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Kurt Blome (31 January 1894, Bielefeld, Westphalia – 10 October 1969) 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'' ((英語:''A Physician's Struggle'')), he equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death. Blome only 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. In reality, starting in 1943 he "assumed responsibility for all research into biological warfare sponsored by the Wehrmacht." and the S.S.〔Paul Maddrell, 'Operation “Matchbox” and the Scientific Containment of the USSR', in Peter Jackson & Jennifer Siegel (eds.)''Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society''. Praeger Publishers, 2005, p. 191.〕 Although he was acquitted of war crimes charges at the Nuremberg Doctor's Trial, this was mainly due to the intervention of the United States and his earlier admissions were well known, so it was generally accepted that he had indeed participated in chemical and biological warfare experiments on concentration camp inmates.〔Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, ''Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Nazis''. Verso, 1998, p. 148.〕 ==Director of the Nazi biological warfare program== 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 (Poznań), which is now in Poland. Although he claimed that the work at this institute involved only 'defensive' measures against biological weapons, Heinrich Himmler, Herman 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. In 1943, Schumann wrote to Dr. Heinrich Kliewe, one of the Wehrmacht's biological warfare experts that "in particular, America must be attacked simultaneously with various human and animal epidemic pathogens as well as plant pests."〔Ute Deichmann, ''Biologists under Hitler''. Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 280.〕 According to Kliewe, plague, typhoid, cholera and anthrax were being developed as weapons, as well as a new "synthetic medium for the spread of these bacteria" which would allow them to remain virulent for eight to twelve weeks.〔Deichmann, p. 280.〕 As part of the Nazi biological warfare program code-named ''Blitzableiter'' (Lightning Rod), Blome's institute was therefore "a camouflaged operation for the production of biological warfare agents", and its construction was overseen by Karl I. Gross, an S.S. officer and specialist in tropical diseases, who had conducted lethal experiments on 1,700 prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp.〔Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 262-63.〕 It was surrounded by a ten-foot high wall, guarded by a special S.S. unit, and designed to prevent the accidental release of the various biological agents being produced there. By May 1944, the institute had sections devoted to physiology-biology, bacteriology and vaccines, radiology, pharmacology, cancer statistics and a tumor farm, and had received at least 2.7 million Reichsmarks in funding from the Wehrmacht and S.S. in 1943–45.〔Deichmann, p. 283.〕 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. At the University of Strassburg, a "special unit" headed by Prof. Eugen von Haagan and employing researchers like Kurt Gutzeit and Arnold Dohmen, tested typhus, hepatitis, nephritis, and other chemical and biological weapons on concentration camp inmates.〔Naomi Baumslag, ''Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus''. Praeger Publishers, 2005, p. 208.〕 Gutzeit was in charge of hepatitis research for the German Army, and he and his colleagues carried out virus experiments on mental patients, Jews, Russian POWs and Gypsies in Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and other locations.〔Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel for the American Military Tribunals at Nurember, 1946. http://www.mazal.org/NO-series/NO-0124-000.htm;B. Leyendecker and F. Klapp, "Human Hepatitis Experiments in the Second World War". U.S. Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 1989. 〕 In October 1944, Himmler also ordered Blome to experiment with plague on concentration camp prisoners.〔Deichmann, p. 284.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kurt Blome」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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