For decades, the U.S. Army conducted human experiments with chemical weapons at Edgewood Arsenal, a military facility located on the Chesapeake Bay. The experiments began before WWII, focussing on mustard gas; after the war, the focus shifted to nerve agents, and, later, to psychochemicals. Many of the experiments were documented on film—some for propaganda purposes, some for research—and we have compiled some of the footage here, in “Manufacturing Madness,” a companion to “Operation Delirium,” my story in The New Yorker this week.  The footage documents soldiers in various states of euphoria, agitation, or physical agony…

Watch the footage, and click-through for more from Raffi Khatchadourian on the Army’s experiments: http://nyr.kr/UcG9YT

“Always Returning,” an essay by Teju Cole on W.G. Sebald, Thomas Browne, WWII airfields, and coincidence: http://nyr.kr/Q6ylcn

(Photograph by Teju Cole.)

Richard Brody on the inadequacy of Berlin’s “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”: http://nyr.kr/MmKjtJ

the memorial, as imposing and as memorable as it may be in itself, hardly serves the function for which it was intended.

Richard Brody on Anne Frank’s Cinema: http://nyr.kr/MiIc9r

The very internationalism of Frank’s Hollywood heroes (Garbo was Swedish, Henie Norwegian, Milland English) suggests her sense of the relative paradise of tolerance that Hollywood represented and perhaps even helped to foster.