Did Nazi science produce anything of value despite the repugnant methods?
Oddly enough, despite their adherence to the dubious science of racial hygiene, Nazi medicine and science did produce some rather amazing advances. Indeed German physicists and engineers developed what was in essence the first Cruise missile (the V-1) and the precursor to the intercontinental missile (the V-2). German medical scientists identified the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer more than two decades before the Surgeon General’s warning and undertook public health programs to help people quit smoking. Indeed, in his book, The Nazi War On Cancer, Robert Proctor describes, well, a Nazi War On Cancer in which many of the public health measures taken were both progressive even by today’s standards and decades ahead of their time. (Indeed, I keep meaning to do a post on this topic, and I keep somehow never getting around to it.) At the same time, the Nazi regime, while producing advances in scientific medicine, also was enamoured of “alternative” medicine such as na
