The Specialists

In comic books, radiation can give you superpowers. In real life, the only power it will give you is the ability to bleed out of every orifice, and then only for a short time. Likewise, in The Specialists, eugenics is a program of genetic manipulation intended to create super-powered Nazis. But the real Nazi eugenics program was a system of selective breeding intended to create an Aryan race that was taller, blonder, smarter, and more genetically “pure”. They used artificial selection to ensure that their Germanic genes were propagated while inhibiting the “lesser” races through extermination and sterilization. In the meantime, the Nazis put those undesirables to good use through forced labor and medical experiments.

Those who are familiar with WWII history will no doubt have noticed that Doktor Metzger has a lot in common with the real Josef Mengele. That’s no coincidence. In fact, we had initially intended to use Mengele as our mad scientist character. Mengele was not the only scientist conducing medical experiments in the concentration camps, though he has become the most famous. These experiments were often concerned with determining how the human body withstood trauma, when they served any discernible purpose at all. This is ironic, considering that the Nazis didn’t feel that their test subjects were truly human. Here’s a short but grisly list of some of their areas of experimentation:
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