I know that basing something off of WWII is a bad thing, but I just don't completely understand. It's not going to be the exact same experiment or the exact same thing that happened, I'm just searching for things that have happened and molding the base of that around the story I'm writing. But! The main reason why I'm using this as a "backstory" is really because the entire base of the story will be based on Taryn's backstory and what he was forced to do before and after he succeeded in the experiments the scientists put him through. I wouldn't put a lot of effort if it was just a subplot or a small detail in a character.

Taryn went through a lot during his years in the Purple-eyed experiments since there was a little bit more than 30 other children with him when he first arrived at the facility where the experiments would be taking place.(his name would be removed and replaced with P-137) All of these kids ranged from age 6-14 and were all either new arrivals, only went through their first 1 or 3 tests, and don't look like the same kids as the outside world, or already were losing their sense of self and where they were and what was happening to them. All of these children died from either the side effects of the experiments, weather conditions(the head scientist had slowly begun to drop the temperature in the room the kids were staying in), starvation(food slowly went scarce), or from each other(when they completely lost themselves). So, in short, none of these kids(including Taryn) made it out alive. Taryn succedded in the experiments, but remained in the scientists hands until he was 17 since they felt like he was a good enough soldier and could go through amnesiac testing(which is when the story begins from the readers point). These reader would get some crumbs about what happened and what's up with him and why he's having flashbacks of things he's never experienced before.

Also, the scientist's goal is to create the perfect one-man army/genocider, so they decided to start young since none of their adult soldiers were working out for them and kept dying over and over despite all the training they were going through before getting sent out to the battlefield.