Abstract

DO.02.04

Bomb war – Walter Dieter and his „splinter protection spectacles“

Rohrbach J. M.
Center of Ophthalmology, University Tübingen, Tübingen

Objective: In May 1940 the allied air forces began to bomb German cities. Consequently, eye injuries in civilians increased markedly. Regarding prevention the “splinter protection spectacles” by Walter Dieter (1895-1973) played a major role.
Methods: Analysis of literature concerning Walter Dieter and evaluation of files concerning the national socialistic (ns) period in the Federal Archive Berlin.
Results: Walter Dieter was the successor of the expelled Alfred Bielschowsky as the head of the University Eye Hospital in Breslau/Silesia. He had joined the national socialistic working party (NSDAP) as early as in 1923 and, as the party had been newly founded in 1925, again in 1932. Dieter joined the “Schutzstaffel” (SS) in 1933 and acted as ns-advisor when appointments to ophthalmological chairs had to be done. During World War II he invented a field magnet for the extraction of intraocular foreign bodies which was widely used. In July 1943 Walter Dieter contacted the “health leader” Leonardo Conti and proposed the production of “splinter protection spectacles” for the civilian population which then were manufactured at least two million times until the end of 1943.
Conclusions: Walter Dieter can be regarded as the most prominent ns-ophthalmologist although he did not occupy any leading position in the German Ophthalmological Society (DOG). The millionfold production of the protection glasses within only 5 months after the idea had been presented to Conti in a time when raw materials had run dramatically short is remarkable and indicates that Dieter must have had very good relations with leading representatives of the system. As the “Ministry of armament and war production” (Speer), the “Ministry of internal affairs” (Himmler), and the “Ministry of propaganda” (Goebbels) were involved Dieter’s “splinter protection spectacles” must have had a significant priority for the ns-government. How far the protection glasses were definitely distributed among the civilians and whether they actually prevented bomb-induced eye injuries is unknown as yet.

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