Joseph Mengele: The Angel of Death

Podcast Transcript

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 Joseph Mengele and his hideous crimes on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Joseph Mengele was born in Günzburg, Germany, on March 11, 1911. He was the eldest of three children born to his father, Karl Mengele, an industrialist, and his mother, Walburga.

Mengele grew up privileged, as his father’s profitable “Karl Mengele & Sons” farming equipment company provided the family with comfort and security.

In 1915, Karl shifted his company to aid the war effort, producing military equipment and weapons for the Germans in World War I. After Germany’s defeat in the war, he returned to selling agricultural implements.

As a child, Mengele was considered to be highly intelligent and creative, enjoying both academic activities and the arts.

Mengele became interested in medicine at an early age. His fascination with the field was inspired by his own health problems. When he was 15, Josef was diagnosed with a disease known as osteomyelitis. This illness is an infection of the bones, causing inflammation and other complications.

He ended up studying medicine at the University of Munich. Around this time, Mengele became involved in politics. His extreme political beliefs were likely influenced by his father, who later became a member of the Nazi Party.

While at university, Mengele joined the “Steel Helmet,” an organization that blamed Jews for Germany’s loss in World War I, further shaping his emerging ideology.

Mengele attended several universities while pursuing his doctorate in medicine, which gave him connections with fellow academics throughout Germany.

His racial beliefs influenced his early research in school, culminating in his receiving a doctorate for his study on the jaw bones of people of different races.

He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 while working on his medical dissertation. This research was also genetics-based, focusing on cleft palates. Mengele’s early research shows how deeply he believed in Nazi racial science from the beginning.

Mengele 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, Mengele met Irene Schönbein, the daughter of a professor. The couple had their only child, Rolf, in 1944.

In 1939, World War II began, which interrupted his studies. Mengele was called to service early in the war, where he served in a medical unit.

In 1941, Mengele’s unit was sent into Ukraine as part of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. During this time, Mengele was awarded the Iron Cross First Class after he rescued two German soldiers from under a tank.

In 1942, after being wounded in service and deemed unfit for combat, Mengele was transferred to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, where he evaluated candidates for the Germanization Campaign.

This campaign aimed to spread German culture, language, and people to non-German areas, focusing on Eastern and Central Europe, and also seeking to assimilate or exterminate populations based on racial criteria

By 1942, SS doctors had begun transferring to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, tasked with determining which prisoners were sent into forced labor and which were sent immediately to gas chambers. Roughly three-quarters of arrivals were killed immediately.

Encouraged by a colleague, Mengele 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 prisoners who didn’t recover in two weeks to their deaths. If he believed a prisoner was too ill, weak, or injured to work, he ordered their execution in the gas chamber.

This reputation earned him the nickname, the “Angel of Death,” as his arrival in the infirmary or barracks meant that prisoners were going to die.

He also participated in the prisoner arrivals. It was reported that Mengele was almost always on the ramp upon arrival, making it appear that he was personally performing most of the death-selection duties.

Mengele 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.

His research focused 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 camp, was the biggest supplier of subjects for the experiments. Because of its size, it is 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.

Mengele worked with genetic researchers Karin Magnussen and Otmar Von Verschuer, both from Berlin’s Kaiser-Wilhelm Institte, to conduct his research.

One of their areas of study was heterochromia, a condition involving differently colored eyes. The group aimed to determine differences in iris structure across races, hoping this would help “cure” heterochromia.

Mengele extracted heterochromatic eyes from Romani he killed and sent them to Magnussen and Von Verschuer for experiments. At Auschwitz, he also conducted his own experiments, such as injecting adrenaline into children’s eyes to try to change their eye color.

Mengele’s experiments on twins have become especially infamous. Twins, mostly children, were often selected and taken to designated barracks for Mengele’s experiments.

Mengele was curious about both identical and fraternal twins. Using twins, he wanted to study how genetic diseases originate and evolve, as well as determine which traits are innate and which are products of the 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.

Mengele 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 transfusions, causing immense suffering.

Many of his twin experiments were unspeakably cruel. In perhaps the most heinous example, he sewed two twins together in a attempt to create conjoined twins. The children endured days of agony before succumbing to death.

The procedures often proved fatal. If one twin died, Mengele typically killed the other to compare their internal features through dissection.

Beyond experiments on twins and eye color, Mengele also targeted people with physical abnormalities, including individuals with dwarfism.

For people with physical abnormalities, Mengele drew blood, extracted teeth, completed measurements, and administered drugs and x-rays. He conducted this study for two weeks. Afterward, he sent the person to the gas chamber and sent their skeletons to Berlin for further experimentation.

Mengele also experimented on pregnant women, despite lacking gynecological training, infecting them with typhoid to study transmission to newborns.

Other mothers had their chests physically bound so that they were unable to breastfeed their children. The goal of the experiment was for Mengele to see how long the babies could survive without being fed.

Additionally, Mengele 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 above may have been falsely attributed to him. Many historians have claimed that some of the experiments were myths, whereas others were potentially done by other doctors.

Nonetheless, it is believed that Josef Mengele experimented on as many as three to four thousand people, a large number of whom were children. Even if some of these cases are false, there is undeniable evidence that he committed many of these crimes.

As the Soviet forces moved closer to Auschwitz, Mengele 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 began moving westward.

He was eventually captured by American troops in Germany and was held for two months in prison before being released. Unfortunately, the American troops did not realize that the Joseph Mengele they were holding was the one wanted for war crimes. He was released in 1945.

During the Nuremberg Trials, Mengele’s name was mentioned numerous times. Allied forces had falsely believed he had passed away based on his family’s testimony. In reality, he was right under their nose.

Mengele stayed in Germany until 1949. During this period, he worked as a farmhand and reconnected with his family. He only left when he became concerned that staying would lead to his arrest and death.

Eventually, he fled to South America. Once there, Mengele was working as a salesman for his family’s company, selling farm supplies. Reportedly, he made multiple visits to Paraguay as a representative for the firm.

There is some evidence that Mengele continued to practice medicine during his time in South America. According to the Argentine government, there are records indicating that Mengele practiced without a license, performing various procedures.

Mengele 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. During this time, he stayed with his family and even enjoyed a ski trip in 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, José Mengele.

Nazi hunters eventually discovered he was alive and tracked him to Argentina. West Germany filed for an extradition for his arrest and offered a reward. Argentina initially refused to give him up, giving Mengele enough time to flee to Paraguay. By the time the extradition was approved, he was gone.

Mengele grew more concerned about his safety in South America following the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. This meant that despite Parguagy technically protecting him from extradition, he was not actually safe, as the Nazi hunters may enter illegally anytime.

His life in hiding was not glamorous. In Brazil, he lived under aliases, increasingly paranoid and dependent on others. He suffered health problems, including a stroke. On February 7, 1979, while swimming near São Paulo, Brazil, Mengele 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 in Brazil. Forensic analysis strongly identified the body as Mengele’s. DNA testing in 1992 confirmed it. This ended decades of speculation that he might still be alive.

Joseph Mengele’s legacy was not that of a madman operating outside the system. That is one of the most disturbing parts of his story. He was trained, credentialed, and given free rein to conduct some of the most hideous experiments

Today, Mengele is remembered as one of the clearest examples of why medical ethics matter. The absolute prohibition on human experimentation without consent was strengthened after the Nazi crimes became known.

His life shows how education and professional status can’t prevent evil when ambition and ideology replace morality.