Q1. Describe the experiment devised by Dr Josef Mengele
Prior to the commencement of the film, Hitler allowed Dr. Josef Mengele, an infamous Auschwitz doctor, to take half a litre of his blood and a cutting from his ribs which he permitted Mengele to use in producing clones. In the 1960s, Mengele had secluded several surrogate mothers in a Brazilian clinic, fertilising them with ova each carrying a preserved sample of Hitler’s DNA. Mengele monitored the pregnancy progress and successfully conducted the birth of 94 perfect Hitler clones. These clones were subsequently sent to various countries for adoption – specifically to civil servants aged 43, whom possessed cold, domineering and abusive attitudes, and their wives aged 20, whom were expected to dote on their children. The experiment devised by Dr Josef Mengele was aimed at reincarnating Hitler’s ‘legacy’ through the flesh of clones that were genetically produced using Hitler’s DNA, in conjunction with a similar upbringing (an abusive father who died at age 65 and a doting mother who spoiled her son) as that experienced by Adolf Hitler. Mengele’s vision was to pass on the mantle of Hitler’s dictatorship to his clones and therefore reignite the Nazi movement.
The film begins with Barry Kohler stumbling upon a secret organisation of Nazi war criminals holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay with Mengele. Barry phones Ezra Liberman, an aging Nazi hunter, to inform him about overhearing Mengele’s orders to murder 94 civil servants, all aged approximately 65 years. Consecutively, Lieberman travels throughout North America and Europe to investigate the suspicious deaths of a handful of civil servants, prompted by the mysterious death of Barry whilst having a phone conversation with him. To his utter amazement, Lieberman observes the uncanncy resemblance in the sons of the murdered civil servants such that they all share the same physique and demeanour, with dark brown hair and blue eyes.
Eventually, during a meeting with Professor Bruckner, an expert on cloning, Lieberman realises the significance of Mengele’s plan to resurrect Hitler’s legacy. Mengele travels to Pennsylvania, where he murders Bobby Wheelock (one of the clone’s) father and anticipates Lieberman’s arrival at the farm. After engaging in a brutal fight, Mengele successfully gains the upper hand and taunts Lieberman by explaining his twisted vision to return Hitler to the world, just before Lieberman manages to set Wheelock’s dogs on him. Bobby arrives home and calls off the dogs to try to find out what has happened and is told by Mengele that he is cloned from Hitler and destined for supreme ‘greatness’. Upon finding his murdered father in the basement, Bobby does not hesitate to unleash the dogs to kill Mengele as well as call the ambulance to take Lieberman to the hospital.
In the aftermath of obtaining Mengele’s list of the names and locations of the remaining Hitler clones, Lieberman is encouraged by a Nazi hunter to expose Mengele’s scheme to the world and turn over the list so that the boys could be systematically killed in order to prevent the potential of unleashing future tyrants into society. However, Lieberman objects on the grounds that they are mere children and opts to burn the list before anyone can read it. The epilogue depicts an unsettling scene where Bobby hangs several photographs of a severely injured Mengele and stares at a shark tooth bracelet with a menacing smile – displacing signs of sadism and brutality.
Q2. Compare the cloning of rabbits and cloning of Dolly the Sheep
Cloning of rabbits
1. An unfertilised egg is removed from the fallopian tube of an ovulating white rabbit.
2. The egg nucleus, which contains the genes and chromosomes, is destroyed using ultraviolet light so none of its genetic makeup remains.
3. Using a pipette, a blood cell from a black rabbit donor is injected into the egg to implant its nucleus.
4. The resulting cell in culture divides and is put back into the female white rabbit.
5. The egg grows into embryos, and in time a litter of black rabbits is born from a white rabbit, thus proving that the rabbits have been cloned.
Cloning of Dolly the Sheep
1. Cells taken from the udder of a Finn Dorset ewe are placed in culture with low concentration of nutrients. The cells are starved under such conditions, this they stop dividing and switch off their active genes.
2. Meanwhile, an unfertilised egg cell is taken from a Scottish Blackface ewe. The nucleus, with its DNA, is sucked out – leaving an empty egg cell containing all the cellular components necessary to produce an embryo.
3. The two cells are placed beside each other and an electric pulse caused them to fuse together. A second pulse mimics the burst of energy at natural fertilisation, jump-starting cell division.
4. After a week, the resulting embryo is implanted in the uterus of a different Blackface ewe.
5. After the gestation period, the pregnant Blackface ewe gives birth to a baby Finn Dorset lam – Dolly, that is genetically identical to her original Finn Dorset donor.
Similarities
Both involve a donor cell with its genetic material intact and a cell with its nucleus and DNA material removed, but still has necessary cellular components to develop into an embryo.
Both cloning processes produced a clone that was genetically identical to the animal which provided the DNA, and used the colour of the clone to prove this.
Both experiments proved that a mature differentiated somatic cell is still capable of reverting back to an embryonic totipotent state. In this totipotent state, the cell can then divide and produce all of the differentiated cells in an organism.
Differences
In the cloning of the rabbit, the donor of the egg and the surrogate mother is the same rabbit, whereas in the cloning of Dolly, the egg donor and surrogate mother are two different sheep.
The rabbit was successfully cloned in one attempt, whereas Dolly was the only successful clone out of 277 attempts.
During the cloning process of the rabbit, the DNA of the donor cell was injected into the egg via a pipette, whereas during the cloning process of Dolly, the two cells were stimulated to fuse by an electric shock.
Q3. Epigenetics and the likelihood of recreating exact copies of Hitler
Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than the alteration of the genetic code itself. This modification of gene expression is influenced by various social and environmental factors which an individual is exposed to beginning from the prenatal stage through to the rest of their life. Twin studies have demonstrated that although two individuals may have identical DNA, it is possible for them to exhibit different personalities as a direct result of epigenetic influences (e.g. in the form of long-lasting differences in methylations). As such, this research supports the notion that Hitler clones who all possess the identical genetic makeup of Hitler are still likely to exhibit at least some differences in behaviour and personality characteristics. This phenomenon extends beyond the simple explanation of genetic makeup and lends itself to epigenetic mechanisms. In other words, epigenetics plays the “symphony of life” on our genes such that the genes are the “instruments” utilised by epigenetics which are the “musicians”.
During early development of the embryo, the epigenetic markers from the egg and sperm cells must be reset to ensure that the cells in the embryo become totipotent, and to erase the epigenome changes acquired from the parents. This allows for healthy development, and creates a ‘blank slate’ so the embryo can then develop their own epigenetic differences. Some of the markers in the epigenome of the parents may be passed on to the next generation in a process called epigenetic inheritance, although the most are erased. Examples of epigenetic mechanisms include DNA methylation and histone modification.
Likelihood of recreating Hitler
Assuming the cloning of Hitler is technically feasible, it is still very unlikely that exact clones of Hitler could be created such that all the clones will grow up to become tyrannical dictators and plan mass genocides. This is because external and environmental factors can influence the way the genes are expressed and regulated in an individual. In his experiment, Mengele only tried to recreate three specific aspects of Hitler’s childhood environment. Gene expression is variant and therefore there are an infinite amount of other factors that Dr Mengele should consider. These factors include, Hitler’s friendships, his relationships with other family members, his individual experiences, and the list would go on. For example, in the film, Dr Mengele did not recreate the death of Hitler’s younger brother whose death deeply affected the eleven-year-old Hitler.
It is also worth mentioning that Hitler was affected by many historical events such as World War I and the Great Depression, which would have contributed to his rise in the political world, and therefore his development into the individual that he was. That is, Hitler’s historic rise to power was largely influenced by long-term socio-economic factors such as the resentment in the German people, the weakness of the current German government (Weimar system), the widespread sentiment of Communism phobia, terror of his stormtroopers and brilliance of his speeches. The Great Depression rendered masses of the German population in desperate need of social and economic support and a charismatic leader to look up to. Necessarily, there would need to be certain events that are similar in nature to trigger a similar level of utmost devotion to such a tyrannical leader, in the 1970s era within which the film is set.
Moreover, during embryogenesis in the mother’s womb, exposing embryo to drugs or environmental toxins, also known as teratogens, can cause problems in the behavioural and emotional development of the child and therefore alter its gene expression. Hence, we are uncertain about whether environmental teratogens had influenced Hitler’s behavioural and emotional development. If so, Mengele would presumably have had to replicate this if he wanted to produce exact biological clones of Hitler.