1947-02-04, #1: Doctors' Trial (early morning)

Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the Matter of the United States of America against Karl Brandt, et al., defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 4 February 1947, 0930-1630 hours, Justice Beals presiding.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Marshal, will you ascertain that the defendants are all present in Court.

THE MARSHAL: If it please Your Honor, all the defendants are present in the Court.

THE PRESIDENT: The Secretary General will note for the record that all defendants are present in the Court.

Defense Counsel nay proceed.

DIRECT EXAMINATION — Continued BY DR. SERVATIUS — Resumed

Q: Witness, yesterday afternoon you were discussing your attitude toward experiments on human beings. Will you please say when such experiments in your opinion are permissible and what the guiding principles in such cases are?

A: I said yesterday that within medical scientific research in certain diseases and under certain conditions, in order to guarantee further development experiments on human beings are absolutely essential. I said that there can be general reasons for this. Of course, there can also be special reasons — I refer to the war—for special experiments and special work in certain direction.

It is a matter of course that before one undertakes a human experiment all possible animal experiments must be conducted first, and that the execution of an experiments on human beings requires all medical and human precautions.

I indicated briefly that one can not judge retroactively from the results of an experiment its justification and that, vice versa, a negative result does not mean that the experiment as such was jot justified.

If one does conduct experiments, they must be kept on as small a scale as possible and, on the other hand, **** be sufficiently extensive that the results are certain.

I believe that there are two basic questions which one must consider if one intends be undertake a human experiment. That is the question of the importance and the question of the unimportance.

"Importance" is synonymous with "necessary", in the interests of humanity, which one must consider as represented by individuals.

Assuming that the experimental subject volunteers for the experiments as such is not dangerous, or is as little dangerous as is humanly possible, then I consider that such an experiment is not much disputed.

It is different when I do not say that the experiment is important, the subject is voluntary and the experiment not dangerous. If I say that the experiment is not important, a human experiment, seen from the point of view of the unimportant, is in my opinion impossible. That is, perhaps, the first point where one could actually speak of a crime. If the experiment is unimportant, the subject a volunteer, and the experiment not dangerous, this is nevertheless no justification for the execution of such an experiment, because it is in the first place unimportant.

The question becomes difficult as soon as the question of the voluntary character of the experimental subject is discussed in an experiment which is recognized as important. It is that the subject does not volunteer, even if the experiment as such is not dangerous. In such a case, the words "not voluntary" must be defined, and one will come to different points of view.

Recently the question was discussed whether a prisoner can volunteer for an experiment. I do not want to take the definitely opposing view which was taken at that time, for I consider it quite possible that a prisoner may volunteer to have non-dangerous experiments performed on his own person, but from the moment when there is danger—that is, danger to the life of the experimental subject through the experiment—at that moment, the physician as such can not alone decide whether or not to carry out the experiment. Here it is necessary that a superior authority give at least approval for such an experiment; that is, permit it.

Here the question of persons condemned to death becomes acute; whether the person condemned to death volunteers or not. I will leave that question open for the moment. The person is given an opportunity, a chance, and the decision is more or less left up to him.

These experiments will also be discussed where the importance of the experiment is recognized, the subject does not volunteer, and the experiment is dangerous, or, even if the subject volunteers, where the experiment is dangerous.

It will probably be necessary to settle these questions basically, probably on an international basis; all the more because on the basis of the indications given in literature, every civilized state today — if one considers human experiments a crime—every state is guilty. I should like to say that the higher scientific research is carried, the further this development has progressed in a state, the greater would be the guilt. The purpose of an order for experiments would be given; the point of view would be established from which experiments can to conducted, and, in the third class, for the execution, of the experiment itself, the necessary methods would be established.

Q: Now, witness, will you please come back to the experiments carried out here in Germany. Would you have been able to stop such experiments?

A: It is difficult to answer such a question since it is more of a theoretical question, but nevertheless I do not believe that I would have been able to stop them. If I had been informed about the methods of execution in the case of the dangerous experiments, I would certainly have been told that they were persons who had been condemned to death; and in the non-dangerous experiments I would have been assured of the voluntary nature of the subject, also the importance of the experiments, which in some cases were equal to a strong dispute. All this would have been pointed out so on the whole I consider it impossible for me to have stopped or prevented the experiments as such.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal understands the witness has placed basic stress upon the importance and the non-importance of the experiments, having in mind the goal to be attained. The Tribunal would be interested in learning the attitude of the witness concerning his view, having in mind the circumstances of the occasion and his view of the importance or non-importance of the experiments charged in this indictment to have been conducted by the defendants. Do you understand, sir?

DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, sir. Witness, you have heard what information the Tribunal wants about the experiments. You know the experiments. Please speak of the cold experiments, the freezing experiments, as you knew them.

THE WITNESS: I must state that I know the experiments only from the prosecution's side and that I do not yet know the attitude of those who actually carried them out. I could possible express my views on the experiments more clearly if I were asked to do so at the end of the examination of the actual defendants; if I must now comment on the actual experiments, I might later have to make some corrections.

DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, I do not know if I understood the court correctly.

THE PRESIDENT: The point is this, Doctor. Let us assume for the moment that the prosecution's version of these various experiments is correct. Based upon that supposition, the court would be concerned in knowing the attitude of the witness about them.

If an untold theory or point of view is presented by the several defendants when they take the stand on their own behalf, I am confident the Tribunal will allow this defendant to go back on the stand and express his attitude or view in consideration of the entire evidence then before the Tribunal.

BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q: Witness, you heard what the judge has said. Would you please assume that what the prosecution has presented is correct?

A: If I speak of the cold experiments, they were conducted in the year 1942 and the occasion for these was a demand of the Luftwaffe in order to bring aid to those fliers who were in emergency situations. A superior state of interest, which I mentioned before, was no doubt decisive in this case. The execution of the experiments, insofar as they concern Mr. Rascher, seem to me exaggerated for his person from a certain period of time on. I know that similar experiments in the year of 1941 were carried out in the United States with similar results. Prisoners were not used but insane persons were used. The cooling was down to 25 degrees body temperature and there were six cases of death. I assume that similar interests and conditions were decisive as were later decisive for our Luftwaffe. That these experiments themselves have certain importance is shown by the fact that the American Air Force also announced in the past month that the experiments in Dachau had given then an advance of several years in their own research, so the experiments in Dachau have led to a generally positive result.

Q: Witness, about the high altitude experiments. Can you comment on them also, even though you were not a specialist? At lease please express your opinion.

A: The high altitude experiments were possibly initiated for the same reasons. As far as the person of Dr, Rascher again is connected with them, one must assume the same thing that I just said about the cold experiments, I believe that from a certain point on he acted beyond the limits necessary. One is the importance of the experiments being carried on as small a scale as possible.

Q: What is your opinion about malaria experiments?

A: They are a typical example of the fact that experiments on human beings are necessary. Research into malaria can be conducted only with human beings. I referred to Dengue fever yesterday where the situation is similar and the references, which you yourself made recently to the research in America now being conducted on one hundred prisoners, speaks for the fact that this is not of a criminal nature; that it is simply a demand in the interests of humanity and one knows about one million persons dying annually in India of malaria and the demand to help here is all the greater.

Q: Please speak about the Lost experiments?

A: The Lost experiments are to be considered first of all as non-dangerous. They have generally been carried out ever since chemical warfare agents have existed. A low quantity milligram of Lost is put on the skin in order to examine the reaction and later new methods of treatment are developed. It is a typical example of the fact that the volunteering, the aspect of the volunteering mass, is decisive. I know that in the Military Medical Academy practically every officer candidate made such a Lost experiment on himself. The degree of danger is virtually none. This would be an experiment which fell into the first group which I said was necessary, voluntary and not dangerous.

Q: You have also heard of the sulfonamide experiments. Please speak about them.

A: In 1941 and 1942 the question of sulfonamide was debated in the Wehrmacht among the physicians of the Wehrmacht and at home. It was not clear whether the use of sulfonamide administered locally on the wounds, or orally, that is, by administering sulfonamide tablets, whether this would give protection in all front hospitals. This question was debated and the decision as to whether sulfonamide was to be applied or not was at that time quite unsettled. There were individual surgeons and consulting surgeons who held the point of view that for the hospitals sulfonamide was to be rejected in caring for the wounded in operational methods and one should not put sulfonamide powder on the wounds end think that that was enough.

I know that in the experiments of Professor Gebhardt and other agents possibly the death of Heydrick in Prague played a role, perhaps as setting the time for this assignment. I said yesterday that I myself was of the opinion that this question should be solved in a different way be establishing a sort of movable hospital which would follow the patients and thus control the effectiveness of the sulfonamide.

Q: What is your opinion about the transplantation and regeneration experiments?

A: According to the one-sided presentation of the prosecution I cannot understand this problem completely. I do not understand the reasons for the type of experiments conducted and I wish to ask that I speak on this after Professor Gebhardt has testified himself.

Q: You have heard of the sea water experiments?

A: The sea water experiments possibly fall within the framework of the two experiments mentioned where the interests of the Luftwaffe were the impulse, which in the last analysis came from Goering and were executed with that impulse. Whether dangerousness played a special role I cannot say.

Q: What is your opinion of Hepatitis research?

A: Hepatitis Epidemica was a disease which effected all the Wehrmacht in the East severely. It is known that certain units lost 40% to 50% by this sickness. The disease, as such, is not dangerous; in the literature which was published only last year, 1946, it is said that special measures for prevention are not necessary because there is no danger to life. I said yesterday that the mortality figure is about one-tenth of that in the case of malaria. If experiments ware conducted, and I assume that they were now, they were no doubt not dangerous and it is probable that the methods used in the investigations, such as the stomach juice investigations or the liver functions, were not dangerous. The disease, as such, in view of the number of losses which the Wehrmacht had from this disease, was of special interest, and I assume that experiments in this connection were conducted in other countries in the same way as I assume they were conducted here.

Q: Sterilization experiments were also mentioned — Schumann and Glauberg — will you please comment on them?

A: The Schumann experiments seemed to me to have been useless experiments. I cannot imagine that with two or three minutes of x-ray treatment one can effect sterilization. I cannot declare myself positively in favor of the principle. There were no medical indications of why the sterilization was to be carried out.

Q: Will you please comment on the Typhus experiments?

A: Typhus is a disease which is to be considered as much more serious than Hepatitis or Malaria. Consequently, because of the actual loss of life through typhus the superior State interest in this disease during war time was all the greater. In order once more to give a comparison of the dangerousness of these diseases, one can assume that Typhus is 100 to 200 times as dangerous as Malaria. An example occurs to me on the question of the experiments. In the first World War a Turkish doctor, in order to study typhus and its transference from one human being to another, infected 310 Turkish soldiers with infected blood.

About 170 of them fell ill. The others had already had typhus and apparently were immune. Of the approximately 170, 65 patients died. The result at that time, it was 1916, was decisive in many respects for the medical service of the Turks and they sought an excuse, a juristic excuse, for this physician who was responsible for these deaths, by declaring him temporarily insane.

Q: Now there remain the phosphorous experiments. Will you please speak about them?

A: The dangerousness of phosphorous experiments, as such, can be judged only as in the case of the Lost experiments. I saw innumerable phosphorous burns on women and children in our cities and the experiments conducted in Buchenwald must have dealt with the same symptoms, since phosphorous came from English incendiary bombs, The wounds healed after suitable treatment by various methods. Death occurred only where there were extensive burn and where the symptoms of the patient were those as in burns in general.

DR. SERVATIUS: Does the Tribunal desire any further information on these individual experiments?

JUDGE SEBRING: Assuming the Prosecution's testimony to be true concerning the charge of extermination of Jews for the purpose of completing a skeleton collection and the later extermination of tubercular Poles, will you have the defendant comment upon what military necessity existed, if any, for conducting those programs?

Q: Witness, you have heard the question of the Tribunal. Will you please comment on the tubercular Poles and the skeleton collection?

A: There was certainly no military interest in question in the skeleton collection. In the case of tuberculosis, I must assume that such things did occur. I would not consider it justified. I consider it necessary that as long as one can help a human-being and as long as there is any prospect whatever, one must help him. That one may consider transfers of tuberculosis patients from one place to another is a thought which is not unfamiliar to me. When I spoke of these special hospital installations yesterday I can add that we considered moving tuberculosis patients and concentrating them at certain points in the Allgau and several such installations, hospitals, tuberculosis hospitals, which already existed, or in the southern Black Forest near St. Blasien; but I see no justification because a person is sick or suffering, or because he can no longer work, to kill him, no matter what his nationality is or what his age is.

THE PRESIDENT: I have a question. A question by Judge Beals. I understand the witness, in discussing experiments upon human-beings, to stress the danger to life only. I would like the opinion of the witness upon such experiments which it would be reasonably anticipated or known would result in serious physical injury to the experimental subject, whether internal or external, as to whether that would not also be an element to be considered, as well as danger to life only?

BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q: Will you please comment on that?

A: It is a question of serious sickness and of subsequent symptoms to be considered but in my opinion a distinction must be made between whether there is actual danger to life or possible danger to life. I said before that I consider an experiment as not dangerous if it is not dangerous as far as a human-being can judge. Of course I admit that there is no experiment which actually and under all circumstances is not dangerous, since even in the most simple injury there can be complications. But it is not expected. For example, if a malaria patient, who has contracted malaria through an experiment, cannot get rid of malaria and does not respond to treatment, that has to be evaluated differently than if the malaria could be treated and cured. But the conditions under which one undertakes such experiments is that one assumes that it is not dangerous.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness did not quite answer my question. I intended to request the opinion of the witness as to whether or not the practically certain serious bodily injury, permanent injury, either internal or external to the experimental subject, was not also a serious consideration and that the only consideration is not the possible death of the subject?

That is, in any experiment upon a human-being if it would reasonably be anticipated that the experiment would result not in death but in serious personal injury to the subject, either internal injury or external injury, would not that also be a serious consideration in determining whether or not any experiments should be conducted?

A: Such a point of view is decisive in the selection of experimental subjects. I would consider that of about equal importance with giving a person condemned to death an opportunity to preserve his life under the conditions to be expected. I failed to point out one thing — that is, that in all experiments one must make it clear to the subject what the experiment is about and what results may be expected. Whether the experiment is dangerous or not, this seems to me to be a decisive factor in the question as a whole.

BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q: Witness, now I come to another subject; you were not alone on these things, you were in a circle of officers and associates. In this way you could learn of many events and be informed of them. Will you please explain your relationship to the group, so-called?

A: I must distinguish between several groups. Of the 22 co-defendants, I met nine only here in the prison in Nurnberg. Those are Ruff, Romberg, Becker-Freyseng, Weltz, Shaeffer, Hoven, Biegelbeck, Pokorny and Miss Oberheuser. I know by name, but did not have any closer connection with three, that is Poppendick, Fischer and Rudolph Brandt. With six others, Mrugowsky, Shroeder, Gebhardt, Blome, Rose and Sievers I had only brief and occasional contact, and only with Sievers did I have any contact in connection with the experiments which are the subject of the indictment.

I was at a conference with Mrugowsky once on an apparatus for removing poison from drinking water, which had nothing to do with the thing under discussion here. It was a discussion in connection with an assignment to determine the application of apparatus to determine use in chemical warfare.

With Shroeder, even before he was Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe, I met him once or twice in connection with the question of construction of hospitals, since he too was interested in such matters from the Luftwaffe side.

I saw Genzken only once. I no longer remember exactly what year it was, I believe it was 1944 when he approached me in order to get some medical officers for the Waffen SS, whom he had asked for from the Army and not obtained. He thought in this way he could have his wish fulfilled more quickly. I did not know Gebhardt before the war. I met him the first time during the war, at the beginning of the War with Poland when the headquarters leaders and Himmler's Headquarters were in a special train, and the trains were near each other at Gross-Beuern where the troops were on maneuvers. There was a big troop bandaging place where Polish soldiers were being cared for, and Gebhardt and I helped there day and night to take care of the wounded. It was my first personal contact with him. I saw him several times when Himmler visited the Headquarters, but we did not really talk with each other. I was with him a longer time the first time at Hohenlychen at the meeting in 1944 in the spring.

I have known Blome since 1941, I believe. I met him with Mr. Conti. There were the differences which I had mentioned between Dr. Ley, Conti, and so forth, and Blome had taken up a very definite attitude against Conti. I met him occasionally on the same question of leadersship of Wehrmacht physicians, but we never discussed the things which are under discussion here.

Rose visited me once in 1944, I believe. Yesterday I mentioned his desire to have the paralytics, whom he was treating with malaria, and put in a hospital, and I was in contact with him a second time, I believe it was in writing though, when he asked for additional food rations for these malaria patients. I passed on his request to the food ministry.

I referred to Sievers yesterday. I saw him only once, when in connection with the apparatus against gas he gave me a final report from Hirt He did not tell me about the Ahnenerbe at that time, or about other experiments which were being conducted.

Then there is another group of gentlemen, Handloser, Rostock and Brack. I discussed my contact with Professor Rostock yesterday. I worked with him for 19 years. Generaloberstabsarzt Handloser, after 1942, the events over Viasma, I came in contact with him and since that time I have had increasingly close contact with him. At the end of the War, his office as Chief of Medical Service was open in Belitz, a small suburb of Berlin, where I was also located and from the practical necessity of location we came together there. I did not discuss the experiments which are on trial here with him.

The last is Brack. I met Brack in 1934 as the Adjutant of Buhle, the head of the Chancellery of the Fuehrer in Berlin. I had more closer connections with him later in 1939 or 1940, when the problem of euthanasia had been brought up, and then until he went into the Wehrmacht in 1942 I saw him frequently.

Q: Those were the individual persons; what contact did you have with the medical societies?

A: I did not belong to any medical society until 1933, I was a member of the German Society for Surgery, and in 1933 I resigned so that I had no connections with these societies.

Q: How about the National Socialist League of Physicians, you mentioned it once?

A: In 1933 I joined the National Socialist League of Physicians. Before there was any mooting or discussion I was sent material and with a request to make a speech on racial questions. I refused because in the first place the material given me seemed to me too primitive, and in the second place because I did not have adequate scientific knowledge to say anything basic on this question. I do not mean to say that I would not recognize racial points of view as such and that I do not think on the whole they play an important role in the lives of nations. I did not participate in the first meetings of the National Socialist League of Physicians in Bochum, at that time, and more or less from laziness I continued to remain a member. Other organizations which might be important here, Professor Liebrand mentioned the Altrose organization the other day. I was never there. Neither Conti or Blome asked me or invited me to participate in any of the meetings.

Q: What were your relations with Conti?

A: My relation with Dr. Conti was at first very uninteresting. We had no contact of any kind. From the moment when I had the task of coordinating Wehrmacht and Civilian health matters, a tension arose between us which never ceased. It was well known that I had to be careful whenever we might get in public that it was not expressed.

Q: I have a question about the meetings; were you not invited to meetings, were you not informed there about the questions, the issues?

A: I took part in few meetings during the war. Until 1942 it would not have been possible, because as Escort Physician I was tied to the Headquarters. From 1942 on I was in Marburq, once at a celebration. I then participated in the third meeting of the consultinq physicians of the military Medical Academy, which was in 1942 in the spring. One morning I spent at the meeting of German soldiers in Dresden. In the fall of 1943 on behalf of the Fuehrer, I had to give Sauerbruch the Knights' Cross or War Merit Cross. There was a second meeting of consulting physicians of Hohenlychen in 1944.

Q: At this meeting at Hohenlychen did you hold the welcoming address?

A: Yes.

Q: I will show you this opening speech, which is Document NO 924, which is not in any document book; which was submitted in one of the last sessions. I do not know whether the Tribunal has a copy in English.

A: I must explain the history, the events leading up to this meeting, and point out the reason why it was held in Hohenlychen. In the spring of 1944 it was hardly possible to hold a meeting in a German city, because of constant air raid alarms the execution of a meeting world have been impossible. For a reason which I do not know Gebhardt learned of this. Gebhardt learned it had not been settled where this meeting was to be held and no doubt offered Hohenlychen as the place for holding the meeting, and Generaloberstabsarzt Handloser accepted the invitation.

It was possible to put up the many participants at Hohenlychen and receive them, and there was enough room to hold the individual conferences. Hohenlychen was, at the same time, an SS Hospital. The supreme Chief in this case was Himmler. I had to participate in this conference because a word was to be given on behalf of the Fuehrer by ea.ch one of the representatives from the Luftwaffe, the Army, and the Navy. In order to decide who was to hold the opening speech there, in any case, I had to distribute the decorations. Gebhardt, who was the host, asked me to hold this speech, and. he said this was in agreement with Himmler.

I did not discuss this question with Himmler himself either before or after and for formal reasons I made this speech in the name of the Reichfuehrer. I pointed out the necessity of common work of the doctors, in the interest of the soldiers, and gave this decoration to Gebhardt himself, first. I emphasized the value of Hohenlychen as a place of knowledge where post-operative care was carried out. Hohenlychen had gained a certain reputation in Germany during the Olympics. Gebhardt was in charge of the medical care of the sportsmen and through the nature and method of this treatment he was a man who was known far beyond the borders of the Reich.

That Hohenlychen was to play a special role in this direction was because in the Medical Zone there was a hue and cry for a new Hohenlychen, and it was apparently agreed to establish a new hospital in Luedenscheidt. Hohenlychen, as a sports place of treatment, in the case of Gebhardt, was a well known conflict with us.

As to the other gentlemen who were given an award, there was Gutzeit. Gutzeit was the consulting head of the Wehrmacht Medical Section. And I had expressly given him the award, because, in addition to his good work itself, Internal Medicine, which he represented, was to be honored as the text reading. Gutzeit was the only Internalist that received this award. So far as surgeons were concerned, Gutzeit had already received the Knight's Cross from Gebhardt, and the third was Professor Thoeniss a well known brain surgeon known in German medical circles. Herman Backmeister, at the head of the Medical Center at St. Blasien as I mentioned a while ago, received the award in view of his work and participation in the fight against Tuberculosis.

BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q: Now, I should like to conclude this subject. I come to the Reich Research Council; you were a member of the Board of Directors of the Reich Research Council, were you not?

In 1943 I became a member of the Reich Research Council. At that time the Reich Research Council was under the Education Minister, and by a special decree in June of 1942 they removed it from the Education Minister and it was put under Generalartz Schreiber. Scientific work was to be put on a very broad basis of general science and Schreiber seemed the right man to do this. The Reich Research Council consisted of a president and an administrative machine. Then, it had a set of leadership staff, about thirty or forty branches of different types of research. There were heads of each of the specialist groups. Medicine coming under the head of Classical Medicine was placed under Sauer watch. There were a number of Deputy Ministers. The Deputy at the head of the Reich Medical Control was Dr. Schreiber who was mentioned yesterday. Aside from the Board, and this administrative machine, the Reich Research Council, was a representative arrangement.

There were representatives of the highest Reich Authority, and from agencies of which one could assume that they had some contact with scientific work. The Plenipotentiary Minister was in it. Speer was in it. And I was also one of the members, there were over twenty. The Board did not have any right to issue instructions and could not exert any influence on the heads of the specialist group and the deputies and the Commissioners. This was not possible because the composition of this Board was not from the point of view of Profession but of Agency. And it did not in effect play any important role itself, by reason of the fact that from a military research viewpoint, the Society was founded in July 1944. This fact was not even reported to the members of the Board, and I myself learned of it only on the basis of the document.

I must point out that in April 1944, shortly before the end of the War, I received an appointment from Goering himself. That is, as the individual Deputy over a specialist group to take up the point and establish medicine and to take charge of them. I was to be the Deputy General Surgeon within the Reich Research Council. I received the degree only a week before my medical agency was dissolved in 1944.

Q: Were you connected with the Reich Research Council through your office of Research?

A: It could only be a matter of general names which Professor Rostock has for all office chief director with Prof. Menzel. He had no right to issue instructions to the heads of specialist groups because they were undergoing supervision; there was no other connection. Rostock made all of the appointments himself.

Q: What is the Ahnenerbe Society; what was your connection with it?

A: Until I was arrested, I considered the Ahnenerbe Society Organization a sort of SS Administrative Agency concerned with Research in connection with antiquities of some sort. I did not know any details or any facts of anything that was done. I never had any contact with the Ahnenerbe at all. The only contact I had with Mr. Sievers is that he did not inform me I did not even know that he came from the Ahnenerbe.

DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, now I come to the next count of the indictment about Euthanasia. Shall I begin now or after the recess?

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, you may continue with the examination of the Defendant.

BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q: Witness, you appear to have participated in the experiments on Euthanasia. I shall show you the decree of the 1st of December, 1939, that is Doc. 360. It is in Document Book No. 14. Please discuss how this decree came about.

A: After the end of the Polish campaign in about October, the Fuehrer was at Obersalzburg. I cannot longer clearly remember the advance but I was called to him and he told me that because of the Document, which he had received from Professor Bouhler, he wanted to carry out a solution of the Euthanasia question. He gave me general directives of how he imagined it, and the fundamental; insane persons, who were in such a condition that they could no longer take any conscious part in life.

These people were to be given relief by death. General instructions about information which he himself had received followed, and he told me to get in touch with Boehler himself about the matter. I did so by telephone on the same day, and then I informed Hitler about my talk with Boehler. Then he sent me later the decree, not in the form in which we have it here, but in a similar form, and certain changes were made. My request was that a precaution be introduced for the participation of Doctors, and I used an expression which was familiar to me. It said that Euthanasia could be carried out on persons incurably sick with probability bordering on certainty.

Since, this formulation was strange to him, it was added with the most critical judgment of their condition of sickness. This decree was signed about the end of October, which reads as follows:

Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M. D., are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain doctors to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurably ill can on the most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.

Q: Did you talk to Bouhler?

A: I talked to Bouhler only by telephone at first and after the decree was signed I did not talk to him immediately but sent the decree to him in Berlin.

Q: And what was Hitler's idea of euthanasia? What did he understand by it?

A: The decisive thing for him was what is expressed here in the decree; that incurably ill persons — really I should have said insane, other persons were always exceptions — a mercy death could be accorded. That is a measure ** dictated by purely humane considerations, and nothing else could be thought under any circumstances, and nothing else was ever said to me.

Q: You said that the Fuehrer gave you the assignment on the basis of a call from Bouhler. It could not have been a call from Bouhler alone. There must have been other reasons.

A: It was not a call. It was some kind of a documentary procedure which was decisive. It may be that the Fuehrer already had these documents or that Bouhler spoke to him about it. I don't know exactly. But this was not the cause of the euthanasia problems being taken up.

In his book, "Mein Kampf", Hitler had referred to it in certain chapters. The law for the prevention of the birth of sick children is proof that Hitler had concretely concerned himself with such problems earlier. The law for the prevention of the birth of children of congenital disease followed the events. It was written because people with congenital diseases existed. It is a problem which affects the whole world. Similar laws have been passed in other countries.

Dr. Gehardt Wagner, who was the predecessor of Dr. Conti, at the Party rally in Nurnberg discussed these questions. I did not talk to Gerhardt Wagner at that time and had nothing to do with these things, but I have heard now that in 1935 Gerhardt Wagner had a film made presenting the problem of the insane.

It was apparently a film made in asylums with insane persons.

Q: Witness, were there not requests received by Bouhler and the Fuehrer?

A: Requests to this effect were certainly received constantly by Bouhler The Chancellery of the Fuehrer always received such things.

I only know that these requests were passed on to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. I myself know of one request in the spring of 1939 which was sent to the Fuehrer himself through his Adjutant's office. The father of a deformed child approached the Fuehrer and asked that this creature should be killed. Hitler turned this matter over to me and told me to go to Leipzig immediately — it had taken place in Leipzig — to confirm the fact. It was a child who was born blind, an idiot — at least it seemed to be an idiot — and it lacked one leg and part of one arm.

THE PRESIDENT: We will have a recess for a few moments.

(A recess was taken.)