Many companies still exist today that supported the Nazis leading up to and throughout WWII. While there are dozens of companies that fit the bill, each of these remains an important company in and out of Germany. Many contributed to the war effort by designing and building weapons and equipment, while others benefited from slave labor.

While each of these companies supported the Nazis in one way or another, not all of them did so willingly. Pressure was put in place to force numerous companies into submission, which should be considered when considering their actions leading up to and during WWII. That said, the companies that unforgivably employed slave labor crossed a rather significant line.

The following ten companies, presented in alphabetical order, all helped the Nazis in one way or another and continue operating to this day.

Related: Top 10 Discoveries That Wouldn’t Exist Without Nazi Germany

10 Associated Press

The Associated Press is the standard-bearer for modern journalistic integrity, but during the lead-up to WWII, the AP was there, supporting Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, the AP entered into an arrangement with the Nazis to continue reporting in Germany despite every other respectable agency having been kicked out of the country. This made the AP the sole legitimate reporting agency in Hitler’s Third Reich.

The AP maintained access by establishing a mutually beneficial arrangement with the Nazis. To accomplish this, the AP promised not to publish anything negative about the Nazis. One of the ways the AP managed this was by hiring pro-Nazi reporters and publishing Nazi propaganda. Some of this propaganda was negative toward Jews and filled with all manner of horrendous lies.

When news of the AP’s WWII activities came to light, a spokesperson told The Guardian, “AP rejects any notion that it deliberately ‘collaborated’ with the Nazi regime. An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler’s coming to power in 1932 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941.”^[1]

9 Audi

Audi is known worldwide as one of Germany’s greatest luxury car brands, but it has a sordid past. During WWII, Audi, which operated under the name Auto Union during the conflict, hashed out a deal with the Schutzstaffel (SS) to use concentration camp inmates for production. A report published in 2014 found that Audi used more than 3,700 enslaved workers taken from seven labor camps operated by the SS.

On top of the company’s use of camp-based slave labor, Audi benefited from an additional 16,500 forced workers not taken from concentration camps in Zwickau and Chemnitz. Another 18,000 worked in Bavaria, where some 4,500 people died toiling for the company. Nearly one-fifth of Audi’s “employees” during WWII consisted of concentration camp inmates, the majority of whom were of Jewish descent.

Additionally, anyone who was disabled or otherwise incapable of performing their duties was sent to concentration camps for execution. Audi responded to the revelation, admitting the modern leadership of the company was unaware of the full extent of its shameful past. The company established a fund in the early aughts to compensate Nazi slave laborers and their descendants.^[2]

8 Bayer

Bayer is a leading multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company operating today, but its actions throughout the 1930s and ’40s significantly differ from their modern operations. During WWII, Bayer belonged to the IG Farben conglomerate, which heavily supported the Third Reich. With ethical and legal limitations frozen by the Nazis, Bayer took advantage, testing drugs on unwilling human subjects in the Dachau, Gusen, and Auschwitz concentration camps.

Bayer worked through much of the conflict in Auschwitz, overseeing a chemical factory where human experimentation took place in Birkenau, at the women’s camp hospital. There, Bayer scientists purposefully infected patients with diphtheria, tuberculosis, and many other diseases. In addition to crossing this moral and ethical red line, Bayer also employed over 25,000 slave laborers.

Bayer’s involvement in the Holocaust came to light in 1999 following a lawsuit targeting the company. The suit accused Bayer officials of bribing Nazis to gain access to concentration camp inmates for human testing experiments. The suit included names like Dr. Koenig and Dr. Mengele as beneficiaries of these actions, effectively tying Bayer with the so-called “Angel of Death” and the horrors brought by other unscrupulous Nazi collaborators.^[3]

7 Chase National Bank

These days, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., is one of the world’s largest consumer and commercial multinational banks. Leading up to World War II, Chase National Bank conducted business with the Nazis through a special program involving the sale of a unique version of the Reichsmark called the Rückwanderer (Reborrowing). Chase sold Rückwanderers to American citizens of German descent, but it wasn’t exactly on the up and up.

The Nazis used Chase to sell Rückwanderers to Americans at a discounted rate, and it was able to do this because the purchase of a Rückwanderer was backed by currency taken from Jews and refugees fleeing the Nazis. Chase was fully complicit in this, helping the Nazi government amass more than $20 million ($427 million in 2024), and it wasn’t the only controversy involving the bank.

Chase also aided the Nazis in blocking the French from accessing their accounts from the States, helping the Third Reich sidestep the United States sanctions on Nazi assets. On top of that, the head of Chase in Paris worked hard to block Jewish funds and property, ultimately benefiting the Nazis through this action. Chase’s involvement was finally exposed when The FBI declassified records of Chase’s actions during WWII.^[4]

6 Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank (DB) is one of the largest commercial banks in the world, and it’s a primary money manager for Germans today. Leading up to and during WWII, DB was there to help the Nazis navigate the waters of international sanctions and defense spending. DB was fully integrated into the Nazi government, firing any Jews who worked for the bank. Part of DB’s actions during the lead-up to WWII involved the seizing of Jewish assets and turning them over to the Nazis.

As the Nazis spread across Europe, DB took advantage, taking control of banking institutions in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and elsewhere. Additionally, DB facilitated the sale of gold stolen from European Jews, which helped fund the Nazi war effort. DB’s WWII crimes came to international attention when the bank attempted a merger with a U.S. company.

Once revealed, the bank’s chairman, Rolf-Ernst Breuer, said, “We deeply regret the misery and injustice suffered and… we acknowledge the bank’s ethical and moral responsibility.” Perhaps Deutsche Bank’s most pivotal violation of human rights came during the war when it loaned the Nazis the money to construct the IG Farben facilities and the Auschwitz concentration camp using stolen Jewish gold.^[5]

5 Ford & General Motors

General Motors (GM) and the Ford Motor Co. are American companies, so most people might not consider their involvement during WWII to be nefarious. After all, Ford and GM, like most companies, manufactured military machines for the American war effort. Still, both automakers were involved overseas through their many subsidiaries, which controlled 70% of the German auto market in 1939.

These subsidiaries did what Ford and GM did for America, only they retooled their plants to support the local war effort, i.e., they built stuff for the Nazis. Not only did these subsidiaries engage in war production, but they also did what many companies in Europe did at the time: They used a large slave labor force to work in their factories, and many of these enslaved personnel were Jews.

GM’s fully-owned subsidiary, Opal, built trucks and aircraft used in the Nazi war effort. When the U.S. Army liberated these factories toward the end of the war, one report found that Ford’s German branch served as “an arsenal of Nazism, at least for military vehicles.” The Army determined that the parent company (Ford) consented and was complicit. Despite this, both companies insisted they lost control of their German plants in 1941 and denied any culpability.^[6]

4 IBM

IBM is an American company that developed computers leading up to and during WWII. These computers were considerably archaic compared to whatever you’re reading this article on, and they used punch cards for programming. In 1933, IBM sold 2,000 punch card machines to the Nazis, and the Nazi government used them to produce 1.5 billion index cards.

This was a monumental use of early computing effort, and the Nazis didn’t use it to keep track of bullets or ball bearings. Instead, the Nazis utilized IBM computers to create cards used to track and manage all of the people enslaved and executed during the Holocaust. These cards tracked Jews and other minority groups throughout Germany and Nazi-controlled parts of Europe, making the Nazi murder machine incredibly efficient.

IBM became involuntarily and quasi-voluntarily complicit in the wholesale slaughter of Europe’s Jewish population. Nazis used their IBM “Death Calculators” to determine the number of Jews they could efficiently remove from ghettos daily for shipment to concentration camps. At the time, IBM’s Polish subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, helped liquidate that nation’s Jewish population, so the company’s hands are far from clean.^[7]

3 Mercedes-Benz

Germany had numerous manufacturers supporting the war effort leading up to and throughout WWII, and Mercedes-Benz was one of many. The company was known as Daimler-Benz AG at the time, and it worked closely with the Nazi government. The company’s board included numerous Nazis, and once the war broke out, Daimler-Benz became the Nazi’s leading manufacturer of armaments. While this wasn’t entirely unexpected, the means of manufacture were problematic.

To fuel the Nazi war machine, Daimler-Benz did what most companies did during WWII: It used a massive force of slave labor for manufacturing. These enslaved people were primarily Jews but also prisoners of war and other marginalized groups targeted by the Nazis. During the war, Daimler-Benz “loaned” its enslaved laborers to other companies in exchange for money, so it was fully active in the Nazi slave trade.

After the war, Daimler-Benz didn’t try to hide its involvement in Nazi activities and embraced the “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future” initiative. In 1988, the company agreed to pay $12 million into a fund managed by the West German Red Cross designed to pay reparations to thousands of former slaves and their families.^[8]

2 Porsche

Porsche didn’t come into existence until 1950, but the company existed before this, and it was one of Hitler’s most prolific suppliers of his war machine. This was done through Porsche’s founder, Ferdinand Porsche, who designed cars for Hitler leading up to WWII. When the conflict broke out, Porsche continued designing for Germany, only switching to building tanks and off-road vehicles.

Porsche’s success at this time could be attributed to two things: Hitler adored the man, and he fully embraced using slave labor in his factories to meet the Führer’s demands. Porsche not only utilized slaves to build everything from cars and trucks to tanks and more, but he did so actively and with the full knowledge that his “employees” were forced to live in rat-infested quarters with minimal food and terrible treatment.

Porsche enjoyed massive profits, and the company that grew from these efforts became a multinational car company that is respected worldwide. Those who labored and died producing Porsche’s Nazi war machine saw little compensation after WWII. Porsche hasn’t fully admitted its involvement, though it supplied €2.5 million to a German reparation fund. Ultimately, Porsche avoided prosecution for his actions during WWII. Still, his reputation bears the stain of his involvement in the Holocaust.^[9]

1 Volkswagen

Most people know that Volkswagen created the VW Beetle for Hitler, but the company’s involvement in the Nazi war effort went way beyond that. When the war broke out, Volkswagen switched to military production, which most companies did at the time. This was true in Germany, the United States, and elsewhere, so war production isn’t why Volkswagen crossed numerous lines through its actions during World War II.

When Volkswagen’s Fallersleben plant opened, the war broke out, leading to the production of several military vehicles. Additionally, VW manufactured the V-1 flying bomb, which made its factory an ideal target for the Allies. This was problematic because VW employed a massive force of slave labor in the production of its vehicles and weapon systems. Volkswagen’s workforce consisted of approximately 70% forced laborers, who numbered in the thousands.

The laborers were “supplied” by the Schutzstaffel (SS) from nearby concentration camps. As you can imagine, living conditions were inhumane at best. Investigations into the company’s activities during the war determined the company “let babies die” in horrid conditions throughout WWII. In 1998, the company established a reparations fund consisting of $12 million to compensate its WWII victims ($23 million in 2024).^[10]

Adolf Hitler was rightly vilified for his atrocious practice of eugenics, which was a euphemism for mass murder. But it’s amazing how many widely admired people have held similar views of cleansing the undesirables from the human race. Most of them didn’t suggest the use of gas chambers, but their recommendations weren’t exactly humane.

10Helen Keller

As we all know, a childhood illness left Helen Keller blind and deaf in the late 1800s. Without the help of a determined young teacher named Anne Sullivan, she might have been institutionalized.

Keller was a lifelong advocate for the blind and the deaf. Less well known are her strong political views, resulting in FBI surveillance of her for a good portion of her life. She joined the Socialist party in the early 1900s, believed in women’s rights and birth control, supported the NAACP, and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. The Helen Keller Services for the Blind helps blind and deaf people get educations and jobs.

In her own life, Keller also wanted love. Although she never married, she was once engaged to a man named Peter Fagan. Both Keller’s mother and Anne Sullivan were against the marriage. Supposedly, they believed that Keller wouldn’t be able to take care of a family with her disabilities. At first, Fagan wouldn’t allow Keller to be influenced by her family, but they eventually scared him off.

Keller had a warm, lifelong friendship with Alexander Graham Bell, whose views on eugenics we’ve already discussed. Keller believed in eugenics as well. In her case, it involved people with mental disabilities. When baby John Bollinger was born with various deformities in 1915, surgeon Harry Haiselden refused to operate to save the boy’s life. Instead, he told the boy’s parents that their “defective” child should be allowed to die, saying the infant would “be an imbecile and possibly criminal.” In some cases, Haiselden actively ended the lives of disabled infants. He trumpeted his views, even making a movie (starring himself) to publicize them.

The Chicago Medical Society kicked him out of their organization. Keller expressed her views in a 1915 letter to The New Republic:

“It seems to me that the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a jury of expert physicians. An ordinary jury decides matters of life and death on the evidence of untrained and often prejudiced observers . . . Even if the accused before them is guilty, there is often no way of knowing that . . . He would not become a useful and productive member of society. A mental defective, on the other hand, is almost sure to be a potential criminal. The evidence before a jury of physicians considering the case of an idiot would be exact and scientific. Their findings would be free from the prejudice and inaccuracy of untrained observation. They would act only in cases of true idiocy, where there could be no hope of mental development . . . We must decide between a fine humanity like Dr. Haiselden’s and a cowardly sentimentalism.”

9Theodore Roosevelt

Widely admired during his lifetime, US president Teddy Roosevelt is still highly regarded by many people today. He was the “trust buster,” the man who gave us a “Square Deal,” the conservationist who created the US Forest Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System, and the first American winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

He even had the teddy bear named after him because he wouldn’t shoot an old bear after it was tied to a tree. He thought that was unsportsmanlike. But he had no such reservations about eugenics. In a January 3, 1913, letter to Charles Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office, Roosevelt compared human reproduction to stock breeding:

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding . . . We fail to understand that such conduct is rational compared to the conduct of a nation which permits unlimited breeding from the worst stocks, physically and morally . . . Some day we will realize that the prime duty—the inescapable duty—of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

Many people associated with the eugenics movement wanted to do away with physically weak individuals. Roosevelt agreed with that in his letter. Yet, he himself was plagued by physical weakness his entire life, even though he promoted an image of being physically robust. He was a sickly child, with severe asthma and myopia. He also had heart problems, became blind in his left eye from a boxing match, and lost the hearing in his left ear.

8Sir Winston Churchill

In 2002, Sir Winston Churchill was voted the greatest Briton of all time by the British public. He was often a polarizing figure, but as one writer put it, “He got the big issues right.”

He was more than just a skilled orator. When almost no one in the US or UK wanted to acknowledge what was happening in Germany under Hitler, Churchill traveled there to get a firsthand look. “It’s an illusion to think he was just a rhetorician, a man who skated over the issues,” said Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London. “He was deeply immersed in all the detail, and all the technicalities. And that helped him to get the right answer.” Churchill also won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his historical works.

Nevertheless, the man who fought Hitler had something in common with him: the belief that eugenics was vital to preserving the purity of a self-defined superior race. “The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate,” wrote Churchill in a 1910 letter to British prime minister Herbert Asquith.

The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 defined the “mental defectives” who could be put away indefinitely. “Idiots” were so mentally deficient that they couldn’t protect themselves against ordinary physical dangers. “Imbeciles” couldn’t manage their own affairs, although they weren’t as bad as idiots. The “feeble-minded” were better than idiots or imbeciles, but they needed supervision, control, and care to protect others or themselves. A “moral defective” had a permanent mental weakness along with criminal tendencies that couldn’t be controlled with punishment. With minor adjustments, the same definitions applied to children.

Although Churchill didn’t advocate the use of gas chambers, he did believe in the segregation, confinement, and sterilization of these inferior people.

7Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling was a scientist and peace advocate who was so widely admired that he’s the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes. The first was for chemistry, and the second was for peace. In all his pursuits, he appeared to have an overriding philosophy to minimize human suffering. He was dedicated to banning the testing of nuclear weapons, arguing that the nuclear fallout was dangerous to human health. Although he was sometimes a controversial figure, he was a tireless advocate for world peace.

He also made a lot of contributions to science, including the observation that sickle-cell anemia was caused by a genetic mutation that deformed the hemoglobin of a blood cell. It was the first time a “molecular disease” had been identified.

Then he combined eugenics with his findings. To reduce human suffering, he believed it was necessary to legally intervene to wipe out the factors that caused genetic diseases. With sickle-cell anemia, he suggested that African Americans be legally required to get tested for the disease. The next step would be to restrict marriage and reproduction for carriers of the disease. He felt that carriers of other genetic diseases, such as fibrocystic disease and phenylketonuria, should be treated the same way.

A few years later, Pauling recommended even more extreme measures to minimize suffering from these diseases. He recommended that carriers have a tattoo or other prominent mark placed on their bodies, perhaps on their foreheads, to identify them. In that way, he figured that carriers of the same disease could avoid getting married. He also felt that if a female carrier became pregnant by a male carrier, the baby should be aborted to reduce the child’s suffering in a preventative manner. He believed that abortion caused less suffering than a hereditary disease.

However, Pauling did not advocate killing a child who had already been born with such a disease. Nor did he believe in forced castration or sterilization.

6Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

As an associate justice of the US Supreme Court for 30 years, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was considered one of the most brilliant jurists of all time. His effect on the law is still felt today, 90 years after his death. Appointed to the court in 1902 by President Teddy Roosevelt, Holmes became known as “The Great Dissenter” because of the supposed wisdom of his dissenting opinions.

Although Holmes was widely admired during his lifetime, there remains at least one dark stain on his career: the 1927 majority opinion he wrote in Buck v. Bell, regarding forced sterilization in the US for undesirables. Using eugenics as the basis for a diagnosis, Charlottesville resident Carrie Buck was deemed unfit to have more children after she became an unwed mother at 17 years old from a rape. It’s believed that her mother was put in a state institution because she was deemed promiscuous, even though she was raped. To make a stronger case to sterilize Carrie, her six-month-old daughter was diagnosed as “abnormal.”

Holmes wrote that Carrie was the “probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted.” He went on to say that “her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization.”

Holmes also gave the Nazis a line of defense at Nuremberg. To justify their atrocious acts, the Nazis quoted this passage from Holmes’s decision: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

That decision paved the way for thousands of women to be forcibly sterilized in the US by upholding Virginia’s sterilization law.

5John Maynard Keynes

In the early 1900s, John Maynard Keynes was considered one of the world’s leading economists. He wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which looked at how the overall economy performed rather than breaking it down into separate markets. That approach became known as macroeconomics, a branch of study that has been putting students to sleep for almost a century.

At that time, Western governments routinely balanced their budgets. Keynes’s approach was novel because he recommended that governments run deficits when economic growth slows to keep people working. He wanted governments to spend more than they took in during recessions (and then reverse this policy once the economy could bear it).

As a last resort during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried Keynesian economics to stimulate the US economy. “I came to the conclusion that the present-day problem calls for action both by the Government and by the people, that we suffer primarily from a failure of consumer demand because of [a] lack of buying power,” said Roosevelt in an address to the American people. “Therefore it is up to us to create an economic upturn.”

Keynes got credit for reviving the struggling US economy, making him an economic hero. Others dispute whether Roosevelt’s plan really helped at all. Nevertheless, US fiscal policy was based on Keynesian economics until the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan used monetary policy to fight rampant inflation.

Keynes also believed in macromanaging the population through eugenics. In his book The Essential Keynes, he wrote: “The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.”

As director of the Eugenics Society for about seven years, Keynes believed contraception was necessary to limit the growth of the lower classes because they were too “drunken and ignorant” to do it themselves.

4Edward Franklin Frazier

Edward Franklin Frazier was considered the most important African-American sociologist in the 1900s. Like many of his contemporaries who analyzed the black community, he was a controversial figure. Eventually, he was named the chair of Howard University’s sociology department.

In one of his more contentious findings, he said that African Americans no longer had a link to their African heritage. He believed that they were now culturally American. He was particularly critical of African Americans who saw themselves as middle-class. He thought that they exhibited cultural elitism and led their lives solely for the acquisition of material goods.

Frazier didn’t support the white eugenics model of Nordic superiority, but he did apply a version of eugenics based on class and geography to the black community. In Eugenics and the Race Problem, he wrote, “There is no apparent danger that the best mentally endowed Negroes will debase their intellectual inheritance by mating with feebleminded persons. But there is a danger that the proper institutional controls, which should control the procreation of the colored feebleminded, will be lacking among colored people. In the South where little notice is taken of the colored feebleminded, they are permitted to breed at a rapid rate.”

Frazier believed that black Southerners have undesirable traits that are linked to unregulated reproduction, while the desirable black Northerners, whom he saw as high achievers, got that way through a “socializing process.” He seemed to believe that the environment in the North creates its own natural selection of the best and the brightest. But his references to controlling reproduction in segments of the black population to better the race is typical eugenics language.

3William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois was a complicated figure in African-American culture. He often clashed with other black leaders, but his influence was undeniable for many years.

Born in 1868 just after the Civil War, he was the first African American to get a doctorate in history from Harvard University. Shortly afterward, he began to publish insightful papers on the American black community, for which he gained recognition as the first serious scholar of black life in the US.

With his combative approach to fighting racism, Du Bois clashed with the more conservative Booker T. Washington, the most distinguished African-American leader at that time. This caused a rift in the black community, as people chose which type of leadership they wanted.

Du Bois cofounded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he edited its monthly magazine, The Crisis. In 1934, Du Bois left the organization in a feud with Walter White, the leader of the NAACP, over the issue of voluntary segregation of the black community. The NAACP preferred to fight for integration, while Du Bois thought the correct course was segregation.

Given his passionate fight for equality, it’s rather surprising that Du Bois believed in eugenics. He didn’t agree with the Nordic eugenics movement, but he did advocate a eugenics approach to the black family. He divided the black community into four groups—from the desirable “Talented Tenth,” whom he saw as educated leaders, to the undesirable “submerged tenth,” whom he described as prostitutes, criminals, and loafers.

Du Bois wanted to promote marriage and reproduction within the Talented Tenth and breed out the submerged tenth. In the Birth Control Review, he said, “The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that part of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.”

2Woodrow Wilson

For over 50 years, Woodrow Wilson has been ranked as one of the top 10 US presidents. According to Franklin D. Roosevelt, “All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.” He felt that Wilson was a moral leader who used his position as president to persuade the public and the legislature that he was leading the nation down the right path.

As the 28th US president, Wilson was the nation’s commander-in-chief during World War I. He received a Nobel Peace Prize after the war for negotiating a peace treaty that called for the establishment of the League of Nations, an organization meant to avoid future wars by arbitrating disputes between countries.

Wilson established the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, getting labor reforms (such as child labor laws) passed and pushing Congress to give women the right to vote. “I do not believe,” said Wilson, “that any man can lead who does not act . . . Under the impulse of a profound sympathy with those whom he leads—a sympathy which is insight—an insight which is of the heart rather than of the intellect.”

His words seem to be at odds with his actions as governor of New Jersey in 1911, when he signed New Jersey’s sterilization bill into law. It was “an act to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded (including idiots, imbeciles and morons), epileptics, rapists, certain criminals and other defectives.” It goes on to say that heredity is largely responsible for these “defects,” which was the reason for sterilization without consent.

Wilson suffered a massive stroke in 1919 while he was president. He was paralyzed on his left side, and his vision was impaired. He was confined to bed for 17 months, and his wife and doctor tried to hide his condition. As a result, Mrs. Wilson is considered by some people to be the country’s first female president. But it does raise the question of whether Woodrow Wilson would have been eliminated under some eugenics programs.

1Clarence Darrow

The words of famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow were often poetic, appealing for compassion and tolerance for those who fell short of society’s standards. “I am pleading for the future,” he once said. “I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

By the early 1900s, Darrow was known as the “Attorney for the Damned,” a tip of the hat to his mythical image of always defending the underdogs of society. The man didn’t measure up to the myth.

When Darrow argued that all life was worth saving, he was referring to recent college graduates Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who had killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks to see if they could commit the perfect crime. According to Darrow, the defendants’ actions were determined by their parents, their wealth, their youth, detective novels, and anything else he could think to blame. As he explained, Leopold and Loeb didn’t kill Franks because they felt any negative emotions toward him. They killed for the experience, like killing a spider.

Darrow has been especially praised for his 1926 article in The American Mercury, in which he argued vehemently against sterilization and the banning of intermarriages for the purpose of eugenics. He even felt that we should keep “morons, idiots, and imbeciles” because we need them to do manual labor for the intelligentsia.

Yet, Darrow displayed a cold cruelty toward disabled children. Ever the champion of the underdog, Darrow went on record as agreeing with Haiselden, the Chicago surgeon Helen Keller had written in response to. “Chloroform unfit children,” Darrow said. “Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.”

Chinese medicine, holistic therapies, and ritualistic shamanism are often viewed as pseudoscience. But they are actually very ancient practices that have been around for thousands of years. However, due to raised interest worldwide, our scientists are now running huge numbers of research trials to try and discover if there is any truth in these strange areas of knowledge. Because of the advancement in technology, such as brain imaging, we are now able to study the brain patterns of people actively practicing meditation or receiving acupuncture, shedding light on what is happening in the brain and body. Here is a Top 10 rundown of the best scientific research to date.

10Acupuncture

The ancient technique of sticking needles into the skin at strategic points has origins dating back thousands of years, the first documented record being around 100 B.C. It is still widely used in China today to treat the root cause of conditions as opposed to the symptomatic approach of Western medicine. However, acupuncture is gaining recognition fast in the West with the British National Health Service stating that acupuncture encourages the body to produce pain-relieving endorphins. Acupuncture is now available for free on the NHS in some areas of the United Kingdom.

So, the question is, if the UK NHS are providing acupuncture to patients, surely there must be some clinical evidence to prove its efficacy? There is! There are over 3000 clinical trials studying the benefits of acupuncture in a vast array of illnesses and conditions. For example, the British Acupuncture Council says obesity has been studied in numerous acupuncture trials with positive results.

A pain management review of acupuncture was published by Manyanga et al. in 2014.^[1] The review looked at 12 trials comparing acupuncture to standard care in osteoarthritis (plus placebo and no treatment at all). The results showed significant pain reduction, improved mobility, and better quality of life. And the longer the treatment period, the greater the benefits. The review team from Canada concluded that there is evidence to support the use of acupuncture as an alternative to traditional painkillers in people suffering from osteoarthritis.

So, it’s a big tick for acupuncture, as long as you can overcome the horror of hundreds of needles sticking into your skin at one time.

9Meditation

The National Center for Biotechnology Information currently has over 4000 published papers listed for the search phrase “meditation efficacy,” 400 alone over the last year. Although meditation has been practiced for centuries, particularly in Eastern cultures, it is only recently that the effects of meditation are being studied more widely within the scientific community. Specifically within the field of neuroscience. Some studies have shown that meditation produces positive benefits such as more patience, self-confidence, happiness, less judgmental attitude, calmness, release of anxiety and depression, and a general increased comfort with life’s uncertainties. These benefits, in turn, bring more physical vigor and energy for life. Sounds great, but where is the science?

Here is some carried out by a professor of Physiology, a professor of Anesthesiology, and a professor Pharmacology. The aim of the study was to find out the effect of “Osho dynamic meditation” on the stress hormone levels and whether it has any anti-stress effect. Osho was an Indian guru who introduced dynamic meditation to the world in 1970. Dynamic meditation includes several stages—deep, fast chaotic breathing, EXPLODING! (letting it all out), repeating the mantra “Hoo, Hoo, hoo” whilst jumping up and down, ten minutes of silence, and then dancing. Really, it’s true. It is said to decrease aggressive behavior, anxiety, and depression.

The study measured the plasma cortisol levels (stress level indicators) before and after 21 days of meditation. The results showed a significant reduction at trial end. Thus, it was concluded by the team that Osho dynamic meditation did indeed produce an anti-stress effect, which could be attributed to the release of repressed emotions, psychological inhibitions, and traumas. The study team says that dynamic meditation could be used for the improvement of stress, plus stress related physical and mental disorders.

Incredible and almost unbelievable? How about this one: Dr. Zoran Josipovic of NYU has been using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the meditating brains of Buddhist monks.^[2] Neuroscientists believe the brain is split into two networks—the extrinsic and the intrinsic. They do not function at the same time. They switch. The extrinsic network is where everyday tasks originate, like putting the kettle on or taking part in exercise. The intrinsic network or the “default network” as scientists are now dubbing it, is linked with emotions and inner thoughts. It is also the area of the brain where the most activity is seen during fMRI in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s, depression, or autism, indicating that this is the area being attacked by these conditions. So far, study results have shown a clear disconnect between the two brain networks in experienced and proficient meditators such as Buddhist Monks. The hope for the future is that as it is now proven that the intrinsic brain can be purposely isolated from the extrinsic during meditation, it opens up a new pathway of research for various brain disorders.

Happy, meditating monks and a possible future solution for Alzheimer’s? Neuroscientists say yes. So, it appears that meditation might be mind blowing in many positive ways.

8Sound / Music Therapy

Music is an important part of many people’s lives. It is mood enhancing and can lift your spirits, or can be a more calming, relaxing influence. Research has shown that just listening to music can reduce stress levels and increase production of the antibodies needed to fight off invading viruses and boost the immune system. However, more recent science is proving that music and sound therapy may have a far greater impact on human health than was previously believed.

Music Director Anthony Holland teamed up with his science colleagues at Skidmore College in 2013, looking at the idea of tuning forks, which cause each other to resonate in unison. They discussed that if finding the right frequency can cause a crystal glass to shatter suddenly, maybe it would be worth investigating if the right frequency could be found to shatter an organism, like a cancer cell for example. Having discovered the magic frequency, in 2015 Novobiotronics published a paper on their lab-based trial on leukemia cells with very promising results. In their findings, they report a 61 percent reduction in cancer cells. It is still early days, but Anthony, a musician at heart, is optimistic that this research could be music to the ears, as well as all other potential cancer dwelling areas of the body.

Ultrasound is a well-known form of sound therapy, but how about histotripsy? Histotripsy is “non-invasive, mechanical tissue ablation”^[3] which uses sound energy to blitz cancer cells. The mechanical process of histotripsy is a focused ultrasound causing microbubbles to form under extreme pressure. These bubbles then oscillate furiously creating huge amounts of energy which causes the targeted tissue to normalize. William W. Roberts, M.D., associate professor of Urology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, reveals that in their current research, they are looking at how patients suffering with from liver cancer, prostate cancer, congenital heart syndromes, and thrombosis might benefit from histotripsy.

7Energy Healing (Reiki)

Reiki is a Japanese technique for reducing stress and promoting healing. It is the “laying on of hands” and is based on the idea that an unseen life force energy flows through centers called chakras. Sometimes this energy gets blocked, the chakras become unbalanced, and this can be rectified using Reiki.

Slightly too eccentric for some tastes, famous cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Mehmet Oz brought energy healing into the limelight when he invited Reiki master Julie Motz to treat patients during open heart surgeries and heart transplant operations. Dr. Oz believes “Reiki has become a sought-after healing art among patients and mainstream medical professionals.”

But has it? Is that true? A trial from the University of Arizona compared Reiki against physical therapy to see how it fared with increasing limited range of movement in patients suffering from shoulder pain.^[4] The study proved the concept that a ten-minute Reiki session is as effective as manual physical therapy in improving range of movement in patients with painful shoulder limitation. The research team even suggests that it might be beneficial for physical therapists to train in Reiki so that they could reduce the need for manual work on patients!

In Brazil, scientists at the Institute for Integrated and Oriental Therapy in Sao Paulo evaluated the immediate effect of Reiki on abnormal blood pressure after a 30-minute Reiki session. They saw a positive reduction of blood pressure, suggesting Reiki could be used in the control of hypertension.

A further study from Turin, Italy, looked at the effects of Reiki therapy on pain and anxiety in cancer patients attending a day oncology unit. Reiki sessions of 20 minutes showed a reduction of blood pressure, and overall it was considered helpful in improving well-being, relaxation, sleep quality, pain relief, and reducing anxiety. The research team writes that offering Reiki in hospitals could help with patients’ physical and emotional needs.

Hands up who didn’t believe in hands on healing? Hands up those who still don’t!

6Qigong / Tai Chi

The ancient practice of Tai Chi has been growing in popularity over recent years, but in China, this art form (or health and well-being exercise) has been part of daily life for millions of people for thousands of years.

But does it work and what does it do? So far it is commonly accepted that Tai Chi has some fitness and general wellness benefits, particularly in older adults. In 2016, a team of researchers conducted a study into the specific effect of mental attention in an elderly population before and after participating in a 16-week Tai Chi program.^[5] Set mental ability tasks that were performed showed a significant improvement in the participants who had committed to the 16-week Tai Chi program.

What about Qigong? Qigong is lesser known than Tai Chi, but it is actually the foundation on which Tai Chi was created. Thus, the principles are similar, focussing on well-being, general health, and improved cognitive function. Earlier in 2017, a German team investigated EEG brain activity during Qigong Training. The EEG imaging clearly showed significant changes in brain activity, concluding that Qigong induces a relaxed, attentive mind, as well as the participant being “centred” (a state of mind different to “mind-wandering”).

5Mantra Chanting

Mantra is a Sanskrit word for “sound tool,” and “Om” (or Aum) is probably the most well-known mantra of them all. Similar to listening to music, where the vibrational frequencies resonate with our brain evoking emotions, it is believed by many cultures and individuals worldwide that the vibrational frequency of a repeated mantra induces movement of both physical and emotional energy, stirring our emotions. But do they actually do anything?

In 2011, a study carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, looked into the neurohemodynamic effects of “Om” chanting using fMRI.^[6] In this study, they observed a significant deactivation in the limbic system of the brain when the participants were chanting “Om.” The limbic system is the part of the brain responsible for both our higher mental functions and primitive emotions. It includes the amygdala (emotional center) and the hippocampus (home of long-term memory and emotional response). The research team compared their results to those of a different study looking into the neurohemodynamic effect of VNS treatment (vagus nerve stimulation) used to reduce epileptic seizures and to target treatment-resistant depression. Similar observations were recorded in the VNS trial, with significant deactivation of the limbic system. Therefore, the effect of chanting the mantra “Om” is at least equal to electric shock treatment when it comes to creating inner peace and calm. Is that what they call a no-brainer?

4Telepathy and ESP

Have scientists proved that telepathic communication is no longer science fiction? Well, almost. An international research team has developed a way to say “hello” with the mind, by recording the brain signals of a person in India, converting them into electrical brain stimulations, and relaying them to recipients on the other side of the world.^[7] It’s telepathy of a fashion using a process called synaptic transmission. EEG is used to record electrical activity by firing neurons in a participant’s brain. The subject’s conscious thoughts are recorded by EEG, decoded by a computer, and emailed to researchers in France. The stimulation is then delivered to three other participants using a process called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) which applies pulses to the recipient’s brain. The recipient and research team are then able to decode the signals into words.

But is that really telepathy? The scientists say not entirely. They prefer to call it the “transmission of information from one brain to another using non-invasive but still physical mechanisms.”

Another study defining telepathy as “the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized channels of sense” wanted to explore the neural basis of telepathy by examining a “famous mentalist” and another subject with no known special ability. Both performed a set telepathic task whilst undergoing fMRI. The results showed the two participants’ brains were firing in completely different areas, the famous guy showing activation of the right parahippocampal gyrus (which is part of the intrinsic system linked to emotions and inner thoughts), whereas the other guy showed activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (extrinsic system—where the performance of everyday tasks are handled). The study team says that the findings suggest that the limbic system of the brain is significant in the study of telepathy and further systemic research would be beneficial.

In the 1990s, the CIA famously closed their remote viewing studies which were part of the Stargate program, even though it is still muted that their research turned up some interesting findings. As early as the 1970s, Stanford Research Institute was carrying out research into perception augmentation techniques on behalf of the CIA. In 1975, Stanford concluded in their final report, “Our data thus indicate that both specially selected and unselected persons can be assisted in developing remote perceptual abilities to a level of useful information transfer.”

3Hypnosis

Hypnosis is widely known across the world, usually as an aid to combat addictions like smoking, or to lose weight, or get rid of phobias. It is also popular as a stage act. But research is being done to test the benefits of hypnotherapy and the claim that it helps us to improve our lives. A lot of people are either afraid or don’t believe. Is it mind control? Is it the devil’s work? Or is it a real tool that can be used to improve many aspects of our lives?

In 2007, a research team at Mount Sinai School of Medicine published their trial results showing that the use of hypnosis before surgery in breast cancer patients not only reduced the amount of anesthesia administered during the operation, but also pain, nausea, fatigue, discomfort, and emotional upset at discharge were greatly diminished in comparison with standard procedures. The time and cost of the procedure were dramatically reduced also, and the team concluded that, overall, the present data supports the use of hypnosis with breast cancer surgery patients.

In addition, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine scanned the brains of hypnotized subjects and could see the neural changes associated with hypnosis. Fifty-seven brains were scanned in total using a guided hypnosis technique used clinically to treat anxiety, pain, or trauma. Altered levels of activity were recorded in distinct sections of the brain, and David Spiegel MD, the study’s senior author, concludes this is confirmation of which parts of the brain are involved in this kind of treatment. Consequently, he enthuses that how we use the mind to control perception and the body can be changed using this very powerful means. He also suggests that it has taken 150 years to acknowledge that the mind has something to do with pain and controlling it. “It is now abundantly clear that we can retrain the brain,”^[8] Spiegel writes.

Spiegel and his team are about to begin a new trial looking into the benefits of hypnosis on fibromyalgia. They will be recruiting soon, and participants can apply here.

2Acoustic Levitation

Acoustic or sound levitation has been the stuff of legends since time began. From the pyramids of Giza to Machu Pichu, there has always been speculation as to how they were built, with believers and non-believers disagreeing over whether some form of ancient levitation was involved. However, that debate may be about to change. Argonne National Laboratory has been experimenting with acoustic levitation or “containerless processing method” in order to increase the solubility of molecules used in pharmaceutical drugs. Currently, solubility is low which means that drugs are not as effective as they could be. If they could be transformed into something more soluble, like an amorphous form, efficacy levels would dramatically increase.

Argonne’s revolutionary acoustic levitation trial has achieved just this, creating great optimism for the future. Admittedly, the technique cannot yet move huge slabs of stone, but the small quantities of pure amorphous forms being synthesized can potentially be useful in the optimization of clinical products. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so who knows what the future holds?

How about a larger object? Researchers from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, published a paper in Applied Physics Letters, 2016, describing their acoustic levitation work. They demonstrated that acoustic levitation can levitate spherical objects much larger than the acoustic wavelength in air. The spherical object is a two-inch polystyrene ball which we might not find very impressive, but this demonstration is one of the first to levitate an object larger than the wavelength of the acoustic wave.^[9] “At the moment, we can only levitate the object at a fixed position in space,” says Marco Andrade, co-author of the study. “In future work, we would like to develop new devices capable of levitating and manipulating large objects in air.“

Maybe this is this how they built the Pyramids? What did they know that we have forgotten? Scientists are now busy working on it at least, so hopefully we will find out soon.

1Aromatherapy

The term aromatherapy probably evokes an image of a health spa, or those gift sets we get at Christmas from a lovely aunt, but we don’t necessarily want. However, aromatherapy is an ancient method used in Egypt, China, and India for over 6000 years to enhance health and promote feelings of well-being. Our ancient ancestors believed that different scents influenced different systems in the body. For example, lavender scent was thought to relieve stress and calm the body. Lemongrass was used to ward off insects and relieve body aches.

Aromatherapy gained a lot of attention in the 20th and 21st century in therapeutic, cosmetic, aromatic, fragrant, and spiritual use. And its role in mood, alertness, and mental stress became the hot topic amongst the scientific community recently, with some researchers looking at brain activity using EEG patterns and fMRI. Several studies published interesting results such as patients with depression required smaller doses of antidepressants after citrus fragrance treatment, and the scent of orange oil reduced anxiety in dental patients.

How does it work? The complete mechanism of action is still being studied, but put simply, a biological signal is received by receptor cells when a scent is inhaled. The signal goes to the hypothalamus in the brain, which causes the brain to release messengers like serotonin and endorphin—hormones related to pleasure. So there does seem to be some logic.

One of the most recent publications, dated 2017, is from the University of Calabria in Italy, who published their clinical evidence and possible mechanisms of aromatherapy in treating the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia in patients with Alzheimer’s.^[10] Their results provided substantial evidence for symptom relief of agitation using aromatherapy in dementia patients, and positive effects were seen in the brain. There is also promising evidence for the effectiveness of aromatherapy, more specifically bergamot essential oil, for managing chronic pain associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.

It seems that science is suggesting that lovely smells make us happier, calmer, and more relaxed. So, giving someone a bunch of flowers is not only a loving thing to do, but it also has a positive effect on well-being. It’s official.

Kathryn has lived in “Coconutland” for the past ten years. She was born in “Farmlandshire” where she grew up and was totally oblivious to the existence of places such as South East Asia. Kathryn, (or Katy) has run her own IT business for 12 years which is not very exciting. She also wrote a book about search engines in 1999, worked as a journalist for a glossy holiday magazine—a bit like Country Life but with coconut trees and beaches—and now just writes about everything and anything she finds interesting. When she is not writing, she can be found swimming in the sea, dancing on the sand, or drinking a cold beer.