Code 6: Legacy of Nazi Human

Experimentation in WWII

Mia Leonard & Matthew Owens

Senior Division
Group Website

Why We Chose This Topic:

Both of us have been avid computer gamers for a lengthy period of time,
since childhood in fact. We tend to play rather violent games, like World of
Warcraft and League of Legends, where the primary objective is to obliterate your
opponent and take over their base or home. This, coupled with numerous other
odd developments, have led both of us to be interested in understanding things that
are inherently violent or evil - both of which fit the Holocaust experiments. Since
the female of our group wishes to be a doctor, and the male once wished to become
a psychologist, this topic seemed only natural.
How We Conducted Our Research:
Much of our time is clearly spent on computers, so we turned to the Internet
first. We looked through pages upon pages of photos and archive collections at the
National Holocaust Memorial Museum, and went through every court docket we

could find on the Nuremberg trials. We spent a lot of time speaking with our
schools history teachers about Nazis and their experimentation on humans; it
ended up coming up in nearly every class discussion. Then, we turned to books
about the life and beliefs of Hitler and the Nazi party officials. We also watched
videos on the court trials, and over the results of the experiments.
How We Created/Developed Our Website:
First, we decided on a color scheme for our website and decided to use black
and white, as loud colors would distract from the monstrosities we were trying to
present, and could make the subject matter less easily stomached by those who
could be viewing our website - injuries are easier to view in black and white. We
then spent some time setting up the individual pages, and trying to uniformize their
layout. After everything was settled, we put in the photos and text, then captioned
and sourced all of our information.

How Our Project Relates to the Theme:

Leadership and legacy go both ways, there are bad leaders with horrible
legacies, and vice versa. We chose a more extreme case of bad legacies. The
human experiments conducted by physicians of the Nazi party still exist in
textbooks, and are generally taught everywhere - including in Germany. The legacy
they left behind was not a good one, it is illegal to say Heil Hitler, in public in
Germany, or to form the Nazi salute with your hands. Anyone who has taken a
class in modern history shudders at the thought of Joseph Mengele and his
experiments on twins. What remains of their ideals is a history of physical pain and
emotional suffering for millions of people, which would carry down generation
after generation, even into today, nearly 80 years after it happened.
(478 words)