Melinda Clarke, who guest starred as Lady Heather, also starred as Julie Cooper on The O.C. at the same time that this episode aired.

Wendy: I have a question. How do you have sex with someone who killed your daughter?
Grissom: Revenge is an act of passion.

Warrick: A hand in the desert is worth two in the bush.
Nick: Well, right now a hand is all we have to go on.
Warrick: Ok, Grissom.

Brass: Nothing sounds good in German.

Title: Pirates of the Third Reich

The Third Reich is the term used by Nazi Germany to refer to itself. Reich means "empire" in German, and one of their claims was that the Third Reich (after the Holy Roman Empire and the one ended by WWI) would last for a thousand years. Try 12.

Pirates of the Third Reich is an obvious play on the popularity of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, also produced by CSI's executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Capt. Jack is a further reference to Pirates of the Caribbean, via the movie's popular main character, Capt. Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp.

Those who want to live, let them fight; and those who do not want to fight in this eternal struggle, do not deserve to live:

Coupled with the notation at the bottom (A.H 1933), it can be surmised that this passage probably comes from Mein Kampf, written by Hitler, which outlined his plans for Germany his intentions for "lesser peoples."

Tuskeegee

The US Public Health Study of Syphilis took place in Tuskeegee, Alabama, and involved 600 black men, roughly half of whom had syphilis. When the study began in 1932, syphilis had no treatment; and led to a painful and fatal multi-symptom disease. The men in question were given no ideas as to what was being studied or why, they were simply offered regular medical treatment and burial benefits. Originally planned to have gone on for six months, the study wound up continuing indefinitely. The worst aspect of the study, with strong racial overtones, was that, when penicillin as a treatment was developed in 1947, the subjects were never informed nor offered the treatment, and the study continued, as-is, until it was revealed in 1972 by media attention, leading to substantial public outrage. This case led to substantial reforms in medical ethics policy concerning informed consent and testing design.

Grissom: What nature couldn't fix, our Dr. Mengele could?

Josef Mengele was (and is) considered one of the most sadistic figures in both medicine and the Holocaust. Mengele performed grotesque and sadistic experiments on concentration camp prisoners in Auschwitz, including unanesthetized vivisection and other tortuous malpractices. Several of these experiments, among other horrors, involved changing eye color by dubious means and one, involving twins, led to the poor souls being sewn together back-to-back to create "conjoined" twins

Mengele escaped to South America after the war and was never apprehended; in 1992, DNA testing confirmed his death in Brazil, his corpse having been found by Nazi hunters in 1985.