Science of the Nazis

My Inquiry Project will be a study into how science changed in Germany during the Nazi
rule. I will begin my research by inquiring into the scientific advancements that the Germans
produced while under the third Reich. I am interested in this topic because of my interest in
science in general and I am interested in the ways that the processes of scientific discovery were
affected by the way that Hitler ran his country.
Throughout my previous education of the holocaust I became aware that in Hitlers
power, Nazi Germany ran with ruthless efficiency. I also learned of significant advancements in
military technologies to help them in the war such as the V2 rocket and the submarine. I also
know that with the massacre of millions of Jews happening, there was an abundant supply of
human test subjects and cadavers that the Nazis had no qualms with using in their experiments.
These human experiments could not be performed in other situations due to ethical conflicts, and
as such a plethora of new information was discovered in the fields of medicine, anatomy, and
biology. Many of these discoveries proved to be very useful and have helped shape what we
know about the human body.
I have two questions that I can start to research and answer specifically. These questions
will help me develop more about what other topics I can explore and they will help me begin the
process of inquiry. I would like to explore what extent human experimentation practiced by the
Nazis was taken to. My second curiosity is to the specific progresses there were in my field of
interest: Physics.
In order to understand this topic I may need to locate primary source documents. In
particular, I would like to read scientific articles written by Nazi scientists. This can give me a

better perspective on the research being done by the scientists themselves. I may also need to
find reports on laboratories that were discovered after the successful invasion of Germany. These
would give me a perspective on the situation that is different from just the aspects of the research
itself.
One angle I could approach this topic with is to examine what differences there were
from other scientific environments; describing what advantages and disadvantages they had. I
could also look into how life was like as a scientist in Nazi Germany.
Inquiry question:
How did the Nazi reign affect the advancement of science in Germany?