Earlier this week, I published posts about two other "mad scientists:" Vladimir Demikhov and Jack Parsons. I'd like to preface this post on Josef Mengele by saying that he took "mad" to an entirely different level. While Parsons and Demikhov both were batty in their own unique ways, they never rivaled the cold, callous, derangement of Josef Mengele.
Little is conclusively known about Josef Mengele's early life, but one might assume that he was an exceedingly bright young man. He received his PhD in anthropology in 1935 at the age of 24. Upon reaching this educational echelon, however, his life began to take a darker turn. Two years after graduating, he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, an organization focused on forwarding Aryan racial purity through scientific means. Later that year, Mengele became an official member of the Nazi Party. In 1938, he joined the SS and served in the army as a medic, where he merited numerous awards for heroism. After being wounded in combat and declared unfit for active duty, Mengele was promoted to captain and eventually reassigned to Auschwitz, where he became chief camp physician in November 1943. Here, with unfettered power, in a place where ethics were absent, Mengele's madness flourished.
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