Yeah, I get what are saying.
The bad time example is going on OUTSIDE, but the scientists are working in a lab, safe somewhere else, INSIDE.
But yea, research can still happen in bad times, but the priorities are different.
As mentioned, the A-Bomb was happening during wartime, just the fighting and destruction was far away.
Which probably would not have happend if the roles would have been reversed. Scientists can only work, if they are far away from the frontline, working in relative safety, with enough resources to do their research, which is my point ...
By the way, before 1936 one of the concepts behind nuclear research was to provide energy, or at least many scientists saw the application here for it. And a lot of the research was sponsored and done for civilian projects, before half of the egg-heads in the US have been send on a remote location to concentrate their effort on a bomb. But let us not get to much in to hypotheticall stuff.
As horrendous as it was, Mengele and Unit 731 were doing a lot of medical research during wartime.
Of which most was useless data, not done under correct scientific conditions without a realistc way to check and varify anything they did and it could not be applied after the war - for obvious reasons, for one moral reasons and the second, most of the research and data simply vanished, guess why. But even in war time what they did had literaly zero practical use. For the mentioned reasons above, just doing some testing and
stuff, doesn't have to get you anywhere.
Only very little, if any, of the tests they did in the concentration camps has actually really shown anything usefull for the Germans. Those tests have been hardly done in controlled environments or what you could call empirical studies.
(...)
Leaving aside the question of medical ethics, did any useful science ever come out of Nazi experiments on unwilling subjects?
Very little. Concentration camp doctors conducted research on vaccines, antibiotics, fertility, transplantation, and eugenics. The majority of those experiments were either useless, scientifically unsound, or duplicative. More interesting was a series of studies on the limits of human endurance: At the Dachau concentration camp in 1942, Nazi doctor Sigmund Rascher submerged approximately 300 naked victims in ice water for two to five hours and monitored their heart rate, muscle control, and core temperature, and he noted when the subjects lost consciousness. (His stated goal was to see how long a downed pilot could survive in the North Sea.) More than 80 of the prisoners died during the experiments; nevertheless, some argue that Rascher's data are valuable and irreproducible. Dozens of medical journal articles have cited the research, which has played a minor role in the development of survival suits for cold-water fishing boats and warming techniques for hypothermia patients. (...)
Do you even know how serious and profound scientific research is even done? The modern kind, with the scientific method?
The Germans were working on numerous wunderwaffen such as the ME 262, Zielgerat 1229/Vampir scope, wire guided rockets, Horten Ho intercontinental bomber, etc.
Of which many saw research BEFORE the war, like jet engines - in both Germany and Britain, same for rockets and even infrared lights. And would have seen, without a doubt, a civilian use without WW2.
(...)
In 1936, AEG was ordered to start the development of infrared night-vision devices and in 1939, first successful prototype unit for use with 37mm Pak 35/36 L/45 anti-tank gun was constructed. In autumn of 1942, unit for use (infrared headlamp with viewer ZG 1221) with 75mm PaK 40 L/46 anti-tank gun was constucted and was also mounted on Marder II (Sd.kfz.131) (...)
None of the theoretical knowledge that led to those technologies and their applications was researched and deployed during wartime nor really meant to be solely technologies for war. Why? Because wartime doesn't allow much room to do theoretical research. Most of the technology has usualy a dual purpose, for the civilian and the military use. Even all rifles if you want so - Mauser up to this day, is making excellent hunting rifles. Only very few weapon systems like artillery, have solely a military use. Infrared light was a technology where AEG started to develope and research already during the early 1930s, for the simple reason, that it can be used in many different ways. Heating, Physics and Chemistry (Infrared spectroscopy), electronics and even in medical applications.
But, the main focus was on war-time applications, as requested by the Nazis. No surprise there that it lead to nothing else but a night vision in 1944/45.
