1947-02-03, #4: Doctors' Trial (late afternoon)
THE PRESIDENT: I will ask the reporter if he has a correction to make for the benefit of the record, the translator, I mean.
INTERPRETER (Mr. Rambler): Yes, your Honor. The word mentioned earlier today, the German word, hydrierwerke, should have been translated as hydrogenation works, which is the works for the process of the refinement of gasoline.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed. I will suggest to the reporter and the Secretary General that they see that the translation as contained in the record appears correctly.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:
Q: I have one more question on the old subject. Witness, when did you lose your position as escort physician of the Fuehrer? Was it after you had become Reich Commissioner or before?
A: No, that was afterwards, shortly afterwards.
Q: Was there any connection as far as motives are concerned?
A: One may assume a connection because I became Reich Commissioner against the will of Martin Bormann and he tried everything to influence Hitler against me. He probably submitted the letter from me which he had obtained from Dr. Conti when I joined the SS Physicians' League which I mentioned this morning, when I put down in writing that I did not want to do any active SA or SS service. I have been told about similar things and arguments.
Q: That is enough. Now I come to the experiments. As Document KB Number 2, I submit a chart, the correctness of which you will certify --
DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, the chart is not yet ready in English. I shall turn in one copy in German. It is primarily a chart which is understandable in itself. It shows the duration of the experiments in columns and there are red lines crosswise which show the position of the witness in each case. Right at the bottom his last position as Reich Commissioner and above that his position after the second decree, so that during the examination one will always have a picture of the chronological relationship of an experiment with the position of the witness.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:
Q: Witness, you have the document before you?
A: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Just a moment. Has the Prosecution a copy of this chart?
MR. McHANEY: Yes.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:
Q: You prepared this chart. Is it correct as far as the entries of your position after the second and third decrees chronologically?
A: It is correct as far as this decree is concerned, and I have also entered under Number 6-D, Lost, and in 6-A, Sulfonomide, when I learned of these two groups of experiments concerning the Hirt and Gebhardt experiments.
DR. SERVATIUS: Then please put this chart to one side. I offer the document as Exhibit Number 2.
THE PRESIDENT: Referring to document of June 4, 1945, this document was identified January 27 as Karl Brandt's Exhibit 1 for identification. It has not yet been formally offered as a exhibit before the Tribunal in this case. Does the defendant desire now to offer it as an exhibit? It was merely identified. I mean this document, counsel.
JUDGE SEBRING: Dr. Servatius, during the case of the prosecution on 27 January 1947 you exhibited, as I recollect, to one of the prosecution's witnesses an excerpt from "Life" magazine. At that time the Court was of the view that although it could then be catalogued as Karl Brandt's exhibit for identification only in order to eliminate confusion, that it should be offered prior to the exhibit you have in your hand, as Karl Brandt's Exhibit Number 1.
DR. SERVATIUS: I should like to submit it as Exhibit 1, but it is not available at the moment. That is why I left that number open and submit this document as Exhibit Number 2.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. McHANEY: The Prosecution has just a formal question with respect to Karl Brandt's Document No. 2, and I understand it is now being offered as Exhibit No. 2 for Karl Brandt. I don't think we have any great objection to it going in as an exhibit, but there is some question in my mind as to whether or not it really isn't a matter of argument rather than a document which has any probative value in and of itself. It simply purports to give the chronology of the various experiments charged in the indictment together with the three decrees which vested the Defendant, Karl Brandt, with certain authority. I don't know but what it would be better if this document not be included as an exhibit in the record but simply presented as a matter of argument.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel for the Prosecution may have time to study this document. It can be used today for examination. Counsel may study it tonight and inform the Tribunal in the morning if he agrees that it is correct or if he does not, and then Counsel may cross examine the witness upon this particular document if no desires to do so. The Tribunal will delay passing on the admissibility or non-admissibility of the document until tomorrow morning, but it may be used this afternoon by Counsel for the Defendant in examination of the witness.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:
Q: Witness, I shall go into the individual experiments in the order in which they are listed in the indictment. First we come to the freezing experiments here during the trial. Did you have any part in them?
A: No, I had no part in the freezing experiments. I heard of these experiments for the first time after I was arrested. If I recall correctly, it was last year when I was here in Nurnberg. Before that I had no knowledge of them. It is not quite clear to me in what way my Office for Science and Research could have been informed about it. It is possible that a general report was received there. Schroeder said once in another connection that copies of reports were sent there, but I believe that the freezing experiments were so long ago — I don't have the table of chronology here.
May I — that I don't believe I had that Office for Science and Research yet at that time. The freezing experiments were in May — they were already concluded in May, 1943. That was at least three months before the nominal decree according to which I was to establish an Office for Science and Research which actually went into operation only in 1940.
Q: You want to correct yourself; you mean '44?
A: Yes. '44.
Q: How about Count C, malaria experiments?
A: I learned of malaria experiments only after I was arrested. I knew nothing about them before. During the whole war I had something to do with malaria on two occasions quite independently of the experiments mentioned here. Once the dean of the University of Bonn, Professor Schulemann, in his capacity as a medical officer had a small malaria hospital near Bonn in which the normal treatment of refractory patients was carried on. Because of an air raid on Bonn, the continuation of this hospital and the University Institute was endangered, and he approached me on this matter. We never discussed any experiments. I never made any such request of him or he never made any such request of me. The other time when I had something to do with malaria was that Professor Rose, who was carrying out malaria treatment on insane persons, or at least had a part in them, approached me about the sheltering of these patients. He came to me because — it was either 1943 or '44 — because in connection with the transfer evacuation of hospitals I was connected with an agency of the Propaganda Ministry, and he knew from the Luftwaffe through some agencies of the Air Raid Precaution Medical Service that I was connected with it. I told Rose at that time to go to the competent agency in the Ministry of the Interior, and he did whatever was necessary. He took up the necessary negotiations. I had nothing else to do with malaria or with patients suffering from malaria.
Q: What did you have to do with lost experiments? Do you remember the diary of Sievers, the final report of Himmler — the final report of Hirth?
A: After I had received the assignment to make gas masks on the first of March, '44, at the end of the same month Sievers called on me and on Himmler's orders, as he said, he gave me a final report of Professor Hirth about the treatment of lost injuries.
He visited me in my office in Belitz. He said nothing else. The word "Ahnenerbe" was not mentioned. Nothing was said about any other work of a scientific nature administered from there, and I promised him that in April, in the next month, I would visit Professor Hirth myself. Sievers could not give me any further information about it, and apparently did not have any inclination to do so either. Then in the following month since I was in Strassbourg for another reason, I visited Professor Hirth there once. That was at the end of April, 1944. Mr Hirth explained to me the essential points of his plan of treatment, and with the aid of a number of animal preparations, he explained what he had called significant in this final report. It was the question of supplying the organism with vitamins and the role of destroying poison which the liver plays in connection with lost damage. I assume that I was with him for about one hour, certainly no longer. With the aid of a number of explanations of a chemical nature which I cannot repeat altogether, the final conclusion was that it was necessary if one wants to treat lost injuries to introduce certain vitamin groups into the organism in larger quantities. In this conversation between Mr. Hirth and myself the question of illegal or special human experiments was certainly not brought up, not because there was the impression that we were trying to avoid anything, but because the questions asked during my visit to Mr. Hirth were of an entirely different nature from the beginning. I was there after I had read Hirth's report in order to obtain information about the special vitamin questions.
It was, of course, Mr. Hirth's interest to present his special viewpoint, and if one considers general lost treatment, this was not anything so special. The previous treatment with liver oil salve had the same aim. It is not clear to me whether in the course of 1944 I had any further connection with Mr. Hirth. It is possible that there was some correspondence. It cannot have been important. I never say Hirth again. I never visited him again. I had no further contact with him.
Q: Now, what about the sulfanilamide experiments. Did you understand the question about sulfanilamide and the treatment of wounds?
A: Shortly after the beginning of the war and in every theater of the war the question of the sulfanilamide was discussed. At that time sulfanilamide was exactly the same thing, that a few years later, in the United States, penicillin was. Every one was interested in it, and the Professor Morrell, whom I mentioned before, had developed his sulfanilamide experiments, and the question of sulfanilamide was discussed at large. A sulfanilamide treatment in the Wehrmacht was started with the clear formula, with the aim —
I must mention the name of Professor Krueger because anybody who had anything to do with it knew what it was about, and besides Professor Brack, who was a consulting surgeon at that time, should have been interested in the question from a purely scientific point of view. This was my connection with Professor Rostock and with the Chief of the Medical Services of the Armed Forces, Dr. Handloser.
An attempt was made amongst the troops to obtain clear results — clear findings about the effectiveness of sulfanilamide. I, myself, in 1944, had a special hospital, ambulance, and so-forth. I had made them available, thinking that instead of the usual type of observation, we would have to accompany the wounded with a type of hospital from the first wound at the front until final healing. The doctors should always be under one chief; that is, the treatment of the patients should be controlled from the beginning to the end, which otherwise was interrupted by transfer from one hospital to another. In all the questions of sulfanilamide there was no case of the Gebhardt experiments.
I know that Professor Gebhardt once thought that after he finished his experiments, but before the report in the Military Medical Academy, he had informed me about this question. I believe he was mistaken when he said this, and he will probably confirm this himself, that he made a mistake. I can only say that before Gebhardt announced his experiments in the Military Medical Academy, I was definitely not informed. I did not order the sulfanilamide experiments. I did not have any other connection with them. I was informed by the report in March 1943, in the Military Medical Academy — May 1943, in the Military Medical Academy.
The nature of the report of Gebhardt did not give me the impression that the experiments, themselves, had been conducted in any criminal manner.
Q: Did you object to the report?
A: No, I had the impression, and Gebhardt will probably confirm this, that Gebhardt gave the description in such a way that those present at this report had to gain the impression that he had tested a limited number who were effectively condemned to death. So, I certainly aid not object in any form; otherwise I would have a different memory of the report than I do. I cannot recall the actual wording of the report. I remember the fact that I was there, and that I did not object. From that, I conclude that Gebhardt made his report in such a way that those who were present, who heard, the report had no reason to object in any way.
Q: Persons condemned to death were mentioned. Did you have any misgiving that such death sentences were completely unobjectionable from the legal point of view?
A: No, I did not have any misgivings in that form. I said before that if I received such I would have misgivings.
Q: Now, I come to the experiments on transplantations and regeneration. Were you informed about them?
A: I can say nothing about these experiments. I was informed of them only here in Nurnberg. I knew nothing about them before. I have nothing, whatever, to say about them. I was temporarily of the opinion that they were reported in some other form; although I was not present at the discussion but later on, that was not the case.
Q: Now, you are changed with participation in the Sea Water Experiments. Do you have anything to say about that?
A: I learned of the Sea Water Experiments for the first time through the Indictment. I knew nothing about them beforehand. I did not learn of them — I had no part in them, and I only know of them after reading the Indictment. I could not, at first, realize what it was about. I assume if Schaefer says in his affidavit that he thought that the higher circles of physicians knew of this problem, that it was an open secret, he probably meant the people who participated.
Q: He will be able to tell us that. Now, did you have anything to do with removing poison from water?
A: I had a conference in Berlin for obtaining apparatus for disposing of poison gas. It was a question of obtaining apparatus for the war against chemical agents. Apparatus for removing poison from water was discussed but no final decision was reached. I met Mr. Mrugowsky once, who was connected with such apparatus; this removing of prison from drinking water after gas attacks.
Q: Then, the Indictment lists experiments with Hepatitis. A letter from Grawitz to Himmler says that you furthered these experiments. Did you, yourself, work on this question, clinically?
A: I never did any work with Hepatitis Epidemica. If so, it would have had to have been during the war, since before the war this disease was of no importance in Germany during the war. I did not deal with this question because I was to busy with other things in the first place, and in the second place such a purely internal disease is of interest to Hygienist, and was relatively uninteresting to me as a surgeon.
Q: Did you issue research assignments on this subject? How about Doctor Dohmen?
A: I do not know why I should have given a research assignment to Doctor Dohmen. Of course, the question of Hepatitis was a question which interested everyone. Every one encountered it everywhere in the East. But, for that reason I would not have given special attention to that disease. It had no relation together things which interested me more as a surgeon. I know the letter. I was told about it last year. I saw it here for the first time, this year. It says that I had asked Mr. Grawitz to have a Doctor Dohmen carry out special Hepatitis work. Doctor Dohmen, the letter goes on, was to obtain seven or eight prisoners for that purpose and the lives of these prisoners would be endangered. It is not clear to me in what connection and for what reason, in the letter, mentioned my name as the instigator of Hepatitis research for in all the rest of the correspondence and in all the other documents there is not even the slightest hint that I had any particular interest in this question or that I was so interested that I could have started it.
Assuming that the experiments were carried out, I would never have received any report citing results. There are indications against the sense of this letter, especially when it says these experiments are to be carried out on persons to be condemned to death. Hepatitis Epidemica is not a disease as dangerous as all that. I have inquired meanwhile, and know that for example, compared with Malaria it is dangerous only about tenth of a fraction as Malaria. Today, I have already discussed my relationship with Himmler and with Grawitz; that was not invented; that was actually the truth. On the other hand, all the correspondence — in all the correspondence, Hepatitis, one year later, after the first letter failed to have the desired effect, Professor Schrieber is looking for a way to approach Himmler in order to have Hepatitis research work continued.
Schriber was the deputy for epidemic control in the Reich Research Council so that I may assume for a reason which is not quite clear to me that Grawitz possibly confused Schrieber and me in the first letter. That is conceivable. The letter is dated the 1st of June, 1943, a short time before there was the meeting of the Military Medical Academy and probably Grawitz, who was present, talked to Schreiber as well.
In any case I am not able to give any information about this question of hepatitis and certainly not about any experiments which actually book place. I have no information; I received no report; and I did not hear from any other source even now that these experiments were really conducted. It seems to me significant that the witness Schmidt who was here testified that the experiments were not conducted in Strasbourg, as Dohmen, who was to conduct them, was there for only two or three days himself.
MR. McHANEY: If it please the Tribunal, I don't like to get up and object; but it seems to me that the witness should confine himself to answering questions which are put to him by his defense counsel and refrain from making arguments on the basis of the evidence which has gone in. He has now been discussing at length the testimony of various witnesses and the assumptions that he draws from them. I think that argument can be taken care of by defense counsel at the appropriate time.
DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, the answers were no doubt all essential. Whether I chop these questions up in pieces or let the witness speak consecutively makes no great difference in my case. It would only take longer and would be confused. But if the Court wants me to ask him short questions. I will do so.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel has been proceeding satisfactorily with the examination of the witness. The witness has included occasionally matters of argument which might properly be made by his counsel but has not consumed much time; and the prosecution witnesses were allowed considerable latitude also. The examination may proceed in the manner in which it has been conducted heretofore.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:
Q: Witness, you are accused of participation in sterilization experiments. You know the documents which the prosecution has submitted. When did you first learn of this problem?
A: I learned of this problem of sterilization after I was arrested here; and I learned for the first time only now the type of procedure. From this fact that two or three minutes of X-ray treatment was intended to sterilize I want to prove that I certainly did not know about it for that is such an unscientific conception of this biological process that one cannot imagine any doctor would be in favor of such a plan. I was connected with it by the fact that a Doctor Schumann, who was connected with an agency of Bouhler, was involved in this question. I cannot remember ever having seem or talked to this Doctor Schumann. I certainly never gave him any instructions to take up this question of sterilization; and I was not consulted, I was not asked whether he could do that or not; and the name of Dr. Glauberg, who also played a role in this, I heard only here during the trial. Concerning Dr. Schumann, whom I mentioned first, and the agency in which he worked, I must add that I never entered his office and, of course, I had no influence on the hiring of personnel by Bouhler's agency.
Q: We'll come back to that when we discuss euthanasia. What part did you have in the typhus experiments?
A: I learned of the typhus experiments, not details, just the fact that such experiments were conducted, as far as I can recall in interrogations last year; but it may have been at the end of 1945. It is asserted in the documents that my agency and Prof. Rostock were informed; but this means only that the subject but not the manner of execution was discussed if at all. Rostock was not asked for approval for the execution of these measures; but I know that in this case he received a carbon copy. I can testify about these experiments only what has been presented by the prosecution here in documents.
Q: Now, did you hear of the report at Hohenlichen and protest by Prof. Rose?
A: No, as far as I am informed this protest of Prof. Rose's was not reported in the minutes of this meeting at Hohenlichen. If typhus was discussed then, this was within a certain group of interested persons; and I did not participate in it.
Q: Witness, now there are a number of points which are not directly the subject of the indictment but which have been brought up here in the course of the trial, the questions of biological warfare, polygal treatment, phlegmon, cancer research. Did you have anything to do with any of these fields?
A: Of those which you have mentioned, phlegmon, cancer, I can answer only that I learned of them solely here through the prosecution. Also about the polygal experiments. I may say the following about the polygal experiments, that Prof. Rostock on the basis of a publication about the blood coagulation drug polygal in the Munchener Weekly approached this paper, this magazine, and asked for further information. The fact that he approached this magazine on the basis of the published article shows clearly that he had no previous knowledge; and after that he did not receive any further information abut these things. I know nothing about phlegmon experiments. I knew nothing about them before.
If biological warfare is discussed, I must explain a little. When I received the assignment on the 1st of March, 1944, about the chemical warfare apparatus, Field Marshal Keitel spoke to me and asked me whether I was informed about biological warfare. I said "No," then he told me the following: In 1943 and apparently at the beginning of 1944, too, altogether three times on express orders from Hitler, he had passed on instructions that preparations against defense measures, against biological warfare, were forbidden as well as offensive measures; but he said it would be important if I had some knowledge of what work foreign countries were doing on biological warfare; and he said that through Generaloberstabsarzt Handloeser I should go to Stabsarzt Klieve, who was gathering the material, I obtained the permission from Handloeser to talk to Klieve; and then I did talk to Klieve; and he showed me the material which agents had brought him, which showed that preparations for biological warfare were being made by the United States and, above all, by Russia.
He himself had no special laboratory or anything else. He was only registering these reports on paper. A letter was submitted here or a file note, rather, form Mr. Klieve, which is supposed to show that I had close contact with Blome concerning the question of biological warfare. This contact certainly did not exist in this form. After I learned of this clear order of the Fuehrer to Keitel, I could not on my own initiative make any preparations for biological warfare. I could not even present counter-measures.
The file note of Klieve probably means that Blome wants to tell Klieve that his institute in Hosen was being generally supported by me. That is true. At the end of 1943, I think, Blome called me up, called me on the telephone. I pointed out this morning that I was concerned with construction and repair questions concerning medical matters. He asked me to use my influence to have his institute in Posen promoted from the construction angle. It was to become a general serum institute. Since I received this request by telephone, one can see from that fact alone that we certainly did not discuss biological warfare. I wrote a letter to Speer's construction office and suggested that this office should support Blome on his plans as far as possible. Those were all the connections I had with biological warfare.
Q: How about phlegmon and cancer?
A: I knew nothing about phlegmon experiments. I learned of them only here. As far as cancer is concerned there was never any question of experiments. I know that Blome was the man in the Reich Research Council in charge of cancer and that he had begun before the war to be interested in this question of cancer research. I never discussed with him that experiments were necessary or should be carried out. I assume he had no intention except work which might be conducted anywhere else.
Q: Now about the typhus matter. I believe there was a mistake. You said that Professor Rose was in Hoenlychen in 1944, wasn't that in 1943 in Berlin, in the Military Medical Academy?
A: Yes, that was a mistake on my part, that is a confusion between the meeting in Hoenlychen and the other meeting.
Q: Now, witness, will you please tell us about the general aspect of the experiments. You are aware that experiments on human beings can be criminal. Will you please comment upon this?
A: First of all I can say that experiments on human beings have been conducted as long as any scientific efforts have been made in medicine. To what extent they can been clearly classified as crimes one has to decide on the basis of individual cases. I do not want to go into the experiments right now since I know of them only from the Prosecution side, but to what extent human experiments are still conducted today I can show by a literary reference, a reference to something which came into my hands last year.
Professor Kaudri, I believe of the University of Boston, pointed out that if one wants to make progress in the cancer problem one absolutely has to conduct certain very careful animal experiments and then one would have to decide from the animals. with cancer one would have to examine the organs by taking a part of the liver and other organs and examining them according to special methods. When that has been done, it will be necessary to conduct similar experiments very carefully on human beings too, that is, remove parts of organs, the liver, etc. I do not mean this in the sense that one considers such things from the scientific point of view which comes within the border line between right and wrong.
One would have to conduct such experiments because from a certain point on a biological comparison between animals and human beings is no longer possible. We heard recently that criminals are, under certain circumstances, used for such experiments. This is considered taking a chance. The criminal is given the opportunity of reestablishing himself by a decision of Providence and it is not necessarily connected with any alleviation of his imprisonment, but these thoughts are only the consequence of biologistic thinking, and as Professor Leibrandt said, the further advanced and the more differentiated scientific work becomes, the more accurately must it be aimed at the final objective.
How fast this differentiation has advanced in the last decade is shown by an example I have mentioned, blood. During the first World War we had no idea there were blood groups, barely ten years later almost everyone know something about the four blood groups, and today we realize that within the individual groups there are five differentiations, just as blood was originally divided into four blood groups. Medically and biologically science with the aid of technology, and with the aid of finer biological investigation is advancing into the stratosphere in which actually only the human being himself can bring the final decision, and we know today very well that malaria experiments must in the last analysis be conducted on human beings. The same is true of the classic typhus and dengue fever and other infectious diseases.
In the experiments which were conducted in Germany the personality of Himmler certainly did play a role. I know that he was formerly a teacher and he never lost this quality and he was tempted to take up things of all kinds and carry them on. He was distrustful, he let no one see his files. Gebhardt will be able to testify to this too, and if one wants to describe the "scientific field" with which he concerns himself, one sees the dilettantism. He makes porcelain, he had a goldsmith; he tried to make gasoline out of water and coal. He forced his way into medical matters. This morning I spoke of Von Boehmer and his cancer research and on this side he had his excavations and Goodness knows what else. I assume he probably would have considered me insane if he had heard that in 1944 I made attempts under the most difficult conditions to obtain animals necessary for experimental purposes.
I must say that the question of the effectiveness of German chemical warfare was important in connection with the counter measures, and the Wehrmacht told me they had difficulty getting animals. I turned to dog catcher societies and I was told that was not enough from the parallelism to human beings but that monkeys were needed and then I tried through all the zoological gardens to get the monkeys together so that they would be available for the experiments.
In the summer of 1944 I learned that even that was not enough and in contact with the Speer Ministry we had about 200,000 francs in Swiss currency which was made available to us, and it seemed the only opportunity to get the necessary monkeys either from North Africa or from Gibralter, and we sent a man to Spain and had monkeys caught and bought there and brought them by devious means, by the Luftwaffe and we had agents in Bordeauz and took over the zoological gardens in Dresden because that seemed the fastest to us.
I cite this only in order to show that the principle was not just to conduct the human experiments, but that my knowledge about these questions was that the animal experiments were the decisive factor and that human experiments were conducted only under certain circumstances and under certain medical demands. If one speaks of human experiments at all, then in my opinion one does not confuse the result of the experiments with the justification for it. A justified experiment may lead to a negative result because it was not the final thing and the right thing and one must observe one principle, that an experiment must not be kept as small as possible, but it must be as big, as extensive as necessary, so that the result is actually useable.
THE PRESIDENT: Court will recess until nine-thirty o'clock in the morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 0930, 4 February 1947)