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese... |