In a meeting in Heidelberg earlier this month, science historians concluded that German science between 1933 and 1945 was exploitative and unethical. The organizer of the meeting, Wolfgang Eckhart, head of history of medicine at the University of Heidelberg, said in Nature last week: "We have proven that the DFG [Germany's main research agency] was willingly involved in the full range of medical crimes during the Nazi era."
It is perhaps not surprising that scientists in Nazi Germany suppressed ethical concerns. (That's putting it mildly: A letter from one scientist to the head of the medical section of the DFG praises the "excellent conditions for researchers in Auschwitz.") But what is surprising is that amid the atrocities of the Third Reich, there was a clinic in Vienna that treated autistic children with extraordinary gentleness and intuition.
The director of The Vienna University Pediatric Clinic had a Heilpadagogik (therapeutic pedagogy) department, and its head was Hans Asperger.